Chapter 89 Fang Hunt

The bone-white fang necklace swayed gently in the firelight.

Forgan stood near the cave entrance, wrapped in his wolfskin cloak.

He had not hidden behind anything.

He had not stepped out of sight.

In fact, his massive frame was blocking the cave’s only exit.

Yet throughout the entire fight, not one goblin had noticed him.

These creatures had been sensitive enough to react the moment Xia Nan entered their lair.

But Forgan?

Nothing.

It was as though some instinct in their minds had simply accepted that he belonged there.

A piece of the cave.

A tree.

A rock.

Something that did not need to be questioned.

Naturally, Forgan had done it on purpose.

[Barbarian]

[Mourning-Frost Oathbound]

He had completed his class advancement.

He had stepped into the Transcendent Tier.

He was, in the truest sense, a high-level class holder.

And Forgan knew exactly what would happen if he allowed his presence to spread unchecked.

He did not even need to attack.

The killing intent condensed from the dying cries of countless prey was enough.

If he stood here without restraining it, these thin, cowardly, degenerate greenskins would become like snow hares caught beneath a wolf’s gaze.

Too terrified to fight.

Too terrified to run.

Forgan had been born among the barbarian tribes of the Frostmoss Highlands.

His people had lived deep in the snowfields for generations.

He did not possess the vast learning of the old scholars at Neum City Academy.

He knew nothing about teaching theory.

Nothing about lesson plans.

Nothing about structured instruction.

But he knew battle.

In the collision of muscle, instinct, fear, and violence, a person revealed himself.

Temperament.

Habits.

Skill.

Potential.

All of it became as obvious as steaming blood spilled across white snow.

The black-haired young man called Xia Nan was decent.

By the standards of ordinary people or common adventurers, his fighting skill could even be considered good.

But Forgan had grown up among highlanders who fought giant bears and ice pythons from childhood, people hardened by blizzards and ice storms.

Against that standard, Xia Nan’s technique was nothing exceptional.

Even [Spinning Slash], which Xia Nan had clearly trained to Mastery, had not interested Forgan much.

A combat technique at Mastery before gaining a class level?

Good.

Useful.

Still only a foundation.

Nothing more.

Except…

There had been one moment.

One second.

Almost insignificant in the span of the entire battle.

Xia Nan’s foot had slipped on the moss.

His balance had broken.

Enemy attacks were already coming down.

And instead of simply falling, Xia Nan had struck the wall with his arm shield and used the rebound to change the direction and speed of his fall.

A messy situation.

An improvised answer.

One that had worked.

A faint glimmer appeared deep in Forgan’s ice-blue eyes.

[Interesting.]

The silver-white fur of his wolfskin cloak shifted in the draft.

The aura he had suppressed began to rise again.

Forgan stepped forward.

…

Crunch.

Xia Nan’s thick leather boot came down on a goblin eyeball lying in his path.

It burst beneath his heel.

[Green Pine] was already sheathed.

Breathing a little harder than before, Xia Nan walked over to the goblin corpse pinned by the Decapitating Longsword.

He planted one boot against the body.

Gripped the sword with both hands.

Pulled.

Shhk!

The blade tore free from damp soil and dead flesh.

The goblin’s stick-thin limbs twitched.

Warm blood and specks of mud sprayed from the wound.

Xia Nan gave the sword a few sharp swings, flicking away most of the filth.

Then he sheathed it.

Proper maintenance could wait until later.

For now, he wiped the few drops of blood on his face with the cleanest part of his sleeve.

The cave had gone quiet.

Xia Nan turned and looked across the floor.

Goblin corpses lay everywhere.

Whole.

Halved.

Pierced.

Crushed.

A strange satisfaction rose in his chest.

Not clean satisfaction.

Something more complicated.

It reminded him of squeezing pus from an infected pimple.

The pressure was gone.

The pain was relieved.

But afterward, you still had to wonder whether it would leave a scar.

When Xia Nan had first arrived in this world, two goblins jumping him had been enough to blank his mind.

He had been a pure newcomer.

A rookie in every possible sense.

Now?

He had just cleared an entire goblin lair by himself.

Before transmigration, even watching someone kill a chicken through a screen had made him uncomfortable.

Today, after slaughtering fifteen goblins, the thing that bothered him most was the fresh scratch on the breastplate he had just paid to repair.

Was this world changing him?

Or had this always been part of him?

Maybe the monsters, danger, and constant struggle to survive had simply stripped away the layers that modern life had kept buried.

Xia Nan did not know.

Clack.

The bone-fang necklace sounded beside him.

Forgan approached.

The barbarian looked the same as ever.

Cold.

Silent.

Solid as a slab of ice.

Xia Nan’s thoughts immediately shifted.

This fight had almost certainly been an assessment.

A practical test.

Forgan wanted to see how he fought before deciding which technique suited him.

And now the test was over.

So there should be a result.

“I changed my mind.”

Xia Nan straightened.

Forgan’s thick Northlands accent rolled through the cave.

“[Iron Wall Spin], [Freeland Spear Thrust], [Heavy Shield Bash], [Blade-Breaking Guard].”

A pause.

“You. None of them work.”

[What!?]

Xia Nan stared at him.

His mouth opened.

No sound came out.

[What does that mean?]

[Did I fail?]

Forgan, as usual, offered no immediate explanation.

He looked away from Xia Nan and toward the goblin corpses scattered through the blood.

The problem was language.

Forgan’s Common Tongue had been shaped by the speech of the Northlands tribes, and what he meant was not quite what Xia Nan heard.

It was not:

You are incapable of learning them.

It was not:

You failed.

And it definitely was not:

Get lost.

The four options Forgan had offered were all basic close-combat techniques from the [Warrior] path.

They were not rare.

They were not especially difficult.

Given enough time and practice, almost any ordinary person could learn them, even with mediocre talent.

That was precisely why Forgan had chosen them.

He had important business elsewhere.

His stop in Rivervale Town was brief.

He did not have weeks or months to supervise Xia Nan.

So the ideal technique was one Xia Nan could learn to Novice under his guidance, then continue practicing toward Proficient alone.

Simple.

Reliable.

Easy to teach.

That had been the original plan.

Then Forgan watched Xia Nan fight.

And changed his mind.

Not because he had suddenly taken a liking to the young man.

Not because he was moved by some desire to nurture talent.

They had known each other for less than two days.

They barely knew anything about one another.

Forgan had accepted this task because he owed an old friend a favor.

That was all.

But if he had agreed to do something, he would do it properly.

Xia Nan was clearly self-taught.

Or close to it.

His style lacked the neat patterns that appeared in adventurers trained through conventional methods.

When something unexpected happened, his reactions often came from instinct rather than drilled form.

He improvised.

Adapted.

Used whatever was available.

If the situation demanded it, he would even throw away the weapon in his hand to buy a moment.

That alone ruled out [Iron Wall Spin].

The technique depended heavily on specific movements and fixed postures.

It demanded structure.

Xia Nan fought too freely for it.

[Heavy Shield Bash] was also a poor fit.

Xia Nan wore two layers of armor, but instead of carrying a proper large shield, he used a compact arm shield.

More importantly, even when he blocked an attack successfully, his first instinct was not to slow down, stabilize, and control the pace.

He wanted to hit back.

Immediately.

Preferably with the shield itself.

[Heavy Shield Bash] emphasized defensive counterattacks, positional control, and steady pressure.

It worked best with a larger shield.

Wrong fit.

[Freeland Spear Thrust] clashed with Xia Nan’s preference for slashing attacks.

[Blade-Breaking Guard] did not match his aggressive footwork and constant movement.

So, in Forgan’s blunt way of putting it:

None of them worked.

That did not mean there was no answer.

Forgan lifted one hand and touched one of the bone fangs hanging from his necklace.

The alternative he had in mind was harder.

Far harder.

It demanded more effort to learn and more effort to master.

But after watching Xia Nan’s battle, especially that moment when instinct had taken over after the slip…

“Perhaps another combat technique would suit you better.”

Xia Nan’s shoulders loosened.

[Good.]

[Good!]

For a moment, he had thought the whole thing had gone wrong.

As long as there was still a real combat technique to learn, he was satisfied.

He had no connections.

He had no money.

And the pile of questionable manuals in the general store had already tortured him enough.

Real technique?

Genuine instruction?

He would take it.

Xia Nan wet his dry lips and was about to ask what the technique was when a dense rush of footsteps echoed from the entrance passage.

Shrill laughter followed.

Then deeper, uglier growls.

Xia Nan turned.

A hulking bugbear stepped into view.

Its coarse fur was reddish brown.

A spiked mace hung from one thick hand, the weapon still wet with bright, fresh blood.

It looked as if the creature had just returned from hunting.

Behind it came more than twenty goblins, crowding around a black-skinned bovine beast with its skull smashed apart.

They carried the carcass together, shrieking with excitement at the thought of the feast waiting for them.

Xia Nan understood immediately.

[No wonder this cave is so big.]

The place was almost twice the size of the goblin lair he had encountered before.

This was not a small nest.

It was a full goblin settlement, led by a bugbear and numbering close to forty greenskins.

And now the returning group had blocked the only exit.

Worse, the bugbear had a Challenge Rating of 1.

That was well beyond Xia Nan’s current ability.

Oddly enough, he was not too nervous.

Because he was not alone.

Forgan was here.

A suspected high-level class holder.

So even if things went badly, Xia Nan should still be able to get out safely.

Probably.

…

Right?

A collection of tavern stories suddenly surfaced in his mind.

Stories told by drunk adventurers about barbarians.

Reckless ones.

Crazy ones.

People who thought the solution to every problem was to hit it harder.

Xia Nan’s confidence wavered.

His earlier battle had been easy enough overall.

What if Forgan thought Xia Nan had not shown everything?

What if he decided this was the perfect chance to raise the difficulty and test him against something stronger?

What if…

Cold spread through the air.

Xia Nan’s thoughts stopped.

Forgan glanced at him.

“Watch.”

That single word was all he said.

Then he turned toward the cave entrance.

Whoosh!

A freezing wind tore through the stale, foul chamber.

The cold was not merely on the skin.

It seemed to seep through Xia Nan’s pores, sinking into flesh and muscle, blood and bone.

He shivered.

The wind strengthened.

Then strengthened again.

Soon it was howling through the stone passage like a storm trapped underground.

Something moved inside that sound.

A long, ancient cry.

A beast.

Fine debris began falling from the cave ceiling.

The blood pooled across the floor rippled.

The cave itself seemed to tremble.

Xia Nan stood behind Forgan.

He could not see the barbarian’s expression.

All he could see was the wolfskin cloak stirring violently in the wind.

All he could hear was the faint clatter of bone fangs with each step.

The blood-heavy air inside the cave rushed outward beneath the pressure of the cold.

The bugbear at the entrance sensed something was wrong.

It growled.

The goblins around it immediately became alert.

The creature raised its spiked mace before its chest.

Its yellow-brown eyes sharpened with ferocity.

Then Forgan stepped into view.

And the entire passage changed.

The killing intent filling it seemed to devour every trace of warmth and life.

The monsters stiffened.

For one instant, they looked less like living creatures and more like frozen statues.

Then Xia Nan finally understood the sound hidden inside the wind.

A wolf howl.

Awooooo!

Cracks raced across the stone walls.

Frost spread over the passage floor in branching patterns, twisting forward like countless crystal snakes.

Mist poured through the air with every breath.

Then Forgan vanished.

Not moved.

Not ran.

Vanished.

Xia Nan’s mind had barely begun to process what he had seen when the tunnel exploded with sound.

BOOM!

Forgan’s charge hit with the force of something shaped by years of blizzards and ice storms.

The air along his path compressed so violently it seemed to collapse.

The bugbear never even changed posture.

Its mace was still raised.

A strand of saliva still hung from one tusk.

Then its hide split.

Not from a blade.

Not from a weapon.

From force.

Blood burst from its pores.

Spiderweb cracks tore across skin thick as cowhide.

Then the flesh itself came apart, exposing red muscle and pale bone beneath.

The goblins fared worse.

Much worse.

Their thin bodies were hurled into the air by the shock wave.

For an instant, they looked like cheap toys tossed from a table.

Then limbs separated.

Bodies broke.

The continued roar crushed what remained into fragments.

Cold wind slammed into Xia Nan’s face, whipping his hair wildly.

Ahead, Forgan walked slowly out of the passage.

A haze of blood mist and ice crystals swirled around him.

For a moment, the red haze almost resembled the head of a winter wolf.

The obsidian handaxe at Forgan’s waist had never left its sheath.

He had not needed it.

The cold-tempered barbarian from the Frostmoss Highlands had just smashed apart a monster group capable of wiping out an entire adventuring party.

With his body.

Nothing else.

Forgan turned.

“[Fang Hunt].”

His voice reached Xia Nan through the ringing in his ears.

“Want to learn?”

Blood mixed with glittering ice crystals flowed across the floor.

Somewhere above, the echo of the wolf howl seemed reluctant to fade.

Xia Nan swallowed.

Then nodded hard.

“Yes!”