The creature standing in front of Jimmy and Henry was unlike anything they had encountered so far.
It was clearly a werewolf. Its massive body was hunched over, and its thick claws were dug deep into the dirt. But there was something wrong with its anatomy. Growing directly out of its hunched back were two extra arms.
These two extra limbs were disturbingly thin, covered in tight skin that made them look like bare bone. Despite their sickly appearance, they looked incredibly strong and fully mobile.
"Grrrrr...!"
The monster growled, its yellow eyes locked onto them as it took slow, calculated steps forward.
"Fuck this...!" Jimmy yelled.
He didn't wait around. Rushing forward, he gathered speed and sprinted directly at the beast, aiming to tackle it and climb onto its back.
But he underestimated the monster's reach.
Suddenly, the two thin arms on the werewolf's back whipped forward. They moved with terrifying speed. With a hard, sweeping motion, one of the skeletal hands caught Jimmy mid-stride and completely swept him off his feet.
Before Jimmy could even react, the werewolf snagged him by the leg, lifting him high up into the air and dangling him upside down.
Henry didn't freeze. Seeing his partner caught, he moved immediately.
Pushing his energy forward, Henry thrust his palm out and fired a condensed blast of air directly at the werewolf.
The beast didn't even try to dodge. Instead, it unhinged its jaw and opened its mouth unnaturally wide. It was a terrifying sight. Past its razor-sharp teeth, its throat looked like a pit of endless, pitch-black darkness.
The swirling ball of compressed air flew right into the monster's open maw, and its jaws snapped shut with a heavy crunch.
Henry's eyes widened in absolute shock. There was no explosion. No visible damage. It was as if his attack had simply been swallowed into a void.
Without missing a beat, the werewolf pivoted its massive body. Using its skeletal extra arm, it swung Jimmy like a ragdoll straight into a nearby parked car. The heavy impact crumpled the metal door, sending Jimmy tumbling away into the dirt.
With its first target down, the monster locked its glowing eyes onto Henry.
"Oh, shit!" Henry shouted.
The creature exploded forward, tearing up the ground beneath its claws. It was terrifyingly fast, moving much quicker than any of the wolves they had fought so far.
'I need to move, now!' Henry thought.
With barely a second to react, he aimed his hands at the ground beneath his boots to defend himself.
Boom!
The explosive force launched Henry vertically into the air just as the beast arrived. The expanding shockwave blasted outward, striking the werewolf directly in the face, but the massive creature simply pushed right through the violent wind, completely unfazed.
While suspended mid-air, Henry quickly adjusted his aim. He thrust his palm sideways and fired another concussive blast into the empty space. The heavy recoil violently shifted his momentum, pushing him away from the beast and throwing him toward the remains of a collapsed building. Reaching out, his hands slammed against the jagged edge of a concrete balcony, his fingers digging in hard to secure his grip.
Down below, the first shockwave he had launched didn't just fade away. Reacting to Henry's will, the condensed sphere of wind suddenly changed its trajectory mid-flight. It whipped around, tearing back through the air to strike the monstrous werewolf right in its blind spot.
The attack came fast from behind, but the creature was unnaturally agile. The beast didn't even turn to look. Its thick legs coiled instantly, and it launched itself completely out of the way in a blur of muscle and fur.
Boom!
The condensed air slammed into the empty street where the monster had just stood. The explosive force ripped a massive crater into the ground, shattering solid chunks of gray asphalt and spraying heavy debris everywhere.
Henry wasn't exactly a true mage. In fact, calling him a spellcaster was a stretch. His combat style was a brutal workaround he had developed back when he served the Vornshade Clan. While he possessed both a Qi core and a Mana core, he was entirely cursed with zero natural magic affinity.
To actually wield magic, he had to rely entirely on intricate spell runes. That was the secret behind the dark tattoos covering his skin. By permanently etching these magical arrays into his flesh, he completely bypassed the need for slow incantations, allowing for rapid-fire casting.
Whenever he shot an airball, those tattooed runes allowed him to keep a mental grip on the processed wind. It let him bend the air's path, redirecting it to chase down targets even if his initial shot missed.
'It should have hit,' Henry thought, his teeth gritting together as he hung from the balcony.
But he had miscalculated. He simply hadn't accounted for the terrifying speed, strength, and unpredictable instincts of this new werewolf variant.
Without missing a beat after dodging the initial attack, the werewolf kicked off the broken pavement. It launched itself straight through the rising dust and raining debris of the explosion, completely ignoring the sharp shrapnel bouncing off its thick hide. The beast leaped directly toward Henry, soaring incredibly high and terrifyingly fast.
Still hanging from the balcony, Henry desperately aimed his free hand and fired a rapid barrage of compressed air blasts. But the monster was just too quick. Every single shot whiffed past the creature in mid-air, allowing the heavy werewolf to slam right into the wall directly above Henry, its thick claws digging deep into the concrete.
But Henry wasn't finished. Using his tattoos, he mentally yanked the missed airballs back around.
Boom!
The first sphere of condensed wind slammed heavily into the werewolf's back, driving the massive beast right through the exterior wall and into the ruined building. Before the creature could even try to recover, the rest of the redirected attacks arrived from behind.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The rapid succession of explosive impacts was too much for the already damaged structure. The entire building groaned and shook violently under Henry's fingers. Not wasting a single second, he pushed off the railing and dropped safely to the ground below.
He landed heavily and spun around just in time to watch the facade give way. With a deafening roar, the upper floors crumbled brick by brick until the entire structure collapsed in on itself, throwing up a massive, blinding cloud of thick gray dust.
'That should be enough, right?' Henry thought, his chest heaving as he stared at the mountain of rubble.
To him, any normal creature would have been crushed to death under hundreds of tons of falling concrete and steel. But just as he tried to catch his breath, a heavy shifting sound echoed from within the wreckage.
Heavy slabs of stone were tossed aside, and bricks loudly ground together. Through the thick, lingering dust cloud, a massive, hunched silhouette slowly rose back to its feet.
Henry instinctively took a step back.
Gritting his teeth, he instantly drew on his reserves. He clenched his fist, and a highly condensed ball of air formed violently in his palm before he fired it straight ahead.
The explosive projectile tore forward, carving a clear tunnel through the heavy dust cloud as it shot directly for the dark figure. But right before the attack could connect, the massive silhouette simply vanished from sight.
The airball struck nothing but empty rubble.
Boom!
The explosive wave of air blasted outward from the point of impact, acting like a violent gust of wind that swept away the thick cloud of concrete dust.
With the air suddenly clear, Henry could finally see the point of impact. There was nothing but an empty crater. The werewolf had completely evaded the strike.
A split second later, a cold, heavy spike of dread washed over Henry's entire body. His survival instincts screamed at him.
He snapped his head to the side. The mutated werewolf was already airborne, leaping directly at him from a blind angle. Its jaws were completely unhinged, exposing that terrifying, bottomless pit of a throat, ready to snap him in half.
But before Henry could even brace for the fatal bite, a massive shadow suddenly eclipsed the space directly above him.
A heavy, dark shape soared through the air, perfectly intercepting the leaping monster. It was an entire car. The chassis was dented and broken, but it still retained its massive weight and heavy steel frame, and it had been hurled through the air like a baseball directly into the beast's path.
Boom!
The heavy vehicle crashed into the beast mid-leap. The sheer kinetic force violently swatted the werewolf backward. It slammed brutally into the asphalt, the heavy metal car rolling over and forcefully pinning the struggling monster down against the ruined street.
Breathing heavily, Henry immediately spun around to see who had just saved his life. Standing a few paces behind him was Jimmy.
"How the hell were you able to hurl a whole car like that?" Henry asked, his voice laced with absolute shock.
Jimmy blinked, looking just as confused as his partner.
"Me?" Jimmy asked. "I didn't throw any car."
"Don't you dare give someone else my credit," a smooth, familiar voice called out from the darkness.
This time, Jimmy spun around as well. Through the settling dust, the two battered fighters could clearly see three distinct figures confidently walking toward them.
"Zephyr! Lennox! Isla!" Jimmy yelled, his voice cracking. Seeing the trio arrive, he looked like he was practically on the verge of tears.