Chapter 85 | Elite Boss: Mist Wolf King
Chapter 85: 85 | Elite Boss: Mist Wolf King
Their yipping sounds had changed from aggressive to panic.
Andrew didn’t let them escape. He took a step forward and appeared beside the fleeing fox in a single step strides. His body looking like it was floating as that single step traversed him to match speed with the fleeing fox.
As it fled, it noticed something beside it and saw Andrew floating beside its with the same speed. Its eyes widened and that all they did before a single downward cut ended its life.
The second-to-last fox tried to dodge, veering sharply to the left as it ran. Andrew’s Omniscient perception tracked its movement perfectly, and he adjusted his strike angle by a few degrees.
The blade caught the fox, severing its spine. It tumbled forward, its legs splaying uselessly, and Andrew finished it with a quick thrust through the skull.
The last fox was the fastest. It had put nearly 100 meters between itself and Andrew in the few seconds since the rout began, and it was running with desperate, lunging strides that ate up the distance.
But it was no match for Andrew’s normal speed. He activated Shadow Dash again, closing the gap instantly, and the final fox died with a crimson slash across its back.
Everything took less than fifteen seconds till their death.
Andrew stood among the corpses, breathing evenly, his heart rate barely elevated. The Godslayer Blade dripped with blood, its soul harvest passive having activated during the fight absorbing stat points from the deaths and increasing his strength. By the end of the brief battle, he had been moving so fast that the foxes couldn’t even track his blade.
He activated Extraction on each corpse in turn.
[Extraction Successful]
↳ +3 Strength
[Extraction Successful]
↳ +2 Agility
[Extraction Successful]
↳ +1 Mana
[Extraction Successful]
↳ +2 Strength
[Extraction Successful]
↳ +3 Agility
[Extraction Successful]
↳ +1 Strength
[Extraction Successful]
↳ +2 Agility
[Extraction Successful]
↳ +1 Mana
The total gains were modes, 7 strength, 10 agility, and 2 mana. It was little but it was something.
More importantly, one of the extractions yielded something unexpected.
[Talent Extracted]
↳ Twin-Tail Coordination skill (E-Rank)
Effect: When fighting alongside allies, slightly increases attack coordination and synchronized movement speed.
It wasn’t particularly useful for Andrew’s current solo playstyle, but he filed it away in his growing collection. With his Creation Talent, even mediocre abilities could potentially become something extraordinary when combined with the right components.
After collecting his rewards, Andrew continued following the trail. The blood scent he had detected earlier was growing stronger, and with it came that strange, sweet musk that he had noticed at the previous site. Whatever had killed the second villager, it was still in the area—or at least, it frequented this part of the forest regularly.
Finally, he discovered a third trail. This one was much fresher than the previous two. The footprints were clearer, the disturbed vegetation more recent, and the scent of human sweat was strong enough to detect even without his omniscient perception.
This person had passed through here within the last day, perhaps even within the last few hours.
Believing this trail belonged to the blacksmith’s son, who had been described as the strongest and most capable of the missing youths, Andrew immediately followed it.
The footprints continued deep into the Misty Forest, moving steadily away and more than 300 kilometers from the village and toward the depth of the distant mountains that loomed on the horizon.
The forest changed as Andrew walked through.
The trees grew closer together, their branches intertwining overhead to form a dense canopy that blocked out almost all natural light.
A thick mist began to seep through the trunks, pooling curling around the roots like ghostly fingers.
The temperature dropped noticeably, and the sounds of the forest, the birds, the insects, the and smaller animals, gradually faded until the only sound was Andrew’s own breathing.
Andrew frowned. "Hope this isn’t a jump scare."
Not long afterward, he encountered the next obstacle.
The mist thickened suddenly, reducing his perception and even his vision to less than ten meters.
"HOOOOOOOOOWL!"
The howl was deep as it vibrated through the forest with a unique frequency that shook the leaves in the fresh.
It carried across the mist-shrouded forest with a penetrating quality that seemed to bypass the ears entirely and strike directly at the primitive fear center of the brain.
"Awooo!" "Awooo!" "Awooo!" "Awooo!"
The howl was answered by a dozen more, each one slightly different in pitch and duration.
In that split second, they came from every direction, surrounding Andrew in a web of sound that left no avenue of escape.
Wolves.
They emerged from the mist like demons straight from hell. Their fur was a pale grey that blended almost perfectly with the surrounding fog, making them appear and disappear like phantoms. Their eyes glowed with a cold blue light, and their breath formed small clouds of vapor in the chilled air.
There were over a dozen of them, fourteen, by Andrew’s count and each one roughly the size of a large horse.
Their muscles shifted beneath their thick fur as they walked forward, their massive paws making no sound on the damp forest floor.
[Mist Wolf]
↳ Level 5
↳ Normal Monster
↳ HP: 350/350
But the Mist Wolves were not the true threat.
Andrew’s Omniscient perception, even reduced by the mist, could detect the presence of something much larger standing at the center of the pack, hidden behind a wall of grey fur and glowing blue eyes.
At their center stood an Elite Boss.
[Misty Wolf King]
↳ Level 9 Elite Boss
↳ HP: 5,000/5,000
The Mist Wolf King was enormous, nearly twice the size of its subordinates, with a coat of silver-grey fur that seemed to flow like the mist itself.
Its eyes were a deeper, more intense blue than those of the regular wolves, and they radiated an intelligence that was almost human in its depth.
A thick mane of darker fur surrounded its massive head, and its fangs, each one as long as a dagger protruded from its upper jaw like ivory spears.
"Awwooooo!"