Chapter 147: Even If I Can’t Beat It, I Still Have to Fight!
The taller one was missing everything from the waist down.
Below the chest, there was nothing left. Only a few ghastly white splinters of bone jutted out into the air, the break jagged and uneven, as though sothing had bitten straight through him in a single snap.
The blood had not fully dried yet. It had spread out beneath him in a dark red pool, soaking into the moss and running downhill.
The shorter one lay several steps away.
His body was covered in wounds. A huge chunk of flesh had been torn from his shoulder, exposing the stark white bone underneath. His abdon had been ripped open, and what had been inside was spilling out in a heap beside him. Several deep claw marks scored his legs, so deep that bone showed through.
His face was turned toward Ryan.
His eyes were still open. The pupils had already gone slack, but his mouth was still parted, as though he had been trying to scream sothing before he died.
Ryan stood where he was, one hand on the hilt of his knife, his knuckles white.
His heart was pounding. His temples throbbed.
A chill crawled up his back, climbed along his spine, and bored into the base of his skull.
He drew in a deep breath and forced it down.
He could not panic.
He made himself move. He tore his gaze away from the two corpses and began scanning the surroundings.
The blood flowing from beneath the bodies ran toward one direction, where the ground dipped lower.
Were there signs of shrubs being crushed?
Yes.
Several broken branches leaned to one side, their fractures fresh.
That thing had dragged sothing away in that direction.
Or perhaps it had dragged part of them away.
Ryan lifted his head and looked at the trees around him.
Were there claw marks on the trunks?
Yes.
Quite a few trees bore them, old and new mixed together. He looked upward. The branches layered over one another in a dark tangle, too dense to see what might be hiding inside.
Those trunks were thick enough that one person could not have wrapped both arms around them. So of the lower branches were close enough to the ground for sothing to leap up onto them.
That thing could be in the trees.
It could still be nearby.
Ryan slowly backed away.
One step. Then another.
His eyes never left the surroundings. The trees, the shadows, the dark masses of interwoven branches overhead.
His boots sank soundlessly into the moss. His hand remained on the knife hilt. His knuckles were still white, but they had stopped trembling.
After retreating more than ten steps, he stopped.
Those two young n had still been drinking soup by the campfire yesterday. They had still been so excited over a single sword that they probably had not been able to sleep.
Now they were lying here as two mangled corpses.
That thing was still nearby.
Sowhere in this forest.
Sowhere around him.
Ryan turned and quickened his pace as he left. He did not run, but he moved fast, following the marks he had made on the way here.
He passed one tree after another, one cut mark after another.
The corpses behind him grew farther away, but the sll of blood seed to cling inside his nose, refusing to fade.
Ryan moved quickly.
One mark after another passed beneath his eyes. Horizontal, vertical, horizontal. Horizontal, vertical, horizontal.
It was like a thin line binding him to the path behind him.
He followed that line back, passing silver-gray trees one after another, crossing patch after patch of wet, yielding moss. The two corpses behind him receded farther and farther, but the sll of blood still clung to him, impossible to shake.
He had no idea how long he walked.
Perhaps half a stick of incense. Perhaps a full one.
The trees were still those sa trees. The flecks of light were still those sa flecks of light. The dim grayish light showed no sign of changing.
But that feeling of being watched, that prickling sense at the back of his neck as though needles were pressing into his skin, gradually faded.
That thing had not followed him.
At least, not yet.
Ryan finally slowed and let out a breath.
His heart was still racing, and his temples still throbbed, but it was much better than before. He leaned against a tree, and the trunk was so cold that he could feel it through his clothes.
He closed his eyes and forced his breathing back into rhythm.
Safe.
The thought had only just appeared—
When the world in front of him suddenly lit up.
A sheet of golden light appeared out of nowhere, unfolding directly in the center of his vision like a pane of transparent glass suspended in the air.
A line of black text leaped onto it, the strokes sharp and clear:
【Warning】Probability of being attacked by an unidentified creature in the next second: 87%
Ryan’s pupils constricted violently.
At that exact sa mont, a voice rang out in his mind—
“Ryan, watch out!”
The voice was light, but the urgency in it nearly spilled over.
Ryan had no ti to think.
His body moved first.
A sharp tearing sound split the air above him. Sothing was diving down from the canopy at terrifying speed, the pressure of it enough to make his scalp tighten.
Ryan did not look up. He did not have ti.
He drove off with both legs and hurled himself in the opposite direction.
He hit the ground, rolled, and rolled again.
His shoulder blades slamd against the earth. His knees smashed into the moss. He ignored the pain and used the montum to keep rolling away. The world spun, and the tree trunks around him blurred into streaks of silver-gray.
Boom—
A trendous impact exploded behind him.
The ground shook.
Sothing had crashed into the spot where he had been standing a mont earlier, blasting up moss and soil in every direction and punching out a crater the size of a wok.
Ryan stopped rolling and dropped to one knee, his hand already on his knife. He lifted his head and finally saw it clearly.
It was not sothing that could easily be described in words.
It stood there, its body seven or eight ters long, nearly filling the gap between two massive trees.
Its limbs were grotesquely thick, each one nearly as wide around as Ryan’s waist. When it planted them on the ground, its claws sank deep into the moss.
Those claws—every single one of them was more than half a ter long, dark gray and glinting with a tallic chill. Shreds of flesh and dark red blood still clung to the tips.
Its body looked as though it had been pieced together from the fragnts of countless predators.
Its spine was wolf-like, arched with smooth but savage muscle.
Its head resembled a tiger’s, but the jaws split far wider, stretching nearly to the base of its ears, revealing two jagged rows of fangs.
Its forelimbs were like a bear’s, grossly oversized and thick with obscene power, the muscles at the shoulders piled up like hills.
Its tail was reptilian, long and massive, dragging against the ground and sending up moss and dirt whenever it lashed.
Its entire body was pitch-black, as though it swallowed all the light around it.
The sunlight filtering down from above landed on it and revealed nothing, only a deeper patch of darkness, like sothing that had crawled out of a nightmare.
The only real color on it was the blood dripping from the corners of its mouth.
Bright red. Fresh. Warm.
Drop by drop, it pattered onto the moss and seeped into the soil.
Ryan stared at that mouth, at those rows of fangs, at those half-ter claws. His mind rifled through every Magical Beast entry he knew—the magic wolves of the Whispering Forest, the polar bears of the north, the jungle tigers of the east, the mountain lions of the west.
None of them matched.
This was not anything he recognized.
Not anything recorded in any bestiary he had ever read.
The creature stared back at him.
Its eyes—if they could even be called eyes—were a pair of vertical pupils, dark yellow, like two clots of congealed fla.
His reflection was caught in them, small and fragile.
It opened its mouth and let out a low growl.
The sound was not loud. It was dull, like thunder rumbling beneath the earth.
But Ryan could feel the vibration.
Through the ground.
Through the air.
Through the gaps in his bones.
Every hair on his body stood on end.
Ryan tightened his grip on the knife and slowly rose to his feet.
His knees were still weak. His hands still trembled slightly.
But he stood upright.
He looked into those dark yellow slit pupils, looked at the blood still dripping from that mouth, looked at the black body stretching seven or eight ters long.
“What is that?” he asked inwardly.
The one who answered was, naturally, Syl, who had just warned him.
“I don’t know. But judging from its aura… it has lived here for many years.”
“Can I beat it?”
Syl fell silent for a mont.
“Even if you can’t, you still have to fight.”
Ryan took a breath.
The thing stepped forward once.
Its claws dug into the earth, carving several deep grooves.
User Comments
0 comments from readers