His words stabbed me like a dagger. And then, his non-metaphorical sword came at me. A blazing heat flared in my thigh.
“Arrrrrgh!” Seeing that I had been stabbed, I fell onto my backside.
“We got a solo-er!” shouted the leader. “Everybody fall back! He’ll be our bait!”
I had no clue what that meant. No—I didn’t want to acknowledge what it meant.
The wand woman looked at me and passed by without a word. The warrior who had been blown away just looked at me coldly, as did the rest of the group. None of them said anything as they fled behind me, which meant that, naturally, the colossal wolf sprang straight toward me.
I screamed, terrified, and attempted to leap away, but the stinging that ran through my leg wound caused me to tumble clumsily. Now that its other enemies had fallen back, the wolf approached its newest and closest prey. In its savage eyes and razor teeth, I could see my own gruesome demise.
My head was swimming, a whirlpool of negative thoughts and feelings. My life and experiences flashed before my eyes.
The following skill has activated: ???
Stabilizes your mental state in exchange for some of your emotion.
+1.00 to Confusion.
A mysterious text display popped up in the corner of my eye. But that was the least of my worries. There was no way I could comprehend what that was about, yet my brain, belying the storm of emotions in my heart, started to become less hazy. The whirlpool of doom and despair in my head abated, the resentment ebbed away, and I was able to focus on a way out of these dire straits.
My unmuddled mind selected the best course of action. Avoiding using my wounded left leg, I stood up with only my right. At that very instant, the wolf attacked. I leaped to the side and ran, but I was nowhere near fast enough to escape. As I passed by the beast, its claw rent the upper part of my right arm. A dolorous tingling gripped my arm, but I didn’t have time to lick my wounds.
Just then, I heard one of the people who had moved to safety. “Good, right there! Now shoot! Block the way!”
Chills. It was then I remembered the wolf wasn’t my true enemy. Those bastards! They made me their decoy, turned tail, and now they’ve got the gall to do this?!
I looked behind me, fearing the worst, and saw an all-encompassing blast of flame heading my way. The wolf didn’t fail to notice it, but it was too late. It had sprung forward to bite me to death, and as such, it couldn’t avoid the wall of fire. Needless to say, I, too, lacked any means of escape. The fireball exploded with the wolf and me at its epicenter, igniting everything in its blast radius. I threw up my hands to protect my head and dropped to the ground as I jumped as far away as possible.
A fiery shock wave slammed into my back, blowing me away. My whole body was scorched by flames as I was rocked by the excruciating sensation of being flayed alive. But I used that agony as a wake-up call and kept my cool. My hate and frustration were my vim and vigor.
I’d been blasted to the ground, but soon I slowly opened my eyes and examined my surroundings. The fire that had engulfed the area was already gone, like magic. Yet a neat wall of flames blocked the path through which the others had escaped.
“So... So tha...”
The words “so that’s what they were scheming” died before they could come out; my burnt throat wasn’t working properly. My eyes, however, were functioning normally. With the path out of the corridor well and truly cut off, all that was left were the wolf and me.
We got back to our feet, the both of us. The wolf was visibly weaker now, most likely because it had been mid pounce, effectively covering me, when the fireball struck. It also had more surface area to burn, so its wounds were even graver. It staggered, its breathing labored, but there was still fire in its eyes. Its will to fight hadn’t diminished in any way. It paced over to me as it howled, as if to say, “You should see how fearsome a wolf gets when it’s injured.”
The wolf steeled its resolve, and I mine. By chance, I’d landed in a favorable position. Though the wolf probably couldn’t see it, a greatsword lay behind me. It was probably the sword the warrior from earlier had been using. If I could sneakily make use of it, I’d be opening up a chance of victory, albeit a tiny one.
I turned my back to the wolf and ran with all my energy. The moment I about-faced, I saw the wolf pounce from the corner of my eye. Searing pain shot through my left thigh, and alarm bells blared in my head, but I ran regardless, forcing my now numb foot to pound the floor.
I couldn’t pinpoint the right time to counterattack, nor could I accurately predict how the wolf would come at me. All the same, I picked up the greatsword with whatever strength I could muster and slashed at it as I turned to face it. The sword was so heavy that I couldn’t hold it up even using both hands, but I poured my might into the swing of the blade. It was all riding on this moment.
With a fleshy, muffled stabbing sound, the greatsword sank into the wolf’s hide.
“YES! Ah, urgh!”
My joy was premature. With the sword still lodged in its neck, the wolf’s giant body bore down on me. I was able to narrowly avoid its fangs, but I couldn’t dodge its massive frame of over three meters. Its unbelievable weight crushed my body, and the contents of my stomach spewed out of my mouth.
Even as its neck was being torn to shreds, the wolf was trying to extinguish my life in its jaws. It opened its maw wide in a bid to swallow my head, but I snapped myself back and dodged by wrenching my body to its absolute limit. Then I capitalized on the recoil by digging the sword even deeper into the dread beast.
“You stupid goddamn—”
I waved my arms as if expecting to fling its three-meter body to the curb. All that did was open up a small gap between us, but to me, in that moment, it was the greatest outcome I could have hoped for, allowing me to escape from beneath it. I let go of the sword and put some distance between the two of us before peeking back at it. It was no longer attempting to pursue me. I could sense that it wanted to push itself forward, but its battered body wasn’t cooperating. The beast’s blood spilled out profusely, its insides burned to cinders.
Still, I couldn’t let my guard down. I continued observing the wolf from a distance, and that was when I noticed—its right eye had been destroyed by the fire, and arrows were stuck deep in its hind legs. The sword must have penetrated its respiratory tract, since the sound of its breathing had become a meager flute’s whistle.
A word escaped my lips: “You...”
The wolf doggedly dragged its mutilated form my way. To make doubly sure, I kept to the blind spot created by its burnt eye. It collapsed shortly thereafter. Its blood had pooled into a veritable lake, and it was only barely breathing. The instant it stopped breathing, it started emitting a faint emerald green light and faded away. The sword and arrows that had been stuck in the now nonexistent wolf clattered to the ground.
“Huh?”
That’s right.
The thing had simply vanished, leaving no corpse behind. It had disappeared like it had only ever been a figment of my imagination. The only thing that remained in its wake was a shining green gem on the floor.
Then, another text display box silently hit my retinas:
Title gained: Dawn of Deep Green.
+0.10 to Str.