Chapter 558 The Prototype of a Battle Posture and the Third Evolution

Flynn had not caught a clear glimpse of his attacker.

From his perspective, he had nearly knocked the black bear adventurer unconscious; for a short time, it had lost the ability to dodge.

Diving from the sky, driven by the momentum of his heavy body and the thrust of his insect wings, the sword-like horn aimed at the bear's head should have completely pierced its flesh.

But halfway through his descent, an inexplicable wolf howl rang out as a powerful impact slammed into his flank. It completely interrupted his attack, sending his entire body flying into the nearby bushes.

'Damn it!'

Flynn felt a surge of irritation at this sudden complication, especially after working so hard to use the falling orb of light to bait other adventurers.

Meanwhile, the chitinous shell covering his body like heavy metal armor had drastically reduced the damage from the impact.

Driven by both his frustration and his physical resilience, he momentarily lost his usual caution.

After rolling across the ground a few times and steadying himself, he charged out of the bushes almost instantly, fueled by anger and humiliation.

What greeted his eyes was the black bear, having recovered from its stun and now standing in the meadow.

Beside it stood a bizarre wolf, far larger than any he had ever seen. It had long, slender limbs, and icy mist drifted from its sharp fangs. Its snow-white fur stood out starkly against the forest backdrop.

'This is—'

'A Winter Wolf?!'

Flynn naturally recognized this powerful monster, famous among adventurers across the entire Aifala Continent.

He had grown up in the Southern Archipelagos, a massive distance from the natural habitat of such lupine beasts.

Yet among the adventurers from all over the world who mingled in the archipelagos—especially those reckless, wild barbarians—many possessed a deep understanding of these creatures.

Some barbarian tribes even used the Winter Wolves that roamed the snowy plains as their totems.

Given this environment, even though Flynn rarely took the initiative to study them, he had gradually picked up quite a bit of knowledge about the monsters over the years.

He might be fuzzy on their habits and combat styles, but he remembered one detail with absolute clarity:

The Challenge Rating of a Winter Wolf was 3.

In contrast, even though he had completed the First Evolution, the [Horn-Blade Golden Beetle] he currently possessed only had a Challenge Rating of 1.

'Why?'

'Did he just get lucky and randomly roll a high-level monster when he descended?'

'Or has he already reached the First Evolution stage like me?'

His thoughts tangled in chaotic confusion.

In the physical world, however, Flynn's body came to an abrupt halt.

The pitch of his rapidly beating wings shifted sharply. Facing the Winter Wolf, he slammed on the brakes and hovered in midair.

Shifting his center of gravity, he banked and climbed, attempting to flee.

Naturally, Xia Nan was not about to let this opportunity slip by.

He had been ready the moment his enemy burst out of the bushes. When the beetle hesitated at the sight of him, Xia Nan broke into a sprint on his long, slender legs.

His fluffy white fur flattened against his body from the sheer speed of his movement. Dark, chaotic astral winds wrapped around him, sweeping up grass and shredded leaves to form an illusory Wolf Head.

His explosive speed was already top-tier among monsters of the same level, but amplified by [Fang Hunt], it reached a frankly absurd extreme.

A black-and-white blur flashed through the forest. The Winter Wolf, which had just been a considerable distance away, suddenly leapt into the air and appeared right in front of its enemy.

Instead of biting recklessly like a wild beast, Xia Nan retained some of his human combat habits.

He raised a long claw high, riding the momentum of his leap. An ochre-red energy clung to the sharp talons, and the air warped slightly around them—a sign that Xia Nan was simultaneously activating [Gravity Etching] and [Heavy Tide].

Paired with this was [Spinning Slash], which still felt awkward but undeniably boosted the attack's lethal power.

"Swoosh—Crash!"

Accompanied by the sharp shriek of a blade tearing through the air, the wolf's claw slammed into the top of the beetle's head.

The ochre-red force field erupted in an instant. The heavy chitin, capable of deflecting metal weapons, offered zero resistance. As if crushed by a sledgehammer, the shell fractured and caved in before exploding into black shrapnel, exposing the tender white flesh and viscous fluids beneath.

Rumble—

A miniature ochre-red firework bloomed in the forest.

[Tidal Stabilization] took effect. Despite the massive recoil, Xia Nan maintained his balance, and his slender wolf paws touched down lightly onto the meadow.

Meanwhile, Flynn—having taken a claw dead center to his skull in midair—looked as though he had been hit by a missile.

The long, sword-like horn he relied on to terrorize the jungle snapped at the base, spinning through the air before stabbing into the dirt a short distance in front of Xia Nan.

His heavy, dark beetle body was blasted backward, nearly snapping an oak tree as thick as a man's waist in half.

Unexpectedly, this devastating blow—which would have killed ninety-nine percent of the creatures in this forest—didn't end Flynn's life. It merely left him critically injured and hovering on the brink of death.

With his brain severely traumatized, his mind went blank, temporarily robbing him of the ability to think.

Driven purely by instinct, he desperately flapped his wings and turned to flee in the opposite direction.

His speed had drastically plummeted. His flight was erratic and wobbly, smashing through countless bushes and tall weeds. He looked as if he might plummet from the sky at any second.

Seeing the beetle expose its defenseless back, Xia Nan knew that a single follow-up strike would finish it off completely.

He took a step forward.

Then, his icy blue eyes suddenly caught sight of the beetle's severed horn planted in the soil ahead.

A flash of inspiration struck Xia Nan's mind.

'The incredibly awkward [Spinning Slash],''a wolf's body,''a sword-like weapon'—

Unlike the natives of the Aifala Continent, he came from a modern, technologically advanced world defined by an explosion of information. He possessed a far broader perspective and knowledge across countless obscure domains.

Combined with a faint, yet invaluable, flash of mystical intuition forged in combat...

Xia Nan didn't even pause to analyze whether the idea was viable. Moving on pure instinct, he took two steps forward and stopped before the embedded horn.

He raised his head and gave a slight hop.

The Wolf's Maw opened and snapped shut.

In the next second, he was holding the beetle's sharp, elongated horn horizontally in his jaws.

Feeling the cold, hard texture in his mouth, the icy gleam of the horn's blade-like edge flashed in his peripheral vision.

His icy blue eyes reflected the wobbling, staggering silhouette of the black beetle as it desperately flew away.

Aim, charge.

He didn't use any extra combat techniques.

In that moment, Xia Nan felt as if he had reverted to his early days over a year ago—back when he hadn't even acquired a Class Level and braved the Misty Forest armed with nothing but two combat techniques.

—[Fang Hunt]!

Wreathed in dark astral winds, the snow-white figure darted forward like light cutting through water. Accompanied by a howling gale, he instantly closed the distance, striking later but arriving first.

Just a second before catching up to the beetle, he bent his limbs slightly, shifting his trajectory and the flow of his power.

He redirected the forward-charging momentum from his legs up into the Wolf's Maw.

Clamping down on the horn, he tilted his head slightly and sent his leaping wolf body into a horizontal, 360-degree spin.

—[Spinning Slash]!

"Slash."

A perfect arc of dark, razor-sharp light flashed fleetingly through the air.

The snow-white Winter Wolf righted itself midair, long blade still clamped in its jaws, and landed gracefully.

Behind him, the beetle's corpse plummeted from the sky, cleaved cleanly in two by a diagonal strike.

The cut had been devastatingly swift and utterly crisp.

Flynn didn't even process what had happened as he fell. His abdominal pincers twitched in a futile struggle, but he completely lost control of his body.

It wasn't until gravity dragged him to the ground and he saw his own neatly severed lower half that the realization struck. A second later, agony crashed over him like a tidal wave, completely swallowing his consciousness.

Hum—

A glowing blue orb of light floated up from the corpse and hovered in midair.

Xia Nan remained where he was, the long horn still gripped in the Wolf's Maw, a thoughtful gleam shining in his eyes.

He was recalling the indescribable sensation of executing [Spinning Slash] while holding a blade in his beast form.

Since arriving in this world, the inherent awkwardness of using combat techniques in a beast's body seemed to have completely vanished in that singular strike.

In its place was an inexpressible, silky-smooth fluidity.

Xia Nan didn't know how to describe what he was feeling.

Truthfully, he had tried combining [Fang Hunt] with [Spinning Slash] back when he had just reached the Novice tier with the former.

He would use the charging momentum of [Fang Hunt] to fuse his body's kinetic energy into the sword swing of [Spinning Slash].

The results had been excellent. Right up until he was dragged into the Secret Realm, it had been his standard combat tactic.

Yet, across countless battles, it had never felt as seamless and fluid as it just had.

It was as if he had naturally fused two entirely distinct, separate combat techniques into a fixed combination, one that allowed both skills to unleash their power in a far more cohesive way.

Lacking formal guidance on his professional path, his fighting style was largely self-taught and unorthodox.

Xia Nan didn't fully understand what this meant, nor did he know how to plan his next steps.

He only knew, driven by his combat intuition and the sheer experience hammered into him by day and night of grueling training since his transmigration, that he instinctively needed to keep developing in this direction.

He had to capitalize on this Ritual Secret Realm—an opportunity to temporarily inhabit a beast's body that most adventurers wouldn't encounter in their entire lifetimes.

Using his current lupine physique, which perfectly synergized with [Fang Hunt], he needed to further refine the combination of these two combat techniques.

Perhaps, when the dust settled, it would yield an unexpected harvest.

And as if to confirm his hypothesis...

The moment the glowing blue orb above the beetle's corpse poured into his body, the evolutionary paths on his Attribute Panel expanded into even more specialized and profound directions.

"Proficiency +1"

"[Gravity Control] lv1 (55/100) -> [Gravity Control] lv1 (56/100)"

"Proficiency +2"

"[Ember Echoes] lv2 (38/100) -> [Ember Echoes] lv2 (40/100)"

"Proficiency +6"

"[Heavy Tide] lv3 (35/100) -> [Heavy Tide] lv3 (41/100)"

"Ding!"

"Evolution conditions met!"

"Automatically retrieving evolutionary paths—"

1. [Polar Snow Beast]

Compatibility: 84.7%

—

Description:

Rumored to be a variant subspecies of the Winter Wolf. It inhabits regions of extreme cold and grows ice crystals resembling a crown atop its head. When light shines through them, they refract a dazzling, aurora-like radiance.

It is capable of manipulating ice and snow; blizzards that blot out the sun naturally manifest wherever it roams. The barbarian tribes of the northern tundra call this creature the "Ice Calamity."

2. [Cord-Spine Blade Wolf]

Compatibility: 92%

Description:

An incredibly rare wolf species that haunts ancient battlefield ruins. It features a broad back and fur the color of steely blue-gray. The ridges along both of its shoulders have evolved special, sheath-like organs capable of accommodating bladed weapons.

The Cord-Spine Blade Wolf is a natural master of the sword. So long as it finds a suitable weapon, it uses its head as an axis. Relying on full-body rotation and the explosive power of its neck, it can cleave any enemy who dares underestimate it in half.

3. [Flash Hound]

Compatibility: 81%

Description:

—

The Flash Hound is the ultimate culmination of speed evolution on the vast plains. Every inch of its long, streamlined body is optimized for extreme velocity. Its deep, broad chest houses massive lungs and a giant heart. Its spinal joints can compress and spring, and its flat tail acts as a rudder. When running, it moves like a razor blade skating across ice.

At full burst, a Flash Hound can accelerate from a standstill to a subsonic speed of 1,000 kilometers per hour in three seconds, tearing across the plains like a bolt of lightning.

Given what he had just experienced, there was naturally no need to overthink it.

The [Polar Snow Beast] was an elite, enhanced version of the [Winter Wolf], but its reliance on ice and snow for combat clashed with Xia Nan's current fighting style. The [Flash Hound] possessed peerless speed, but it wasn't suited for the mountainous terrain; moreover, just like cheetahs in his past life, it sacrificed too much in other areas to achieve that speed. It was too hyper-specialized. Taking an unorthodox path wasn't Xia Nan's style.

By comparison, the [Cord-Spine Blade Wolf] almost perfectly matched Xia Nan's immediate needs. It would facilitate his efforts to combine [Fang Hunt] and [Spinning Slash] while in a lupine form, and the beetle's sword-like horn could serve as his temporary weapon.

Weighing all these factors, Xia Nan made his decision. With a mere thought, he gently tapped the option for [Cord-Spine Blade Wolf].

"Crackle—"

His already massive Winter Wolf body expanded once again. His spine broadened and bulged slightly, and his snow-white fur was overtaken by a cold, steely blue-gray.

Bulging with new muscle, the Wolf's Maw transformed from its slightly blunt shape into a sharp, angular structure. The robust ridges of his jaw muscles became starkly visible, optimized for firmly clamping down on a sword hilt.

—

The most striking change lay on both sides of his body near the shoulder blades. Two vertical fleshy slits, fringed with dense layers of keratin, opened deep within his fur.

Xia Nan carefully examined his physical transformation, feeling the ceaseless surge of strength within him—a power even more torrential than before.

He realized that the posture of holding the horn in his mouth no longer carried the slight, dragging awkwardness it had before.

Subconsciously, he tilted his head, pressing the long horn against the slit on his flank.

With just a subtle push, the dark, elongated beetle horn was completely swallowed by the organic sheath. Only a convenient, hilt-like segment was left protruding near his shoulder for easy biting.

In this way, it wouldn't hinder his everyday running and movement. And should he encounter an enemy, all he needed to do was tilt his head, snap the Wolf's Maw over the hilt, and instantly complete the motion of "drawing his sword" to enter a state of combat.