Chapter 556 There's an Airdrop?

"Roar!"

A furious tiger's roar erupted through the sparse woods, startling a few birds resting in the treetops into flight.

As a powerful predator at the very top of the food chain, this large carnivorous feline once held the moniker of the "King of Beasts."

Here on the Aifala Continent, the existence of magic particles might have allowed many terrifying monsters wielding unimaginable power to claim the higher rungs of that food chain.

But to ordinary beasts without supernatural abilities and the vast majority of commoners, a tiger still equated absolutely to the word "danger."

Oftentimes, even from a great distance, a terrifying low growl drifting inexplicably from the forest was enough to send chills down a person's spine and make their palms sweat.

The same held true right now.

Although there were no highly intelligent lifeforms in the Ritual Secret Realm other than the adventurers, that piercing roar still sent many small beasts in the surrounding woods fleeing in panic.

However, these low-intelligence animals clearly failed to sense the unspeakable emotion hidden within the tiger's roar, one completely different from its usual state.

"Drip."

Warm, viscous blood dripped slowly from the mangled flesh where its fur had been peeled back, staining the soil below a dark, muddy red.

This was a brown-striped tiger of medium build, a species commonly found in woodlands and hilly regions.

Nearly three meters long, dark brown stripes covered its entire body. Highly explosive muscles were hidden deep beneath its thick fur and fat, driving its robust, powerful frame with the lightning-fast reflexes unique to felines.

Its furry paws, larger than an adult's face as they pressed into the meadow, could easily pin prey to the ground with just a little force. It would then crush its victim's throat and windpipe, turning them completely into food.

Truthfully, when facing such a ferocious beast one-on-one, even bottom-tier adventurers who had only recently gained a Class Level wouldn't dare act carelessly.

After all, who could guarantee their flesh and blood could withstand the tearing and biting of sharp claws and fangs?

Barring encounters with proper monsters or other troubles, this tiger had clearly become the master of this patch of woodland, treating all prey within its marked territory as its exclusive food.

But right now, the condition of this adult brown-striped tiger did not seem well at all.

Three deep, parallel gashes—as if carved by sharp claws—stretched all the way from its side shoulder to its chest. Its thick fur had been instantly sliced open, exposing the fatty tissue and scarlet flesh beneath.

Blood seeped endlessly from the wounds.

Without a doubt, if it didn't receive timely rest and treatment, this would be a fatal, life-threatening injury out in the wild.

As for the culprit who inflicted such an injury, it was currently standing opposite the brown-striped tiger: a massive Winter Wolf with a shoulder height of 1.5 meters and a body length matching the feline's.

Its fluffy, flawless snow-white fur stood out sharply against the verdant surroundings. Its slender legs touched the ground lightly, traces of blood and mangled flesh lingering between its claws.

It had been exactly five days since Xia Nan had chosen his evolution branch.

He had tracked his target all the way from the depths of the dense forest into this mountainous woodland.

Through consuming a massive amount of food to absorb nutrients and energy, the original [Temple Nightwalker Wolf] bloodline had been completely overwritten by the higher-tier [Winter Wolf].

The snow-white fur covering his entire body and the crystalline, icy mist drifting from his Wolf's Maw and nostrils with every breath were the proof.

He had also used this time to thoroughly adapt to his new Winter Wolf body.

It had to be said, the compatibility of over ninety points displayed on the Attribute Panel for the [Winter Wolf] when choosing his path was indeed no lie.

When Xia Nan used this body to unleash [Fang Hunt], the overall sensation felt even smoother and more fluid than when he was human.

Coupled with the experience he had summarized from using a human body, combining it with the attack methods of [Heavy Tide] and [Gravity Etching] had also become increasingly seamless.

The combined use of his combat techniques seemed to have formed a sort of subconscious instinct. During battle, he didn't even need to expend extra focus to concentrate; they flowed out naturally.

Xia Nan didn't know why such a change had occurred, but it was obviously a good thing—whether for this wolf body right now, or his human body back in the real world.

He didn't overthink it, simply treating it as a natural phenomenon following the gradual increase in his proficiency.

The only pity was that a wolf's body didn't seem very suited to using [Spinning Slash]. Even after evolving into a Winter Wolf, his posture and power generation when swiping his claws still felt awkward.

Otherwise, under normal circumstances, a single direct claw strike would have blown the enemy's skull clean off, leaving the tiger beast ahead no chance to react.

Besides this, Xia Nan's true harvest during these five days was that, relying on the perception abilities of Sarissa's sparrow form, he had found two more ritual participants.

After confirming they weren't members of his faction, he had turned them into numbers on his proficiency panel.

The process hadn't been difficult. For someone like him who could use combat techniques and had already completed his Second Evolution, facing ordinary beasts that didn't even have a Challenge Rating could even be considered a dimensional beatdown.

And right before his eyes was the third adventurer he had found during this period.

To be precise, it was the corpse of the third adventurer.

Clearly, judging by the gaze and demeanor of the brown-striped tiger facing him down in the clearing, this was merely the most common of ordinary beasts within the Secret Realm.

Xia Nan's target was actually the horned deer in the bushes behind the tiger, which had already been gnawed down to half a body.

A cluster of glowing blue light floated leisurely above the corpse.

He didn't know why this ritual participant had still died to a beast's fangs and claws despite possessing the memories and experience of a veteran adventurer.

However, through the scene before him, Xia Nan could deduce that after the beast an adventurer transformed into died, its life energy wouldn't dissipate, nor would it be absorbed by animals not possessed by participants; it simply lingered in place.

This allowed him to heave a sigh of relief.

At the very least, it was all combat technique proficiency. Even if he couldn't necessarily find them all, it was better than the energy dissipating directly upon death.

"Roar!"

The brown-striped tiger ahead, heavily injured by a single claw strike from Xia Nan, naturally had no idea what this massive, snow-white wolf beast—the likes of which it had never seen before—was thinking.

From its perspective, it had searched for prey for half the day and finally caught one that looked injured. Before it could even take a couple of bites, a white wolf had appeared out of nowhere and clawed it in the chest.

Actually, according to the normal logic of such top-tier carnivores, given the abundant resources in the wild and the extreme risks associated with injury, Xia Nan wouldn't even have needed to attack. Just standing at a distance and howling a few times to intimidate it might have been enough for the brown-striped tiger to weigh the pros and cons and surrender the deer corpse.

Unfortunately, Xia Nan had directly initiated an attack, inflicting a wound that was severe enough to be called a "critical injury."

This directly provoked the brown-striped tiger's ferocity, leaving no room for it to back down.

"Thud!"

The massive paws hit the ground, supporting its heavy frame and emitting a muffled thud upon impact.

The tiger beast roared as it lunged at the white wolf ahead. Its body nearly blurred into a phantom, the bulging, rippling contours of its muscles faintly visible beneath its striped fur.

In response, Xia Nan was neither rushed nor panicked.

One side was a top-tier predator among ordinary beasts, but the other was a genuine, powerful monster with a Challenge Rating as high as "3."

The brown-striped tiger's movements seemed swift and fierce, but in Xia Nan's eyes, they were like slow motion.

Tapping his slender limbs lightly against the soft meadow, he dodged the tiger's pounce with an incredibly graceful posture.

At the same time, he opened his Wolf's Maw toward the enemy in midair.

Between his jagged fangs, a biting, frigid aura rapidly gathered in his throat, rippling the surrounding magic particles.

"Boom!"

An icy-white beam as thick as an adult's forearm blasted out from his Wolf's Maw, landing dead center on the brown-striped tiger's body.

Crack—

A freezing sound that set one's teeth on edge abruptly rang out in the air. Biting frost spread rapidly in all directions, centered around the beam's point of impact.

The angry roar, tinged with pain, came to a screeching halt. The tiger beast's struggling movements froze in an instant.

All that remained was a lifelike, tiger-shaped ice sculpture standing upon the meadow.

—[Freezing Breath].

A special ability possessed by the Winter Wolf.

Their inherently powerful bite force and monster-tier digestive system meant that when facing powerful prey that was difficult to capture, even if they used "Freezing Breath" to freeze the target to death, they could still easily shatter the "ice sculpture" with their teeth and swallow it for digestion.

Xia Nan had also tasted it a few times over these past few days.

He had originally thought it would be hard to swallow, but eating it in practice, the taste was surprisingly not bad.

It was like eating ice cream on a summer day. In the relatively hot environment of the forest, occasionally eating a few chunks of something so ice-cold was extremely comfortable for this Winter Wolf body, which ought to have inhabited the polar regions.

Thinking to save it for dinner, Xia Nan bypassed the brown-striped tiger that had been frozen into an ice sculpture and approached the horned deer corpse.

He wasn't in a rush to absorb the life energy floating above it, however.

Instead, he just stood there until the sound of flapping wings drifted down from above.

Seeing that the battle was already over, the sparrow Sarissa had transformed into naturally flew down from the canopy where she had been hiding, landing on the ground.

"Are you sure you don't want it?"

Opening his Wolf's Maw slightly, Xia Nan confirmed with her.

His ability to find adventurers in succession these past few days was all thanks to Sarissa.

Without her help, even if he wanted to use the ritual participants to increase his combat technique proficiency, he would only be able to scurry blindly around the map. Whether he actually found anything would rely entirely on luck.

Right now, the two of them were in a cooperative relationship. Xia Nan wanted to borrow her special perception abilities to search for nearby adventurers, while Sarissa's goal was to stop the ritual of the "Algae Scale," Dodd.

He provided combat power, and she provided information.

He had already absorbed the life energy of the previous two adventurers himself. For their upcoming plans to proceed smoothly, there ought to be give and take; Xia Nan felt there was no harm in letting her have the energy left behind by the horned deer before him.

However, Sarissa's thoughts were clearly different.

Although they didn't know the specific details of the ritual itself, they were both experienced veteran adventurers after all. Even relying solely on the intel they'd grasped thus far, they could roughly deduce the goal of "Algae Scale" Dodd.

It was nothing more than slaughtering the adventurers he'd dragged into the Secret Realm, continuously achieving evolution in life levels, and ultimately seizing victory.

Under such circumstances, if they wanted to stop him from winning, they obviously needed a powerful individual who had likewise completed multiple evolutions.

Therefore, Sarissa felt it was better to concentrate the energy entirely on Xia Nan.

As for her current sparrow form, its small size was convenient for hiding, and it possessed the ability of flight. She was already extremely satisfied and didn't need to evolve and upgrade.

As to why she was betting it all on Xia Nan, their previous time together on the Blade of Vengeance Ship was one reason, while the other was that he could bizarrely use combat techniques freely even within the Secret Realm.

Seeing Sarissa state her stance, Xia Nan no longer hesitated, stepping forward a couple of paces on his wolf legs.

Buzz... As if drawn by some invisible magnetism, the glowing blue cluster floating in midair rapidly converged toward his direction, seeping into his body through the pores of his skin.

Familiar translucent characters flashed before his eyes.

"Proficiency +1"

"[Gravity Control] lv1 (54/100) → [Gravity Control] lv1 (55/100)"

"Proficiency +1"

"[Ember Echoes] lv2 (37/100) → [Ember Echoes] lv2 (38/100)"

"Proficiency +4"

"[Heavy Tide] lv3 (31/100) → [Heavy Tide] lv3 (35/100)"

He could feel surges of warm currents flowing along fixed routes within his body. His wolf physique, which had already developed rapidly over the past few days, couldn't help but expand another size, gradually exceeding the build a Winter Wolf ought to possess.

However, perhaps because the adventurers Xia Nan had tracked down during this period—including the horned deer before him—had yet to achieve their First Evolution, the life energy they provided was relatively limited.

Even when accumulating three of them, the life energy stockpiled within his body right now was still just a little bit short of reaching the Third Evolution.

Seeing that the rank-up progress bar had already reached ninety-nine percent, Xia Nan naturally wouldn't stop here.

Noticing it was still early in the day, he cast his gaze toward Sarissa beside him and said, "If we find roughly one more adventurer, it should meet the conditions required for the Third Evolution."

"Are there any suitable targets near us?"

Hearing this, the sparrow Sarissa had transformed into immediately closed her eyes and began to sense carefully.

Unlike "Algae Scale" Dodd's full-map perspective, his daughter could only sense the adventurers closest to her immediate surroundings.

It was exactly by relying on her guidance earlier that Xia Nan had made his way from the densely packed primal forest to this woodland.

Strangely, unlike the previous few times they tracked someone, Sarissa's speed in searching for a target had become unusually slow. Even her petite sparrow body stiffened in place, looking as if she were struggling.

'Is it because the distance is too far?'

Xia Nan guessed inwardly.

But before he had time to think further, a massive humming sound suddenly tore across the distant sky.

His gaze shot over subconsciously.

He saw a cluster of glowing blue light, more dazzling than any Xia Nan had seen before, slowly descending from the high altitudes in the southeast.

"One hundred adventurers dragged into a Secret Realm," "A ritual mechanism of mutual slaughter and evolution," "A gradually shrinking map boundary."

And now, a glowing blue cluster of light slowly dropping from the sky that every adventurer in this mountainous region could see—

A strange gleam suddenly flashed through Xia Nan's icy blue wolf eyes.

"Is this—"

"An airdrop?"