The moment we left the doors of The Rusted Anvil was like walking into a meat locker designed by a sadist. The wind was too thick to see through, a wall of white noise and ice crystals that caught every gap in my clothes. My boots sank knee-deep into the powder instantly.
Beside me, Bruce was shivering, looking like he'd fall over in a second. Where did the guy looking for a fight earlier go ? He was hunched, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of the oversized coat he wore, his breath coming in short, jagged plumes of steam.
Fortunately my minor adaption ability helped me deal with the cold, so I could still move about fine. And with the food now in my belly, I had some gas in the tank.
"Stay close, Bruce !" I growled loudly, my voice barely cutting through the loud winds. "If we get separated in this, you'll freeze before I can find you."
I closed my eyes, trying to push past the roar of the blizzard. Usually, my sense of smell is a high-definition map. I can track a bead of sweat through a rainstorm from three miles away. But here, the wind was whipping the scents in a thousand directions, shredding them against the pine needles and freezing them into the drifts. The air was a chaotic mess of ozone, pine, and ice.
I dropped to all fours, my bare hands sinking into the freezing snow. I didn't care about the frostbitet i'd heal from it. I pushed my nose inches from the ground, where the wind couldn't scatter the trail completely.
.
.
.
There.
It was faint, buried under a layer of fresh snow. A single drop of blood. And beneath it, the scent of something close to a grizzly but worse, it violated the air it touched similar to gamma radiation but different, very different.
"This way," I rasped, standing up and pointing toward the jagged spine of the northern ridge.
The walk was brutal. Every step was a battle against the mountain. The snow concealed frozen pits and sharp, hidden rocks that tore at our boots. I led the way, using my dense frame to break the trail, creating a trench for Bruce to follow.
My smell was impaired, so I shifted my focus to my hearing. I filtered out the groan of the heavy branches, the whistle of the wind, and the heavy, sluggish thud-thud of Bruce's freezing heart. I cast my auditory net wider, searching the dark for a heartbeat that didn't sound human.
For an hour, there was nothing but the storm. The woods felt alive, malicious, and watching. Several times, the wind seemed to mimic the sound of a woman weeping, or a child calling out. It was the Wendigo's hunting tactic, designed to draw us off the path and into the black. I ignored it, trusting the faint scent trail buried in the ice.
"Logan..." Bruce panted, stumbling behind me and catching himself on a frozen birch tree. "How... how far?" His face was turning a light blue, and ice was hanging off his nose.
"Focus on your breathing, Doc," I replied without looking back. "Save your energy. We're getting close."
We crested the ridge, pushing through a dense thicket of dead spruce. The terrain leveled out into a hidden plateau, shielded from the worst of the wind by massive walls of sheer granite.
My nose flared. The smell of rot hit me like a physical blow. It was overwhelming now.
I held up a fist, signaling Bruce to stop. I closed my eyes, straining my ears.
Thump... thump... thump...
Three heartbeats. Rapid, shallow, and terrifyingly weak.
I opened my eyes and scanned the rock face. Partially obscured by a curtain of massive, jagged icicles was a dark maw in the cliffside. The entrance to a cave.
I didn't wait for Bruce. I drew my claws—SNIKT—the adamantium gleaming dull silver in the faint moonlight. I moved with silent, lethal grace, slipping between the icicles and stepping into the gloom.
It was a slaughter house. There is no other word for it.
The stench of corpses deteriorating was so thick I could taste it on the back of my tongue. The floor was littered with the remnants of the beasts' previous meals. Scraps of rusted camping gear, shredded winter coats, and bones. Hundreds of them. Piled in the corners like mountain trophies, cracked open so the marrow could be sucked dry. The walls were slick with frozen gore.
And in the very back, huddled in a shallow depression in the rock, were the survivors.
The older women, Sarah was draped over her two daughters, Lily and Maya, her body acting as a fragile shield against the freezing damp. Her face was a mask of absolute shock, her eyes wide, staring blankly at the cave wall. The girls—no older than four and five—were silent. Their faces were buried in their mother's tattered coat, their small bodies shivering so violently I could hear their teeth clicking together.
"Bruce," I whispered sharply.
Bruce scrambled into the cave, his breath catching in his throat as he took in the horror of the room. He rushed over to the family, dropping to his knees, his medical instincts overriding his exhaustion.
"It's okay," Bruce said, his voice trembling but gentle. "We're here. You're safe. We're going to get you out of here."
I stood near the entrance, my back to them, my senses flaring outward. The hairs on my arms stood on end. The air pressure in the cave shifted, the temperature dropping even further.
The trap was springing.
The faint, whistling sound of wind passing through empty ribcages echoed from the blizzard outside. They had circled back. They had let us find the meat so they could trap us all inside the slaughterhouse.
"Bruce," I said, my voice dropping into a low, rumbling baritone that echoed off the bloody walls. "Take them. Now."
Bruce looked up, his eyes wide. "What? Logan, they can't walk. They're catatonic. I need a minute to—"
"You don't have a minute!" I snapped, turning my head just enough to pin him with a glowing, feral glare. "I can smell them. They're right outside. Grab the girls. Support the mother. You get them out of this cave and you run back down that mountain."
"I'm not leaving you alone against those things!" Bruce argued, his own anger flaring, a hint of green flashing in his irises. "You've been fighting for three days, Logan! You're running on empty! If I bring him out—"
"If you bring the Hulk out in this cave, you'll collapse the roof and crush these kids!" I roared, the beast in my blood surging forward. "I'm the Wolverine. This is what I do. Now take the damn kids and GO!"
The sheer force of my voice seemed to snap Sarah out of her trance. She let out a strangled, terrified gasp, clutching her daughters.
Bruce gritted his teeth, the jaw muscles jumping. He knew I was right. He scooped Lily and Maya up, one under each arm, groaning under the weight. He nodded to Sarah, pulling her to her feet. She leaned heavily against him.
"Don't die," Bruce hissed at me as he shuffled past toward the cave exit.
"I already died once, bub," I muttered. "Didn't care for it."
The moment Bruce and the family slipped through the icicles and disappeared into the howling whiteout, the shadows detached themselves from the ceiling.
Six of them.
They dropped to the cavern floor with heavy, sickening thuds. They were nine feet tall, their limbs impossibly long and spindly, bent at unnatural, spider-like angles. Their skin was the color of a drowned corpse, stretched so tight over their protruding ribs that the yellowed bone threatened to pierce the flesh. They had no lips, just rows of jagged, chisel-sharp teeth bared in permanent, starving grins. Massive, brittle antlers sprouted from their skulls, caked in dried brain matter and frost.
They surrounded me, their obsidian claws clicking against the stone.
The largest one—the alpha—stepped forward. It tilted its head, its milky, dead eyes locking onto mine. When it spoke, it didn't roar. It perfectly mimicked the voice of the sobbing father back at the bar.
"Help me... please, somebody help me..."
The sheer, disgusting malice of it made my stomach churn. But then, a profound realization washed over me.
My past life—the kid who read the comics—and my current life—the man with the adamantium skeleton—fused together in a moment of absolute clarity. I knew the lore of the Wendigo. I knew what Mac the bartender had said, and I knew what the Marvel encyclopedias had written.
Wendigos possess an extreme supernatural healing factor. They regenerate tissue, muscle, and bone almost instantly. They are virtually immortal unless their heart is ripped out or they are completely incinerated.
I looked at the six towering nightmares circling me. For the past few days, with the Hulk and with Ross's soldiers, I had to hold back. I had to pull my punches, dull my blades, and fight the animal inside me to keep from becoming a murderer.
But these things? They weren't human. They couldn't be reasoned with. And most importantly... they wouldn't die easily.
I didn't have to hold back.
A slow, terrifying smile spread across my face. I could feel the feral rage—the berserker that lived in my marrow—stretching its legs, uncoiling after being locked away for so long.
SNIKT.
I popped the claws on my left hand to match my right. Six blades of indestructible metal caught the dim light.
"You boys hungry?" I growled, rolling my shoulders. "Come and get a bite."
The largest one shrieked—a deafening, ear-piercing sound that shattered the icicles at the cave entrance—and lunged.
It was incredibly fast. It crossed the twenty feet between us in a single bound, its massive claws swiping down at my head. I didn't dodge. I stepped into the strike, bringing my left arm up. The Wendigo's claws hit my adamantium forearm with a shower of sparks and a deafening CLANG.
Before the beast could recover from the shock of hitting unbreakable bone, I drove my right fist buried deep into its hollow stomach. I didn't just stab; I twisted and pulled upward.
The adamantium sheared through its tough, leathery skin, slicing through its intestines and severing its diaphragm. Black, necrotic blood erupted from the wound, spraying across my face and chest. The beast howled, stumbling backward, its guts spilling onto the cavern floor.
But just as I knew it would, the flesh immediately began to writhe and crawl. The spilled intestines pulled themselves back inside, the skin knitting together with sickening speed.
It was already healing.
"Perfect," I whispered.
The other five descended on me all at once.
It was absolute chaos. A Wendigo tackled me from the side, its immense weight driving me into the stone wall. Its jaws clamped down on my shoulder, the jagged teeth tearing through my leather jacket and sinking deep into my trapezius muscle. The pain was blinding—cold and sharp—but the teeth hit my adamantium collarbone and shattered.
" GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!"
I let out a guttural roar, dropping my shoulder and driving my elbow into the beast's ribcage, feeling the bones shatter. As it reeled back, I spun, decapitating it with a wide, vicious sweep of my right hand. The head flew across the room, bouncing off the wall. The headless body collapsed, but I could already see the neck stump bubbling, preparing to regrow or reattach.
I couldn't just kill them. I had to dismantle them.
I let the Berserker take the wheel. The red fog descended over my vision, drowning out the exhaustion, drowning out the pain of my three-day brawl with the Hulk, leaving only the pure, rhythmic instinct of the slaughter.
Another beast leaped from the ceiling, aiming to crush me under its weight. I dropped to my back, planting my boots into its stomach as it fell, using its own momentum to flip it over my head. As it crashed into the stone behind me, I vaulted backward, landing squarely on its chest. I drove all six claws down into its shoulder joints, severing the arms completely from the torso.
Black blood coated the floor, making the rock slick. The smell of rot and copper was suffocating.
Two of them charged me simultaneously from the front. I sprinted toward them. At the last second, I slid on my knees across the blood-slicked stone, passing directly between them. I threw my arms out wide, the claws acting like scythes, hamstringing both monsters in a single, fluid motion. As they collapsed, howling in rage, I sprang to my feet and buried my claws into the base of their spines, paralyzing them.
I was a whirlwind of leather, blood, and silver. I took hits—deep, tearing gashes across my chest, a backhand that dislocated my jaw, a claw strike that laid my thigh open to the bone. My healing factor screamed, burning through the last reserves of my energy to stitch my meat back together.
But I didn't stop. I couldn't. I was hacking, slashing, tearing them to pieces faster than their dark magic could put them back together. I severed limbs, crushed windpipes, and carved them into regenerating piles of gore.
The alpha, having recovered from its gutted stomach, let out a furious bellow and charged me again. It grabbed me by the throat with one massive, clawed hand, lifting me completely off the ground and slamming me into the ceiling.
The impact knocked the breath out of my lungs, my vision swimming with stars. The beast opened its jaw impossibly wide, preparing to bite my face off.
"Help me..." it mocked again, in the father's voice.
"Shut up," I snarled.
I brought both boots up, planting them squarely against the monster's chest, and kicked off with every ounce of my superhuman strength. The force tore its grip from my throat. As we separated mid-air, I swung both fists in a devastating, crossed-arm X-strike.
The adamantium sheared cleanly through the alpha's neck and chest, dividing its upper torso into three separate, bloody chunks.
I hit the floor in a crouch, gasping for air, the blood pouring from a dozen wounds.
The cave was silent, save for the wet, sickening sounds of six dismembered monsters slowly, agonizingly trying to heal. Legs twitched, severed arms clawed blindly at the dirt, and heads gasped for air they no longer had lungs to breathe. They weren't dead. But they were broken. It would take them days to piece themselves back together from this level of utter butchery.
I stood up slowly, my joints popping. I looked down at my hands. The claws were stained pitch black. My clothes were hanging off me in bloody rags. I felt the familiar, agonizing itch of my own wounds closing up, the muscle fibers reweaving themselves over the unbreakable metal.
[+6 stat points]
I dismissed the blue screens with a mental wave. I didn't care about the points right now.
I retracted my claws. The snikt sounded incredibly loud in the quiet cave.
I spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor, walked over to the severed head of the alpha, and kicked it into a dark corner of the cavern.
"Bon appétit," I muttered.
I turned and walked out of the cave, stepping back into the blizzard. The storm had begun to break, the heavy snowfall thinning out as the first grey light of dawn began to bleed over the eastern peaks. The wind was still cold, but it didn't feel as difficult to move in anymore.
I followed the deep trench Bruce had carved through the snow. My body felt heavier than it ever had, the adrenaline crash hitting me like a freight train. Level 3 or not, I needed food and I needed sleep.
About a mile down the ridge, I found them.
Bruce had managed to find a small, sheltered overhang beneath a massive pine tree. He was huddled with Sarah and the girls, shivering violently, waiting.
When he heard my boots crunching in the snow, he jumped up, his fists clenched, ready to fight. But when he saw me emerge from the tree line, he stopped.
I was a walking horror show. Covered head to toe in black gore and my own blood, steam rising off my healing wounds into the freezing air.
Bruce stared at me, his eyes wide. "Logan... my god. The beasts..."
"They're taking a nap, Doc," I rasped, my voice sounding like grinding stones. "A long one."
Sarah looked up at me from the snow. She didn't see the blood. She didn't see the monster that had just butchered six supernatural apex predators. She just saw the man who had bought her children's lives with his own flesh.
She began to weep—quiet, relieved tears.
I didn't say anything else. I didn't have the energy. I just walked past them, leading the way back down the mountain toward the faint, flickering neon sign of the bar in the valley below.