"...must pay with your life!"
As those final four cold words, drifting from the deepest abyss of the nine nether hells and devoid of any human emotion, struck down like four of the heaviest, most ruthless hammers of judgment upon Bone-Breaker's soul, which was already on the verge of collapse—
Boom!!!
His world, at this moment, completely collapsed!
It was a feeling more terrifying than death itself—the ultimate cold and despair!
The face that had been flushed red with shame and helplessness instantly drained of all color, turning as pale as the filthy, trampled snow beneath his feet!
Those murky wolf eyes, which had been burning with a final trace of unwillingness and anger, also extinguished completely at this moment, leaving behind only a hollow void of—bewilderment and deathly silence.
Death...
This word, so intimately familiar yet utterly terrifying to the Remnant Bone Tribe, which had long been struggling on the edge of death, struck like a black bolt of lightning filled with the aura of destruction, violently cleaving thru his brain, which had long been paralyzed by endless suffering and despair!
He did not fear death.
Truly, he did not.
In every day and nite spent struggling for survival on this damned Giant Bear Ridge, which was like a living hell, he had long since cast aside all thoughts of his own life and death.
He had watched with his own eyes as his wife, on a nite filled with blizzards, unable to endure the bone-gnawing hunger, froze to death in his arms.
He had watched with his own eyes as his adorable son, not yet five years old, after mistakenly eating a poisonous berry, twitched in agony before him, slowly losing his final breath.
He had watched with his own eyes as the brothers who had once fought by his side, laughed together, and cried together, fell one by one to that cruel hunger and cold, turning into cold, lifeless—corpses.
Death, to him, was no longer a terrifying thing.
It was even a form of liberation.
A gift that could completely free him from this boundless pain and despair!
However...
He could not die!
At least, not now!
Bone-Breaker slowly turned his head, his gaze, which had long become hollow and numb, piercing thru the raging blizzard to look toward the narrow, pitch-black cave entrance.
He saw it.
He saw those faces, sallow and gaunt from long-term malnutrition, filled with terror and unease.
He saw those pairs of eyes, hollow and bewildered by boundless fear and despair.
These were his tribespeople!
They were the final hope that he, as a chieftain, had desperately supported with his own spine, already bent by the weight of heavy responsibility!
He saw the elders, already gray-haired and needing to support each other just to stand. There was no fear in their eyes, only the calm and numbness of stagnant water. They had long grown accustomed to death, and were only using their withered bodies, like dry tree bark, to subconsciously shield the shivering children behind them.
He saw the poor women who had already lost their husbands. They held their children, whose lips were already purple from the cold, tightly in their arms, with no tears in their eyes—because their tears had long since run dry over countless days and nites filled with despair and pain. They only looked at him with eyes full of pleading and prayer, looking helplessly at their only reliance—their chieftain!
He even saw a girl only seven or eight years old. In her hand, she tightly clutched half a piece of dried meat that had frozen as hard as stone—food her mother had saved for her yesterday. She did not cry, did not fuss, but simply gazed with large eyes, clear as the purest mountain spring, curiously and fearfully at the terrifying scene outside the cave, which looked like a forest of white steel.
In that instant, Bone-Breaker's heart felt as if it had been violently pierced by the sharpest, hottest dagger!
It hurt!
It hurt so much he could barely breathe!
If he died...
If he chose that resistance filled with honor and dignity...
Then what would be the fate of the hundred-plus poor tribespeople behind him who had pinned all their hope on him?
Destruction.
That young, overly young werewolf chieftain, and that cold voice filled with indisputable authority, echoed frantically in his ears once more like the most vicious curse!
Yes.
Destruction!
Total, complete destruction!
Before that irresistible white torrent, which was like a natural disaster, these hundred-plus wretches, already tortured by hunger and cold to the point where they could barely lift their weapons, wouldn't even be able to stir up a ripple of resistance!
They would only be ruthlessly crushed and torn apart by those merciless Wolf Claws, turning into yet another pile of—withered bones—filled with sorrow and unwillingness upon this ice field!
No!
No!!!
Bone-Breaker let out a silent roar in his heart, filled with endless pain and despair!
He could not let that happen!
He absolutely could not!
However...
Submissiemed to intensify, yet it could no longer blow away the complex atmosphere permeating the crowd, a mixture of relief and bitterness.