Chương 106: Vol 2: 106. Mushroom Wolf

The young man stood in the middle of a forest clearing, hemmed in on all sides by tall trees gone almost black in the evening shade, their crowns closing together somewhere high overhead, letting through only scattered, broken shafts of fading daylight that slid across the flattened grass in pale, trembling patches.

The air here was thick, humid, tinged with the smell of decaying leaves and something else, something faintly reminiscent of rot — a smell growing more distinct by the minute, as though the clearing itself were slowly, reluctantly bracing for what was about to happen within it. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the wall of trees, unseen birds called to one another now and then, but even their voices sounded muffled, wary, as if the forest itself were holding its breath.

He wore a dark black hoodie with a high collar that hid part of his neck, and plain black pants that didn't restrict movement, loose enough to allow any sudden lunge or turn. On his back hung a large, dark red backpack, cinched tight against his shoulders by wide straps worn smooth from constant use, its weight pulling noticeably at his shoulders.

His lean frame and narrow, almost adolescent shoulders betrayed just how young he still was, and his thick, unruly black hair fell across his forehead, partly covering his eyes, giving his gaze an even darker, more guarded look, as though he'd grown used to watching the world from beneath lowered brows. His feet were clad in red sneakers, marked with faint, already-dried patches of green, as if he'd recently had to wade through something sticky, viscous, and thoroughly unfamiliar.

Everything about his appearance, for all its simplicity and practicality, radiated something grim, something on edge, as though the very air around him had thickened with taut, ringing anticipation. Suddenly he stretched out his hand, and in his open palm, woven together out of dozens of blinding white sparks, a small gold pocket watch appeared, hanging from a thin chain, its hands ticking off each second with a steady sound that seemed almost deafening against the surrounding silence.

He stared intently at the dial, his brows drawing together slightly, his lips pressing into a thin, tense line as he calculated the time he had left in his head.

"Well, looks like I've got less than an hour. Guess it's time to head back." The watch immediately dissolved back into a scatter of tiny white sparks, flaring for an instant brighter than all the meadow's scarce light and slowly drifting down to the ground, like snow falling in still air, winking out one by one mid-flight.

But the moment the last spark touched the flattened grass, a quiet, barely audible sound came from somewhere behind him, deep in the dense underbrush — the snap of a breaking branch, the rustle of disturbed leaves — and his whole body tensed instantly, his breath catching for a second.

He spun sharply toward the sound, and in that same hand that had just been holding the watch, a blade began rapidly taking shape out of a swirl of crimson, ominous sparks — a fairly plain-looking sword with a black, tightly wrapped leather grip and a dully gleaming silver rod in place of a pommel. He gripped it with both hands, clenching the hilt so tightly his knuckles instantly went white, his jaw tightening as the tension in him mounted. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road.

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"Not now. Not when I'm already running out of time," raced through his mind, an irritated, almost resigned thought. And then the uninvited guest finally emerged, stepping out of the dense brush with that very sound of snapping branches that had put him on alert a second earlier, followed by the heavy, wet thud of something massive landing on all four paws at once. It was a dark wolf.

Its fur was so black it looked as though it had been carved out of darkness itself, swallowing what little remained of the evening light without so much as a single glint or spark reflecting off it. The creature's whole body looked monstrous — thoroughly rotted, covered in festering sores and torn holes in the flesh, through which yellowed, time-darkened bone showed here and there.

One such wound stretched across nearly half the wolf's muzzle, running from ear to jaw, and out of its depths, writhing and squirming, crawled fat, whitish maggots, dropping now and then straight to the ground with a soft, wet plop, leaving behind glistening, slick trails across the black fur. Long, viscous strings of drool hung from between the beast's yellowed, broken fangs, its parted jaws leaving little doubt that the slight, thin young man standing before it had already made it onto tonight's menu.

The wolf's eyes were entirely red, without a trace of white or pupil, and seemed to glow with their own dim, malevolent light even in broad daylight, burning across the distance between them like two thin, unblinking beams. But far more unsettling, far more unnatural, were the mushrooms.

They grew literally everywhere on the creature — out of its head, out of its torso, out of those same rotting, foul-smelling holes in its flesh — in small clusters, dozens of pale, glistening caps studding the wolf's hide, swaying with every movement of the beast as though living some separate life entirely their own.

The mushrooms themselves looked oddly ordinary, neat, even — arguably — edible, smooth and clean, almost domestic in appearance, which made the whole sight only more revolting set against the decaying, rotted body of the creature that carried them, as if nature itself had been turned inside out here, rot and growth fused into one.

The young man clicked his tongue, grimacing in disgust, and muttered quietly under his breath, stepping back half a pace while bending his knees slightly, bracing for the lunge: — A mushroom wolf. Again. Just my luck.

"That's exactly what I needed today," he thought bitterly, feeling his stomach twist unpleasantly at the mere sight of the maggots squirming in the wound.

After exchanging one long, heavy look with the beast — barely a couple of seconds, though it felt almost endless — the wolf suddenly let out a piercing, ear-splitting snarl, sounding more like a death howl than a battle cry, echoing across the whole clearing and making even the motionless treetops overhead seem to shudder — and charged at him, tearing up the soft forest floor with powerful, pitch-black paws, kicking up clumps of damp, rot-scented earth in every direction.

Without a moment's hesitation, the young man did exactly the same, pushing off the ground and lunging to meet the beast with blade raised, feeling his heart slam into a wild, pounding rhythm right up in his throat. And now the two of them were hurtling toward each other across the clearing, drenched in evening shadow, separated by mere meters closing fast with every fraction of a second, united by one single, brutally simple intention. Kill.