Chapter 5 : Chapter 5
Chapter 5: Fangs of the Wastes
Caesar did not immediately go outside. He remained seated cross-legged on the crude felt mat, his deep purple eyes shining with startling brightness in the dimness.
He paid no attention to that mountain of gold nearly overflowing from the Dimensional Warehouse, instead sinking his consciousness into his own body.
The Dragon Descendant bloodline, like an awakening river of magma, was surging and roaring through his veins.
Wave after wave of tingling, slight pain—the sensation of being forcibly torn apart and reassembled—came from his limbs and bones.
His body was greedily absorbing the free-floating energy of this world at a terrifying speed, frantically remaking itself.
“What's happening?”
He spoke, his voice not loud, yet carrying a composure incongruous with his age.
“Listen for yourself.”
Roland stepped aside, clearing the tent entrance.
The camp had already erupted into chaos.
The grizzled veterans who had been boasting by the campfire moments ago about which girl in the Valerius Territory brothel had the rounder ass were now all springing up like cats with their tails stepped on, hearts pounding.
The leaping firelight reflected on their faces, no longer illuminating drunken numbness but panic pierced through by the wastes' most primal terror.
“Fuck! It's Dread Wolves!”
A one-eyed veteran missing his left eye spat into the fire, producing a soft “sizzle.”
Fierce light blazed in his single eye as his massive hand grabbed the single-edged axe leaning beside him.
“More than one… from the sound of it, these bastards came out in force!”
Another white-haired veteran, thin as a bamboo pole, gripped his spear with hands trembling like leaves in autumn wind.
His name was Finn. In his youth, he'd reportedly been a guard captain in some small town, but now he could barely stand steady.
Hooowl—Hoooowl—
Howls came from all directions, rising and falling in succession, merging into a symphony of death.
The hunger and cruelty overflowing in those sounds were like countless invisible hands gripping every throat in the camp, making even breathing hot and difficult.
Caesar's senses were far sharper than theirs.
The Dragon Descendant bloodline not only granted him strength but elevated his five senses to an inhuman level.
He could clearly “smell” the thick, rank stench carried on the wind, along with a faint trace of blood.
He could “hear” countless claws scraping frozen earth in the darkness, and even the subtle “crack” of some small creature's neck being bitten through.
They were hunting.
And this camp of ten broken wagons and fifty elderly invalids was like a piece of unguarded meat laid out on a dining table.
“Move your asses! Grab your weapons!”
Roland's roar rang out like thunder, temporarily dragging those panicked greenhorns (even if their beards had gone white) from the swamp of terror.
“Circle the wagons! Form up! Anyone who wants to live, point your spearheads outward!”
The orders were simple and brutal, but most effective in this chaos.
The veterans cursed and shoved, moving in disarray.
They pressed their backs against the heavy wagons loaded with useless ore, trying to form a defensive circle.
But the circle was crooked and uneven, full of gaps everywhere, like a worm-eaten apple.
Their weapons were a motley collection—rust-spotted spears, notched short swords, rolled-edge axes, and some even held only sharpened wooden sticks.
Every face was written over with the desperation of being chased by death.
They weren't the Empire's elite legions, just a group of failures exiled after being wrung dry of their last bit of value.
Courage had long since been worn away during ten years of hard labor.
Caesar pushed through the tent flap and stepped out, standing behind Roland.
He looked at these so-called “followers,” his gaze calm and waveless.
He knew that expecting this group to hold off the wolf pack was nothing but a pipe dream.
Just then, in the darkness, a pair of ghostly green points of light appeared silently, like will-o'-wisps drifting from hell.
Then came two pairs, ten pairs…
One hundred pairs.
Two hundred pairs.
Dense and endless, they emerged from the darkness surrounding the camp on all sides, like ink dropped into clear water, rapidly spreading.
They made that feeble campfire at the camp's center seem like a candle flickering in the wind, as if it would extinguish at any moment.
The air froze.
No probing, no intimidation.
The instant the first pitch-black Dread Wolf, large as a calf, silently burst from the darkness, the entire pack transformed into a tide of black, sweeping forward in silent, efficient unity!
“Hold the line!”
Roland took the vanguard position, his massive frame like a mountain, holding firm at the widest gap in the defensive circle.
The greatsword in his hands held not a trace of superfluous technique—only simple, heavy, deadly horizontal sweeps and cleaving strikes.
SPLURT!
A Dread Wolf leaped through the air, its gaping maw mixed with drool and rank wind, nearly extinguishing the campfire.
Roland neither dodged nor evaded. He lowered his center of gravity, the muscles in both arms bulging as his greatsword traced a deadly half-moon from bottom to top.
The blade entered precisely through the wolf's soft jaw, unstoppable, splitting straight through its skull! Scalding wolf blood and foul brain matter splattered over him head to toe.
He stood like a reef in a sea of blood—with each sword swing, a wolf was sent flying or cleaved in two.
But there were too many wolves.
They were like killing machines without pain receptors, without fear, using their companions' corpses as stepping stones in wave after wave of suicidal assaults against this fragile defense line.
“Ahhh—!”
A piercing scream rang out from the formation's flank, tearing through the night sky.
It was old Finn.
He was guarding the rear, currently back-to-back with a younger man.
The spear he thrust out was feeble and powerless, easily batted aside by a Dread Wolf's shoulder.
The next instant, another wolf flashed like lightning through the gap his aged slowness had left, biting down on his thigh!
“Get off! You bastard!”
Eyes red, Finn frantically beat the wolf's spine with his spear shaft, producing dull “thump thump” sounds again and again, but unable to break that iron-like bite.
The agony nearly made him pass out.
A third wolf silently circled behind him and suddenly leaped, pressing down with its entire body weight.
“CRACK!”
The sound of a cervical spine snapping under tremendous force was clearly audible across the chaotic battlefield.
Finn's screams cut off abruptly as his body went limp and collapsed.
He didn't even have time to look one last time at this world he'd hated for ten years before being dragged into darkness by the three wolves.
The darkness filled with teeth-aching sounds of fabric and flesh being torn, and the crunch of bones being chewed to pieces.
One gap instantly became a breached levee!
“Hold! All of you hold!”
The one-eyed veteran roared. He discarded his dulled axe, using his own robust body to desperately plug the gap, the dagger in his hand stabbing frantically.
Two wolf corpses already lay at his feet, but his own chest had been slashed open with three deep gashes visible to the bone. With each breath, bloody foam spilled from the corner of his mouth.
“My arm! My arm!”
Another soldier was tackled down. Instinctively raising his arm to block, sharp wolf fangs instantly punctured his forearm, biting straight through the bone.
He let out an inhuman wail, blindly stabbing with the short sword in his other hand, but was buried by more wolves, leaving only a rapidly expanding pool of blood.
This wasn't battle—it was slaughter.
These veterans might have experience, but their aging bodies, sluggish reactions, and courage long since ground down by the years were hopelessly fragile before these wasteland predators the size of calves, far more vicious than ordinary wolves.
In less than five minutes, nearly twenty of the fifty-man force had fallen.
The heavy stench of blood mixed with the stink of entrails spread through the camp, like an Asura hell.
The survivors were all wounded, the defensive line compressed smaller and smaller, every face written over with numb despair.
Caesar stood within the circle, not far behind Roland.
He didn't move.
The dancing firelight cast two cold flames in his deep purple eyes.
He watched those lives that had once mocked him coldly now falling like cut wheat.
He watched Roland fight like a maddened tiger. The old knight's breathing had become a broken bellows, each gasp carrying the taste of blood.
Large and small wounds covered his body—no fewer than ten. The tiger's mouth between thumb and forefinger on both sword-gripping hands had long since split, fresh blood flowing down the hilt, staining it slick.
Caesar was evaluating.
Evaluating the wolf pack's numbers, evaluating their attack patterns, evaluating Roland's limits.
And evaluating his own limits.
He knew Roland was nearly spent.
Once this hardest reef fell, everyone remaining—himself included—would be torn to shreds within ten breaths by this black tide.
It was time.
Just as Caesar's right hand fingers curled slightly, something hard and cold stirring beneath his skin—
The wolf pack's frenzied assault stopped without warning.
Like a well-trained army, they retreated in unison a dozen meters, reforming into a loose but leakproof encirclement. Suppressed growls rumbled in their throats, ghostly green eyes fixed on the camp, but they advanced no further.
The surviving veterans leaned on their weapons and wagons, gasping heavily, staring at this eerie scene in shock.
“What's going on? These beasts… had a change of heart?”
The one-eyed veteran clutched his chest, asking warily.
Roland didn't answer.
He knelt on one knee, leaning on his sword, chest heaving violently, blood continuously seeping from the gaps in his armor.
He stared fixedly ahead, true despair appearing on his face for the first time.
The wolf pack parted, opening a path.
A shadow massive as a monarch paced forth from the darkness.
It was a giant wolf nearly twice the size of its kin.
Its coat wasn't black but a flowing silver-white that shimmered in the moonlight.
Its four paws touched the ground with faint azure energy streams swirling around them. With each step, an invisible vortex swept aside the gravel and blood on the ground, leaving its paws unstained.
Most heart-stopping were its eyes.
Not the ghostly green of beasts, but a cold blood-red that seemed to contain human intelligence.
“First-Order Magical Beast… Howling Wind Wolf King…”
Roland's voice was hoarse and dry, filled with bitterness and helplessness.
“It can manipulate wind elements… its power is enough to easily crush a fully armed official knight…”
His words were like a bucket of ice water, extinguishing the last sliver of hope that had just ignited in the survivors' hearts.
The Howling Wind Wolf King had no interest in those trembling remnants of defeated soldiers. Its blood-red eyes pierced through the dancing flames, locking directly onto Roland—the one with the strongest aura and greatest threat to it.
That gaze held cat-toying-with-mouse contempt and cruelty.
The next second, it moved.
Without a running posture, its body seemed lifted by an invisible gale, transforming into a silver lightning bolt that instantly crossed the dozen meters of distance!
So fast it left only an afterimage in the air!
“Watch out!”
Roland's pupils contracted to pinpoints!
Battle instinct honed between life and death made him unleash his last reserves of potential. Roaring, he poured all remaining strength into both arms, abandoning all defense, swinging his greatsword upward with all his might in a mutual destruction attempt!
CLANG—!!!
A deafening metallic explosion that could rupture eardrums!
The Wolf King's seemingly elegant claws collided violently with Roland's greatsword.
Roland felt an overwhelming force surge madly along the blade, as if struck head-on by a heavy cavalry charge at full gallop.
His arm bones produced a series of overburdened “creaking” sounds as his entire body flew backward uncontrollably, “BANG”—slamming hard into a wagon loaded with ore!
The heavy wagon was knocked back half a meter, its wheels groaning in pain.
“Pffft—!”
Roland spat out an arc of blood mixed with organ fragments, his face instantly turning ashen.
The greatsword also flew from his hands, clattering to the ground several meters away.
Just one strike.
This veteran of a hundred battles who had slain dozens of Dread Wolves was utterly defeated, life or death uncertain.
The camp fell into a silence more terrifying than death itself.
All survivors froze, staring dumbly at this scene. The last sparks of luck and hope in their eyes were ruthlessly crushed by this absolute difference in power.
It was over.
Everything was over.
The Howling Wind Wolf King landed gracefully on the ground, shaking its silvery coat without a speck of blood on it.
With the posture of a victor, it stepped forward, walking toward the unconscious Roland one pace at a time.
It would first feast on this strongest prey.
Just then, a clear, calm voice rang out across the death-silent camp, clearly reaching every person's ears—and every wolf's.
“Your opponent is me.”