The Villain Who Invests in a Witch to Survive Chapter 98 : Chapter 98

Chapter 98: First Battle

When the daylight filtering through the gaps in the forest canopy began to take on a faintly weary pale-gold hue, the Life-Preserving Rune Stone sent him a new signal.

This ti, the point of resonance was ahead of him and not far away. Its fluctuating nature was unlike any of the ones he had found before, carrying a sharp, condensed quality.

Ryan headed in that direction. The layer of humus beneath his feet gradually thinned, replaced by harder earth mixed with small stones.

The trees also began to grow sparser, and ahead of him, the outline of an irregular clearing gradually ca into view.

The instant he stepped to the edge of that clearing, his footsteps paused.

It was too quiet.

Not silent—the wind still passed through the more open branches, and there was still the faint chirping of insects in the distance.

But this sense of quiet ca from sothing missing. There was no rustling of small creatures darting through the grass, no occasional birdsong from the branches overhead. It was as though an invisible boundary existed between this modest clearing and the lively forest surrounding it.

In the center of the clearing, atop a half-withered tree stump, lay a rune.

It was a dull iron-gray from end to end, with not the slightest gleam flowing across its surface. On the contrary, it seed to absorb all the light around it, like an ominous dark stain in the deepening dusk.

Unlike the earlier placents, which had practically been gifts, this rune was displayed there openly and nakedly, with no concealnt whatsoever and no need to search for it.

Its very presence was like a silent declaration.

The Whispering Forest assessnt had never been a treasure hunt. The academy had clearly stated in the assessnt notice that “the essence of the survival challenge is to simulate the extre conditions of a real wilderness environnt, where resources, danger, and competition coexist.”

Ryan stopped at the edge of the clearing and did not step in rashly. He slowly adjusted his breathing. His right index finger rested lightly on the activation stud of the Repulsion Bracer on his left wrist, while his left hand quietly moved toward the pouch at his waist that held the Elental Foils.

His gaze calmly swept over the sowhat disorderly grass around the clearing, the shadow cast by the tree stump, and the trunks of several nearby trees suitable for using as leverage in a leap.

His eyes finally settled back on that iron-gray rune.

Here it ca.

Five paces to his left, a clump of mottled ferns as tall as a man swayed ever so slightly—not the natural ripple of leaves stirred by the wind, but a brief, abrupt tremor at the stems near the roots, caused by sothing heavy and swift brushing past them.

Ryan’s body did not move an inch, but his center of gravity had already sunk slightly, and both knees had begun storing the power to explode into motion at any mont.

The next second, the fern cluster burst apart with a crash.

A shadow shot out like an arrow loosed from a bow, so fast that it dragged a blurred afterimage through the air.

It was a panther-like magical beast, a full size larger than an ordinary mountain leopard. Its fur was a muted gray-black, covered in dark patterns that flowed like rippling water, allowing it to rge almost perfectly with the shadows in the dim light.

A Shadow-Pattern Panther.

A notorious mid-tier predator—cunning, patient, and most skilled at using its surroundings and the shadows to launch lethal ambushes.

Its pounce was fierce and precise, aid directly at Ryan’s undefended throat.

Almost at the exact sa instant the panther burst through the ferns, Ryan’s left hand had already moved.

Three thin tal foils flew from his fingers in a slight fan shape, but they were not aid at the beast itself. Instead, they shot toward the ground three paces ahead of its attack path.

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Three nearly inaudible sounds rang out as the foils activated the mont they struck the ground. There was no explosion, no shockwave—only a burst of blinding white light, intensely concentrated, detonating at the edge of the clearing.

The Shadow-Pattern Panther let out a short, shrill hiss, and its charging body visibly faltered in midair.

For a hunter that lived in perpetual darkness and relied on shadow and ambush, this kind of instantaneous, vision-stripping burst of light was far more deadly than a direct attack.

And Ryan had already moved.

Rather than retreating to widen the distance, he stepped half a pace forward into the monster’s charge, his body turning sideways with the fluidity of a swimming fish.

At his right wrist, the rune circuits inside the Repulsion Bracer flashed with a faint blue glow, and an invisible but powerful shockwave slamd head-on into the creature’s shoulder blade.

With a dull boom, the magical beast’s perfectly aid pounce was knocked three inches off course.

That difference of just three inches ant that the claws originally aid at his throat—more than enough to rip through flesh—ended up only grazing the fabric at Ryan’s shoulder.

Riiip.

A long tear was ripped across his uniform.

The wind of the claws brushed past his skin, bringing with it a wave of cold.

But Ryan’s left hand had already followed through, landing with perfect precision on the back of the Shadow-Pattern Panther’s neck, which had lifted slightly from the impact.

The sensation against his palm was hard and springy: powerful muscle wrapped tightly around bone, with a violently throbbing artery beneath it.

“Stone Armor.”

He spoke the brief incantation in a low voice.

His Mana compressed and guided itself in an instant, concentrating heavily on the surface of the skin from his palm to his forearm.

In that instant, the color and texture of that hand turned into rough granite, gray-white and hard.

Then he drove it downward and twisted.

The movent was plain to the point of simplicity, yet it carried the essence of the joint-locking techniques Barton had emphasized over and over again in Basic Magic–Martial class: use the clever principle of leverage to pry apart and destroy the opponent’s greatest point of balance with the least possible force of your own.

“Wrrgh—!”

The Shadow-Pattern Panther let out a muffled howl mixed with pain and fury. Its entire charging body lost balance under that exquisitely applied but irresistible force and slamd forward toward the ground.

But it was still a mid-tier magical beast. In this mont, its savagery, ferocity, and powerful physique were on full display. Its forepaws clawed madly at the ground, trying to forcibly steady itself, while its mouth, packed with sharp fangs, twisted violently around and snapped toward Ryan’s wrist before he could withdraw.

Ryan gave it no such chance.

At the very instant the beast twisted its head and exerted force, the index and middle fingers of his right hand ca together, and a faint but scorching dark-red glow flared at the tips.

This was not a Fireball, which required a full construct and an incantation. It was one of the techniques of magic–martial enchantnt: the violent Mana of the fire elent compressed and bound to its extre limit, temporarily attached to the end of a limb, forming an invisible searing touch capable of lting tal and cutting iron.

He thrust two fingers forward.

The point of impact was exact—roughly three finger-widths below the Shadow-Pattern Panther’s left eye, at the natural weak point where the skull joined.

Sssst.

A light sound rang out, like hot iron branding flesh.

His fingertips pierced through the tough fur and pressed against the hard skull beneath. Ryan did not try to punch through it with brute force. Instead, the instant contact was made, he released the compressed heat Mana in its entirety and drove it inward.

All of the Shadow-Pattern Panther’s struggling and snarling ceased at once.

Its massive body convulsed violently, then went limp as though all its strength had been drawn away in an instant. It collapsed to the ground, with only its limbs twitching faintly in reflex.

The beast’s eyes, once filled with savage light, lost focus and clouded over with a layer of scattered gray haze. The instantaneous shock and burn inside its skull, along with the intense pain and dizziness they caused, had temporarily stripped it of the ability to move.