Chapter 84 | Twin-Tailed Foxes
Chapter 84: 84 | Twin-Tailed Foxes
Andrew opened his eyes flashed to the corpse and knelt beside the remains.
The body had been partially consumed by birds, insects, and small mammals had all taken their share over the past three days.
What remained was barely recognizable as human, but from the clothing fragments and the shape of the bones he could guess what happened.
Judging from the remains and the scattered footprints surrounding the area, the person had been killed by a beast.
Large claw marks tore the ground and nearby tree trunks, each one deep and large enough to be fisted.
The pattern of the tracks suggested a massive four-legged predator that had ambushed its victim from the side.
Andrew activated his Extraction ability on the remains.
[Extraction Successful]
↳ +2 Strength
↳ +1 Agility
"Eh? Even better than I expected."
Andrew grinned as he stood up and went back to the last point where the trail had split, searching again with his Perception for any signs he might have missed.
The second trail led him deeper into the forest, following a path that coiled around massive ancient trees whose trunks were wider than houses.
Their roots spread across the ground like tangled serpents, creating a labyrinth of obstacles around the forest.
Andrew easily passed through them with shadow step effortlessly, as he blurred on tree branches.
Then he found it, blood. A massive anour of blood. It had soaked into the earth and splattered across the roots of a tree.
But there was not a single remain or corpse. Not even the clothes was left.
The absence of a body was more disturbing than finding one. It meant either the person had been carried away whole, or something had consumed them entirely—bones and all.
Andrew crouched beside the bloodstain and inhaled deeply through his nose. He detected human blood, but also something else, a murky violent odor that made him want to choke to death.
Before he could analyze the scent further, a sound reached his ears. A high-pitched, almost musical yipping that came from multiple directions at once.
"hoooowl!"
The howl was answered by a dozen more, creating a chilling chorus that echoed through the dark forest.
Andrew’s Omniscient perception immediately picked up the approaching heat signatures—small, fast-moving creatures converging on his position from all sides.
Twin-tailed foxes.
They emerged from the shadows of the trees like ghosts in flesh.
Their fur was a deep brown and each fox was about the size of a massive cow, with sleek bodies, pointed ears, and, most strikingly, two long, flowing tails that trailed behind them like ribbons of flame. Their eyes glowed with a faint amber light, and their lips curled back to reveal rows of sharp, glistening teeth.
"Yi!" "Yi!" "Yi!"
There were eight of them in total, forming a loose circle around Andrew’s position.
They moved with a fluidly and softly, that their paws made no sound on the forest floor. Their tails swished back and forth and the yipping sounds they made seemed to coordinating their movements and adjust their positions.
Andrew’s system immediately fed him the relevant information.
[Twin-Tailed Fox]
↳ Level 5
↳ Normal Monster
↳ HP: 200/200
They were all Level 5, which would have been a significant threat to most beginner players. A party of five or six Level 3 players would have struggled against this pack, likely suffering casualties even if they managed to win.
Andrew was not most beginner players.
The foxes seemed to sense that something was wrong. As Andrew glanced at them indifferently. His level 7 strength radiating off him in a wave.
Several of them instantly lowered their heads and growled, a deep, rumbling sound that vibrated in the chest. But none of them broke formation or fled.
"Awooooo!"
The larger lead fox gave a sharp bark.
"Kyak! Kyak!"
All eight foxes charged simultaneously from eight different directions. They moved at incredible speed, covering the twenty-meter distance between them and Andrew in less than two seconds.
Andrew drew Godslayer in a single, smooth motion. The blade hummed as it cleared the sheath, the crimson metal seeming to glow with anticipation.
He didn’t move from his position. He didn’t need to.
The first fox reached him, its jaws open wide, aiming for his throat.
"Slash!"
Andrew’s blade moved in a horizontal arc. It was so fast that the motion was barely visible, and the fox was bisected mid-leap.
Its two halves sailed past him on either side, separated by a clean cut that cauterized the wound as it made it, courtesy of the blade’s inherent sharpness and the residual heat from Andrew’s Chaos Flame bursting out in excitement.
The second and third foxes arrived almost simultaneously, one from the left and one from the right.
Andrew stepped forward instead of back, ducking under the snapping jaws of the left fox while bringing his sword up in a diagonal slash that caught the right fox across the chest.
The blade easily cut through fur, muscle, and bone as if they were paper, and the right fox collapsed in a heap of blood and fur.
"Bang!"
Without pausing, Andrew spun on his heel and drove his elbow backward into the left fox’s skull as it tried to latch onto his back.
"Crack!"
The impact was devastating as Titan Gauntlets amplified the force of the blow exponentially, and the fox’s head simply caved into its body.
It’s body squeezed like dough as it dropped to the ground. A two meters long fox was squeezed by a single elbow to 800 centimeters. As it dropped to the ground, its body twitching once before going still.
Three down, five remaining.
"Kyak! Kyak! Kyak!
The pack’s coordination began to collapse. The sudden deaths of three of their members had shattered the formation, and the remaining foxes hesitated for a fraction of a second. That fraction was all Andrew needed.
He activated Shadow Dash, vanishing from his position and reappearing fifteen meters away, directly behind two of the foxes that had been approaching from the rear. They never saw him coming. A single horizontal slash took both of their heads off, the crimson blade passing through their necks with such ease that Andrew felt like he was slicing through air.
The last three foxes broke formation and they turned to flee with their twin tails streaming behind them.
"Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!"