The forest filled with glowing red eyes.
One pair. Then three. Then more, emerging from the shadows between the trees until the clearing was surrounded. The pack — a dozen wolves at minimum, their black fur shimmering with heat, moving with the patient circling of predators who had already decided this was finished. The Wolf King stood at the center, watching him with the specific intelligence of something that had done this many times before.
Lysander exhaled slowly.
This was bad. Even one Ashfang wolf was dangerous for someone at his level. A dozen, with the King directing them, and his mana already thin from the fights in the ruins — this was a different kind of problem.
The wolves began closing in. Slowly. No rush. They had time.
Then the Wolf King lunged.
The pack moved with it — every direction at once, claws and fangs and fire coming from angles that covered each other, no clean dodge, no clean block. Lysander moved on instinct — not void draw, just speed, just the quick draw style that Nythera had beaten into him through repetition. Steel flashed. One wolf's throat opened and he was already moving before it fell, the sheath clicking shut as he rolled across the dirt to avoid the wolf that had come from his left.
He got up. Another wolf was already on him.
A flaming claw caught his shoulder. The heat was immediate and sharp — not a deep cut but enough to send pain across his back and throw his balance. He hit the ground, rolled, got his feet under him before a second wolf landed where he'd fallen.
His breathing had changed. Harder. Faster.
Too many. Too fast. He cut another wolf with the same quick draw — click — speed and timing, nothing more, no mana behind it. But the Wolf King was already moving again, its claws tearing across his side. The impact sent him stumbling backward. Blood soaked through his shirt. His vision blurred slightly at the edges.
I can't keep this up.
The wolves circled again. The Wolf King stepped forward slowly, red eyes burning. It knew. Its prey was weakening and it was content to wait.
Lysander tightened his grip on the sheath.
Then Nythera's voice came through — quiet, direct, cutting through the noise the way her strikes cut through everything else.
Stop looking at the pack. Look at the king.
He frowned. I'm a little busy.
The king controls the hunt. Break the king and the pack breaks.
He looked at the Wolf King. Then at the wolves circling him. She was right — they moved when it moved, hesitated when it hesitated, their entire behavior tied to it. Not a dozen separate threats. One threat with a dozen arms.
Void Draw isn't about fighting many enemies, Nythera said. It's about ending the fight.
He exhaled. His stance lowered. His hand rested lightly on the sheath. The pain in his shoulder and side was still there — he filed it somewhere quieter where it could wait.
The wolves began closing in again.
He ignored them.
His entire focus narrowed to the Wolf King. The weight shift before it committed. The way its shoulder dropped a half-second before a strike. He'd seen it three times already in this fight. There was a pattern there — a small one, barely anything, but real.
The King lunged. The pack followed.
Lysander stepped forward instead of back.
Time slowed the way it had in Nythera's trial — perception sharpening at the exact moment he needed it to. Claws. Fangs. Fire. Everything moving at once. He moved through it — not dodging all of it, one wolf's fang grazed his arm, the King's heat washed across him as it passed — but he was already in the right place.
He drew.
The blade moved faster than anything he'd done in this fight — something shifting in his body at the last moment, the form that had been inscribed into him in the trial space surfacing without him fully choosing it. Not clean. Not controlled. Void energy flickered along the edge — faint, unstable, barely there — but enough. The strike landed across the Wolf King's neck exactly where it needed to.
Click.
The sword returned to the sheath.
Silence filled the clearing.
For a moment nothing moved. Then the Wolf King's body collapsed. The pack froze — the specific frozen quality of animals whose entire behavioral framework had just been removed. Then panic spread through them like a wave and within seconds the remaining wolves scattered into the forest, disappearing between the trees.
Lysander stood alone in the clearing.
His breathing was heavy. His body trembled with the specific exhaustion of someone who had pushed past what they should have been able to do. Blood soaked his shirt on two sides. His shoulder burned badly enough that he was going to need to deal with it soon.
But he was alive.
The system appeared.
ABYSSAL SYSTEM — UPDATE
Boss Defeated: Ashfang Wolf King
Title Acquired: Wolf King Slayer
Effect: Damage against beast-type monsters increased.
Rank Progression: F → E
Void Draw — First Form: Abyssal Sever
Status: Partial activation recorded. Body adapting. Full usability pending.
Lysander closed the window.
Then Nythera spoke again — quieter this time, the combat precision replaced by something more measured.
...Acceptable.
He laughed weakly. It hurt.
"High praise."
The clearing was silent now. But somewhere in the forest, other candidates had heard the Wolf King's final roar — and they were already moving toward the sound. Which meant he had very little time.
He wiped blood from Kagekiri's blade, sheathed it properly, and looked around the clearing.
"...I should disappear."