Chapter 216: Death of the Lone Wolf [Part 1]
Chapter 216: Death of the Lone Wolf [Part 1]
Every time it rained, there would always be new characters who would step onto the stage that was the forest. They might be nobodies at the beginning, but they often climbed the food chain steadily and eventually amazed the world.
The rain that was growing bigger and bigger captured the particles suspended in mid air and fell to the ground, washing the fog away. The blurry sceneries slowly grew clearer and clearer.
The giant lizards seemed to like today’s rain a lot. They were all hanging out on the outside and allowing the rain to pour over their bodies.
On the other side of the forest, Oskulos walked unhurriedly without riding a hoverboard or piloting a spaceplane.
Oskulos’ strength lay more on his acute perceptivity. He could always, always find the prey he was seeking for. This was the perceptivity only a top class Hunter possessed.
Oskulos liked solving problems using a primitive method.
Jiada once said that Oskulos was a cruel and very conceited person. The only time he tinkered with machines was when he was absent minded, and in fact he trusted in his own abilities far more than he trusted any other. No person or machine could change his mind even if he was in the wrong.
It was why the leaders of violent groups who were connected to Oskulos – the Skull King Carranio for example – more or less picked up this habit from Oskulos.
Oskulos didn’t use any machine. He simply covered his head with the head cover of his jacket and walked alone in the rain. He thought that machines were irritating objects that just wouldn’t stop chattering.
Cillin would’ve been impressed if he knew of Oskulos’ ability to understand the machine language. However, Oskulos was not a person who accepted the counsel of others.
Oskulos put away his blade. He disliked having his blade being touched by anything but blood, and these ‘dirty’ raindrops especially were completely out of the question.
Oskulos’ footsteps weren’t quick, but they had a clear purpose behind them. He would walk down a certain direction he chose without ever wondering if he had made the wrong choice, or if his prey was there. The direction Oskulos chose to walk towards was exactly where Cillin was currently at -the lizard nest.
Right now, Cillin was concentrating on recovering while hiding inside the lizards’ cave. The fast-acting medicines he had prepared since a while ago had already been injected, not to mention that his recovery speed was already astonishingly quick even without the agents.
The many big and small blade wounds that riddled Cillin’s body were starting to recover. In fact, the smaller and shallower wounds were starting to form scabs already. The bigger and deeper wounds were swiftly recovering as cut muscles became connected, folded, and fused into one just like before.
The broken nerves at several spots inside his body were also extending, linking and connecting with each other by themselves. Blood began to flow normally inside his blood once more.
His crushed bones were healed in silence. Every step was perfect, and every recovery was on point like they were calculated and executed like a program.
Respiration, Genya once said. Humans had different respirations for different situations, and one could determine a human’s physical condition just by checking their respiration.
The human body had a best respiratory pattern when it was conducting spontaneous healing. The fastest recovery was achievable with the use of medicine only when the human was breathing under this pattern. Many people who had experienced life or death situations wouldn’t purposely try to regulate their breathing patterns while they were recovering. Instead, they would obey their instincts and respire naturally, especially after experience had trained their bodies to get used to this rhythm. Cillin was one of them.
He didn’t need to change it on purpose. His breathing naturally switched into another frequency.
Cillin checked every wound on his body and how they were recovering by feeling while his eyes were closed. He perceived his surroundings through the information conducted by every pore and every hair on his body.
Heartbeats. There were a lot of heartbeats around this area, and Cillin’s was not the only one.
There were plenty of lizard eggs inside this lizard nest, and heartbeats of different strength could be heard from them. Cillin was hidden amidst this lizard eggs, and their heartbeats provided the greatest mask for his.
As for the lizards outside the cave, the agents Cillin had fired into their mouths had seeped into every part of the giant lizards’ body. The effects of the agent wouldn’t be too obvious in such a short frame of time, however. As long as these giant lizards’ weren’t experiencing strong emotional turmoil, the agents wouldn’t reveal their effects immediately.
Still recovering, Cillin suddenly opened his eyes and stared towards a certain direction outside the cave.
It wasn’t long before the giant lizards outside the cave also looked down that direction. Their long tongues flicked, and their icy cold eyes stared straight towards it. Their natural instincts informed them that a troublesome fellow was heading their way.
The forest rain came as quickly as they came. Sunlight shone through the clouds and into the forest.
Lively green sprouts appeared on the meadow stretching all the way from the forest to the nest. A drop of water fell off a tender leaf and caused a ripple to appear on a puddle.
A spider-like insect that was even smaller than a sesame climbed down the leaf, dragging a sparkling and translucent thread behind its back.
Rustle. Rustle.
A figure slowly appeared from the shadows of the forest. It was Oskulos.
He didn’t conceal his tracks or footsteps in the slightest. The fear that permeated from his prey when they heard his footsteps pleased him.
Oskulos looked at the lizards in front of him. These ferocious-looking creatures were nothing but tiny preys in his eyes; the kind of prey he could take out with the mere flick of his blade.
“Did you think that you can escape me by hiding inside these little reptiles’ cave?” Oskulos laughed softly. His laughter was neither loud nor oppressive, but it made Cillin feel like the sky was painted with blood out of nowhere.
The outermost lizard crawled towards Oskulos, spitting its long tongue and swinging its large tail left and right in the process. The grass all around it were crushed into bits.
Oskulos didn’t move out of the way even though the lizard was crawling towards him. In fact, he was watching his pitiful prey’s movement with interest.
The lizard crawled faster and faster, scattering mud as its claws struck against the ground.
A metallic white flash cut the lizard in half just as it opened its big mouth full of teeth and attempted to bite Oskulos. Blood sprayed everywhere as it became mixed with the puddles that hadn’t yet dried on the earth.
Cillin closed his eyes once more, concentrating on recovering as quickly as possible. He ignored Oskulos, who wasn’t far away from the cave entrance currently.
The hunt had just begun.
The lizards grew angry when they saw their companion being killed, and the blood stench in the air awakened their innate ruthlessness even more. They howled out hoarsely and climbed swiftly towards Oskulos.
Oskulos narrowed his eyes this time, however.
The lizards were changing, swiftly and all-encompassing as if someone was inflating their bodies with air. They grew bigger with every step they took, and as their cells were stimulated by the agents to divide more and more the lizards grew bigger faster and faster as well. Their thick, rough skin was also getting thicker as the thorns behind their back protruded like long spears.
The earth shook stronger and stronger with every step they took.
When the lizards made their way to Oskulos’ front, they had swelled almost ten times their original size already.
Oskulos cut down five lizards in five hits during the time he lifted his blade, but this time they were not decapitated in half like the very first lizard. The wounds he inflicted on the five lizards quickly healed and stopped bleeding. Moreover, they had grown even bigger during the short time he spent to cut them down.
Oskulos swept a glance at his surroundings. More than 80% of the lizards were starting to swell up, and they were all turning ruthless. The remaining lizards that hadn’t transformed were bloodily eaten by the giant lizards.
Oskulos didn’t know if the lizards’ changes had something to do with Cillin, but one thing was certain: he chose to hide here because he knew that these giant lizards would undergo such a transformation.
The agent Cillin had fired into the lizards’ mouth was in fact the biomass he extracted from the giant tree of that plant only planet. A few relevant tweaks later, the biomass was modified into the agent that was acting on the lizards right now. These agents granted the lizards tremendous physical boosts, but also robbed them of their self awareness. The unnatural transformation made them ruthless and bloodthirsty, which was why they had attacked their untransformed kind.
The dozens of transformed lizards charged straight towards Oskulos. Naturally, this wasn’t an easy battle even for Oskulos.
This absolutely didn’t mean that Oskulos couldn’t cut these giant lizards in half, however.
Inside the cave, Cillin’s eyes were still closed. But there was a gun in his hands that was being manually loaded right now.
Although Cillin’s movements were very quiet, Oskulos could hear them clearly outside the cave. His danger intuition was especially active right now. Cillin had prepared that gun purposely to deal with Oskulos, and Oskulos himself could sense a great danger coming from the weapon. That was why he was especially attentive of Cillin’s movements.
The moment the giant lizards pounced towards Oskulos, Cillin abruptly opened his eyes, raised his hand and fired every bullet inside the gun chamber.
The lizard cave wasn’t shaped like a straight line. Technically, there was a small curve that kept Cillin from seeing outside from where he was. But not only did Cillin’s bullets travel along a strange, curved trajectory to exit the cave, they slipped through the gaps between the giant lizards perfectly to hit Oskulos’ guard.
Oskulos waved his blade and blocked every bullet that came at him. Oskulos didn’t want to use an energy shield even though possessed one; he felt like it was an admission of weakness if he were to use it. Moreover, an energy shield would slow him down, not to mention that he trusted himself more than an energy shield.
Had Oskulos been someone else – had he been Cillin himself – he wouldn’t have the time to fight those pouncing lizards and block the bullets at the same time. After all, those giant lizards could crush a human being with a single foot.
But Oskulos could.
His blade flashed to block the bullets and cut the foremost giant lizard that tried and failed to flatten the tiny Oskulos in its eyes in half at nearly the same time.
The lizard was now a hundred or so meters long, not five meters. And yet Oskulos cut it in half all the same.
This slash shouldn’t be underestimated under any circumstances. It contained too many factors to account for such as a powerful concentration, a perfect fusion between the mind and the blade, a skillful, consummate and unhesitating blade technique, and many more. Although the blade only entered one third of its body, the wound split open towards the other side by itself as if a powerful energy was literally tearing this gigantic body in half.
The blade moved so quickly that it was impossible to see. The only thing that was left was a decapitated giant lizard.
And this was just the beginning. Before the rest of the giant lizards could react, Oskulos decapitated them one after another. No matter how many layers of hardened skin they added, no matter how much tougher their muscles and bones became, they were all just pitiful little preys beneath Oskulos’ blade. That was all.
The blood covering the ground grew thicker and thicker. They started to spread towards the surroundings.
Absorbed in the excitement of blade cutting through flesh, Oskulos didn’t notice that some of the grass in the surroundings were starting to grow at a frenzied rate towards his direction. Moreover, thin, weightless threads where a tiny, spider-like creature the size of half a sesame was clinging to one end were gliding by along with the wind.
Some of these spider-like creatures landed on the ground, but some of them had landed on Oskulos’ body instead. Even those that had landed on the ground were crawling towards Oskulos.
The dozens of transformed giant lizards were decapitated before a breath’s time was even over. Their giant bodies spasmed on the ground as blood gushed continuously out of their wounds.
Oskulos was going to seek out Cillin after the lizard decapitation when his footsteps came to a sudden stop. He watched his surroundings vigilantly.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
Vines rolled in from every direction as if they had found a most delicious animal to feed on.
Oskulos had seen many strange plants in his life, and he knew that plants were in many occasions deadlier than animals. That was why Oskulos had cut them all apart.
But these plants were grew way too quickly. They looked like they could grow endlessly unless he were to pull out their very roots.
Oskulos slashed at the vines and sent both soil and vine flying into the air. However, he quickly discovered that these vines weren’t like the ones he saw that died the moment they left the ground. These vines didn’t stop growing even after they were thrown into the air, and they quickly regrew their roots the moment they landed back on the ground. Moreover, a vine that was cut into several chunks simply regrew into multiple vines.
That one vine that landed on the halved giant lizards had grown especially quickly after it sank its roots into the giant lizard’s body.
Oskulos cut down the attacking vines while he searched for an opportunity to butcher the brat hiding inside the cave.
It was at this moment a tiny bit of sound came from inside the cave. Oskulos could sense that Cillin was walking towards the cave entrance.
Hmph. Is that kid trying to mount a sneak attack?!
It wasn’t that Oskulos looked down on Cillin only; he looked down on anyone who wasn’t a Star Rank Hunter or Heavenly Edict General. To him, this scheming and tricky little bastard was just a young lad who had experienced neither much of the world nor life and death situations.
But although he looked down upon Cillin, Oskulos still split part of his attention on Cillin while he cut down the frenziedly growing vines.
The second Cillin walked out of the cave, Oskulos abruptly turned around, sped up, and sent a slash right at Cillin. He was swift, but Cillin was prepared for the attack since a while ago. He activated the energy shield on his body.
However, the energy shield was shattered almost as quickly as it started.
The fact that Oskulos’ blade was able to cut through the energy shield powered by a special energy ore and remain perfectly intact showed just how excellent its materials were.
But although Cillin’s energy shield was shattered, Oskulos’ movements were ultimately slowed a little. Cillin took the opportunity to fire another round of fiber needles at Oskulos, and when Oskulos moved his blade to block the needles he seized the opening to hit Oskulos once. The strike didn’t hit Oskulos’ vital spot, and Cillin couldn’t find a second opportunity to try the same thing again, so he had no choice but to move on to Plan B.
Although Cillin managed to deal a hit to Oskulos’ arm, his own waist was cut by Oskulos’ blade. A new injury was inflicted upon his body before he was able to recover in full.
The wound at his waist didn’t slow Cillin down. He ran quickly away from the area.
After he had blocked the fibre needles and cut apart the vines catching up to him from behind, Oskulos exerted strength into his legs and chased after Cillin.
But just as his blade was about to reach the back of Cillin’s heart, a daze suddenly assaulted his senses.
Oskulos was a veteran after all. He quickly realized the abnormality in his body and the tiny things that had crawled into his flesh.
He never realized that these tiny things that he initially thought were forest spiders were in fact parasites until now. In fact, they were poisonous parasites!
Oskulos stopped chasing after Cillin temporarily because he knew just how deadly these little things were. He mobilised his muscles and even some internal organs inside his body.
His muscles abruptly clenched tight and squeezed all the parasites inside his body to death.
Cillin, who hadn’t yet ran far away from Oskulos couldn’t help but feel amazed by the sight. To this day, Oskulos was literally the only person he saw to possess such capabilities. Forget squeezing a parasite to death inside one’s body, no one else he met could even stop the parasites’ from advancing.
You definitely can crush the parasites inside your body, but can you endure the toxins they secrete, Oskulos?