Chapter 449: I’m Different

The obsidian walls of the sunless gorge groaned beneath the violent concussive thunder of dozens of galloping paws.

Basalt scree and jagged shale showered down the crags, clattering against the cold stone floor like hail as the frenzied swarm pushed through the narrow trench.

CLOP! CLOP! CLOP! CLOP!

Behind the retreating pair, the pack of infected Umbral Wolves moved in horrifying synchronization.

Their joints buckled and snapped with unnatural extended spasms as yellow froth flew from their bared jaws.

Protruding between their ears, three-foot-long segmented purple worms writhed into the dry mountain air, their translucent mucus-coated skin pulsing with a toxic magenta that hummed at an ear-splitting frequency.

Roughly two hundred yards ahead, perched atop a massive, moss-draped boulder at the mouth of the ravine, Luna sat with her bushy silver tail curled over her front paws.

The Blessed Wolf tilted her broad head, her golden eyes blinking with slow curious detachment.

Luna’s memory was notoriously simple compared to the rest of the pack... her daily priorities revolved around warm sunlit patches, sweet roasted meat ribs, and the gentle scratch of Silas’s as well as the other women’s hands behind her ears.

Yet, as the wind carried the foul sulfurous reek of the oncoming swarm toward her nostrils, a dormant memory flickered in her canine mind.

Worms...

Luna’s silver ears flattened against her skull, her black nose wrinkling in distaste.

They were squirmy purple things and she had smelled them once in the deep trenches. The worms tasted like rotten copper and spoiled grease and made the mouth itch.

It also made her wonder why they were in the skulls of her former brethren... not that she cared at all, after all, all that mattered was family.

Before her simple train of thought could drift, a commanding voice cut straight through the roar of the canyon.

"LUNA! ON US! INTERCEPT!"

Reina’s shout struck Luna’s instincts like an electric spark.

BOOM!

The granite boulder beneath her rear paws fractured into jagged shards as Luna launched herself forward like a silver artillery shell.

Covering the two-hundred-yard gap in the space of several heartbeats, the dire wolf tore a blinding silver wake through the gloom.

Her corded muscles bunched and released with terrifying power, closing the distance before the lead infected wolves could even register the shift in momentum.

CRUNCH! SQUELCH!

Luna slammed dead-center into the forward rank.

Her massive jaws clamped shut around the neck of the lead alpha wolf, the crushing pressure pulverizing bone, fur, and spinal marrow in a single bite.

With a violent snap of her neck, Luna hurled the carcass thirty feet through the air, smashing it flat against the canyon wall with a concussive splat.

Without slowing down, she lowered her broad muscular shoulder, plowing into two more infected wolves like an iron battering ram.

’I never thought about it but Luna is quite strong... isn’t she?’

BANG! THUD! CRACK!

The two beasts were sent cartwheeling across the shale, their ribcages caving inward from the impact.

"Good girl!" Reina shouted, a relieved grin flashing across her face as she sprinted toward her mount.

"Clear the lane!" Vala echoed, her blade humming beside her.

However, the fleeting satisfaction vanished in a single horrifying heartbeat.

SQUELCH... POP!

From the skull of the wolf Luna had just crushed against the stone wall, the three-foot purple parasite did not die with its host.

With a wet, violent tear of cartilage and burst veins, the segmented worm forcefully wrenched its lower body free from the pulverized cranial cavity.

A geyser of dark viscous black ichor sprayed into the air as the wolf’s host body instantly withered into a dry shriveled husk.

’So that’s what happens when the host falls slowly...’ Vala’s dark eyes narrowed sharply, her combat instincts flaring into high gear. ’The parasite abandons the empty shell before the feedback loop can destroy it!’

FWHIP!

Like a coiled spring coated in translucent caustic slime, the detached purple parasite launched itself through the air, hurtling across the gap straight toward Luna’s exposed ear.

"Luna, dodge! Left side!" Reina screamed in frantic panic, lunging forward with her spear outstretched.

"Too late... it’s airborne!" Vala barked.

The worm moved with terrifying velocity as it landed with a wet splat right behind Luna’s left ear, its lamprey-like maw unhinging wide to reveal concentric rings of spinning razor-sharp chitin teeth designed to bore through skull bone.

SKREEEEE!

The parasite drove its fangs downward to breach the Blessed Wolf’s skull—

VUUUUUUUUUM... FWOOSH!

Before the creature’s teeth could pierce even a single millimeter of Luna’s fur, a blinding halo of radiant golden flame violently ignited across the wolf’s entire frame.

KRA-CRACKLE!

It was not a spell cast by Reina or Vala.

It was the passive protection of the contract with Blessed Land... the imprint left behind by Silas Graves upon every beast blessed by his authority.

The moment the parasitic entity attempted to corrupt a vessel bound to Silas’s soul, the flames detonated with purifying wrath.

The purple worm let out a deafening psychic screech of utter torment.

In less than a fraction of a second, its translucent slime boiled away, its segmented hide turned to brittle charcoal, and the entire parasite was completely vaporized into a puff of harmless sparkling white ash that scattered into the wind.

Luna didn’t even flinch. She simply shook her head once, letting out a confused chuff as she trotted up to Reina’s side.

"Lord Silas’s blessing..." Reina breathed, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs with relief. "Even miles away from the main camp, his authority protects his pack."

"Don’t lose focus... mount up!" Vala ordered, her voice sounding sharp and urgent.

With practiced agility, Reina planted her boot into Luna’s stirrup-leather and vaulted into the primary saddle, gathering the reins in a tight grip.

Vala followed in a single, fluid leap, landing lightly on the rear cantle behind Reina with supernatural balance.

"Go, Luna! Full sprint! Northwest ridge!" Reina commanded, leaning low over the neck.

HOWL!

Luna dug her claws deep into the granite, accelerating with explosive torque that kicked up a rooster-tail of shattered stone behind them.

Yet, despite Luna’s superior physical tier, the pursuing pack was closing the distance with unnatural horrifying speed.

Vala stood upright on the rear of the saddle behind Reina, balancing on the balls of her feet with supernatural equilibrium as the wind whipped her dark hair wildly across her face.

She looked over her shoulder, her dark eyes scanning the approaching horde.

What she saw made her stomach turn...

The forty-five remaining Umbral Wolves were no longer running like living creatures.

Driven by the frantic manic signals pulsating from their purple head-parasites, the wolves were entirely overriding their biological pain receptors and skeletal limitations.

Their thigh bones and shoulder joints were literally cracking and splintering under the impossible self-destructive muscle contractions, their paws shredding down to bare bone against the sharp shale.

CRACK... SNAP... THUD!

They didn’t care about torn ligaments, internal hemorrhaging, or shattered ribs.

The hive mind puppeteering them viewed their bodies as disposable meat engines, forcing them to sprint far beyond the threshold of mortal biological failure simply to catch the silver wolf.

"The entity controlling them doesn’t care if the vessels survive the chase," Vala said in a cold voice with the wind tearing at her words. "It’s burning their life-force down to the marrow."

The lead trio of mutated wolves was barely ten feet away, their gaping jaws snapping inches from Luna’s tail.

CLACK! CLACK!

"Reina, hold tight!" Vala shouted over the deafening roar of the chase. "Keep Luna straight and do not deviate!"

"Holding! Do whatever you have to do!" Reina yelled back, leaning her full weight over Luna’s shoulders as the dire wolf pushed her speed to its absolute limit.

Vala drew a slow deliberate breath, drawing the sulfurous mountain air deep into the bottom of her lungs.

She closed her eyes for a single tranquil second.

Her mind briefly drifted back to that quiet moonlit evening inside the keep’s inner courtyard, when Silas had placed his glowing hand upon her chest and channeled the mysterious reality-bending power of the Absolute Upgrade System to force her class evolution.

Like several other senior combatants in Blessed Land, she had awakened the rare prestigious Magic Swordsman class.

But while standard Magic Swordsmen typically bonded with a single elemental affinity... fire, water, or earth... Vala’s awakening had shattered all established logic.

’I am different,’ Vala thought, a calm razor-sharp focus settling over her consciousness as she exhaled slowly through her teeth.

VUUUUUUUUUM!

The air around her slender frame violently distorted.

Coiling tightly around the length of her dark void-iron blade, howling spirals of emerald Wind Mana erupted in a violent vortex, instantly accompanied by crackling jagged branches of cerulean Lightning Mana that hissed and arced across the crossguard with blinding intensity.

Vala’s eyes snapped open, blazing with an intense glowing emerald hue.

’Wind, Lightning, Fire, Water, Earth... Five distinct elemental affinities have awakened within my soul core.’ Vala reflected with icy ambition. ’And I can still feel the dormant tremors of even more elements sleeping beneath the surface.’

She didn’t let pride cloud her judgment though.

’Was I chosen for this reconnaissance mission because Lord Silas recognized my unique potential? Perhaps but potential is worthless if it remains unrefined. In this territory, every woman is striving to carve her own legend. If I wish to stand proudly beside him... if I wish to be more than just his "Hidden Blade"... if I truly desire to warm his bed as his cherished wife, I cannot settle for mediocrity. I must deliver overwhelming results!’

KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!

The lead wolf leaped into the air, its fangs wide open, aiming straight for Vala’s ankles.

Vala didn’t flinch.

She pivoted on the saddle cantle, swinging her electrified wind-wreathed blade in a massive sweeping radial arc.

"Just... Die."

FWHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSH!

A miniature hurricane of razor-sharp wind blades and branching lightning bolts detonated backward from the tip of her sword.

The concussive elemental blast tore across the narrow canyon floor like a roaring tidal wave as the three leaping wolves were instantly shredded into hundreds of cauterized, smoking chunks of meat mid-air, while the surrounding wind blades cleaved through the front two ranks of the pursuing pack with horrifying precision.

SKREEEEE! CRACKLE! SPLAT!

Over a dozen wolves were lifted off their feet, their bodies mangled and incinerated as lightning arced through their wet fur, popping the purple head-parasites like overripe grapes.

"Haah... Haah..."

Vala stumbled slightly as the immense spell finished its course, a sharp pang of exhaustion throbbing in her mana core.

The dual-element release had burned through nearly forty percent of her active reserves in a single stroke.

’It’s heavy on the core... but worth it.’ Vala thought, gritting her teeth.

VUUUUUUM... CHIME!

Suddenly, a warm electrifying rush of pure cosmic energy erupted from the void, cascading down through her crown and flooding every single meridian in her body.

Her depleted mana pool refilled to overflowing in an instant, her muscle fibers tightened with newfound density, and her perception expanded by several meters.

A small triumphant smirk touched Vala’s lips as she caught her balance and sat back down onto the saddle cantle.

’A level up...’ Vala smiled inwardly, rolling her shoulders.

"Reina! Trace the tether again!" Vala called out, resting her blade across her lap. "We took out the front rank, but the rest are still coming!"

"On it!" Reina shouted.

Reina raised her left hand, condensing her spiritual mana into a needle-thin golden spike.

"Beast... Arrest."

PING!

The golden pulse struck one of the remaining pursuing wolves.

As expected, the foreign command frequency violently deflected the intrusion, but the resulting psychic ricochet sent a glowing magenta beam shooting straight over the crest of the upcoming rocky ridge.

"Left fork! Up the incline!" Reina barked, pulling hard on Luna’s left rein.

Luna dug her front paws into the dirt, executing a breathtaking high-speed drift around an obsidian boulder, and charged up a steep narrow ravine flanked by twisted, deadwood pine trees.

Less than ten seconds later, they burst out of the ravine into a wide, sunken amphitheater surrounded by jagged rock walls.

Both women and Luna skidded to an immediate halt, their eyes widening in collective revulsion.

"By the gods..." Reina muttered, her face turning pale. "What in the world is that horrific thing...?"

"Vile..." Vala hissed, her brow furrowing deeply.

Wedged tightly between the massive gnarled trunks of two ancient, dead weeping willow trees was a colossal biological monstrosity.

It was a gargantuan twenty-foot-tall cocoon forged from thick translucent mucus-slicked membrane that beat with a sickening rhythm.

THUMP-DUB..! THUMP-DUB...!

Flowing through the translucent skin were thousands of glowing purple veins, feeding a thick bubbling green fluid that continuously dripped from the base of the cocoon into a rancid steaming pool of digestive acids below.

Embedded across the surface of the membrane were dozens of grotesque, writhing purple worm heads, hissing and projecting visible waves of psychic distortion into the surrounding air.

RUSTLE! RUSTLE!