Chương 107: Reward

They were a meter apart when the wolf lunged first, springing forward with a speed unexpected from a body so rotted, so eaten through with decay — a speed hard to imagine from a creature that seemed half-corpse already. The ground shuddered dully beneath its paws at the push-off, scattering clumps of damp earth reeking of carrion, and the clearing itself seemed to freeze for an instant, holding its breath before the inevitable collision.

The young man swung his sword in the same second, meeting the beast's leap halfway, the muscles in his arms straining to their limit, his entire body coiled tight like a spring ready to release. Time seemed to stretch, to slow for a fraction of a second — he could see with perfect clarity the wolf's approaching jaws, the drops of saliva flying off its broken fangs, the red, unblinking eyes burning with hungry, animal fury.

The blade struck hard against the creature's foreleg, deflecting a swipe of claws aimed straight at his throat, but it couldn't stop the sheer mass of the charging body — the wolf slammed into him shoulder-first with its full weight, and in the next instant they were both flying apart from the force of the impact, each landing on his own side of the clearing with a heavy, dull thud. The young man rolled over his shoulder to absorb the fall and immediately sprang up onto one knee, breathing hard.

A small scratch had opened on his cheek, a thin trickle of bright, living blood seeping from it, running down his chin and dropping onto the collar of his hoodie in a dark, spreading stain. He winced but didn't even lift a hand to wipe it away — all his attention remained fixed on the beast. The wolf had fared considerably worse.

A long, deep gash had opened diagonally across its ribs, from which a genuine wave of thick, tar-black blood came pouring out, spreading across the ground in an uneven, viscous pool that gave off a heavy, sickly-sweet stench of rot. Something else had come out along with the blood — something dark, slick, distantly resembling one of the creature's internal organs — landing in the grass with a disgusting, wet slap that nearly made the young man's stomach turn.

The wolf let out a furious whine, throwing its head back, its long muzzle opening in a silent howl full of pain, but the wound only seemed to fuel it further — it lunged into a new attack, far more chaotic, far less calculated than the first, but no less dangerous for it.

The beast thrashed from side to side, snapping its jaws at empty air one moment, raking its claws through the ground mere centimeters from the young man's feet the next, forcing him into a constant retreat, dodging, parrying blow after blow, knocking the claws aside with sharp, clanging strikes of metal against something half-decayed and rotten.

He could feel the strength slowly draining from his arms, his breathing growing more and more ragged, but losing the initiative wasn't an option — one moment's hesitation, and those fangs would close around his throat. Catching the instant the wolf left itself open, its whole body jerking sideways into another lunge, the young man ducked sharply beneath its foreleg and, pushing off the ground, surged forward, closing the distance to a single meter again without wasting a fraction of a second.

He swung the sword hard and drove the blade straight into the wolf's eye socket, punching all the way through, deep into the skull, to the very center of its head. The blade sank in with a sickening, crunching sound, as if piercing through rotten, crumbling wood, and a warm, sticky trickle of black blood immediately ran down the hilt, staining his fingers.

But the beast still refused to give up — even with a sword jammed through its eye, it kept fighting furiously, jerking its head side to side, straining with everything it had to reach him with teeth or claws, both of which kept whipping past mere millimeters from his skin with a sharp whistle through the air. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Almost there. Come on, just a little more," raced through the young man's mind, a short, desperate thought, as he strained with everything he had to keep his balance, fighting the blade threatening to tear free from his grip, his fingers slipping on the hilt from sweat and someone else's blood, his hold barely holding.

He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached, gathered every last bit of strength left in him, and drove the blade in deeper still, then, throwing the full weight of his body behind it, slammed the wolf into the ground with a heavy, dull impact that shook the grass around them. The force of the strike was enough to punch the sword's tip straight through the beast's skull and out the other side, burying it in the soft earth beneath.

The wolf jerked in one last, convulsive spasm — its paws scraping wildly at the ground a few times, gouging deep furrows into the dirt — but within a couple of seconds the creature's body finally went still, and its ruby eyes, which had blazed like hellfire moments before, slowly dimmed, clouding over with a murky, lifeless film, as though some unseen hand had snuffed out the last spark within them.

The sword dissolved into crimson sparks, fading into the air with a faint, barely audible crackle, and the young man struggled to his feet, feeling his knees shake with exertion, his hands trembling treacherously from the adrenaline still coursing through him. He sank heavily to the ground beside the dead wolf's body, leaning his back against the nearest tree trunk, feeling the cold, rough bark press into his shoulder blades through the thin fabric of his hoodie.

Sweat poured down his flushed, overheated face, pooling at his chin and dropping in fat beads to the ground, and he breathed hard, unevenly, trying to calm his racing heart, which pounded dully somewhere up in his throat.

With tired, half-lidded eyes, he studied the dead wolf, though even now, lifeless, it looked more like some reanimated corpse than an ordinary beast — the mushrooms covering its body remained exactly as they'd been, still just as unnaturally smooth, still glistening with the same damp sheen on their caps, as if the death of their host meant nothing to them at all, as if it made no difference whatsoever whether some heart still beat beneath them.

Black blood kept oozing from the mangled body in a small, viscous pool, slowly soaking into the flattened grass and leaving behind a dark, spreading stain, over which the first flies, drawn by the smell, had already begun to circle.

"Lucky they don't travel in packs. Otherwise I'd be the one lying here right now." A faint, tired smirk touched the young man's lips, closer to a nervous aftershock of the tension he'd just been through than any real joy. But then his gaze snagged on something strange — a faint but distinct green glint reflected in his eyes, dulled with exhaustion.

From the dead beast, slowly, almost reluctantly, a dim green glow began to rise — not quite a cluster of energy, not quite something else entirely — its shape resembling a tiny, trembling flame, hovering in the air like the last ember of a dying fire, on the verge of going out for good. The young man's smile widened noticeably, and a lively, almost eager gleam flickered back into his tired, dull eyes, sweeping away some of the exhaustion from his face at once.

He murmured quietly, contentedly, under his breath, leaning forward slightly. — And there's my reward. He reached his hand out toward the green light, his fingers still trembling faintly from the recent strain, and it, as though obeying the gesture, drifted toward him in turn, floating smoothly through the air before finally sinking into his open palm, dissolving somewhere beneath the skin with a light, almost weightless tingle.

The young man closed his eyes for a moment, feeling something warm spread through his whole arm, then summoned the System with a short, familiar mental gesture. A translucent purple window immediately wove itself out of the air before him, flickering softly in the gathering dusk of the clearing. Souls Collected: [6/25]