Chapter 112
“Mm…mmm…” Destiny’s eyes fluttered open as her eyes focused on the man under her. “Ahhh!”
She cried and rolled away, getting tangled in her bedding in the process. I lifted an eyebrow as I watched her struggle for a solid minute before she finally freed herself of her betting.
“Are you okay?” I asked in amusement.
“Wh-what do you think you’re doing?” She demanded. “Why were you in my bedding?”
I cocked my head. “I wasn’t?”
“Don’t be coy, I woke up right next to you!”
“You’re the one who crawled over to me in your sleep,” I responded helplessly. “We’re nowhere near the fire where you went to bed. I moved three times but you kept following me before I gave up.”
Her eyes followed mine to where the ashes remained on the other side of the room. Finally, realization struck her and her face turned red. I didn’t make it up either. She had crawled over to me in the night and cuddled me. Of course, I had used Decoupling to heat my body so I admitted warmth. Once the heat in the bricks put under her bedding cooled off within this chilly underground cave, she naturally gravitated toward the warmest thing in the room.
“You said you’d wake me up for watch…” She touched her fingers as she tried to change the subject.
“You seemed so deep in sleep, I didn’t want to wake you,” I responded with a smile.
Her blush deepened as she stood up, keeping her back to me so I couldn’t see more of her embarrassed face. “Never mind that. It’s probably morning now. We should get a move on.”
I nodded in agreement and stood up, patting myself off from dust. The pair of us left the cavern. This time, I led her to the quickest route to the cavern exit without encountering anything dangerous.
“Hmm?” I noticed something in my mana sense and couldn’t help but make a noise.
“What is it?” Destiny asked.
“It’s nothing.” I smiled, even though the torchlight from our last torch didn’t reach my face. “Let’s try this direction.”
I had detected some more mana signatures entering the cave, and I was pretty sure it was Shui and one other. It was now down to just the two of them which suggested they had lost another. I was expecting them to run across the valley, or perhaps they had already tried and failed. Either way, they were now in the cave system. I had thought about bypassing them completely and leaving them to walk around the cave systems aimlessly, but that would likely lead to Shui’s death.
Although I had no respect for Shui, I understood that his disappearance would cause Destiny and me a lot of trouble. Even if someone believed we were able to survive an event that wiped out his entire party, it would still lead to unnecessary inquiry, especially into my own life. It might even get back to Mara, and while I was somewhat confident that her family would protect her, I wasn’t sure to what extent a branch family had power over the other major families of this city.
Thus, I started leading her toward Shui and his friend. We moved hand in hand down the darkened corridors. Destiny seemed to move quite timidly since the previous night, and when I looked back, her head was down shyly. The previous day, her hand had held her mind tightly like she was afraid, but now her hand was gentler as if she trusted me to lead the way.
“Shouldn’t we be going…” I heard a mumble of a voice before understanding what they said.
Destiny’s hand tightened worriedly.
“It will get out that we brought Lady Lou here. If we return without her, dead won’t begin to describe our situation. Elder Lou will have us strung up by our big toes. Death would be a blessing at that point.”
“Yeah, but we already found the spot where the cave-in happened. She wasn’t there. Chances are that an infernal wolf got her. It’s not like that mortal could have protected her at all.”
“Don’t even remind me of that idiot. If I run into him, I’m going to-”
“Shui?” Destiny’s voice rang out questioningly just in time to interrupt the good part.
I wasn’t sure if she did it on purpose or not, but my eyes still flashed as I guessed what he would have said.
“Destiny?” There was an answer after a brief pause. “Destiny!”
We could hear steps and then the glowing form of two men appeared. They weren’t using a torch like me, but some kind of stone that let off a faint green light. It was weaker than the torch, but it was more steady and consistent. That was for the best. The torch only had a few minutes of light left, and I might have needed to pretend to crawl our way out the last few hundred feet had it gone out completely.
Shui’s eyes immediately fell flat, his excitement cooling like steel in water as he laid eyes on me in front, with Destiny holding my hand. That had to be an emotional blow. I fought the urge to grin at him. It wasn’t the time for a confrontation anyway.
“You survived?” The one beside Shui seemed shocked.
Shui hit his chest. “Of course she survived! As expected of the youngest lady of the house Lou.”
She winced slightly at his words. “I didn’t do much. We just wondered… uh… and took a nap until morning.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. Let’s get you out of here and back to the city. We’re in danger. There is a Wolf King in these hills. Just reporting it will provide some prestige.”
“A wolf king?” Destiny’s expression grew a bit scared again.
Shui puffed up his chest. “Don’t worry. We have something that can hold him back. If the worst case happens, just run as fast as you can, okay?”
“Ah… y-yeah…”
“Then, we’ll follow you.” I grinned.
He jerked slightly. But he also understood the situation and gave a stiff nod. He was likely thinking he’d use me as a meat shield while they ran. Well, we’d see who ended up being whose meat shield.
The four of us headed toward the exit. Shui seemed to already know the way, so I had no reason to speak up. This was the entrance they had entered, which was why the wolves had already been taken care of. I found a few wolf corpses as we headed out, although the lighting was likely too low for Destiny to make them out. As we finally reached the entrance, I felt something powerful coming up from behind.
Although I didn’t warn anybody, I did suddenly move forward toward the entrance with Desting in hand, like being excited to see the light. This naturally put us farther away from the back of the cave where multiple presences were now coming at a rapid speed.
“Wait!” Shui cursed, running after us. “We don’t know if the Wolf King is still out there.”
“Ah! The Wolf King?” Destiny stopped, preventing me from tugging her forward.
Her fear of that beast must have been no joke. She wasn’t the only one. The Wolf King was probably the real reason Shui had hidden in the caves. They likely had seen the Wolf King waiting in the valley below and realized there was no chance they could get passed them, so they went looking in the caves to buy themselves some time. Well, I could sense out in the valley, and I knew he was behind us. Shui only took a few steps before he finally seemed to sense it too.
“Damn it, run!” Shui cursed as soon as he realized he had been mistaken.
Unfortunately, Destiny was still confused and we had stopped right between him and the doorway. That caused a few seconds delay, but it was all that the wolves needed before they reached us. Before anything else, there was a hot gust of wind, and then there was a low rumble of a beast growling. Everyone couldn’t help but look back.
The light from the entrance of the cave overwhelmed the light of the stone the pair were carrying, but neither was needed as the creature stepping forward from the darkness seemed to emit its light. It looked similar to an infernal wolf, although the fiery impressions of its fur were real. Flames seemed to occasionally erupt around its paws and its mouth breathed out steam. It was the size of the cave, which explained why they didn’t explore the lower caverns which were simply too small and tight for this creature.
Heat emanated from the creature as it stepped forward, and it gave off a pressure that paralyzed Destiny and even caused Shui to shake where he was standing. So, this was the Infernal Wolf King, the highest evolution of an Infernal Wolf Leader. It was at four evolutions, but that likely meant that it could fight at the fifth evolution level. It might even give a sixth evolution, a King evolved, a higher level than I had ever met before, trouble if it fought with its pack.
Setting aside the dragon which was illusory, this was the strongest opponent I had ever faced!
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