As the distant chime echoed from the Upper City District—Lann had no idea of the specific name for the area, so he could only call it by its position.
The city seemed to abruptly react with a series of responses.
On both sides of the narrow streets, towering residential buildings stood.
These buildings were twisted and distorted, pieced together like shoddy building blocks, sometimes even mismatched with the load-bearing exterior walls.
Yet, they were stacked this way, rising high up, topped with Gothic-style spires.
Originally, although the streets were empty and there wasn’t a sound from the buildings, a few windows still emitted light.
But after the chime rang out, people immediately extinguished those weak lights and pulled down iron grilles, iron windows and other protective equipment at every window.
As if the residents inside were not living in a stable city but were instead in a perilous wilderness.
Lann furrowed his brow, looking up at the windows being locked down one by one.
Faintly, he could hear something through the cracks of some tightly closed doors.
"Poor outsider, tsk tsk, poor outsider... unwittingly barging in at such a time, hehe."
Despite the words ’poor outsider’ seemingly expressing sympathy, the subsequent dialogue simply revealed unabashed schadenfreude.
The people here seemed genuinely happy to witness outsiders’ misfortunes.
The various signs upon entering this Mountain City were telling Lann—something was amiss in this city.
There was something very bad happening here.
"Alright, I don’t ask for much; even finding a secure spot to lie low in this city would be acceptable."
The young Demon Hunter usually wasn’t hard-headed; he naturally lowered his expectations for living standards.
Lann began roaming empty and desolate streets, intending to find a place where he could rest peacefully.
The night deepened, and the bright moon had somehow climbed to the mid-sky.
Its illumination was much brighter than Lann’s common knowledge, allowing the Demon Hunter to refrain from drinking a bottle of night vision Magic Potion.
The armored boots stepped into a puddle on the stone street, causing a splash.
Lann’s eyes searched for a corner that would give him peace, where he could safely wait until dawn, but it seemed this eerie city’s atmosphere couldn’t satisfy such a simple need.
As the Demon Hunter once again brushed past an unremarkable alleyway entrance, his footsteps halted amid the jingling of shifting armor plates.
With furrowed brows, those slightly luminous cat-like eyes slowly turned to focus on the depths of the alley.
A thick, sticky blood smell... human blood, but mixed with an abnormal stench of decay.
This irregularity even made Lann doubt himself.
Is this really human blood?
Or is there an issue with my nose or memory?
Breathing sounds emanated from the alley akin to a bellows.
Lann slowly turned his entire body, facing the alley directly.
His cat eyes skimmed over the surroundings, while Mentos flagged a piece of information worth noting.
On the wall brick at the alley entrance, a menacing scratch mark was visible.
The blue stone brick was gouged with several deep, long grooves as if it were cheese.
"Analyzing finger spacing, analyzing claw mark height... Analysis complete."
A general human-like outline was projected on the edge of Lann’s retina.
Standing around two meters tall, with recurved joints, sharpened primate claws... werewolf, perhaps? Read full story at NoveI-Fire.ɴet
According to the rough outline Mentos computed, Lann slightly adjusted his stance, making his posture more suitable for facing an enemy of this size.
The next moment... "Boom!"
In the alley, the sound of debris and wooden crates being kicked shattered rang out, the entity hidden in the darkness seemingly unable to contain its desire any longer.
Roaring, with a "wooow," it jumped out of the alley’s darkness!
Even though Lann had adjusted his breathing and mindset, in that instant of seeing the entity, his eyes reflexively narrowed in surprise.
This thing indeed resembled the werewolves Lann was familiar with, but upon closer observation, it appeared abnormal.
The entity was like a super emaciated version of a werewolf, its chaotic fur, and the thin layer of skin it clung to, were essentially all it had apart from bones.
Sharpened claws, recurved joints... these mutated organs on a werewolf would at least show traces of natural wolves, in other words: wild, natural.
But on this creature, these mutations only felt twisted, bizarre... practically pathological!
More importantly was the face; logically, a werewolf transformed to this extent should have had its skull extended into a wolf’s head.
However, the entity before him still retained a human skull-shaped appearance, its rough dense fur merely wrapping the skull.
Surprise lasted only a moment before being suppressed.
Faced with a frenzied monster charging at you, academic issues could be discussed later.
In its hand, the creature held a long metal rod, judging by the patterns, it seemed forcefully wretched from some fence or pipe within the city.
The city’s style leaned towards a nineteenth-century Victorian look, where iron tools were no longer rare and precious.
The unique tear marks on the sharp edge highlighted the creature’s strength.
Its height and long limbs made the metal rod’s jagged edge like a spearhead, stabbing downward at Lann!
"Very aggressive, yet another point different from ordinary werewolves."
And faced with the metal rod stabbing down from overhead, judging from the opponent’s strength, it could pierce through from the chest all the way to the lower back, Lann calmly evaluated the situation.
With a "click," the long knife was pushed out of its sheath by the thumb’s spring.
A flash of gleaming blade light—"Clang!"
A burst of bright, explosive sparks erupted, a peculiar force infiltrating the creature’s body with the clash of weapons.
Its plunging attack was forced off course.
Lann chose not to clash strength-for-strength with the creature; although he could roughly do the same stunt of tearing steel objects from the city with bare hands, why bother contesting sheer strength with an evidently abnormal creature during your first encounter?
It was neither wise nor profitable.
Having pre-adjusted his stance for combat, Lann cleverly deflects the creature’s thrust using the finesse of [Iwami Style: Climbing Carp].
For an average build, an ordinary person untrained in systematic armed combat, [Climbing Carp] essentially causes a collapse of the opponent’s stance after the first weapon contact.
But the creature before him, which could tear metal pipes with its hands, obviously wasn’t ordinary in build.
Lann estimated that it would take approximately twenty precise applications of [Climbing Carp] timing to disperse the creature’s full body force erratically.
Regular practitioners of the Iwami Style at this point should launch a relentless offensive, applying continuous pressure on the opponent’s stance and body.
But Lann was not merely a swordsman.
The concentrated impact of Magic Power, precisely targeted, struck the creature’s crooked knee bend with a dull thud.
The highly efficient recurved joints, forced into an incorrect position, ironically became a vulnerable liability in its body.
That wolf-like leg scrambled on the ground for several moments, struggling to regain stability.
Yet following the Magic Seal... "Boom! Crack!"
The armored boot, wrapped in air currents, stomped on the creature’s recurved ankle joint! The forced bone break produced a teeth-grating sound.