Chapter 45: King of the Jungle
The forest went still.
Not in that peaceful, "oh look, nature's calming down" kind of way, no, this was the bad still. The still before a bar fight when two guys just stop yelling and start reaching for bottles.
And then they came.
First, it was the shamans, those ugly, green-skinned, bone-wearing freaks with glowing red-orange orbs atop their staffs, lining up like they owned the place. They'd stopped hurling their fireballs and stood there, all smug, as if they were waiting for the main event.
And the main event arrived.
A wave of black poured out of the forest, wolves, lions, panthers, all manner of big predators, coated in sleek, leathery black skin that shone like wet tar under the setting sun. They weren't mindless. No growling, no snarling, just a slow, deliberate walk that made the hair on my neck stand up.
And then I saw him.
The leader. A lion the size of a fucking two-story house. Its mane was wild and thick, like black smoke turned solid, and every step it took made the ground beneath the walls tremble.
Sitting on top of it was… something. Cloaked head to toe in black, hood drawn so low I couldn't see a face. Just a shadow where a face should've been. For a second I wondered if I was imagining it, if maybe the hangover from earlier had finally fried my brain. But then the lion stopped, tilted its head back, and roared.
Roared isn't even the right word. This wasn't some king-of-the-jungle crap. This was a sound that felt like it shook the marrow out of my bones. I could feel it in my teeth, my chest, in the wooden planks of the wall beneath my boots. It was a sound that made men drop weapons and women forget to breathe.
Around me, the entire section of wall went silent. Nobody said a word. You could feel the tension, heavy and sticky, crawling into your skin.
I glanced sideways at Freya. Her knuckles were white around her sword's grip, but she didn't look scared, just tense, like she was staring at something she recognized but didn't want to see again.
She muttered without looking at me.
"That… that's not just some monster. The magical energy coming off that thing…"
I blinked. "I don't feel a damn thing."
"That's because you can't feel it," she said, eyes never leaving the black-cloaked rider. "But I can. So can everyone else here with half a shred of mana sense. That thing's power is…" She trailed off, jaw tightening. "…It's like standing in the shadow of a mountain before it falls on you."
People were whispering now, voices quick and panicked. Orders from somewhere down the wall were trying to keep everyone steady, but it wasn't working. Every single one of us knew this wasn't going to be a simple "shoot the thing climbing the wall" kind of fight anymore.
My stomach sank, and not because of fear. No, this was the system's handiwork. This was the kind of bullshit twist that only made sense when it was trying to make me sweat. And it was working.
Countdown timer in my vision: 58:06:44.
A few hours till dark. Fifteen hours till day break after that. Perfect. Just fucking perfect.
The massive black lion's first roar still rattled my ribs when it opened that abyss of a mouth again. This time it wasn't just noise, a blinding pulse of orange-red light flared in its throat. For a split second, I thought, oh, that's not good. Then the air itself screamed.
A fireball, no, a fucking planet, at least three meters across shot out like it was fired from a divine railgun. The thing tore through the sky, a glowing meteor trailing fire and heat so intense the wall seemed to warp just before it hit.
BOOM!
The impact didn't just shatter stone, it melted it. The once-solid fortifications sagged like wet clay, hissing and glowing molten red as chunks sloughed off. In the blink of an eye, there was a gaping hole wide enough to march a small army through.
And that's exactly what happened.
The moment the first stones hit the ground, the screaming started, not from people, but from the wild, mindless beasts still crowding behind the shamans. They didn't hesitate. They poured in like a living flood, claws, teeth, horns, all driven by the kind of suicidal frenzy that didn't care how many of them died.
I was already moving, keeping Freya in sight, when the world suddenly turned into pain and velocity. Something slammed into my side with the force of a carriage crash, wham! and the next thing I knew, the world was spinning. My stomach caught up three seconds later.
I landed hard, splintering through a wall, then another, before finally stopping in what used to be someone's dining room. It smelled like dust, broken wood, and… was that soup? My ears rang so hard everything was muffled.
When my vision finally decided to get its shit together, I glanced back at the smoking wreckage of the wall, way too far away now and only then noticed what had hit me.
A boulder. An actual, honest-to-god boulder.
"…You've gotta be shitting me," I groaned, rolling onto my back.
The good news? Still alive.
The bad news? I was now deep in the city… and the beasts had just been given an open invitation inside.
---
Pain. That was the first thing I could process when I came to. Not the noise, not the dust in the air, not even the faint smell of something burning in the distance. Just… pain.
Every inch of my body screamed at me. My ribs felt like they'd been rearranged by a drunk blacksmith, my head throbbed in time with my heartbeat, and my left shoulder refused to even try moving.
I lay there, half-buried in dust and debris, staring up at the jagged hole in the ceiling where I'd come flying in. My ears still rang, the world muted and hollow, but even like this I could tell the city was dead quiet around me.
No merchants yelling prices.
No children running through the streets.
No sound of feet on cobblestone.
Everyone was gone.
The evacuations… yeah. They'd moved them toward the center of the city, away from the walls, away from where I'd just been launched.
I coughed, spitting out blood… or maybe it was dust. Or maybe it wasn't mine at all. I was covered in the stuff, my armor coated in a brown-red paste that might've been a mix of dirt, ash, and whatever poor bastard's blood I'd been near when the wall got hit. I didn't feel dead. That had to count for something.
"Fuck…" I muttered, every syllable burning my throat.
With a groan, I reached into the front of my leather armor, my hands shaking as they fumbled past straps and pockets until they closed around the familiar glass of a potion vial. My fingers barely had the strength to pop the cork, but when I did, I downed the entire thing in one go.
The taste hit first, that sharp, bitter tang that somehow managed to feel both soothing and disgusting at the same time. Then the warmth came, flooding through me.
Yellow-green light flickered over my skin, a faint aura wrapping me like a second layer of armor. The pain dulled. The throbbing in my ribs faded. The tightness in my chest loosened until I could breathe without feeling like a knife was stabbing me. And then, just as quickly as it came, the glow vanished.
I sat there for a moment, groaning, letting the feeling settle in. Then I forced myself to stand. My legs felt… fine. My arms too. But that was just the body.
Inside? My chest was still a fucking mess.
I could hear the chaos at the wall, shouting, metal on metal, the deep, bone-shaking roars of beasts. It was chaos out there, and I wasn't in it. And my heart… my heart was hammering so hard it made my vision pulse in sync.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
I had been close. Too close. Again.
I'd almost died. Again.
And for what? This was only the second mission. Two. Out of what could be a hundred. Or a thousand. Or whatever number the System decided to throw at me before it was done.
Could I actually do this?
I'd told myself the training over the past month would make me strong enough. I'd pushed until my muscles burned, until my lungs wanted to collapse. I'd sprinted, lifted, fought… and for what? So I could get tossed like a ragdoll across the city by a fucking boulder?
I dropped to my knees, my breath catching. Not because I was winded, but because the fear just… cracked through me.
It wasn't the kind of fear you could brush off. It was the kind that got in your bones. That sat behind your eyes and whispered all the ways you were going to die. That reminded you no matter how strong you thought you were, there was always something bigger.
And the worst part?
I wasn't even halfway through the missions yet.
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