I Just Want to Farm, But My Beasts Keep Evolving!!

Chapter 179: The Bloodline Awakens Once More

Bang!!!

The impact sent him hurtling away like a broken doll. He crashed through the body of a dead beast, bounced across the churned-up ground, and finally smashed into a mound of earth hard enough to spit blood. For a second, his ears rang so badly that he could not hear anything else.

The moment Woolie saw Raiden get sent flying, something inside him snapped.

"Woolie!!"

His eyes widened, and the lightning covering his body started changing again. Violet arcs remained the main current, but streaks of crimson began flashing through them like veins of molten metal.

They ran down his horns, gathered around his forelegs, and pooled beneath his hooves in a way that made even the Black Dragon pause for a split second.

Neva also turned savage. She shot threads into the battlefield, the corpses, even the broken weapons lying around, using everything as anchors to turn the space around the dragon into a webbed prison. Then she unleashed gigantic weapons of light.

Woolie attacked from the front. Neva attacked from above. The dragon roared and released a burst of black flames from its body to burn away the silk restraining it, but that split second of resistance was enough.

Woolie appeared right beneath its lowered jaw, his whole body glowing with thunder and hellfire.

"Woolie!!"

He brought his hoof down.

A gigantic crimson hoof made of infernal flame materialised overhead and crashed down together with his strike. The battlefield split with a deafening boom as the attack slammed the Black Dragon straight into the earth.

"ROOAARRRR!!!!"

The force of it drove the monster’s skull downward, shattered scales around the point of impact, and sent cracks rippling outward in every direction. For the first time since it appeared, the dragon screamed in pain.

Raiden, who had just dragged himself back onto one knee, stared at the scene with wide eyes.

Woolie did not get to enjoy that advantage for long. The dragon’s tail whipped upward almost blindly and struck him square in the side before he could retreat.

He was flung through the air and smashed into a pile of corpses so hard that several of them burst apart on impact. Neva hissed sharply and streaked toward the dragon’s head, aiming once again for the injured eye, but the beast had grown more cautious now.

It twisted its neck and released black flames backwards without even looking. Neva dodged the centre of the blast, but the edge still caught her and scorched part of her body. She spun out of control for a moment before she used swords of light as an anchor to stop herself from getting thrown backwards into the ground.

Raiden’s expression darkened.

That exchange had proven one ugly truth very clearly. Even when they landed good hits, they could not afford the return blow. Not against something like this.

Woolie and Neva had become much stronger since the jungle. So had he. But the Black Dragon was still a wall far above them. Worse, it was a wall with experience. It had already seen what they could do once before, and now it was no longer looking at them like escaped pests. It was looking at them like enemies that had to be crushed properly this time.

Then it roared.

The sound rolled over the battlefield like a physical force. Every Terra Beast nearby trembled. Some fell to the ground. Others whimpered and backed away. But the most frightening part came a second later, when several presences deeper in the horde began responding to that roar.

Raiden looked up and felt his scalp go numb as a series of powerful auras started approaching from within the tide. One after another, huge figures emerged from the crowd. A horned sabertooth with silver fangs. A scaled hound with three tails lashing behind it. A mantis taller than a building, its sickle-arms gleaming red in the bloody light.

A heavily armoured boar whose back looked like a moving fortress. All of them were Platinum, and all of them moved to stand behind the Black Dragon without a single sign of rebellion.

John, who was watching from farther back while trying to recover enough strength to stand again, felt the last bit of colour drain from his face.

"No..." he muttered. "No, no, no. It’s not just here for us. It’s one of the ones leading this whole disaster."

Raiden had already realised the same thing.

This Black Dragon was not a random monster that happened to know them. It was one of the commanders driving the tide. Which meant their situation had gone from bad to catastrophic in the span of a few breaths.

He looked at Woolie, who was climbing out of the corpse pile with blood on his wool and murder in his eyes. He looked at Neva, who was panting lightly, part of her body burned away, yet still dragging herself back toward the enemy. Then he looked at the growing wall of Platinum beasts behind the dragon and felt a headache coming on.

"Wonderful," he said hoarsely. "Absolutely wonderful. I should have listened to little Sylvi and stayed at home happily, but no!! I somehow chose the one path where I get surrounded by nightmares."

Woolie ignored him completely and charged a few steps forward again, only for Raiden to grab at his wool before he could commit to another suicidal dash.

"Hold on, you battle-crazed idiot! Use your brain for once in your life."

Woolie turned his head with clear annoyance, as though being asked to think in the middle of a fight was the rudest thing anyone had ever done to him.

Neva, meanwhile, climbed up Raiden’s arm and settled on his shoulder again, though the tense angle of her body made it obvious she was ready to spring the instant he gave the word.

Raiden’s eyes darted across the battlefield rapidly.

The human line was far. The horde was closing around them. In front stood the Black Dragon. Behind it stood multiple Platinum beasts ready to charge. To the left, the ground was broken and uneven from earlier bombardments. To the right, there was a shallow trench filled with black fire and corpses.

Any normal route back was already gone. If they tried to brute force their way through, they would die. If they stayed here too long, they would also die. If the Black Dragon was truly a commander, then stronger beasts would keep gathering by the second.

In other words, life was fucked from all sides.

He spat a mouthful of blood to the side, then took a long breath and forced his panic down. When he spoke again, his tone had calmed oddly, which was always a bad sign for anyone who knew him well.

"Alright. New plan. Since we clearly cannot beat this thing in a fair fight, we will do what we always do best." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at the Black Dragon with a grin that held no humour at all. "We cheat, we lie, we hit where it hurts, and then we run like our ancestors would be ashamed of us."

Neva’s eyes glimmered.

Woolie pawed the ground.

The Black Dragon began gathering black fire in its jaws again, while the Platinum beasts behind it lowered their bodies into attack stances.

At the same time, Raiden felt a violent pulse surge out from deep within Woolie’s body.

His eyes widened.

That pulse was ancient. Ferocious. Hungry. It did not feel like Woolie’s normal lightning at all. It felt colder, older, and infinitely more savage. For the briefest moment, Raiden thought he heard the faint echo of wolves howling somewhere beneath the battlefield itself.

The Fenrir bloodline inside Woolie had started moving again.

The Black Dragon also seemed to sense it. Its eyes narrowed, and for the first time since appearing on the battlefield, true caution flickered across its monstrous face.

Woolie slowly lowered his head.

The crimson streaks in his lightning multiplied.

Then the battlefield started to shake once again.