“Pierce?!” “Still…
still alive…” From the distant grass, Pierce’s weak, intermittent voice sounded.
Confirming his teammate’s safety, Haus inwardly sighed in relief.
He continued to stare intently at the lifeless Wolf King, choosing not to approach to retrieve his sword recklessly.
Who knew if the Wolf King was truly dead?
What if it was feigning death, waiting for him to get close before delivering a fatal strike!
Keeping his eyes fixed on the Wolf King’s corpse, Haus diverted a part of his attention to the manual in his mind.
[Favorability +29] [Favorability: 100/100] [Contract conditions met] [Yes/No to contract] The moment Haus defeated the Wolf King, the fledgling’s favorability skyrocketed to 100 points, successfully meeting the contract conditions.
Returning his focus to the Wolf King, he saw that the exposed organs and flesh torn open by the long sword began to tremble subtly without warning.
It looked like the residual nerve reflexes after death.
Glancing toward the grass, Pierce, now supported by Layla, slowly emerged from the thicket.
Turning to look beside him, Sylvia was already standing quietly with her longbow in hand, arrow nocked and steadily aimed at the Wolf King below.
Like Haus, she remained vigilant against any potential sudden changes.
The fledgling stood on her shoulder, flapping its still-incomplete wings, frequently craning its neck to look around, appearing eager to fly over to Haus.
“Sylvia, keep watch for me; I’m going to rest for a moment.” Haus raised his hand and gently caught the fluttering fledgling, stepping back a few paces.
After catching his breath briefly, he immediately formed a contract with the fledgling.
‘Contract!’ [Monster “Windrider Falcon” (Contract successful, Bloodline Analysis unlocked, species information has been synchronized and recorded in the codex)] [Monster Codex “Windrider Falcon” unlocked] [Milestone reward: Strength +1, Agility +1] A familiar yet indescribable, strange warmth surged through his entire body once again, washing over his limbs and bones.
Haus clearly sensed that the fatigue from his earlier battle with the wolf king was rapidly fading away, replaced by a nearly explosive surge of power filling his body.
The intense pleasure of the dual increase in strength and agility swept away the weariness left by the previous fight.
Haus slowly clenched his fist.
He inexplicably felt that his current strength and bodily coordination might already be on par with Pierce’s.
He looked again at the wolf king’s corpse in the distance.
At this moment, Haus no longer held even a trace of worry about a possible ambush.
Even if the wolf king truly launched a final desperate attack, Haus was confident he could react and dodge it.
This confidence stemmed not only from the improvements in strength and agility but also from the newly unlocked skill.
[Monster: Windrider Falcon] [Monster Innate Skill: Wind Surge] [Skill “Wind Surge” has been shared] [Wind Surge: By harnessing the power of the wind, you can temporarily increase your speed to double its normal rate; under certain special circumstances, it can be increased to triple] [Next-level evolution requirement for the magic beast: Wind-Herald Species (0/10), Wind Element Monster Core (0/1)] Having mastered this new Skill, Haus’s confidence instantly soared to its peak.
Based on the wolf king’s movements and speed that Haus had observed earlier, they were far from reaching double his own.
Therefore, as long as he could react in time, that wolf king wouldn’t even be able to touch the hem of his clothes.
He raised his hand to stroke the fledgling standing on his shoulder, but the sensation under his palm suddenly felt inexplicably strange.
Has it grown feathers?
Haus glanced sideways at the fledgling on his shoulder.
He saw that the originally fine, soft down on the fledgling’s body had already shed, replaced by long, sleek gray-black feathers similar to its mother’s.
Not only had its feathers changed, but its size had also quietly transformed.
The fledgling’s size had grown from its original palm-sized state to the length of a forearm, roughly equivalent to an adult white pigeon.
“Could it be that my own strength has increased, so I can’t sense the change in its weight?” Haus pondered silently to himself.
Of course, it was also possible that the fledgling’s weight had never changed, remaining just a few dozen grams.
Although it sounded far-fetched, this was a fantasy world with supernatural powers.
Perhaps influenced by Mana, the laws of this world did not strictly follow the principles of physics.
Anything could happen.
When Haus first arrived, it took him quite some time to accept the fact that an adult could stand vertically on a wall like Spider-Man.
…
After resting briefly and recovering most of his Mana, Haus stepped forward to examine the wolf king’s corpse.
If the wolf king could still be alive after all this time, Haus could only say it was truly formidable.
With a longsword piercing its belly, intestines spilling out, and internal organs ruptured, yet remaining motionless for so long, Haus admitted to himself that he certainly couldn’t have managed that.
Reaching out, he first pulled Pierce’s longsword from the wolf king’s shoulder, then Haus gripped it tightly and thrust it in, delivering a final stab to the wolf king’s heart to confirm it was truly dead.
After finishing off the wolf king, Haus withdrew his own longsword.
But the moment he grasped the hilt, a strange feeling suddenly crossed Haus’s mind.
Taking out a cloth to wipe the blade clean of blood and grime, Haus then raised the sword high, holding it horizontally beneath the moon in the night sky.
Cold moonlight fell, making the blade’s edge shimmer with scattered silver glints.
This secondhand Refined Iron Sword, originally worth 40 silver coins but bought at half price, had finally entered the countdown to the end of its life after accompanying Haus through two adventures, three battles, and countless daily training sessions.
Staring at the notches on the blade, Haus couldn’t help but recall the shopkeeper’s confident, chest-thumping demeanor when he bought the sword, boasting that it could slash a hundred goblins without a scratch.
He even promised Haus: if the sword broke before slashing a hundred goblins, Haus could come directly to him for compensation.
Back then, Haus had secretly calculated in his mind: one goblin was worth fifty copper coins; a hundred would be five thousand copper coins, equivalent to fifty silver coins.
After slashing them all, he could even make a net profit of thirty silver coins.
Now it seemed that guy was truly a swindler…
or maybe not necessarily.
After all, he had been slashing wolves, not goblins…
Wait, that’s not right either!
Damn it, if the sword broke halfway through a fight, wouldn’t he be dead without a weapon?!
Damn that swindler shopkeeper!
Only now did Haus belatedly realize the full implications.
Sheathing his longsword, Haus looked at the other three and immediately put on a more serious expression.
“We should go.” Hearing Haus’s words, everyone instinctively looked up at the night sky together.
The full moon hung high in the sky, the night still deep and heavy.
It was still the middle of the night…
Seeing everyone’s puzzled expressions, Haus didn’t explain further.
Instead, he took out a dagger, forcefully pried out the wolf king’s two fangs, and casually stored them on his person.
“Don’t ask why.
Pack up first, and I’ll tell you on the way.” Although they didn’t understand why Haus was doing this, everyone still followed his lead, packed their belongings, extinguished the campfire, and left the temporary campsite.
Before leaving, on Haus’s instruction, they did not take the wolf carcasses or the decapitated adult Windrider Falcon corpse.
…
Not long after Haus and the others left.
A group of green, round balls hopped out from the grass, beginning to gnaw on the flesh and blood remnants on the ground.
One of the larger slimes set its sights on the wolf king’s corpse.
It was about to leap forward, pouncing toward the wolf king’s body.
But the next moment, with a “squelch,” a large green foot suddenly stomped out from the grass, crushing it into a puddle of sticky mucus.