Chapter 119 The wrath of the pack
Chapter 119 The wrath of the pack
Now, thirty or so beasts, driven by fury and grief over their fallen comrades, encircled Alex. They moved with predatory grace, not even releasing any guttural sounds like they did when their two comrades were fighting. Only an eerie silence permeated the air.
These beasts were relatively weaker than their two champions competing for the position of Alpha. The majority of them being E to E+ rank, with the exception of two D- rank beasts.
But all of them were still Mutant class beasts, so Alex had to be extremely careful in this fight.
Instantly, the first wave of attacks came fast. Alex swung his sword in a wide arc, shooting out a blazing blade of fire towards the incoming apes, cleaving through the front line. Blood sprayed, and bodies fell.
These were only the weakest E ranks of the bunch.
But the momentum of the pack didn't falter. They kept coming, a relentless tide of claws and teeth.
A beast lunged at his legs. Alex kicked it away, slashing at it, but one of the D- rank apes came from behind and bit down into his shoulder, causing Alex to stop his attack immediately and he desperately delivered a backwards kick, landing right on the beast's groin.
Clutching his shoulder with his free hand, he continued blocking as the beasts kept up their onslaught against him.
But for every attack he blocked, it seemed like two more would take their place. The beasts swarmed him, their claws raking against his shabby leather armour, their teeth snapping inches away from his flesh. Alex fought with a savage efficiency, but he couldn't compare to the real savages of nature. The numbers were overwhelming.
Over 20 beasts were all clamouring to get a bite out of him, and Alex couldn't even move a muscle at this point.
With his desperation reaching a new high, he was forced to drain over 50% of his energy in one shot by activating his Inferior teleportation, landing on a nearby branch 5 metres above his previous position.
He had been practising his teleportation almost every day when he wasn't in a life threatening situation like this, and his range had risen up to 5 metres, which in this case had thankfully saved his life.
But unfortunately it seemed this training had zero effect on his spatial perception, as it seemed the range and sensitivity of this ability only increased when his spatial affinity itself increased.
But even though his teleportation had saved himself a bit of time, the beasts just charged right back at him like nothing had happened, leaving him no choice but to abandon the fight in the canopy and take it to the ground below.
He had spent enough time fighting in an environment where the beasts had the advantage — now it was his turn to return the favour.
Boooom!
With an incredibly loud thud, Alex jumped from his branch, over 400 metres in the air and landed on the forest floor below, sending dirt flying in the air and a shockwave throughout the forest.
When something as incredibly hard and dense as Alex's body hit the ground at a supersonic speed, such reactions would be a normal occurrence.
Just as Alex did so, the beasts also all started jumping down from their trees, filling the forest with booms that made it sound like the forest was being carpet bombed.
Ignoring the aching in his legs from the heavy impact, Alex countered the incoming beast's attack and rolled just in time to avoid a deadly swipe.
It seemed the beasts still had some basic intelligence left inside their monkey brains, as the one that just attacked him had used a particularly sharp piece of stone as a weapon.
With the environment now to his advantage, Alex waited for the beasts to all pile up close to him, and let out a fierce battle cry as he let loose a fiery blast from his body, burning the skin and eyes of all the beasts around him.
This was an attack Alex had used to get himself out of many sticky situations before, but these beasts were strong.
They weren't Ordinary class beasts like the ones he was used to fighting, they were Mutants.
Alex's fire had indeed injured them, but it wasn't fatal.
It at least bought him a few extra seconds though, and he made use of this to drive his sword into 5 of the beasts that looked the most injured, some of them even blinded as the flames directly turned their eyes to ash.
But even during this short moment of respite he bought for himself, the struggle still continued and there were still 15 of these beasts left, with both of the D- ranks still alive.
Alex's instincts were screaming at him to give up at this point and escape, but he ignored them and continued fighting.
'I have to kill all of these beasts here and now, or my efforts here will all be for nothing. Instead of hindering the Count's efforts, I may as well be handing them to him on a platter with how loud and chaotic this battle has been so far. I'm sure the mercenaries are already on their way here, not to mention the Count himself.'
'I have to finish this, now!' n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om
Alex realised that he was pressed for time in this situation, but his energy was running low.
'I don't want to do this, but I have no other choice. This is going to hurt!'
He looked hesitant at first, but he bit his lips and overcame these contradicting emotions, and did the unthinkable.
He threw his sword to the side, and opened his arms wide, inviting all of the beasts to come attack him at once.