Xavier grinned with excitent.
From his body erupted a tidal wave of silver energy — moonlight condensed to plasma. It surged outward in every direction, a storm of luminous devastation. The buffaloes nearest to him disintegrated instantly, their massive bodies turned to shimring dust. The ground split open beneath the force, sending mana-rich shockwaves cascading across the battlefield.
But even as thousands fell, thousands more thundered forward — an unending tide.
Xavier leapt high, landing on the back of one of the largest buffaloes. The beast roared, thrashing wildly, but he dug his dagger into its neck for balance, eyes blazing with exhilaration. He looked ahead — a sea of black horns, glowing eyes, venomous breath.
And he grinned.
"This dungeon really wants dead," he muttered, voice amused, the moonlight reflecting off his dagger’s blade. "Too bad for it — I’m having fun."
He swung his arm downward, releasing another Lunar Flare, cutting a glowing scar across the landscape. Dozens of beasts fell in unison, their death-cries echoing through the spire’s endless cavern.
Still, they ca.
Still, he fought.
Each strike, each dodge, each explosion of light felt like a dance — violent, graceful, unstoppable. The more they attacked, the stronger his aura burned. His movents grew faster, sharper — his instincts honed by the divine energy that had beco part of him.
By the ti the earth stopped trembling, a quarter of the herd lay dead. The ground was slick with black ash and molten venom.
And Xavier — standing alone amid the ruin — still hadn’t broken a sweat.
He spun his dagger once between his fingers, exhaled slowly, and turned his gaze toward the distant spire now visible through the thinning dust. Its silver body shimred faintly in the dim light, ominous and inviting all at once.
"The Silver Spire..." he murmured with a quiet smile. "Soon I’ll see what kind of monster’s waiting inside."
The remaining buffaloes, though countless, began to hesitate — instinctively aware of sothing unnatural about the predator before them.
But Xavier was already moving again, moonlight trailing behind him like the wings of a fallen god as he cut through the herd, advancing toward the heart of the dungeon.
--
The earth trembled beneath the weight of the slain. Steam rose from ruptured hides, the air thick with the tallic stench of blood and burnt flesh. Xavier’s breathing was steady — not from exhaustion, but focus — his daggers still gleaming with silver arcs of light that shimred like twin crescents under an unseen moon.
All around him, the corpses of mutant buffaloes lay scattered — grotesque heaps of muscle and horn sprawled across the cracked battlefield. Yet still, the surviving herd showed no hesitation. Their red eyes burned with blind rage as they charged, shaking the plain with thunderous force. Each impact against the ground sent tremors coursing through his legs, yet Xavier stood firm, carving through them like a reaper at harvest.
Then... amidst the rumble of hooves and the screams of dying beasts — he froze.
That sound.
A howl.
It rolled over the battlefield like a dark wind — guttural, drawn out, resonant enough to drown out the stampede itself. His brows furrowed, and he pivoted slightly, scanning the far horizon. There, the mist quivered, faint and ominous. He had heard it before but ignored it when he was attacked by the buffaloes with sheer numbers
"...Buffaloes don’t howl. This dungeon have a weird ecosystem indeed, first golems, then buffaloes and now this, is it a wolf or so fox," Xavier muttered under his breath, parrying a horned head before driving his blade through its skull.
The beast collapsed with a dull thud. He stood atop its carcass, frowning deeper. The moonlight aura around him pulsed faintly, responding to his unease.
He sighed, brushing the sweat and blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. "I’ll think about that later," he said quietly, before leaping back into motion — slicing through the final wave of beasts like a blade through fog.
One by one they fell, until only silence remained — the kind of silence that listened.
---
Far away — northeast of Xavier’s position — the forest swayed. Not from wind, but movent. Shadows rippled through the undergrowth like waves of smoke. Glowing eyes began to pierce the gloom, dozens... hundreds of them.
The Poison Fang Wolves.
Each one stood larger than a horse, their slick black fur marred with greenish streaks that pulsed faintly, as though venom itself flowed beneath their skin. Their eyes glead a predatory yellow, and from their maws spilled faint wisps of toxic vapor — shimring tendrils that hissed when they touched the earth. Every breath they exhaled poisoned the air; every step left blackened pawprints sizzling on the soil.
Their fangs were jagged, long, and glead with a wet sheen of venom. One bite — even a scrape — was enough to paralyze a wyvern. It was from this very trait that their na was born: Poison Fang.
At their head prowled their Alpha — massive, easily twice the size of the rest. Its fur was streaked with bone-white markings that glowed faintly in the dark, and its eyes... intelligent, cold, calculating. It raised its muzzle slightly, inhaling. The air was rich with the scent of blood — Xavier’s blood, mixed with that of thousands of fallen beasts.
The Alpha’s lips curled back in a soundless snarl. Then, with a low, guttural bark, it commanded its pack.
A hundred answering growls rippled through the night like thunder rolling across the plains. The pack began to move — silent, lethal, graceful. Not a single leaf stirred as they flowed through the trees like liquid shadow.
At that very mont, far off on the horizon, Xavier stood wiping the blood off his blades, unaware that a new hunt had already begun.
His instincts, however, twitched — a faint ripple down his spine.
"...Sothing’s coming."
His moonlight aura flickered once, like a heartbeat. Then he turned his gaze northeast — where the darkness seed to breathe.
---
Ti passed, the place heavy with the sll of death and frost. Steam curled from the corpses of fallen beasts, rising into a crimson haze that cloaked the land like a shroud. Xavier stood amidst it all, a lone figure wreathed in moonlight, daggers in hand, his silver aura dimming and flaring with each asured breath.
He sheathed one blade slowly, eyes scanning the horizon. Sothing was off. The air — too still. The ground — too quiet. The usual rhythm of the dungeon’s chaos had... stopped.
Even the groans of the dying buffaloes had faded into silence.
Only the faint hum of moon energy around his body remained, pulsing in soft intervals like a heartbeat in the dark.
"...They’ve stopped coming," Xavier muttered, narrowing his eyes. His voice was steady, but his instincts were alive — whispering, pulling at him. Sothing was watching.
He turned, slowly, gaze sweeping across the plains. Broken earth. Black blood. Shattered crystal from dead golems. The landscape was a graveyard. And yet... the hairs on his neck stood up.
Then he heard it — faint, but distinct.
A shuffle.
A breath.
The sound of sothing gliding against grass, soft, deliberate.
His grip on his dagger tightened. The faint shimr of his moon aura flared in response, wrapping his forearm in silver.
"Co on then..." he murmured.
A low growl answered. Not from one direction — from everywhere.
It began as a whisper of sound, then built — layer upon layer — until the night itself seed to snarl. From the shadows beyond the corpses, yellow eyes began to ignite one after another, like candles flickering to life in the dark.
Two eyes. Four. Twenty. Fifty.
A hundred. No, many tis more than thst
The Poison Fang Wolves erged like ghosts from the mist. Their movents were eerily synchronized — each one slinking low, heads level with their shoulders, tails twitching in rhythm. They surrounded the battlefield in silence, their fangs exuding that familiar greenish vapor that shimred faintly in the blood-tinted air.
Xavier exhaled slowly, his pupils narrowing.
"Wolves... huh."
He wasnt surprised...
He had cancelled his mana shield ability, The vapor reached his boots, sizzling faintly as it touched the residual moonlight barrier still around him. His mind clicked into analysis mode imdiately.’ Poison type. Paralytic effect. Short diffusion range — but strong in numbers.’
His expression didn’t shift — if anything, a faint smirk curved his lips. "Smart enough to surround ," he said under his breath. "That ans there’s a leader, a smart one at that ."
As if answering him, the crowd parted slightly at the northern edge.
A massive shape stepped out, slow and deliberate.
The Alpha.
Its fur rippled like black silk laced with streaks of bone-white. Its chest was broad, its fangs longer than Xavier’s forearm. When it opened its jaws, a dense cloud of green vapor spilled forth, corroding the ground beneath its paws. Its eyes — those golden, intelligent eyes — t his.
And for a mont, Xavier almost felt it smile.
The Alpha’s growl ca low, resonant, commanding. The rest of the wolves responded instantly — spreading out, tightening the circle. A tactical formation.
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