Instead of hiding, Zekai stepped out from behind the pine.
He'd spent enough of his life reacting to danger from the shadows. Just once, he wanted to see what happened when he walked straight at it.
He rolled one shoulder, stretched his neck loose from the crossing.
"Here I am."
He lifted a bare hand into the freezing air.
"I'm over here."
A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. "Come on, little wolf."
...
Nothing. The grin lasted exactly one second before it died.
The Wolfrezon didn't lunge. He caught it a beat late — its crimson eyes weren't aimed at him at all. They were fixed on something behind him.
"...Huh?"
Every instinct in his body said the same thing at once: don't turn around.
He turned anyway.
A low vibration rolled through the packed snow — not footsteps. Something heavier. Snow slid off something enormous that had been standing there the whole time.
A shape broke through the white haze. Hooves the size of shields sank deep into frozen ground.
A stag. Nearly double the size of the white deer he'd seen minutes earlier.
Zekai's eyes narrowed.
Zzzzsup!
[ ARCANA STATUS ]
Entity Identified: Snow Deer Monarch
Species: Snow Deer
Role: Herd Protector
Zekai blinked. Same species as the one before—but this wasn't ordinary. This was rank above it.
A Snow Monarch. The apex of its kind — protector of the herds beneath it.
It hadn't just arrived. It had been standing there the whole time, watching, and chose this exact second to stop hiding.
Its bulk had blended so completely into the snowscape that the forest itself had kept its secret.
Crystal antlers rose off its skull like a crown carved from ice, scarlet energy pulsing faint beneath the translucent surface. Its eyes never left the Wolfrezon.
It had watched its own kind get torn apart and eaten. This was a reckoning.
Zekai's brow rose. "...Seriously?"
He scratched the back of his head. "I wasn't even the target."
Neither monster acknowledged he existed. Their eyes stayed locked, trading pure lethal intent across the open ground.
"...I walked right in between the two of you."
A beat of silence.
"Well. This is awkward."
The stag roared, the sound splitting the whole valley in half. Its antlers ignited, scarlet light gathering fast between the branching crystal horns, condensing down into a blinding, unstable sphere.
Then it fired. A beam of raw crimson tore across the clearing.
The Wolfrezon grabbed the half-eaten carcass beside it and hurled it into the beam's path.
BOOOOM!!
The corpse vaporized on contact. Steam and pulverized snow blew outward, whiting out the whole clearing for a second.
Neither backed off. Both roared at once and charged.
The impact rattled the forest down to its roots. Snow blasted up off the trees in every direction.
Zekai took a slow step back. The shockwave alone had stripped snow off pines fifty meters out.
He hadn't laid a finger on this fight yet — and if either of them decided to turn on him, Null Drakular might not be enough to save him.
That thought didn't scare him. It sharpened him.
The Wolfrezon reached the stag first, clawed hands snapping shut around the base of its antlers before the points could open its chest. Muscle bulged under thick silver fur, and with strength that shouldn't have belonged to anything with a pulse, it hoisted the entire stag off the ground.
"...What?"
Even Zekai blinked. That thing was lifting an opponent nearly twice its own mass like it weighed nothing.
Then—
BOOOOM!!
The stag slammed into frozen earth hard enough to shatter ancient ice buried under the snow.
Again.
BOOOOM!!
Again.
BOOOOM!!
the ground shuddered under them. The deer kicked, desperate, its antlers flaring brighter with each impact, scarlet light scorching the air over and over.
None of it mattered. The Wolfrezon's brute strength was simply overwhelming the stag.
With one last roar, the Wolfrezon hauled the deer overhead — higher, winding up for a finishing blow that would snap its spine clean in half.
The Snow Monarch screamed and detonated its antlers point-blank.
BOOOOM!!
The blast swallowed both of them whole. Snow and shattered ice erupted skyward.
When the smoke cleared, the Wolfrezon was still on its feet, steam rising off scorched fur, burns tearing across its chest — and its grip hadn't loosened for a second.
If anything, its claws dug in tighter.
CRACK.
Hairline fractures split through the crystal horns. The stag's struggle turned frantic, then weak.
The fight had already tipped past fighting. Now it was just losing.
The Wolfrezon's jaws opened. Black steam curled between rows of fangs long as forearm blades.
One bite would end it.
Zekai's fingers tightened around Null Drakular.
He could walk away. This deer wasn't his war. This world owed him nothing, and none of this touched Aron.
Then forty-two graves surfaced in his mind. Aron's empty name carved in stone. A promise made under rain that hadn't stopped falling in his memory since.
His eyes went hard.
'Not again.'
He moved.
SLASH.
A silver arc cut clean through the blizzard.
SHHKK!!
Black blood sprayed across the white. Something heavy tumbled through the air, throwing a long shadow across the snow. The Wolfrezon's severed arm landed several meters off with a dull, wet thud.
Neither giant moved.
Steam poured off the severed limb. Falling snow curved away from the corrupted blood pooling beneath it.
Both giants froze. Between them stood one figure, sword already lowering.
Snow drifted around him, unhurried. His damp coat moved in the rising wind.
Null Drakular caught the pale light in his hand — not one drop of black blood anywhere on that flawless white blade.
He looked up at the towering wolf, cold and steady. "You've hunted enough."
For the first time since crossing into this frozen hell, he smiled — because he finally had the strength in his hands to protect something instead of just watching it die.
The Wolfrezon staggered, balance broken, blood streaming from the ruined socket of its shoulder.
He raised the blade again, point leveling toward it. A faint smile. "...Because—"
He dropped his weight, the sword settling into his grip like it had always belonged there. His eyes never left the creature's crimson glare.
"—the real hunter." His grip closed tighter.
"...is me."
The Wolfrezon's eyes narrowed to slits. Its roar tore through the frozen forest, pure fury given sound. Birds scattered off into the pale sky. Snow shook loose from every branch for a hundred meters.
For the first time, the hunter had found prey that refused to run.
Far past the frozen clouds, somewhere the Glacial Wilds couldn't reach—
unseen eyes quietly opened.
One. Then another. Something had just watched a hunter get born. And it didn't look away.
✦ End of Chapter 54 — The First Hunt ✦