Chapter 462: The Hunter of Greyfen

By the following morning, Greyfen no longer looked like a forest suffering an unusual migration.

The deeper they travelled, the worse the damage became. Ancient trees thick enough that three men couldn’t have joined hands around their trunks had been uprooted.

Great furrows split the earth where enormous bodies had passed, while shattered boulders and craters marked places where displaced Magic Beasts had fought before continuing south.

Everything they had encountered this deep was a 4th Order Elite Beast, creatures capable of destroying ordinary hunting parties and transforming entire stretches of woodland during a serious battle.

Rowan moved ahead with greater caution than before, until he suddenly stopped beneath a leaning cedar and raised two fingers. Everyone froze.

He crouched beside a gouge Sage had mistaken for another battle scar and brushed loose soil from its edge.

"Nobody move farther north," Rowan warned, his eyes following the depression toward several black rocks. "Something has been following us since before sunrise."

Lucan’s hand settled on his sword. The wound beneath his coat still bothered him, but Iris’s treatment had allowed him to move normally.

"How long have you known?" Lucan asked, scanning the surrounding trees without turning his head too obviously.

"I suspected it an hour ago," Rowan answered as he touched a nearly invisible scratch across one stone. "Now I know."

Mina tightened her shield straps. "Where is it?" she asked, searching the enormous trees surrounding them.

Rowan glanced toward her. "If I knew exactly where it was, Mina, it wouldn’t be doing a very good job stalking us."

Iris slowly gathered mana around her fingers. "Then what are we dealing with?"

"A Gloomstrike Mantis," Rowan replied.

Even Lucan’s expression changed. Sage knew the name from the Guild’s growing monster records.

Gloomstrike Mantises were 4th Order Elite Beasts found in ancient mana-rich forests. A mature specimen stood more than twelve feet tall, its black-green body protected by overlapping plates, while two enormous scythe-shaped forelimbs could cut through stone.

Wind-aspected mana accumulated beneath its wing casings and legs, allowing explosive bursts of acceleration so violent that weaker Warriors often saw nothing but a blurred shadow before the first strike arrived.

Rowan studied the forest. "Don’t search the canopy too obviously. It watches movement. If it realizes we’ve noticed it, it’ll change its pattern."

Lucan kept his gaze forward. "You’ve hunted one before?"

"Twice," Rowan replied calmly. "Killed one. Ran from the other."

Mina looked surprised. "You ran?"

"The second was stronger than me," Rowan answered without embarrassment. "Pretending otherwise would’ve made me dead."

They continued moving, yet nothing attacked. Rowan changed their pace several times, led them through a shallow ravine and eventually turned south.

Sage noticed immediately and asked, "We’re going back?"

"Yes," Rowan replied.

Mina frowned. "Are we abandoning the investigation?"

Rowan shook his head. "I’m teaching it something."

Lucan glanced sideways. "Which is?"

"That we’re nervous."

For the next half hour, Rowan deliberately made them behave like prey. He doubled back unnecessarily, paused in exposed areas and left obvious tracks through soft ground. At one point he removed a bloodied strip from Lucan’s damaged coat and tied it around a branch.

Lucan watched with visible offense. "That coat was expensive."

Rowan rubbed dried blood across the bark. "Then die wearing cheaper clothes next time."

Mina immediately covered her mouth to hide her laughter.

Eventually Rowan led them into a narrow valley between two rocky slopes, where enormous roots formed natural barriers along the ground.

He stopped behind one and unfolded the map.

"It has tested our rear three times," Rowan explained. "Every time we enter dense terrain, it comes closer. Every time we cross open ground, it widens the distance."

Iris immediately understood. "It wants somewhere we can’t see it approach."

Rowan nodded. "And it prefers Lucan."

Lucan stared at him. "Of course it does."

"You’re injured," Rowan explained. "You’ve been compensating slightly with your left leg. It noticed."

Lucan sighed. "I liked this creature more before learning it had opinions."

Rowan positioned Iris and Sage beyond the valley where thick roots concealed them. Mina climbed onto a rocky shelf overlooking the narrowest section. Lucan continued alone along the visible trail, carrying his sword loosely as though his injury had worsened.

Rowan disappeared.

Sage knew approximately where he had gone and still couldn’t find him without activating his Eyes.

Several minutes passed.

Lucan moved deeper into the valley.

A leaf drifted from above. Then the forest exploded.

The Gloomstrike Mantis crossed nearly sixty yards in a heartbeat. Wind mana detonated beneath its wings, shredding branches and blasting leaves outward as the twelve-foot predator became a black-green streak. Its right scythe descended toward Lucan with enough force to split the earth.

Lucan moved. The scythe missed by inches and carved a trench through the ground.

Iris slammed both palms together. Two walls of stone erupted from opposite sides of the valley, but the mantis twisted impossibly fast and carved through one in an explosion of rock. Mina dropped from above before it could escape, her shield surrounded by dense mana, and struck the beast like a siege hammer.

The impact cratered the ground.

The Gloomstrike Mantis released a metallic shriek before wind mana exploded from its body. Mina was thrown backward through a tree. Lucan slipped beneath another scythe and cut across one joint, his mana-coated sword throwing sparks from the armored limb.

The mantis disappeared again.

It landed thirty yards away.

"Don’t chase it!" Rowan shouted from somewhere unseen.

Mina ripped herself from the broken trunk and scowled. "I wasn’t going to chase it!"

She absolutely had been.

The mantis circled them with terrifying speed. Trees split beneath missed scythes, stone shattered beneath its legs, and crescent-shaped wind blades tore trenches through the valley whenever it attacked from range.

Sage could have entered the battle, but Rowan had specifically asked him not to interfere unless the plan failed.

Then Sage understood.

The first ambush had never been intended to kill it.

Rowan had been teaching the mantis where to escape.

The creature suddenly burst toward the eastern slope. A braided cord snapped upward beneath its rear legs. The trap couldn’t possibly restrain a 4th Order Elite Beast for more than an instant.

Rowan only needed an instant.

He erupted from beneath a covering of leaves almost directly under the monster and threw a fistful of grey powder into its clustered eyes.

The mantis screamed.

Lucan stared. "Did you just throw dirt at it?"

"Ground Bittercap and ash!" Rowan shouted while rolling beneath a blind scythe. "It burns the eyes!"

The mantis thrashed violently, slicing through three trees. Rowan stayed horrifyingly close. He ignored its armored torso and drove his sword into the softer membrane behind one rear leg, twisted the blade and ripped sideways.

The leg buckled.

The mantis launched itself upward.

"Mina!" Rowan shouted.

Mina was already moving.

She struck the damaged leg with her shield. The limb broke with a crack like splitting timber, and the enormous beast crashed sideways, tearing a trench through the valley floor. Iris flooded the trench with water before forcing stone upward around its remaining legs, while Lucan attacked the same forelimb joint he had damaged earlier.

One scythe ripped free and swept toward Rowan.

He ducked beneath it, grabbed a broken branch and jammed it between two plates near the creature’s neck. The mantis shattered the branch instantly, but its armor separated for half a second.

Rowan stabbed through the opening.

The monster convulsed.

Rowan abandoned his sword inside the wound, grabbed one damaged antenna and hauled himself onto its back while it thrashed.

Mina’s eyes widened. "Rowan!"

"Break the left forelimb!" Rowan shouted, blood running from a cut across his cheek. "Ignore the head!"

Mina changed direction immediately. Her shield crashed into the scythe joint as Lucan struck from the opposite side. Armor shattered, and the limb collapsed.

Rowan ripped his sword free, climbed along the bucking creature’s back and plunged the blade through the thin seam beneath its skull.

Once.

Then again.

The enormous Magic Beast finally collapsed.

The valley around them looked as though a small army had fought through it. Trees lay broken across shattered rocks, trenches crossed the earth and Iris’s stone walls had become rubble.

Rowan stepped from the corpse and calmly wiped blood from his face.

Lucan stared at him. "You threw mushroom powder into the face of a 4th Order Elite Beast."

Rowan examined his sword. "It worked."

Lucan looked personally offended. "I spent years learning sword forms."

"And you’re very good at them," Rowan replied.

Mina walked around the enormous corpse before looking at Rowan differently than she had before. "That wasn’t how Knights fight."

Rowan finally sheathed his sword. "No, Mina. It’s how hunters survive."

Sage looked from the dead Gloomstrike Mantis to the false trails, chosen battlefield and simple trap that had lasted barely a heartbeat.

Strength had mattered.

But strength hadn’t won the hunt.

Rowan had decided where the battle would happen before the beast realized there would be one.

For the first time, Sage fully understood why a twenty-five-year-old Half-Elf had survived six years as an independent monster hunter in places where entire armed parties disappeared.

The Adventurer Guild didn’t merely need powerful people.

It needed people like Rowan Flintpath.