allendalepharm Chapter 54, I was right, 9.
Chapter 54, I was right, 9.
The wolf has no name, but Shorttail gave himself the name "Shorttail".
The demon wolf has no reason, but the short-tailed wolf can remain sober even during the demon tide.
The Demon Wolves have no future, but Shorttail believes he can lead his pack out of the Rift.
Short-tailed is not something that is called "short-tailed" by nature.
Born thin and with a short tail, it was always the last wolf in the pack, forever following behind its stronger companions, waiting to be torn apart by others.
When it's hungry, it eats rotten flesh; when it's thirsty, it seeks out puddles; if anyone tries to hit it, it shrinks back and finds a corner to stay in.
Their lives were no different from those of jackals and hyenas in the wilderness, constantly struggling to find enough to eat.
Every day, only one thought keeps swirling in my mind: how to get a piece of rotten meat to fill my stomach.
As a result, it often fought with its equally thin and weak counterparts, tearing each other apart in the mud until they bled profusely.
That's the rule of the wolf pack: the strong eat, the weak go hungry, there's nothing more to say about it.
But everything changed the day it became a "short tail".
That day, the skinny short-tailed wolf, as usual, followed behind the alpha wolf "Old One-Eyed," whose body was as big as a small mountain, with its tail between its legs, and participated in a hunt.
The prey were a group of arrogant, two-legged beasts dressed in flashy armor.
The outcome of the battle was a foregone conclusion.
Under the wolf pack's blockade, the panicked two-legged creatures were no match for the wolves' coordinated and tacit attack.
Soon, as the strong smell of blood spread, the last few prey gradually ran out of strength and began to stagger.
With the prey about to fall, the main event for the wolf pack begins: the battle for food.
Beasts tainted by chaotic energy have no concept of sharing. How much flesh and blood they can tear from their prey depends entirely on the strength of their mouths and the hardness of their sharp teeth.
Normally at times like this, Shorttail would only dare to hide a few steps away, waiting for his companions to finish eating and drinking before gnawing on some scraps of bone.
But that day, it was so hungry that it became dizzy.
So much so that it rushed forward recklessly and snatched a delicious bite of food from under the old one-eyed man's paw.
The cost was devastating.
In a fit of rage, the old one-eyed wolf ripped almost its entire tail off with a single claw strike, leaving it no time to dodge.
This skinny wolf, which originally had no name, became known as "Short Tail" from then on.
The terrible price paid was the severed hand of a two-legged beast, still attached to half of its ornate clothing.
Shorttail, dragging its spoils, hid in a corner and wolfed them down, chewing them to pieces, skin and bones alike.
It ate too quickly, so much so that a cold, hard foreign object got stuck in the gap between its back molars.
【Name: 9 Wisdom Ring】
[Rank: Bronze+]
[Effect: Sets the wearer's Intelligence to a constant 9 points (only effective for those below Diamond rank)]
[Note: "I said the 9-wielding brute is the true orthodox, are you deaf?" — Anonymous Sun Knight]
Shorttail, of course, didn't understand what enchanted equipment was. It only knew that this thing made it very uncomfortable, but it couldn't swallow it.
But ever since then, the monotonous world that Shorttail saw as filled only with killing and bloodshed has changed.
From the wild, instinctive beast within his mind, a clear logic, unlike anything he had ever known before, gradually emerged.
Every time they encountered a dense purple demonic tide, while all their companions were dominated by violent emotions and only knew how to tear apart any living thing, Shorttail was able to maintain a strange clarity.
It no longer rushes around like a madman, but has learned to observe from the shadows.
When hunting, it can use the terrain to silently guide its companions to ambush it, and its tactics are often more efficient than those of the old one-eyed man who only knows how to use brute force.
It even knows how to distinguish the different types of fungal mats that emit different eerie lights, and quietly cultivates a small patch of mutated mushrooms that do not spit out deadly spores, in preparation for times of food shortage.
With this extra "wisdom," several "little brothers" gradually gathered around Short Tail who obeyed its every word.
As it hunted more prey, Shorttail's physique grew stronger without it even realizing it, and it even showed signs of succeeding Old One-Eyed as the next alpha wolf of this first level of the Rift Ruins.
It once dared to sneak out of the cave entrance of the Rift Ruins by passing through the purple light curtain.
However, in an environment devoid of the rich aura of chaos, its body weakened within a few hours, forcing it to flee back to its cave in a sorry state.
But the vast and boundless world outside was like an obsession that could never be shaken off, firmly rooted in its mind.
[Once I outlive the old one-eyed wolf and become the alpha, I will definitely lead my pack to break free from this underground prison!]
This is Shorttail's grand dream. For a Chaos Beast that barely reaches the Black Iron rank, it is truly astonishing.
……
To this day, all dreams have been crushed to pieces.
Shorttail has no clear understanding of the "Demon Tide Period," but it hates this time of year.
Because at times like these, the disgusting mushrooms will indiscriminately spray spores, and their companions will once again descend into a berserk state, indiscriminately attacking friend and foe.
The clumsy two-legged creatures seem to have disappeared, no longer coming into the cave in droves to "bring food" during this time.
Just as Shorttail was about to go to its own mushroom ranch to get some clean mushrooms to fill its stomach, it saw a "tin can biped" with a furry little pet perched on its shoulder walk in.
[Something's not right, something's very wrong. How could a two-legged creature have wandered in at a time like this? And there's only one.]
Caution caused Shorttail to stop immediately and hide behind a huge rock to observe.
But "Old One-Eyed" wasn't as cautious as Short-Tail. Influenced by the demonic tide, it only saw fresh flesh and blood, and pounced on it with its equally crazed companions.
Next, Shorttail witnessed the most terrifying scene of its life.
At first, the little tuft of fur on the shoulder of the tin can suddenly transformed into a skeletal dog with eerie blue flames, its sharp claws gleaming coldly as it mercilessly pinned its strong companions to the ground and tore them apart.
Then, the three old, one-eyed henchmen, who were usually so arrogant and strong, couldn't even break through the iron sheet. Instead, they were cut in half at the waist by the two-legged beast with a swing of its heavy sword. The most ferocious of them, the gray wolf, even had its head crushed by a stomp of its iron boot.
Then, this two-legged creature dressed as a knight, using some kind of sorcery, pieced together the mangled corpses of its companions—which had been torn to pieces just moments before—in a nauseating creaking sound, into a deformed monster with three heads!
Just now, the three-headed monster, with a ferocious and overwhelming force, pinned the much stronger alpha wolf, "Old One-Eyed," to the ground, and with its three gaping maws, tore him into bloody fragments scattered all over the ground.
Finally, the tin can produced a large pot from somewhere, and actually threw in all the mutilated corpses of its companions and the poisonous mushrooms that emitted seven-colored light, slowly simmering them into a thick soup!
Shorttail has been completely terrified.
It huddled behind a rock, its body trembling uncontrollably, with a pool of yellowish-brown, foul-smelling liquid spreading beneath it.
"Click".
With a soft thud, the terrifying two-legged creature casually tossed over a piece of the wolf's long, thick leg bone, which had been gnawed clean.
The bone bounced twice on the fungus-covered ground, rolled over to the short-tailed creature's hiding place, and came to rest beside its paws.
"Awooo—"
With a panicked howl, Shorttail went berserk, sprinting on all fours across the slippery cave floor, desperately rushing toward the purple light curtain at the exit of the rift.
The glory of the Demon Wolf race, the dream of breaking out of the Rift, and the unbearable environment outside were all forgotten.
All I want is to escape this devilish, tin can-like two-legged beast!
……
……
"Hey? Why isn't this wolf eating the bones?"
Luo Lan was stewing a "mushroom and meat stew" when she discovered a demonic wolf staring at her from behind a rock using her "thermal vision." She thought it wanted something to eat, but why did it run away when she threw a bone at it?
"Ah Gou, do you want some?"
"No. The eating behavior of organic organisms makes no sense to me."