Demon Wolf

Warmth slid down Wolf’s throat and entered his abdomen before invading the rest of his body. First, it found the laceration in his flank. With his senses awakened, Wolf felt the tingling tug at his wound even as he brought down Book, cleaving yet another cranium.

The warm wave of Qi and vitality grew searing hot in touch with the injury. It nourished the cells and stimulated their regeneration at the expense of the surrounding flesh, which withered.

Then, the medicinal effect spread to that newly damaged tissue, drawing nutrients from those even further away, until it spread the load across the quarter of Wolf’s torso.

Most cultivators cannot notice the healing pill’s wave strategy. It lasted mere seconds, while its oscillations and the mutual theft of vitality happened so quickly and frequently, they only produced a searing sensation of flesh knitting itself together.

“Three hundred and seventeen. These pills function on a fundamentally different principle from potions back home.” Wolf’s Mental Aspect kept counting the bodies as Wolf slew his enemies while noting random phenomena for later consideration.

In slow motion, Wolf’s slaughter stretched into infinity. Two more women tried to get him from below, but he kicked the rats dead before they struck. However, despite blocking the newfound attack vector, the wounds Wolf suffered mounted.

A nick on the arm, a scratch across the shoulders, a prick in the back; all those attacks would have caught a man by surprise, crippling or killing him, yet Wolf detected them the moment the tingling Qi collided with his falsely advertised impenetrable skin.

Still, the mislabeled enhancement his skin had experienced ensured Qi alone could not pierce it. It graced Wolf with split-instants during which he made minor adjustments to his posture, minimizing the damage he suffered.

“Run! Retreat to the base!” A mezzo-soprano, distorted into a lumbering bass, echoed after what seemed like days of slaughter in Wolf’s mind.

The woman stood two dozen meters away, obscured by trees and shrubbery, and Wolf failed to see her. 

Had she arrived at a particularly large cluster of corpses? With that thought, Eviltongue crunched through his enemy’s clavicle, heading towards the heart and spine.

“Four hundred thirty-four.”

I should pursue the survivors.

“That goes against The Ruler’s Way. One should never hound a routed enemy. Such brutality makes your soldiers uneasy, fortifies your future opponents’ resolve, and leaves no survivors to spread word of your troops’ prowess.”

I have no troops. Never lead them either, but yeah, they scattered like rabbits, running every which way. They are impossible to pursue.

“Also, I’m in no shape to run,” the idle Mental Aspect added, ignoring the damaged neurons screaming from dozens of injuries.

The world sped up. The distorted grating noise became the rustle of leaves, the stretched disturbing voices became panicked shouts and screams of pain.

How many non-fatally crippled have I left behind? Wolf summoned another healing pill and swallowed it, then wiped his swords clean.

“Thirty-seven. Mostly severed spines below the neck and in the upper back.”

Wolf sighed through his nose, snorting blood. I hate it when I don’t have enough time to do things properly. Dad insisted I should inflict minimal suffering when killing.

How many did they send? Five hundred? A thousand? He cast one more regretful glance, wondering what losses the enemy had taken before their courage broke.

“There’s a lot of trees, ferns, and bushes. It’s impossible to see how many had fallen at a glance, that helped keep their morale from dropping. I don’t think they are that disciplined. They just saw their friends dead and wanted to murder me.”

“Please don’t kill me.” Wolf reached the first whimpering wounded. The seventeen-year-old stared at him with her brown eyes wide open, but her body remained still, paralyzed from the neck down.

Wolf took a moment to recall why she had survived. He wanted to decapitate her and give her a clean end. However, steel whistled behind his back, and he had to cut his slash short.

He nodded. “Tell me what you know about your sect, your plans, and troop deployment. Then I will spare your life.”

The young woman opened her mouth, spewing information without hesitation, “Senior Apprentice Sister Grundhoffer sent five hundred of us to intercept you. She declared you a priority target for capture…”

Grundhoffer sounds familiar?

“The donkey from the sheepy inn. Her friend had a good pair on her.”

A moment passed and the second Mental Aspect added, “Silver hasn’t harrumphed.”

Meanwhile, Wolf’s nameless attacker spilled everything she knew.

“Young Mistress Daseldoff…”

“The one with good tits.”

“… is on a special mission. She took the most powerful disciples and headed deeper into the jungle to search for a special treasure while we sweep all opposition in the outer ring.”

“What kind of treasure? Do you want water? You sound parched.” Wolf looked down at the woman, sparing her more attention.

The bloody demon of carnage smiled. Caked blood flaked from his face, landing on the fern leaves like red snow.

The woman shook her head, terror flooding her face.

“No. I’m fine. It’s a secret, but I caught several Senior Apprentice Sisters gossiping. It’s something to help Sect Master strengthen her soul, but they were worried about the Monster Beasts guarding it.”

Wolf nodded and let the woman continue at her own pace. She stuttered when she heard gasps and gurgling followed by death-throes from a dozen meters away.

Wolf followed her gaze, silently apologizing to his father.

Finally, the Brilliant Gate’s disciple concluded her treason.

“That is all?” Wolf asked, an important piece of information missing from the report.

The woman wished to nod, but failed. “Yes?”

“What happened to Jakob Silentear?”

“Who?”

“You can tell by her eye movement that she’s raking her brains, but she has no idea who Jake is.”

“An Earth Pavilion disciple. You got my jade ID from him,” Wolf explained, but this new information did not help the paralyzed woman.

“I don’t know. I was in seclusion, cultivating to increase my realm. Most of us were.” An odd emotion Wolf failed to categorize tinged her last few words.

Regret? Self-ridicule? Suppressed anger? Despair?

He spent a long moment trying to figure out which thoughts had passed through the vicious woman’s mind.

Is she reflecting upon the lives she took and ruined, or is she just cursing her luck for running into me? Wolf did not know.

After a moment, he decided he had no desire to find out. He summoned a clean rag into his hand and stuffed it into the shocked, nameless woman’s mouth.

“If your luck is good, you will survive until Corpsewood closes. You can try to cultivate in silence and use Qi to sustain yourself.”

“Can you cultivate if you’ve lost control of your body?”

Wolf frowned and cleaned his hands. He wiped the dried blood off his face without sparing the prone youth a second glance. Once sufficiently clean of human blood, he summoned a honeyed, bear meat croquette and munched it with a carefree smile.

“So, there’s something here I can fortify my soul with? That’s a spark of good fortune.”

How many of them should I interrogate?

“At least one more, to corroborate what I just learned.”

Fifteen minutes later, Wolf gagged Valerie. A twenty-one year old Brilliant Gate’s disciple, forced into committing horrible crimes, but a victim herself.

Valerie respected men. She enjoyed taking long strolls through the sect’s forests whenever she found the chance. She had a younger sister, Fleur, who needed a backer and someone to watch over her back at the Brilliant Gate. Otherwise, gods knew what would happen if she went down the wrong path…

“Well, at least she knew she had to spin a pathetic story and paint herself human to gather sympathy.”

That just means she’s more experienced at tormenting and killing others. You could see panic overflowing in her eyes when she spoke about lilies at sunset. What the hells was that supposed to mean?

“She knew nothing about Jake. I wonder whether that’s a good sign?”

I don’t know. No use worrying about it now. Should I attack their camp? There’s at least twenty-five hundred of them left, and these five hundred were dangerous enough.

“To be honest, I killed only two hundred-odd of them clumped together. And based on what these two said, Brilliant Gate’s people cleared the bushes and ferns for their camp; the improved visibility will aid them.”

Wolf yanked his robe, which hardly offered resistance from all the perforations. The garb tore, leaving him in ripped silk underpants, which he also discarded.

I brought ten spare sets.

“I have no time to wash up and wear clean garments. I should finish what I started and head for their base.”

There’s too many of them. Maybe I could lay a Spell Formation trap—

“They will break the circle. Even if they don’t spot it, after two hundred people trample the line it will fail.”

Damn. Maybe I can come up with something after I check their holdingrings?

sleepydad88 Random Roll -

Spoiler

Who the hell is Jakob Silentear?

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