Chapter 257 Wolf's Maw Bite

Fear.

An intense, primal emotion born of human instinct when confronted with "danger."

It might initially stem from direct sensory input, but through imagination and memory, it extends into the mind's subjective perspective.

What was it that Trevelyan saw—or rather, felt?

It was a cold, ancient oppression laced with pure malice.

Every breath of air around him felt like solid lead, pressing down on every inch of his skin.

This did not come from the thunder rumbling at the edge of the sky, nor was it the piercing chill of the falling rain.

Rather, it was a darker, deeper terror that accompanied the undulating wolf howls and swaying mane.

"A fatal disaster." When it came to survival, to simply staying alive, the alarm in his heart had already been raised to the absolute highest level.

His medium-length golden hair was drenched by the rain and plastered messily to his cheeks. His pale, bloodless lips parted slightly, and a faint, scorching mist resembling life force seeped from between them.

His nostrils flared and twitched uncontrollably, while his pupils were fixed in the rigid stare of a corpse.

Trevelyan stared straight ahead.

In that moment, the dark, icy eyes of the black-haired young man seemed to gradually overlap with the ferocious wolf eyes flickering in the curtain of rain behind him.

They transformed into two bottomless voids of pure darkness, hollows of nothingness that could devour everything, mercilessly sucking in his body, will, and soul.

A tide of death spread silently, manifesting as a freezing hand that instantly gripped his heart.

In a daze, those vague memories buried deep in his heart gradually floated to the surface of his mind, washed up by the tide of fear.

It was from shortly after he was old enough to remember: in the dead of a quiet night, an old woman with a face as wrinkled as rotting wood telling a terrifying fairy tale that kept him awake until dawn.

It was his first time at the horse track, being lifted high as the reins were pulled tight, shadowed by the neighing beast, a pair of hooves coated in mud and grass clippings looming right over his head.

Past traumas and memories filled his heart.

The fear was gradually escalating into despair and panic.

"Huff... huff..."

Every one of Trevelyan's labored breaths sounded like the pumping of a rotten, broken bellows.

Along with the thick stench of blood filling his nose came waves of agonizing pain from the massive wound on his chest.

With the muscles over his entire body as taut as stone, he instinctively tried to grasp the Knight Heavy Sword that had fallen silently and was now planted point-down in the damp soil, engraved with his family motto.

Yet his fingers only spasmed and twitched, clawing vainly at the freezing hilt. They were like wet cotton—soft and utterly devoid of strength.

His arm felt as though it had been pumped full of heavy mercury; the limb that used to swing a sword like the wind couldn't muster a single ounce of force.

Trevelyan wanted to run.

Family honor, his desire for the path to the Transcendent Tier—all these distracting thoughts were cast aside by his sheer instinct to survive. And just as the negative emotions in his mind intensified to their peak, urging his body to turn and flee...

The rather tenacious will forged from years of knightly training, along with the muscle memory developed for handling crises, brought forth a final shred of reason in his heart.

He clenched his teeth, his five fingers suddenly clamping down tight.

He hoisted the Knight Heavy Sword high with both hands, subconsciously blocking in front of him.

"Clang!"

The crisp sound of colliding metal erupted through the rain.

Blinding sparks flared and vanished in an instant.

The black-haired young man, who had been standing in the distance just a moment ago, closed in within the blink of an eye. The piercing gale whipped up by the swing of his iron-gray longsword seemed intent on tearing apart Trevelyan's last remaining shred of will.

He was already heavily injured by the desperate strike from Lawson under the [Dying Sun Blood Will] state, having barely stabilized his wounds with a Healing Potion.

Now, struck into a state of "fear" by the impact of [Fang Hunt], Trevelyan's actual combat strength had been weakened to rock bottom.

He was merely relying on his body's instincts and muscle memory to fight Xia Nan.

Through the special ability granted by [Silver-Plated Knight], a layer of flowing silver-white metal rapidly spread across his skin—providing him with a sturdy defense far exceeding that of other Class Holders.

But before it could spread across his entire body, the opponent in front of him deliberately exposed a flaw—a feint he normally would have seen through with a single glance.

Yet right now, it made him subconsciously twist his wrists, lifting his heavy sword and swinging it violently toward that "flaw."

"Hum—"

The hilt did not relay the familiar sensation he imagined, that of a blade slicing through armor and tearing flesh.

Instead, he was met with a bizarre, jarring feeling, as if he had hacked into cotton with nowhere for his force to discharge.

Beneath his blade was neither flesh nor iron armor, but a translucent, reddish-brown glowing shield.

When the Knight Heavy Sword struck it, it only left behind layers of rippling energy waves. Failing to penetrate even the slightest bit, the blade slid right down the smooth, rounded curvature of the shield the next second.

He lost his balance along with it, stumbling into that stiff vulnerability that occurs right after a swing but before the sword is drawn back.

"Dammit!"

A bone-chilling cold suddenly surged in Trevelyan's heart. His danger instincts screamed, telling him something was horribly wrong.

And exactly as he feared.

At the exact moment his heavy sword slipped off the reddish-brown energy shield, the long, sharp Decapitating Longsword quietly slipped out of his line of sight. From his blind spot, it morphed into a cruel, freezing arc of iron-gray light.

Slashing upward.

"Squelch."

Still tightly gripping the heavy sword, his thick right arm was sent spinning into the air amid a geyser of crimson blood.

From the perfectly smooth stump of his shoulder, the blood vessels continued their diligent work of pumping hot blood, but with nowhere to send it, the blood merely sprayed emptily onto the ground.

"Aaaaaahhhh!!!"

A miserable, agonizing howl abruptly tore through the depths of the torrential rain.

The intense, nearly blinding pain seemed to make the handsome young Knight Commander briefly forget the terror in his heart.

His sole remaining left arm suddenly swelled up, completely encased in silver-white metal, and he hurled it toward the enemy in front of him like an exploding bomb.

But obviously, in terms of sheer reaction speed and Agility, his opponent was faster.

The black-haired young man clad in matte-black Plate-Chain Composite Armor, looking as if he were veiled in shadows, only shifted his body slightly. With absolute ease, he dodged Trevelyan's strike, an attack that packed enough force to blast a boulder apart.

Immediately after, a "Swish."

The iron-gray sword light flashed past once again.

This time, the object that went spinning to the ground was the golden-haired knight's left arm.

"Aaaaaaah!"

The empty, hollow sensation where both of his arms used to be, coupled with the agonizing pain washing over him like a tidal wave...

...made it impossible for him to suppress the profound terror that had been briefly pushed down. It burst forth like a geyser, swallowing his fighting spirit, his mind, and his will—bite by bite, devouring it all.

The youngest Knight Commander from the Morton Family; a man who had already advanced to a Level 5 [Silver-Plated Knight] before the age of thirty; the dream lover of countless commoner girls in Sticky-Tree Territory, and the idol that countless young men aspired to become.

Because of the greed in his heart, he had launched a misguided attack on a target he never should have made an enemy of.

Right now, his mental defenses shattered by unspeakable terror, he could only act like a stray dog with its tail tucked between its legs, weeping and howling miserably as he scrambled wretchedly toward the depths of the Wilderness.

Having long been marked as prey, how could he be allowed to escape his grasp?

The pitch-black wolf beast moved its limbs gracefully through the torrential rain.

With a booming howl, the rain was blown backward.

The Wolf's Maw clamped shut, its iron-gray fangs sinking into the fragile neck.

"Crunch—Thud."

Eyes glazing over and freezing in place, the perfectly round head flew high into the air.

It rolled limply across the ground.

Blood, mud, and grass clippings stained that handsome, sharply contoured face.

"Roll, roll—" The undulating terrain of the mountains caused the head to keep tumbling, until the very end.

It bumped into a small pair of leather boots peeking out from beneath the hem of an off-white robe, and finally came to a halt.