Chapter 14 : Fierce Battle with Forest Subhumans
Chapter 14: Fierce Battle with Forest Subhumans
In the jungle, fine rain fell like threads.
Su Wen lay behind a cluster of bushes, holding his breath.
At that moment, a gust of wind swept through.
Crack!
The Forest Subhuman walking at the front suddenly stepped on a branch, snapping it, and abruptly halted.
His ears twitched slightly, and his head instantly turned left, locking onto Su Wen’s direction.
“Have we been discovered?”
His nose twitched, as if catching a faint scent in the air.
“There are wolves!”
He muttered.
The three Forest Subhumans reacted almost simultaneously. Back-to-back, they quickly formed a triangular formation. Their iron blades were drawn, and their brownish eyes scanned the surroundings with vigilance.
“What sharp instincts.”
Su Wen felt a jolt of alarm.
The most troublesome part was that they had metal weapons. Though their blades were somewhat rusty and their leather armor crude, their presence greatly increased combat capability.
“Spread out, circle to the right.”
Su Wen issued an order to the two Black Wolves lying not far away.
At the same time, Eluan moved as well.
“Follow me.”
Softly instructing the three wolves beside her, she carefully began moving toward the left.
Thick trees and dense foliage obscured vision. Combined with the Black Wolves circling right drawing attention, the three Forest Subhumans failed to notice her for the moment.
Just as she reached the left side…
An accident suddenly occurred.
Eluan’s skirt was snagged by a vine on the ground, causing her to stumble.
She paused for a moment, hurriedly reaching down to free it.
But that brief hesitation exposed her to the peripheral vision of the Forest Subhuman leader.
Through the curtain of rain, that contrast of black and white stood out strikingly.
That was… a wolf?
No, a female human.
The leader froze.
In his understanding, ordinary human females were fragile, rarely venturing alone into the dense forest. Yet this girl seemed to be an exception.
She wore a black dress with intricate patterns. Against its contrast, the exposed skin appeared as if filtered—flawlessly pale.
Eluan also sensed the gaze and suddenly raised her head.
The abrupt movement made her seem slightly panicked, which gave the subhuman a strange sense of beauty.
After all, they were a subspecies of the Human Race.
Faced with such breathtaking beauty, he lost focus for a brief instant.
Fortunately, it was only for a moment before he regained himself.
With a slight turn of his head, his gaze sharply caught the two Black Wolves moving at high speed from the left.
They didn’t seem quite like the gray wild wolves he usually hunted.
Thoughts raced rapidly through his mind, and he realized… the girl before him was likely an easy target.
Even if they couldn’t win, she could be taken as a hostage.
Not to mention, such exceptional beauty and temperament held strong appeal for them.
“Capture her alive—break through when there’s a chance!”
Buzz—
Blades drawn, the three Forest Subhumans directly ignored the threat from the left and, like hunters spotting prey, charged toward Eluan at high speed.
Their movements were astonishingly swift. With a single leap, like enlarged frogs, they covered seven to eight meters instantly.
The distance between them shrank rapidly.
The girl seemed frozen in fear, standing motionless, her slender pale hands tightly clutching her skirt, forgetting to react.
The Forest Subhuman leader had already extended his gray-black hand, attempting to grab her shoulder.
However…
At that very moment, the girl seemed to snap back to her senses. She released her skirt, casually tore free from the vine, then raised her arm and lightly pointed at him.
“Roar—”
Accompanied by a low growl, a black shadow leapt out from behind her right side, jaws wide open.
“Damn it.”
His reaction was extremely fast. He instantly raised his blade to block.
Clang—
The fangs bit down on the blade, and the terrifying force sent his body flying, landing six or seven meters away and rolling twice on the ground.
The blade got stuck between the beast’s teeth, embedding itself as fresh red blood flowed down along the rusted silver edge.
The monster’s claws were already descending.
The Forest Subhuman leader reacted swiftly, slamming his palm against the ground to spring up, narrowly dodging the powerful strike.
Still mid-air, he swung his weapon fiercely and let out a shout.
Scorching flames burst from the blade’s edge, slashing hard at the creature’s neck.
The beast before him let out a howl of pain.
The blade lodged against bone. The Black Wolf’s eyes flared crimson, its strength surging as it lunged forward and bit toward the leader’s arm.
He was forced to pull out his blade and leap back, widening the distance.
But in that instant, another Black Wolf lunged from the right.
Not only that—out of the corner of his eye, he saw a third Black Wolf appear behind the girl.
And farther away, from Su Wen’s direction and the squad’s right flank, the ambushing Black Wolves revealed their fangs, leaping out simultaneously and charging toward the unfortunate subhuman squad.
Puchi!
One Forest Subhuman was knocked down, and three Black Wolves opened their jaws at once, biting into his body.
The situation instantly reversed.
The sudden turn of events sent a chill through the Forest Subhuman leader.
This wasn’t some lone, harmless prey.
He had intended to take the girl as a hostage, but instead, terrifying beasts had been hidden around her.
These Black Wolves were completely different from the gray wolves they usually hunted.
Seeing this, the leader immediately made a decision.
“Retreat!”
With a blazing strike, his weapon pierced through the abdomen of the Black Wolf before him. Without lingering to fight, he dodged the attacks of the two wolves beside him and turned to flee.
“Trying to run?”
Eluan glanced back at the two surviving Black Wolves and ordered pursuit.
“Dire Wolf, follow her,” Su Wen called out, worried his clone might fail.
……
At the front, the Black Wolves rapidly closed in on the fleeing subhuman leader.
The girl followed closely behind at full speed.
After enhancing her Physical Strength, she was no longer as weak as before. At least she could run without being too slow.
With light steps, her figure moved like a black swallow.
Although she wore a dress, this was the forest—there was no need to worry about being seen.
……
The Forest Subhuman ran wildly for over a minute, leaping nimbly through the dense woods.
Just as she worried about encountering other monsters, the terrain ahead suddenly opened up.
The trees grew sparse, and the ground was littered with chunks of concrete and rusted, broken steel bars.
“This is…”
Eluan slowed slightly.
In her view, a massive structure came into sight.
It was a modern building, tilted at about 30 degrees, embedded diagonally into the dark earth. Its upper portion—more than ten floors—was exposed above ground.
From a distance, it looked like a crooked tombstone, standing alone, filled with an indescribable sense of desolation.
Countless vines coiled around its surface, and not a single trace of glass could be seen.
Such a modern, technological structure made Eluan feel, for a moment, as if she had returned to Earth.
“A ruin of the Previous Civilization?”
The Forest Subhuman skillfully leapt into a pile of rubble and slipped through a broken window about three meters above the ground on the side of the building.
“Jump in.”
Without hesitation, Eluan issued the order to the pursuing Black Wolves.