{Time left: 00:02:50:00}
The countdown for the first beast horde to disperse ticked steadily toward zero.
Since the beginning, the orcs had endured with sheer willpower—holding the line, fighting exhaustion, and gathering what little strength they had left to resist the onslaught. Most other factions had expected them to fall after the first wave. And they would have...
Until he appeared—rewriting the fate that had already been decided for these orcs.
Now, Akhil stood face-to-face with the Star Winged Wolf. The air between them rippled with tension, thick enough to cut.
He had yet to land a solid hit—the beast’s speed was almost unnatural, its movements blurring like lightning. In contrast, it treated him like a toy, attacking and retreating as if savoring the fight. Watching them clash was like watching a wolf play with a human’s synthetic bone—violent, mocking, one-sided.
Akhil’s body bore the marks of their battle: gashes, bruises, and shallow cuts streaked across his hardened skin. Though his regeneration was keeping him alive, it came at a cost—his blood essence was draining fast. He needed to end this quickly, but he was also deliberately dragging out the fight to give Aria time to thin the horde.
His eyes flicked to her between clashes.
Aria fought fiercely near the edge of the camp, her blade gleamed with each strike.
She wasn’t killing the beasts outright but rather crippling them—severing limbs, slicing throats, anything to slow their advance. Her goal was clear: stall them long enough for the orcs who had taken the stabilizers to recover.
But the beasts weren’t normal.
They were blood-crazed, driven by pure instinct or perhaps the system itself....
Because, even with shattered limbs, they crawled and limped forward, desperate to reach the camp.
Akhil understood her strategy, but holding back came with a price.
Without any beasts dying, he couldn’t use his blood-based abilities effectively. He was forced to bear the wolf’s relentless onslaught alone.
He couldn’t use the blood from the burnt beast, for obvious reasons.
Between strikes, his gaze drifted toward the orc settlement. Nibo had done as instructed—the first seven orcs brave enough to step forward had been given the stabilizers. All eight doses were used. Now, it was only a matter of waiting.
He could hear their screams even from this distance. The sound of agony echoed through the forest, raw and haunting. Their bodies writhed on the ground as the stabilizer worked through their systems—a necessary torment.
The system mimicked the function of a real-world stabilizer serum, but since the orcs’ initial mutations had failed due to gene incompatibility, the process was far more brutal. Rather than simply stabilizing their mutation, the serum had to restructure their genes entirely—searching for new compatibility and forcing the mutation to take hold.
That meant tearing down what didn’t belong and rebuilding from within. No one could go through that without pain.
Akhil himself had never needed to take one. His mutation had succeeded on the first attempt, fully compatible from the start. It had surprised even him. Being a level five mutant meant his body had already reached a stable form—there was little a stabilizer could do for him now.
Unless there was a level beyond five...
But with his limited MUT coins, it wasn’t a risk he could afford to take.
For now, all he could do was endure—hold the line against the beast and buy time for those inside the camp.
Maybe later, when he had the luxury of strength and resources, he could consider experimenting with higher-level stabilizers.
But right now, survival was the only thing that mattered.
Akhil turned his gaze back to the beast.
From the looks of things, the orcs were far from done with their transformation. Their bodies still writhed in pain, the process incomplete. He had to hold on—just a little longer. Once they stabilized, they could support Aria, and together, they might finally push back the horde.
If only they’d had more time before the beasts arrived, he could’ve prepared a proper defense. But right now, this was all he could do.
Wait. Persevere. Fight.
The Star Winged Wolf lunged again, this time going for his thigh. It had already tested his back, chest, and arms—probing for weakness like a predator toying with prey.
Akhil sensed the attack coming before it happened. His wave perception made it almost impossible for the beast to surprise him. The problem wasn’t sensing—it was reacting.
Even knowing where the next blow would land, stopping it was another matter entirely.
Still, little by little, he was adapting. The wolf’s movements...though fast, followed a rhythm. Its arrogance in its own speed made its attacks oddly predictable, like it wanted him to know, just to mock him for being too slow to stop it.
And Akhil used that arrogance against it.
As the wolf blurred toward his thigh, Akhil was already in motion. His dagger shot upward, his body twisting just enough to drive the blade toward the creature’s face.
The beast froze mid-lunge, its glowing eyes widening as the blade streaked toward its right eye.
But it reacted at the last second—disappearing in a blur of light and reappearing several meters away, its attack aborted.
Akhil chuckled under his breath. "You sure are fast, I’ll give you that... Go on, test your speed again. I promise I won’t attack." His tone dripped with sarcasm.
Before the beast could respond, Aria’s voice cut through the air like a blade.
"Shit! One got past me!"
Akhil’s head snapped toward her. In the distance, a massive black creature—something between a hellhound and a direwolf—was sprinting past her defense line, heading straight for the camp.
He turned sharply toward the settlement. Some of the orcs who had taken the stabilizer were stirring, their bodies trembling as they began to recover—but they weren’t ready yet. Not even close.
"Damn it!" Akhil cursed under his breath.
He moved to intercept—but before he could take a step, the Star Winged Wolf vanished.
His instincts screamed. This time, there was no warning, no readable movement—the beast had learned from its mistake.
’It’ll go for my thigh again,’ Akhil thought, bracing himself. He turned his dagger low to block—
Then he felt it. A sudden rush of air above his head.
His eyes flicked upward.
The wolf was already in the air, sunlight glinting off its talon-like claws as it dove straight for his skull.
{A/N: If you like it so far! Please leave this author some goldentickets!}