As the first faint light of dawn began to bleed through the dense canopy, Asterius slowly opened his eyes, a renewed, vibrant light gleaming in his pupils.
The exhaustion of the previous day had vanished, replaced by the coiled, tempered strength of a breakthrough well-earned.
He stood up, stretched his limbs, and looked toward the horizon.
The wilderness had given him all it could.
It was time to pack his pack up and head toward the fort.
He donned his pitch-black armor then vanished into the woods….
*********************************
The iron-hide boar had been a prize worth the tracking.
For three days, Torin and his small hunting band had stalked these beasts through the woods, finally deciding to strike!
The iron-hide boar was not merely prey; it was a walking fortress.
A rare-grade pack leader, it stood as tall as a wagon, its flanks armored in interlocking plates of living, oxidized iron that ground together with the sound of scraping swords.
Surrounding it were two lesser iron-hides, their tusks jagged and dripping with musk.
Torin’s five-man group knew that brute force would only lead to broken bones.
“Form the Crescent!” Torin roared, his voice cutting through the humid air.
The two underlings charged first, their hooves tearing up the loam.
Kael and Lyra stepped forward to meet them.
As the first beast lunged, Lyra executed the *Flowing Willow Stance*, shifting her weight at the absolute last second.
The boar’s iron snout plowed past her, its momentum carrying it forward.
With a fluid twirl, she drove her short spear upward into the soft, unarmored flesh just beneath its jaw.
The beast shrieked, crashing into the dirt.
Simultaneously, Kael used the *Thorned Pivot*, utilizing his buckler shield to catch the second underling’s tusk, redirecting its blind charge straight into a massive oak tree.
The impact dazed the creature, allowing Joran, their heavy vanguard, to bring down his warhammer with a two-handed Crushing Sledge!
strike, shattering the beast’s spine where the iron plates met the neck.
But the pack leader was a different terror.
Seeing its pack fall, the rare-grade monster roared..[Empowered Mode]!…, its iron bristles standing on end.
It charged Torin with a speed that defied its massive bulk.
“Joran, hold the flank!
Varis, blind spots!” Torin commanded, dropping into a low crouch.
Varis, the group’s skirmisher, moved like a blur…
Leaping Phantom !
…..he dashed off a boulder, vaulting high into the air over the pack leader.
In mid-air, he loosed two heavy, steel-tipped bodkin arrows.
They didn’t pierce the iron hide, but they struck the beast directly in its small, amber eyes.
Blinded and infuriated, the pack leader thrashed wildly, its iron-plated tail snapping a nearby sapling in half.
It went into a frenzied Iron Stampede!, an ability possessed by rare-grade iron-hide boars,charging blindly toward Torin.
This was the moment.
Torin drew a deep, measured breath, centering his weight for the ultimate finishing technique: the Coiling Vine Striking Dragon!.
As the massive iron mass bore down on him, Torin didn’t retreat.
He stepped *into* the charge.
Sliding low beneath the sweeping tusks, he used the beast’s own terrifying velocity against it.
He planted the butt of his heavy hunting spear, a rare grade soul armament, firmly into the earth, angling the reinforced tip upward at a precise forty-five-degree angle.
He aimed for the *Gilded Seam*—the single patch of soft skin right behind the leader’s left foreleg where the iron plates parted during a full stride.
*CRACK.*
The spear point found the seam.
The sheer momentum of the rare-grade boar drove the weapon deep into its own chest cavity, piercing its lungs and heart.
The shaft groaned and cracked under the immense pressure, but the blow was fatal.
The massive iron-hide skidded through the mud, plowing a deep trench before finally collapsing with a heavy, metallic shudder.
Breathing heavily, the five hunters stood victorious over the fallen prize.
It had been a flawless execution of martial precision and teamwork.
But their triumph was short-lived.
Before they could even wipe the sweat from their brows, the mist rolled in, and everything went to hell.
They never even got to butcher it.
Out of the choking gray fog came the cackling, a sound that curdled the blood in their veins.
White-eyed hyenas!A whole pack of them, spectral and massive, emerging from the gnarled trees like demons birthed from the damp earth.
“Run!” Torin screamed, unsummoning his soul armament, dragging a younger hunter by his tunic as the first wave of snapping jaws closed in.
What followed was a nightmare of blind panic and tearing thorns.
The wilderness became a merciless expanse, a labyrinth of choking mist beneath a sky heavy with storm clouds.
The metallic stench of blood—both the boar’s and their own—hung thick in the air, marking their trail.
“They’re gaining!” Lyra gasped, her breath rattling in her chest as she stumbled over a rotten root.
Her shoulder was a ruined mess of crimson where a beast had grazed her.
“Torin, we can’t outrun them!”
“We don’t have a choice!
Keep moving toward the ridge!” Torin yelled back, his own lungs burning.
He spun around,summoning his weapon swinging his heavy hunting spear to deter a lunging shadow.
The spear pierced the hyena’s skull, leaving it tumbling to the ground.
Yet it was a futile flight.
The pack didn’t just chase; they herded!
With terrifying intelligence, the white-eyed beasts flanked them, snapping at their heels, driving them away from the path and deeper into the suffocating heart of the woods.
Finally, the trees closed in, forming a natural, inescapable dead end.
The warriors collapsed against a wall of jagged rock, battered, bleeding, and entirely exhausted.
Their broken weapons were gripped loosely in trembling hands.
Around them, the pack formed a tight, undulating circle of mangled fur and pale, blind eyes.
The beasts grew closer, their collective growls rising in a grotesque chorus that shattered the quiet atmosphere.
“This is it,” Lyra whispered, dropping to her knees.
She squeezed her eyes shut, a tear cutting through the grime on her face.
“May the gods forgive me.
I told my boy I’d be home before the night.”
“I’m sorry,” muttered Kael, the youngest among them, clutching his dagger.
His knuckles were white.
Torin stepped in front of them, raising his heavy hunting spear.
His breath came in ragged, sorrowful gasps.
“Don’t apologize, Kael.
We fight together.
If we go to the halls of our ancestors today, we go on our feet.
Let them taste our steel, what little is left of it.”
But looking at the dozens of glowing, soulless eyes pressing out of the gloom, Torin knew the truth.
It was a pointless bravado.
They were going to die here, torn apart in the dark, their bodies never to be found.
The largest of the hyenas bunched its hind legs, preparing to spring.
Torin braced for the impact, closing his eyes—
Then came the silence.
The grotesque chorus of growls abruptly choked off.
A sudden gust of wind, sharp as a precision blade, sliced through the dense canopy overhead, scattering the heavy mist in a single, violent swirl.
The hyenas didn’t pounce.
Instead, they snarled, a sound of sudden, raw terror.
Their heads snapped around, ears pinning flat against their skulls as they began to back away, their predatory confidence instantly shattering into frantic retreat.
Torin opened his eyes, blinking through the sudden clarity of the air.
The oppressive weight in the atmosphere hadn’t lifted; it had changed.
And then, he appeared.
From the swirling vortex of the cleared mist, a figure descended like a weightless feather, settling onto the blood-soaked earth without making a sound.
The hunters stared in breathless, stunned disbelief at the stranger who had just turned the apex predators of the forest into trembling prey.
Asterius descended like a weightless feather from the lower branches of a tree.
His armor was pitch-black, not merely dark but consuming, drinking the light around it.
Every plate was etched with faint serpentine veins that pulsed with an eerie, internal glow—like embers smoldering in the depths of a forge.
His face remained hidden, save for two slits where eyes should be, yet no light gleamed from within.
Only an unnerving emptiness.
His footwork was a blur, a dance of impossible grace that defied gravity.
He moved along the steep, treacherous slope with an ease that suggested he was weightless.
This was no ordinary man.
The hyenas lunged, their white eyes rolling with fury and viciousness .
As Asterius moved, his obsidian daggers became extensions of himself—shards of darkness that carved through flesh and bone with terrifying speed and ease.
There was no wasted motion.
Every slash, every shift of weight was a masterpiece of lethal efficiency.
The first hyena fell mid-leap, its throat opened so cleanly that it hit the ground before it realized it was dead.
The second met a dagger through its skull, the blade sinking to the hilt before Asterius wrenched it free and kicked the foul beast into the dirt.
For the first time, fear flickered in the milky eyes of the remaining pack.
They hesitated.
Asterius did not give them time to retreat.
He blinked in and out of presence, his footwork carrying him through them like a phantom.
Shring!
Shring!
Shring!
His daggers wove a tapestry of slaughter and gore.
He was at a hyena’s throat one moment; the next, he was behind it, his blade already buried deep.
The warriors could only watch in silence, their breaths stolen by the bloody spectacle unfolding before them.
To these battered fighters, Asterius moved beyond human comprehension.
Even Torin who had witnessed countless battles, felt his stomach tighten.
This was no ordinary warrior; the way Asterius moved, the way his armor seemed to merge with the shadows, felt as if death itself had taken a form.
Kael who had only known myths made into flesh, watched the legend who walked the sky, who could cut the wind itself.
And there he stood, cloaked in darkness, his daggers singing a song of slaughter.
The boy’s initial terror was replaced by something deeper—a reverence bordering on awe.
His chest, bleeding from a deep gash, felt something he hadn’t felt in hours: hope.
Not the fragile kind, but the absolute certainty that they would live.
The last hyena collapsed, its throat sliced open by a flick of Asterius’s wrist.
Silence returned to the clearing.
The warriors stood frozen, their hearts pounding not from fear, but from the sheer weight of his presence.
Asterius turned to them.
He did not speak, yet they felt his gaze like a physical touch.
He had no need for words; his silence demanded their confidence.
” which fort are you from?” he said.
His voice was low, but it resonated throughout the trees like an echo .”W-we came from the star origin fort”.Torin stammered as he replied.
Asterius didn’t nod but turned away.Then, as swiftly as he had come, he stepped upward, his footwork carrying him into the air until he vanished into the darkwoods.
The warriors exhaled in relief.
The wilderness, once a place of dread, now felt altered.
They had been spared of a grizzly end…..sigh….They sighed in relief.
“Who was that ?..”Lyra whispered breaking the silence.
“….I don’t know…..I couldn’t even see through his moves but undoubtedly he must be a Qi condensation stage expert maybe even from one of those tiered martial arts families.
I’ve never seen a footwork like his before, must be at least gold grade!”….”w-What ?”, his teammates exclaiming wide-eyed….w-we really did meet an expert.
Kael muttered silently under bated breath still entranced by Asterius’s dagger skills.
He used a dagger himself so it was understandable for him to be enraptured by Asterius’s expertise.
“Which fort do you think he came from”.
Joran asked.
Torins eyes brightened as he stared at the direction Asterius disappeared.” From the route he took I think he is heading to the star origin fort!”
Torin deduced.
At his words everyone’s eyed brightened.
Looking forward to meeting this expert who saved them from a gruesome death.
“Sooo..what do we do with these bodies…”.
Varis posed, bringing everyone’s attention back to the hyenas who were now reduced to cold corpses.”…is that even a question to ask, of course we take them back!
Lyra announced energetically brightening the atmosphere.