Chapter 52: Found you
Fenrir’s stride ate up the ground beneath them, steady and sure even at a dead run, and Malrik let the motion settle into something almost meditative as he kept his spear low and his eyes on the treeline ahead.
They were retracing the pack’s route exactly — the same direction the Morveth swarm had come pouring out of before the Spider Queen turned thirty of them into stains on the forest floor.
Lily kept pace on his right, wings beating unhurried and easy. The Queen held the left, close enough that he could feel the faint chill radiating off her every time the wind shifted. Behind them, the rest of the host followed in a loose, silent column.
Malrik used the ride to think.
That fight went too cleanly.
If Lily hadn’t spotted the pack from range, if the Queen hadn’t had time to use Plague Bloom skill before they arrived, the numbers alone should have made that a real fight — not a one-sided execution finished before he’d had time to properly get worried.
Something was directing them. Has to be.
He filed the thought where it belonged, next to the other loose ends he hadn’t solved yet, and let it feed into a decision he’d already half-made back at the notification screen.
My contract slots are limited. I’m done filling them with whatever crosses my path.
The Queen had just proven, in under a minute, that Rank alone meant almost nothing. Thirty Awakened-Rank Morveth, dead before most of them finished registering the danger — and none of it because they’d been weak for their Rank. It was because she wasn’t ordinary for hers. Whatever he bound going forward needed to carry that same kind of ceiling. Boss-type Morveth. Anything built like the Queen was built. Anything worth the Evolution Points he’d be pouring into it.
They pushed deeper into the trees.
It didn’t take long before his senses caught it — shapes, moving in loose clusters, closing from multiple directions at once. More of them than the group the Queen had annihilated. Considerably more.
"Everyone," Malrik said, voice low. "Get ready. They’re close."
The shadow wolves went first, folding themselves into the dark at the edges of the clearing until there was nothing left to suggest they’d ever been there at all.
Lily rose without a word, wings spreading wide, a faint smile settling over her face — the kind that made Malrik grateful, not for the first time, that it was never aimed at him.
The Spider Queen took position directly in front of him, and the rest of her brood fanned out in a wide, deliberate ring, closing the circle until Malrik stood dead center of it.
Then the forest opened up, and the Morveth came.
Black tigers with fangs too long for their jaws. Lizards with wide, ugly mouths built for tearing rather than biting. Green serpents dripping something that hissed where it struck the leaves. Things Malrik couldn’t put a name to at all. Every last one of them shared a single trait, unmistakable even at a distance — eyes burning a violent, glassy red, the color of something that had stopped being in control of itself a long time ago.
There it is. Confirmation.
No natural pack behaved like this — not this many species, moving as one coordinated unit like they’d trained together. Something was pulling the strings from somewhere close by. Someone strong enough to hold that many minds on a leash at once.
Whoever it is, they’re near.
He didn’t get the chance to finish the thought. A tiger broke from the pack at terrifying speed, locked onto the nearest spider, and the clearing exploded into motion.
The Spider Queen couldn’t use the same strategy again.
Plague Blossom was a devastating skill, but it had two major drawbacks.
First, it required time to prepare—time their enemies had no intention of giving them.
Second, Plague Blossom was indiscriminate. Once unleashed, it devoured everything within its range, friend and foe alike.
Because of that, the Spider Queen abandoned the idea of using the skill again. Instead, she charged into the battlefield herself, engaging the black serpents in close combat.
That didn’t mean she was any weaker in direct combat. Wielding her razor-sharp legs and the deadly skill Deadly Injection, she carved through the battlefield with terrifying efficiency.
Whatever tried to slip past her paid for it immediately.
The wolves worked the way they always did — appearing from shadow just long enough to open a wound, then vanishing again before anything could retaliate. One shadow moved faster than the rest, barely a smear against the dark, gone almost before Malrik’s eyes could track it.
Then it reappeared with a howl that rolled across the entire clearing, fixed on something considerably larger than a tiger — a serpent, coiled and massive, nothing about its shape suggesting it belonged anywhere near this Rank of fight.
The other wolves answered the howl at once, bursting from the shadows from every direction.
They ignored every other creature on the battlefield, charging straight at the venomous serpents as though they had all chosen them as a common enemy.
It was one of Fenrir’s abilities. By marking a specific target, he could command his pack to focus their attacks exclusively on that enemy, relentlessly hunting it down until it fell.
[ Skill: Tyrant’s Command ] Marks one target as prey. All allied wolves instinctively prioritize the marked target. Damage dealt against the marked enemy increases by 25%.
It shouldn’t have worked. Mortal-Rank wolves threatening an Awakened-Rank serpent wasn’t supposed to be a realistic proposition — and yet the proof was bleeding out in front of him, a dozen shallow wounds opening across its length faster than it could defend against any of them, its guard collapsing under weight of numbers alone.
Fenrir didn’t wait for it to die on its own terms.
He tore through the last of its defense, closed his jaws around its throat, and didn’t let go until it stopped moving entirely.
That wasn’t the end of it. Shadows split away from his body in rapid succession — ten of them, each resolving into a perfect copy of Fenrir, scattering instantly to reinforce whichever part of the line needed it most.
Useful. Very useful.
But numbers cut both ways. More wolves meant more pressure held, but the enemy kept feeding fresh bodies into the fight regardless, and Malrik had already stopped watching from the center of the circle. His spear opened a gap through something with too many teeth and no name he recognized, one of his spiders scrambling free the instant the pressure lifted.
Above them, Lily’s smile had thinned into something considerably less amused.
She’d already turned a handful of Morveth against their own side, forcing them to cut down whatever stood nearest — but the numbers kept climbing regardless, and Malrik understood the shape of the problem the same moment she did.
If this keeps scaling, they surround us. And there’s only one way that ends.
She dropped down beside him just as he wrenched his spear free from a black tiger’s ribs. The tiger didn’t fall from the wound.
It fell because its whole body seized, convulsing violently for half a second before it simply stopped — dead before it hit the ground.
"Master." Lily’s voice had lost every trace of playfulness it usually carried around him. "Give me a minute. I need to find whoever’s responsible for driving these ugly things insane."
Malrik immediately understood that the only way to break the encirclement was to locate the source of the swarm and eliminate it before they were completely surrounded.
Cut off the head, and the rest will stop moving.
He nodded once, and Lily closed her eyes right where she stood, perfectly still in the middle of a battlefield that showed no interest in giving her room to be still.
Malrik didn’t understand what she was doing. He didn’t need to. He turned back to the fight and put himself between her and anything that looked hungry enough to close the distance, spear moving on instinct while the pressure around them kept climbing, steady and relentless, chipping away at how long he could keep this up.
Every passing second tightened the noose around them. Malrik and his forty-two contracted souls were slowly forced into an ever-shrinking circle as the Morveths, seemingly driven even madder than before, swarmed them from every direction.
Faster, Lilith. Please.
A heartbeat later, her eyes snapped open.
Her lips curved — not the sweet smile she wore for Malrik , and not the hungry one she wore for her prey. Something colder than either.
"...Found you."