Chapter 407: Battle of the Rock Mountain — Red-Light Wolf Skin and the Trap for the Wolf King

The Northland wolves first let out a chorus of howls, then, led by adult wolves, groups of two or three nearly-adult pups formed lines that could fit within the Rock Passage, pressing tightly together as they formally entered the Rock Passage.

They crossed over the remains of the original first Wooden Wall, its surface covered in debris; the lingering heat of the ashes at the bottom scorched the fur on the bellies and paws of the Northland wolves as they ran over it. The pups lacked endurance, and as they crossed this still-hot section, they let out bursts of miserable yelps while running.

The adult wolves, disdainful of the pups' lack of endurance, shook their heads and bumped into the yelping pups, forcing them to quiet down and behave.

After crossing the first burnt-out Wooden Wall and turning a corner in the Rock Passage, they formally entered the Second Position designed by Jier.

When the first row of Northland wolves appeared in the eyes of Jier and his group, an old Hunter roared, "Loose arrows! Coordinate and aim for one at a time!"

They had learned from previous experience; after all, due to the terrain, it was difficult for the Northland wolves to leverage their numerical advantage. But at the same time, the Hunters were also unable to utilize the long-range capabilities of their Hunting Bows due to the constraints of the Rock Passage.

From the moment the Northland wolves emerged at the turn in the passage ahead to the Second Position at Jier's feet, it was only about thirty meters long in total; this distance was truly too close, basically about the same length as the backyard behind their house in Kendall City, and even narrower than that backyard where they practiced shooting.

Such a short shooting distance naturally limited the Hunters' advantage in attack range; at this moment, considering the speed of the Northland wolves' charge, they could loose at most one or two volleys of arrows. These few arrows were unlikely to deliver a fatal attack to the Northland wolves facing them head-on.

Thus, the old Hunter in command requested that everyone try their best to volley at one or two targets, striving to kill one or two Northland wolves with a single round of shooting.

Furthermore, do not forget, they still had the Metal Clamps scattered throughout the passage ahead to help with the defense.

The sound of arrows whizzing through the air rang out, and the vibration of bowstrings also echoed around Jier; he hurriedly took a Sugar Pill he had hidden in a small pouch on his Armor Belt and stuffed it into his mouth. He immediately closed his Faceplate, and because the situation was urgent, no one paid any attention to his small movements.

Jier actually did not want to use this semi-homemade pill so frequently; after all, every time he finished using it, his eyes and brain would ache for a while, although the aftereffects had lessened quite a bit in the last few times he used it. But Jier was not stupid; the symptoms lessening did not mean the pill caused him no harm, it could only be said that his body might have gradually adapted to the aftereffects brought about by this pill.

He chewed the pill in his mouth carefully, then swallowed it.

The battle before his eyes had gradually become intense.

The Northland wolves targeted by the Hunters were instantly struck by multiple arrows, their heads and faces bristling with sharp shafts. The techniques and experience of the old Hunters were very formidable; even in such a tense situation, the four of them still steadily struck the Northland wolves in the eyes or front paws. Hitting an eye had a high probability of killing a Northland wolf, and hitting the front paw of a running Northland wolf would cause it to trip, not only falling itself but also tripping the Northland wolves behind it, increasing the speed of the Northland wolves charging from behind.

As for the young Hunters, they were satisfied just to land their arrows on the Northland wolves during the tense moments.

Fortunately, they were not fighting with arrows alone at this moment.

Crack, crack-crack.

Continuously, the Northland wolves had their legs and paws caught by the Metal Clamps on the ground. After a howl of pain, they were tripped, and subsequently, they were either struck in the torso by new arrows or trampled over by the Northland wolves following behind.

The continuous Metal Clamps greatly hindered the charging Northland wolves; some timid pups were even terrified, slowing down and not daring to move forward upon seeing the Metal Clamps ahead, but the other Northland wolves behind them pushed them, and they were still shoved forward and then caught.

Swish, swish, swish, swish.

The Hunters were all firing rapidly; they often used their fingers to pinch a handful of arrows directly from the quiver at their waists, and after drawing them, they used skillful techniques to place the arrows one by one onto the bowstring, then drew the bow and fired after a quick, rough aim.

The other arrows between their fingers would then be nocked with a new arrow.

And as the Northland wolves charged forward bravely, even though the Hunters tried their best, in a very short time, one Northland wolf after another rushed to the front of the Second Position.

Jier stood on the Wooden Wall and exerted his strength to thrust his Metal Spear downward, directly and fiercely piercing the spine of a Northland wolf; he pulled out the spear and then thrust it diagonally from the side through the belly of another Northland wolf.

Just as Jier was pulling out his spear, a Northland wolf tried to bite the shaft of Jier's spear with its mouth full of sharp teeth, but Jier swung the spear directly, and the hard wooden shaft smashed several of the biting Northland wolf's teeth.

The Long Spear was becoming difficult to manage; more and more Northland wolves rushed over, then stepped on the spines of the Northland wolves Jier had wounded, using their running speed to try to charge directly onto the Human Wooden Wall.

He would not let them have their way at all; Jier knew the Long Spear could not handle it anymore, so he immediately let go of the spear in his hand, letting it fall off the Wooden Wall, and then drew his Hunting Sword directly from his waist, using the momentum of drawing the sword to split the chin of the Northland wolf trying to charge up, cleaving the lower half of the wolf's mouth in two.

Pushing the wounded Northland wolf down with his left hand, Jier took off the Shield on his back, hurriedly took it in his left hand, and while walking to the right, he strapped the Shield onto his left forearm.

"Over here! They're coming up!"

Another Northland wolf leaped up; the Wooden Wall, built according to the width of the passage, was not large, and Jier rushed over in two steps, first using the Shield to hold the Northland wolf back, and then the young Hunter beside him fired an arrow at zero distance, pressing against the Northland wolf's head; the arrow drilled directly into the Northland wolf's eyeball, killing it.

"Dead!" the young Hunter shouted, alerting Jier to the situation of the Northland wolf on the other side of the Shield.

Upon hearing his words, Jier pushed forward with the Shield, throwing the Northland wolf three meters away; it fell to the front, smashing into two pups.

"Shoot the Northland wolves further away; leave the ones that charge over to Jier!" The old Hunter in command trusted Jier's close-combat ability quite a bit, so he directly adjusted the Hunters' targets, making the Northland wolves at the turn of the passage the targets for attack.

He also saw that if the Hunters kept their targets following the Northland wolves as they drew closer, the Northland wolves falling under the Wooden Wall would naturally become stepping stones for the other Northland wolves behind them to climb the Wooden Wall.

The biggest problem with their defensive line was that the Wooden Wall under their feet was too low.

Two meters high; even adding the slope of the passage floor, the absolute height was not even two point two meters. For the Northland wolves, this height was nothing; some agile ones could even run and use their claws to charge directly up the surface of the wall without needing any stepping objects.

As the Hunters shifted their attack targets further away, the number of Northland wolves charging over decreased all at once. But correspondingly, there was no one to deal with the Northland wolves that had already charged over.

They boldly tried to charge onto the Wooden Wall, but they were met with Jier's stubborn resistance.

Jier's method was also simple: wherever a Northland wolf charged up, he would smash its face with the Shield, then thrust the Hunting Sword out along the side of the Shield, and then exert force to push the Northland wolf off the Wooden Wall.

There were too many people on the Wooden Wall, and Jier could not properly swing his Long Sword in wide arcs; otherwise, let alone wounding the Northland wolves, he would have wounded his companions first.

If his companions were armored Warriors like him, that would be fine; an unintentional swing would naturally not hurt others. But Jier's companions were all Hunters wearing only thick hunting clothes; those simply tanned leathers and the animal furs underneath for cold protection could not block a forged Long Sword at all.

Therefore, Jier had to either slash and chop vertically, or use more thrusts with the Long Sword, avoiding any horizontal swinging motions.

"Woo-woo-woo-ow!"

A roar from the Wolf King came from the unseen front of the passage. Subsequently, Knight Lanisha, who had been standing motionless on the high rock wall, picked up Jier's Metal Spear with her left hand and gripped her Single-handed Heavy Sword tightly with her right, entering a combat state. She looked toward the entrance of the passage, her body slightly crouched, ready to explode into battle at any moment.

In this place, it was impossible to ride a warhorse; although it looked disadvantageous for her at first glance, the opposite was true. As a Knight Rank powerhouse who excelled in explosive power, her fighting alone in close quarters was truly formidable.

Jier and his group inside the Rock Passage could not see the scene after the turn ahead, but the place where the Rock Passage turned suddenly accompanied a loud noise, and many burning, smoldering wood ashes and charred, smoking wolf bones exploded outward.

Those things seemed to have been blown up by a tremendous force, flying out straight, and the sky was filled with these high-temperature objects falling.

Some of them were still carrying flames.

At this moment, not only the Northland wolves in the passage but also Jier and his group had to dodge these things or use weapons to swat away the burning objects that were about to fall on them.

"Careful, don't let these things ignite the Wooden Wall under our feet!" Jier shouted loudly, and the Hunters also noticed this; everyone had to dodge the scattered high-temperature falling objects while using their Boots to kick away the things that fell onto the Wooden Wall, or stomp out the small flames one by one.

The old Hunter ordered a young Hunter to come down from the Wooden Wall to specifically look after some wood that had been prepared at the bottom behind the Wooden Wall, so it wouldn't be ignited by these things.

After the explosion, the Wolf King appeared.

It panted heavily and walked out from the end of the passage slowly; not only that, its whole body was faintly shrouded in a layer of high-temperature air.

Because of this, no other ordinary Northland wolves approached its body, and even those previously possessed fake Wolf Kings were not there, but had returned to being Empty Wolf Skins fluttering around the Wolf King.

These empty Wolf Skins were emitting bursts of bloody red light at this moment; not only did they look evil, but the falling objects that came into contact with them were also knocked away by that layer of red light the moment they touched them.

It seemed that the red light was not just for show; it also seemed to carry a power that applied a counterattack the moment something approached.

When the Wolf King turned its head to look at Jier and his group, Jier heard more than one gasp of cold air; it seemed everyone was very afraid.

But Jier, under the influence of the Red-eye Mushroom Sugar Pill, felt a bit strange; he not only did not feel the Wolf King was terrifying, but even felt that he should be able to trade blows with the Wolf King.

Especially the axe on his back, which began to vibrate at this moment, and some faint sounds were telling him something. Even if Jier could not hear clearly, he seemed to know what the axe meant.

Fight, fight, defeat it, defeat it.

Jier couldn't help but want to swap the Long Sword in his hand for an axe and rush up to trade blows with the Wolf King.

"Your opponent is me!" A light shout came clearly from the rock wall of the Rock Passage; Knight Lanisha jumped directly down from the high rock wall, the Metal Spear in her hand thrusting straight at the Wolf King in the center of the passage.

The Wolf King instantly turned its head to look at the female knight, and then the two Empty Wolf Skins emitting red light fluttering beside it twisted, elongating their bodies like weapons to thrust straight through the air at the Human knight.

But Knight Lanisha's movement with the spear tucked under her left arm remained unchanged, still thrusting toward the Wolf King, while the heavy Single-handed Heavy Sword in her right hand slashed left and right, sparking scattered red light in the air as it struck the flying Empty Wolf Skins and knocked them away.

Those red lights were not just for show; not only did they protect the seemingly defenseless Wolf Skins while enveloping them, preventing them from being hacked to pieces in the exchange, but they also served another purpose.

That red light had force upon contact with objects; although Knight Lanisha knocked them away in the air and protected herself, the impact of that force changed the direction in which she was falling from the air.

The spear that was originally thrusting straight at the Wolf King could no longer reach it; not only that, but the Wolf King seemed to have calculated the distance, directly unleashing a powerful, heavy forepaw strike toward the Human knight.

Knight Lanisha had just landed in the passage and, before she could stand steady, faced the Wolf King's attack head-on.

She simply didn't bother to recover from her half-squat landing posture; the moment the Wolf King's claw swung over, she slightly changed the direction of the Metal Spear tucked under her left arm, shifting the spearhead from facing the Wolf King's head and face to meeting the Wolf King's claw.

The butt of the spear touched the ground slightly; she did not intend to rely on her own body to withstand the incoming force, but rather let the Metal Spear itself bear this strike from the Wolf King.

With a *puchi* sound, the Wolf King's solid claw slammed directly onto the metal spearhead.

After the metal spearhead entered the flesh a short distance, it became firmly wedged in the claw, and then the entire force of the swing traveled to the shaft of the Metal Spear.

The shaft vibrated for a very short time before bending, but it still struggled and shook. Its butt pressed against the rock on the ground, and the moment it took the force, it cracked and sent the rock surface and the fine Suishi fragments on it flying. Then, the butt of the spear firmly braced itself in the groove it had pressed into the ground.

As for Knight Lanisha letting the spear bear the force itself, she naturally had other plans. The moment the Wolf King's claw hit the spear, she lowered her body slightly, and from her half-squatting posture, she exploded with force, her whole body rushing directly into the gap beneath the Wolf King's head.

The Wolf King's head was two meters off the ground; after a single-paw swing, its other claw was bound to be supporting the ground to maintain its stability, otherwise, without a stable point of force, its own swing would lack powerful force.

After the instantaneous burst, Knight Lanisha gripped the handle of the Single-handed Heavy Sword with her right hand, while her left hand grabbed the middle of the sword blade, the entire sword tilted slightly upward, a bit higher than her body, and then she lowered her body and charged forward.

Although the Wolf King had one claw slamming into the Metal Spear and the other claw stabilizing its body, it still had a wolf mouth full of massive teeth to use for defense.

Seeing the Human knight taking advantage of the momentum to approach, it opened its big mouth wide and lowered its head to bite at this reckless Human knight charging over.

Facing the Wolf King's response, Knight Lanisha could only lower the overall height of her body, attempting to avoid the Wolf King's bite.

*Shuo*—with a sound, Knight Lanisha, having lowered her body, avoided the Wolf King's biting mouth by a hair's breadth and arrived directly beneath the Wolf King's neck.

She was ecstatic, directly thrusting the Single-handed Heavy Sword held in both hands upward, and then her legs also scraped against the rock ground, and amidst a spray of sparks, her whole body leaped upward.

The Single-handed Heavy Sword of unknown material shredded the Wolf King's fur, broke through the tough Wolf King Wolf Skin, and thrust directly into the Wolf King's abdomen. Furthermore, she tried to use the momentum of her movement to make the single-handed sword thrust deeper, slicing a larger and longer wound.

But just at this moment, accompanied by two flashes of red light.

The two Empty Wolf Skins emitting red light came directly to the Wolf King's side, their empty mouths biting onto the Wolf King's fur and flying straight upward.

Just like that, the entire massive body of the Wolf King was lifted up by nearly thirty centimeters, suddenly pulling the sword blade that had pierced into the Wolf King's body right out.

"Damn it!" the female knight cursed loudly; she had not expected that a strike she had prepared for so long, utilizing the terrain and calculating a series of the Wolf King's reactions, would be broken by the Wolf King in such an unexpected way.

Although she was furious inside, Knight Lanisha still had a trick up her sleeve.

Fighting in the Rock Passage was, on one hand, to let the Hunters use the terrain to counter the numerical advantage of the ordinary Northland wolves. On the other hand, she had discovered an opportunity to deal a heavy blow to the Wolf King.

And that opportunity was the thing about to happen now.

"Tuosite!" she shouted while slashing her sword toward the Wolf King's claw.

The old Hunter on the Wooden Wall, having been called, did not respond as Knight Ranisha had previously instructed; he silently raised his bow, held the Arrow with his fingers, and aimed slightly at the position where Knight Lanisha had stood before the battle.

The light there flickered, and a short, thick branch tied with a cloth strip was currently fluttering violently in the wind.

*Sou. *

Amidst the intense sounds of battle, the sound of this Arrow flying was not noticeable at all. Other than its landing point being different, it was no different from the other arrows currently flying through the air.

This Arrow traced an arc with a slightly high trajectory and hit the branch directly.

After the Arrow shattered the branch, the small Stone supported by the branch rolled down directly, and the stone it was tied to carried away another thick branch supported by a larger Stone behind it.

And that larger Stone was now also rolling downward as its support disappeared.

*Dong. *

The huge Stone rolled once on the rock wall, emitting a deafening sound.

The Wolf King at the bottom of the passage looked up, its eyes widening in shock. It immediately wanted to dodge, but the Human knight beneath its body was making trouble, constantly attacking its claws with her weapon, forcing it to use the claw stuck with the Metal Spear to obstruct this Human knight.

But because of this, both of its forepaws were extremely busy, and relying solely on its two hind legs made it difficult to dodge the rolling boulder in time.

Forced, it had no choice but to let the two Empty Wolf Skins emitting red light push against its body to give itself the force to dodge.

But how could Knight Lanisha give the Wolf King this chance?

She threw the Single-handed Heavy Sword in her hand in an instant; the sword first hit the rock wall, then, accompanied by the bursting Suishi, rebounded and struck toward the Empty Wolf Skin at the Wolf King's side.

Knight Lanisha didn't care at all that she was still beneath the Wolf King's body; risking the danger of being crushed by the boulder herself, she strove to ensure the Wolf King was hit first by this massive Stone weighing at least ten tons.