SSS Rank Awakening: The World Beyond Redemption

Chapter 71

More than half the pack already lay dead or dying in the torn clearing. The survivors no longer threw themselves forward in the same coordinated mass. The losses had taught them. They changed the rhythm of the hunt.

Instead of pressing from every direction at once, they began to work in alternating waves. Two would drive in hard while the others held back, waiting for the moment his blade or attention committed. The moment he answered the first pair, another pair moved. The pressure never fully lifted. Rael was forced to keep moving, boots scraping over roots and blood-slick leaves, never allowed a clean second to reset his stance.

The Ironfang short sword felt heavier than it had at the start. Not by much—just enough that each parry arrived a fraction later than he wanted. His breathing had deepened. The long exchange with the spider, then the single wolf, then this running battle against the pack was stacking fatigue in his shoulders and lungs. He could still fight. He could not fight forever like this.

”Keep the feet moving,” he muttered under his breath. ”Don’t plant. Don’t give them a still target.”

A wolf broke from the left in a low, fast rush. Rael met the claws with a short, economical block and shoved the animal aside. Before the first had fully cleared, another came from the opposite angle, jaws open for his thigh. He twisted, felt teeth scrape across the outer layer of his trousers, and tore free with a sharp kick. Fabric ripped. Cold air touched skin where the cloth had given way.

He did not wait for the next set of fangs to find the same place.

Ice Armor.

Frost slammed across his torso, shoulders, and upper arms in a hard, translucent shell. The next wolf hit the ice with a solid, bone-jarring impact and bounced off with a startled yelp, claws scrabbling for purchase that was no longer there. The armor cracked in a thin spiderweb pattern but held. Rael used the rebound to step back into clearer ground.

”Not enough,” he told himself. ”They’re still too many. Break the ground under them.”

Frost Manipulation.

He dragged the cold downward. Moisture in the soil flash-froze into a wide, uneven sheet of ice that spread under the nearest cluster of wolves. Paws shot out from under them. Bodies slammed into the frozen earth in a tangle of fur and thrashing legs. For a few seconds the alternating rhythm shattered.

Rael moved into the opening without hesitation.

He did not waste motion on wide, dramatic cuts. The sword work stayed short and final—thrust to the throat of the first animal still trying to rise, descending cut across the spine of the second, a pivoting slash that opened the third from shoulder to ribs as it scrambled for traction. Each body dropped. The remaining wolves scrambled back from the ice, fury and sudden caution warring in their postures.

When the last of the slipped animals either died or regained its feet outside the frozen patch, only three Fang Wolves remained.

Rael reset his grip on the blood-slick hilt. The Ice Armor was already fracturing and falling away in dull white pieces. His breathing was harder now, but the numbers had finally tipped.

”Three,” he said quietly. ”Finish it.”

He started forward.

A howl stopped him.

It was not like the earlier calls that had gathered the pack. This one was deeper, heavier, and carried a pressure that seemed to push against the chest. The sound rolled through the trees and made the leaves tremble. The three remaining wolves froze mid-step. Their heads dropped. Their bodies lowered. The aggressive line of their shoulders collapsed into something closer to submission.

Rael’s eyes moved past them into the darker spaces between the trunks.

”That isn’t one of them.”

Something large was coming.

The undergrowth parted. A wolf stepped into the thinning light of the clearing, and the difference was immediate. It stood significantly larger than any of the Fang Wolves he had already killed—shoulders higher, chest broader, legs thicker with muscle. Its fur was a deeper, almost black shade that seemed to drink the light. The fangs that curved from its upper jaw were longer and thicker than the others, built for crushing as much as tearing. Yellow eyes fixed on him with a steady, intelligent focus that the rest of the pack had never quite matched.

The three surviving wolves retreated behind it without needing an order, heads still low.

Rael understood at once.

[Monster Detected]

Species: Fang Alpha

Level: 24

Tier: Savage

The Alpha did not rush. It began to circle him at a measured pace, paws silent on the torn ground, eyes never leaving his. There was no mindless hunger in the movement. It was evaluating—distance, stance, the way he held the sword, the residual frost still melting from his armor, the blood already on his clothes. Rael turned with it, keeping the blade between them, feeling the weight of being examined by something that had clearly survived longer than any of its packmates.

”You’re thinking,” he murmured. ”That’s new.”

The Alpha vanished.

One moment it was pacing along the edge of his peripheral vision. The next it was simply gone—no blur, no leap he could track, just absence. Rael’s body reacted before his mind fully caught up. He brought the short sword up across his body in a tight, rising guard.

CLANG!

Claws smashed into the blade with a force that numbed his entire arm. The impact drove him backward across the clearing in a sliding, uncontrolled skid. Boots tore long furrows through dirt and leaves. He barely kept his feet. Before he could fully stop the slide or reset his weight, the Alpha was already on him again.

He blocked the second strike. Steel rang. Sparks jumped. The Alpha’s weight behind the blow was greater than any of the ordinary wolves had managed. Rael’s guard held, but only just.

Then the Alpha changed direction in the middle of the motion—an impossible-looking mid-attack adjustment that took it off the line of his sword and brought the other set of claws across his side. The Nightfall Armor caught most of it. Enough force still transferred to tear a burning line along his ribs and spin him half around. Rael threw himself backward in a short, ugly jump to create space, landing hard and bringing the sword back up.

For the first time since the pack had closed around him, his expression lost every trace of calculation or thin confidence. The look that settled on his face was completely serious.

”You’re much faster than the others.”

The Alpha stood a short distance away, unhurried, the three remaining pack wolves still crouched behind it. It was not breathing hard. It had not yet committed everything. The single exchange had already told Rael the gap between a common Fang Wolf and this one was not a matter of size alone. Speed, power, and the ability to read and adjust in the middle of a strike—those were the differences that got people killed when they treated an Alpha like just another animal.

Rael adjusted his grip, ignored the fresh pain along his side, and settled into a lower stance. The forest around them had gone very quiet. The remaining Hellfire from earlier had burned down to scattered embers. The ice was melting. All that was left was the Alpha, the three watching wolves, and the clear understanding that the real fight had only just arrived.

He exhaled once, steadying the next breath.

”All right,” he said to himself, voice low. ”Show me what you’ve got.”

The Fang Alpha’s eyes narrowed. Its weight shifted forward by a fraction.

The next move would not be a test.

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