Free Web NovelChapter 146: Fierce Battle (1)
The elite rabid wolf wasn’t a pushover. It wasn’t just going to lie in wait for Rohan to arrive.
It met him halfway, springing off the ground with a smoothness and speed that instantly made the ordinary wolves look like little more than mangy pests. Even after everything Rohan had been through lately, that first clash still managed to catch him off guard. The difference between and ordinary E rank beast and an elite one wasn’t just the bigger claws and scarier aura.
The entire beast was more refined, more complete — closer to perfection per se.
Like all the useless parts had been shaved away, leaving behind only what was necessary to just just kill and survive in the Origin Realm, but thrive.
The wolf’s body twisted through the air. Instead of going straight for this throat or torso like the ordinary ones, it cam in at an angle, aiming to slip past the line of his spear and tear into the side of his knee.
’Fast!’
Rohan’s spear swept down and to the side, abandoning any thought of an elegant killing thrust in favour of simply stopping the beast from reaching him. The shaft smacked against the wolf’s side and knocked it off course, but not nearly as much as he would’ve liked.
Rather than being batted away, the elite used the contact to spin with the force, landed on three paws and still managed to drag one set of claws across Rohan’s shin as it passed.
Sparks flew of a combination of molten lava and the beast’s metallic claws.
Yes, metallic. This elite was far beyond the other wolves, even its claws were reinforced with some sort of alloy.
Rohan’s eyes widened slightly.
The claws hadn’t broken through his molten-stone skin, but they came close. The fact he even felt the strike at all was enough to make his grin vanish completely.
’Right. This thing really has the potential to kill me if I’m not careful.’
The elite wolf didn’t pause to admire its handiwork either. The moment its paws touched the stone floor, it pushed off again, using the dense bodies of the two whimpering ordinary wolves as cover while it circled sharply to Rohan’s right. The burning wolves there were barely more than moving obstacles at this point, but the elite handled the chaos with ease, weaving through as if it had already mapped out every body and puddle of molten lava in then entire chamber.
Rohan cursed inwardly and spun to track it.
The whole chamber had become a nightmare. Ordinary wolves were still running about in all directions, some crashing into walls, some biting at their own burning flesh and others retreated altogether. This kind of battlefield heavily favoured Rohan, but that didn’t seem to demotivate the elite.
’Of course it’s still fine. Why wouldn’t it be?’
The wolf reappeared form behind a writhing ordinary beast and launched itself in low again, but this time Rohan was ready. He stepped forward instead of retreating, stabbing down with all his strength in an attempt to pin the creature to the ground mid lunge.
The elite twisted.
Rohan’s spear drove into its shoulder, but not cleanly. What should’ve been a crippling hit became only a shallow pierce as the beast angled its body just enough to avoid taking the full force of it. Blood sprayed everywhere, and the wolf let out a savage snarl as it crashed into Rohan anyway.
The impact nearly bowled him over.
His back foot slid a full metre over the stone before he managed to brace and throw his weight into the collision. One of the wolf’s jaws snapped shut on his upper arm, then instantly reopened when molten heat seared into its gums and tongue.
It tried to recoil back in a rush, but Rohan was already moving. He wrenched his spear free and brought the shaft in a vicious horizontal swing that cracked against the wolf’s ribs with enough force to launch it sideways through two yelping ordinary wolves.
Those two wolves turned into a bloody mist as they barely managed to slow down the force of the elite crashing right into them.
This time the elite didn’t land cleanly like all other times. It rolled once, struggled to regain its footing, and came back up with a much more obvious limp in its front leg.
Rohan saw that and immediately smiled again.
’There we go.’ frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
The elite seemed to have noticed his smile and growled, its ears flattening against its head. It had learned a hard lesson now. Learned that Rohan’s defence wasn’t just a layer of protection but a weapon in itself.
Every time it came into direct contact with Rohan, the molten properties of his skin would punish it for doing so. Every time it got too greedy with a bite or claw attack, it would pay dearly for it.
And yet, despite all that, it was still the more dangerous one in this exchange.
That annoyed Rohan more than he’d liked to admit.
He came into this chamber feeling almost invincible with the level of strength he’d shown over the past few days. A whole horde of Ordinary E rank beasts? That was messy, but manageable.
Now, less than a minute into fighting the real problem in their midst, he was already bleeding energy faster than he liked, and the elite hadn’t even fully committed itself yet.
The beast circled again, limping more visibly now, but still far too quickly. Quicker than even rohan himself could manage at his peak. He was once again reminded of just how imperative it was for him to reach E rank himself before facing off against an opponent as strong as this.
Rohan adjusted his grip on his spear and took a different stance, a more aggressive one centrered on attacking rather than defending.
The elite’s greatest advantage right now wasn’t its strength or speed. It was that it could choose its moments to attack, defend, retreat or such while he had to stay constantly ready for anything.
Something had to change if he were to continue going on like this.
The next ordinary wolf that stumbled between them became his answer.
Rohan stepped into it and drove his spear through its neck, not even bothering to finish the movement properly before ripping the corpse up off the ground.
Then with a savage twist of his waist, he hurled the dying beast at the elite like a sack of potatoes.
The move was crude, but effective.
