Stepping out of Windrunner Spire, they headed toward the eastern foothills.
The afternoon sun in Eversong Woods was harsher than the morning light.
Alleria walked ahead, her long legs striding at a brisk pace.
She radiated unyielding alertness, her right hand hovering a mere three centimeters from the rim of her hip quiver, never straying even an inch.
Li Fan trailed unhurriedly at her flank, his sharp gaze sweeping across the dark underbrush and towering canopy like tangible blades.
Stopping abruptly without warning, Alleria asked in a cold voice without turning around, “Where is the line between hunter and prey in this forest?” Li Fan didn’t answer immediately.
Dropping to one knee, he pinched a clump of moist soil with two calloused fingers and brought it to his nose.
A stench of foul, thick blood rushed into his nostrils, mingled with the scorched scent of damp earth dried by a beast’s body heat after a dead sprint.
Crumbling the soil, he slowly drew himself up, his eyes locking onto the dense woods to their right.
“Three o’clock, past that snapped tree, two hundred paces out.
There’s a starving, solitary forest wolf.
It just swallowed a hare whole, and right now…
it’s staring dead at the back of your neck.” Before the words fully settled, Alleria’s slender fingers had already instinctively latched onto a fletching.
Closing her eyes slightly, her long, pointed ears twitched at high frequency, catching the subtle anomalies in the wind.
Three seconds later, her eyes snapped open.
She drew her bowstring into a full moon!
“Roar—!” With a bloodcurdling howl, a massive gray wolf lunged viciously from the brush.
Its timing was deviously sharp—striking in the split-second blind spot right as Alleria turned, her vision shifting and her center of gravity unanchored.
It skimmed the ground, snapping its jaws wide.
*Swish!* The first arcane arrow transformed into a beam of light, piercing cleanly through the wolf’s left shoulder blade.
Accurate as it was, the shot wasn’t lethal.
Weighing well over two hundred pounds, the beast’s massive body was already locked in an irreversible parabolic arc.
Impaled by the arrow in its shoulder, the wolf surged forward on sheer momentum.
A rank wind blasted her face, and Alleria’s right hand slammed down toward the dagger at her hip.
*Thwack—* A piercing whistle tore through the air.
An arrow grazed past Alleria’s ear, the violent displacement of air whipping the stray golden hairs at her temple.
A dull crack of shattering bone erupted.
Like a venomous viper, the heavy arrow bored into the wolf’s eye socket and drove straight out the back of its skull.
The brutal kinetic force blasted the two-hundred-pound carcass backward, pinning it securely to a trunk behind them.
The wolf’s paws twitched stiffly in midair while the fletching on the end of the shaft hummed in violent, mournful vibrations.
Alleria’s hand froze on her hilt.
Turning her head, a flicker of astonishment crossed her features.
Li Fan was frowning, staring at the longbow in his hands with disgust.
He casually plucked the string twice, released a dissatisfied click of his tongue, and only then looked up to meet her gaze.
“When I drew the arrow just now, the damp fletching wasn’t smoothed out.
It pulled the trajectory two degrees left.
Two inches closer and that pretty face of yours wouldn’t look so good.” Alleria’s chest heaved once, but she remained silent.
She sheathed her dagger, walked over to the wolf carcass, and yanked out the black-feathered arrow with one hand.
Examining the arrowhead covered in brain matter, she saw that one of the tail feathers was indeed slightly warped.
She tossed the arrow firmly back to Li Fan.
Catching it easily, Li Fan wiped the grime off the arrowhead against the wolf’s fur without concern, then slotted it back into his quiver.
“Your shot was aimed at its chest.
If its heart had been off by an inch due to a malformation and missed a clean destroy, its dying momentum would’ve been enough to shatter you against that tree trunk.” “Its point of impact and kinetic momentum were entirely within my calculations,” Alleria refuted coldly.
“Of course.” Li Fan snapped the quiver’s clasp shut and glanced up at her, an unmasked hint of mockery in his eyes.
“You elves and your calculations are always so refined and noble.
Pity elegance can’t stop this beast’s blood from dirtying your new leather armor.” Alleria inhaled sharply, suppressing her irritation.
“And another thing—your breathing is too heavy.” Li Fan stepped forward brazenly.
They were so close he could clearly smell her subtle body fragrance carried by sweat.
His gaze roamed uninhibitedly over the leather armor across her chest—purely to evaluate the depth of her breathing, naturally.
“With such broad, sweeping maneuvers, you wouldn’t last half an hourglass in a full-scale jungle ambush.” Clenching her teeth, eyes cold enough to shoot ice, Alleria squeezed the words out through gritted teeth: “You are merely a trainee.
Mind your place and your tone, human.” Li Fan glanced at her faintly and offered no retort.
Swallowing the anger bubbling in her chest, Alleria turned to resume her stride.
Li Fan, however, stood rooted to the spot, unmoving.
He pressed his cheek gently against the thick trunk of an ancient tree nearby and closed his eyes.
The deep grain of the old bark faithfully conducted the minute ground vibrations directly into his eardrums.
The sounds were heavy and dispersed—wide soles.
No noticeable dragging noise upon lifting feet—seasoned jungle stealth.
His finger tapped lightly on the rough bark, then suddenly froze.
Two.
No, three.
The perimeter was collapsing rapidly.
The vibration source on the right wing had just regrouped.
That wolf hadn’t been a solitary creature at all; it was a planned scout hound!
Li Fan opened his eyes, his gaze razor-sharp and cold.
He lowered his voice to a whisper: “Three.
Amani headhunters.
The wolf was a hound sent out to probe us.” Without a shred of doubt, Alleria sprang lightly like a swallow onto a thick bough of the ancient tree.
Sweeping her eyes across the dense forest, she quickly locked onto the enemies’ positions.
“How dare these beasts creep to the edge of the barrier?” “Don’t use arcane arrows,” Li Fan said coldly beneath the tree.
She looked down at him.
“Glowing magic arrows in a dark forest like this are nothing short of beacons.” Li Fan pointed down toward the ground.
“Use this.” Mud.
Alleria stared at the dark brown mud beside her feet, mixed with animal droppings and rotting leaves, then turned to look back at Li Fan, disbelief flickering in her eyes.
Ask a noble elf to roll her enchanted arrowheads in disgusting slop like this?
But in the next instant, the memory of the wolf carcass pinned to the tree flashed through her mind, alongside Li Fan’s biting sarcasm: *elegance can’t stop beast blood*.
Without a second’s hesitation, Alleria leaped silently down from the branch.
Dropping to one knee before the mud, ignoring the filth, she scooped up a handful of wet, leafy sludge and smeared it over the glowing magical reflections on the inner bow, turning it a lifeless, dull gray.
Immediately after, she drew two arrowheads from her waist and jammed them into the foul mire until the metallic glare was completely submerged.
She stood up without a word.
A chilling wind pierced the canopy as three Amani headhunters closed the snare from three directions.
Clad in heavy boiled-leather armor, they wielded blunt, massive battleaxes.
The clash erupted like a powder keg!
As the first troll sprinted into a blind spot, Li Fan didn’t pull back.
Sliding along the rotting leaf piles like a leopard skimming the earth, the unimposing skinning knife in his hand turned viciously lethal.
Using the slide’s momentum, he severed the troll’s thick hamstring in an instant.
As the troll tipped forward, losing balance, Li Fan spun up with the force, his blade trailing a cold afterimage as it thrust upward through the gap in the jawbone, thoroughly scrambling its brain!
Just three seconds.
Clean, lethal, entirely devoid of flair.
The second troll burst from the bushes only to collide directly with Alleria’s blind shot.
Stripped of brilliant arcane radiance, the mud-slathered arrow ghosted through the shadows, severing the monster’s carotid artery with flawless precision.
The troll’s muffled screech was smothered by a gush of blood welling up its throat.
The final troll went completely berserk.
Eyes bloodshot, it swung twin axes and lunged violently at Li Fan’s back.
At that critical instant, Alleria materialized like a phantom from behind a tree trunk.
Drawing her bow into a full moon, accompanied by a deep, powerful twang, the heavy arrow became a gray streak of light, driving straight into the back of the troll’s skull and bursting out between its brows!
The massive green body collapsed forward like a crumbling mountain, crashing onto the blood-soaked leaves.
Li Fan took one, she took two.
After the intense battle, suffocating silence reclaimed the woods.
Only the cold wind howling above the canopy and the subtle tremors of the three fallen corpses bore witness to the brief, bloody slaughter.
Li Fan slowly straightened his back.
Snatching a filthy loincloth off the nearby troll corpse, he expressionlessly wiped the blood from his skinning knife and sheathed it behind his waist.
“Let me move.
The smell of blood can’t be masked now.
Within ten minutes, every beast within five kilometers will be swarming here.
Unless you want to stay and feed them.” Alleria took a long, hard look at him, then turned and walked deeper into the forest.
This time, her steps had unconsciously shed their previous haughtiness.
The return journey.
The marching distance between them had imperceptibly shrunk from three paces before the battle to under two.
Neither mentioned the seamless teamwork of their fight.
After walking silently for a distance, Li Fan suddenly spoke, his tone as flat as stating the wind direction: “The metal buckle on the left shoulder of your new leather armor is loose.
Have a blacksmith re-rivet it when we get back.
If it falls off during high-speed maneuvering, the flying shoulder guard will smash your arrow trajectory.” Alleria’s combat boots paused in the thick leaf litter for a split second.
She didn’t turn back or make a sound, continuing forward instead.
But her right hand rose quietly, touching the metal buckle on her left shoulder.
It was indeed loose.
She silently dropped her hand, her stride remaining steady.
Long golden hair swayed gently behind her with every step.