Fear of Death

Roaring, I charged at the two Gray Wolves Al was fighting.

One of the wolves notived me and ran straight at me. I’d never fought a four-legged creature before, so I was a little thrown. But most creatures’ vital points are roughly the same.

Because the opponent was low to the ground, my attack options were limited. Still, it wasn’t impossible. With that thought I sent a low roundhouse kick with my right leg straight at the wolf’s face.

The Gray Wolf reacted to the kick. It slammed on the brakes and dodged. The wolf sidestepped to my right-front, and when my kick missed it, it lunged at the opening and tried to bite for my groin.

No way! Panicking, I let the momentum of the kick carry me as I fell to the left and rolled, putting distance between us.

It was quick. More troublesome than I’d expected. I hadn’t realized low-angle attacks would be so hard to deal with… Now I understood why ordinary adventurers couldn’t handle them.

My kick had been too wild from nervousness. I forced myself to keep my kicks compact.

The kick I’d thrown earlier was a straight stepping kick. It was the kind where you step in and twist the supporting foot outward while driving your weight through to strike with the shin.

It’s the most common, powerful type of kick. But right now speed mattered more than power. I focused on the wolf’s preparatory movements.

Many animals push off the ground with their hind legs when they move; quadrupeds are the same. If you can see the winding-up of the hind leg, you can read the timing of the attack.

The wolves circled around me in a rough arc, gradually closing the distance.

When the gap closed and I entered the wolf’s attack range, I felt the hind legs wound up.

I opened my left foot outward at about ninety degrees and made a short step. Instead of twisting my supporting foot and putting weight into it, I stepped from an already-open stance and relied on raw leg strength and weight transfer to generate force.

That’s the kind of kick Micko uses.

It’s hard to generate power unless a player with great explosiveness uses it. Also, to put weight into it you need to tilt your upper body toward the direction of the kick.

When you tilt your upper body, the telegraph gets larger and the opponent can read where you’ll hit. Mi*ko gets around that by mixing illusions, a middle kick, a high kick, a punch, that start with the same motion.

My opponent wasn’t human, so I didn’t need to worry about being read by feints.

Kicking from an already-open stance tends to make the arc swing wide. Wanting speed, I consciously aimed the shortest possible trajectory.

I emphasized speed, but it wasn’t just a tap, I drove my weight through, too. My kick slammed into the Gray Wolf’s neck.

A crunch of bone traveled up my leg. I’d aimed for the face, but the wolf had been faster than I expected and I hit its neck instead.

Still, it was more effective than a face strike. My mistake produced a good result. While mentally adjusting my understanding of the wolf’s movement, I was lucky enough to take it down in a single blow.

Although I’d thought about power, speed was the priority. Even as a counter, I hadn’t expected to fell it outright.

They were fast but apparently not very durable. If they’d also had high endurance, we’d have been doomed.

While I’d taken down one, Gonz and Kimon’s pair had felled another.

Of the original five, only the one Al was fighting remained. I wanted to dispatch that last one quickly and withdraw.

Unfortunately, time ran out.

Ten Gray Wolves burst out of the forest. I drew a knife with my right hand from my waist, flipped the grip, and assumed a southpaw stance.

The wolves that rushed from the trees ran wildly in every direction, throwing Gonz and the others into confusion.

My scent-detection lets me handle attacks from behind, but I couldn’t keep my eyes on all the wolves running loose.

This was bad. A cold sweat rose on my back. As the wolves’ assault threw us into chaos, my detection skill told me there was still one wolf left in the forest.

“Why hasn’t it come?” I wondered, and then the forest’s presence began to move slowly. The wolves were running about and at the same time narrowing the ring that enclosed us.

As the pack inched closer, fear welled up inside me. I dropped into a low stance and focused, ready for anything.

The lone wolf that had lingered in the woods appeared. It was clearly huge, surely a good head taller than the others.

“An upper-ranked Gray Wolf!” Al cried out in astonishment. As if we weren’t already in a pinch! Our party, me included, was thrown into panic.

Sensing our unease, the wolves all attacked at once. Their tactic was nasty: strike and disengage.

Instead of swarming and sinking teeth in, they’d slash with fangs and claws as they passed. If you focused forward, one attacked from behind; if you watched the ground, one came from above.

They flailed about in every direction and left me with several shallow wounds. Not fatal, but the pain broke my concentration.

The bleeding wasn’t severe yet, but over time it could become dangerous.

I threw caution to the wind and counterattacked, accepting the risk of taking hits. A wolf leapt at me from behind, and I spun and slashed its neck with the knife held reverse in my hand.

The wolf whose carotid I cut bled heavily. While I was attacking it, another wolf bit my leg.

I plunged the reverse-gripped knife into the back of the head of the wolf that had latched on. As I did, another lunged for my neck.

I narrowly dodged that bite, but a claw sliced above my left eye. Blood flowed into my eye and my vision clouded. This was bad. At this rate I’d be killed.

Since coming to this world I’d never felt truly real fear. Even fighting hobgoblins to the death had felt a little detached, like someone else’s problem.

It was a dreamlike unreality, as if I weren’t myself, like being a character in a game.

But now it was different. I imagined, vividly, being killed and my body torn apart by wolves.

For the first time since coming to this world, I felt the real terror of death. My body trembled and I froze. Two wolves seized the moment and lunged at me.

The world slowed as if in slow motion. The wolves’ fangs closed in.

No, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be killed and have my corpse eaten! Why should I suffer this? I’d risked my life to save people, been dumped naked in a dangerous forest, wandered for over a year, nearly killed by villagers, forced to kill, and finally arrived at a town full of criminals.

I’d been reincarnated and yet would I die still miserable? No way! I won’t die here! I’ll slaughter them all instead.

At that thought, the shaking stopped. In the slow-moving world I moved.

I thrust my right-hand knife into a wolf coming from the side, and with my left hand I drove a nukite (karate-style spear-hand) upward from a low position.

The right-hand knife sank into a back, and the left nukite tore through the soft belly of a wolf with a wet, tearing sensation. The instant I felt that in my left hand, the world snapped back to normal speed.

I felt the wolves’ shock at my unexpected counterattack.

If we stayed on the defensive we’d be ground down. I wanted to reduce numbers as much as possible before the upper-ranked wolf fully engaged. I grabbed a handful of coins from the pouch at my waist and hurled them at the wolves.

Thanks to the level-based boost to my physical abilities, the coins scattered across a wide area at considerable speed, not quite a shotgun blast, but fast enough to spread far and wide.

The Gray Wolf that had been hit by the coin let out a shrill cry. Seizing the opportunity, I leapt toward the stunned creature and delivered a straight punch, aiming diagonally downward.

My fist sank deep, crushing the Gray Wolf’s teeth and obliterating its face. The fragments of its teeth dug into my knuckles, causing pain, but I couldn’t afford to care about that now.

Taking advantage of the opening I created, I feigned a throw by snapping my wrist, pretending to throw something.

The Gray Wolf, cautious from the earlier coin attack, stopped its charge and took evasive action.

It was a gamble, but it paid off. Had it continued its attack, I would have been in a dangerous situation.

With the number of Gray Wolves decreasing, I finally had a bit of breathing room and took a moment to assess the situation.

Gonz and the others had taken down one of the wolves, but they were still struggling with the remaining four. They were too occupied to provide any support.

Wolves typically target the weakest prey first. The one fighting with Al and the four others had stopped Gonz and his team in their tracks. Meanwhile, the remaining five Gray Wolves, sensing an opportunity, turned their attention to me, the smallest and seemingly weakest target. For some reason, the boss seemed content to watch from a distance.

The Gray Wolf I had sliced across the throat with my knife was lying motionless, having bled out. Another that I had stabbed in the back of the head with my knife also remained still, likely dead.

The two Gray Wolves that had attacked me simultaneously, along with the one that had eaten my punch to the face, were weakened but still moving.

Wounded beasts are the most dangerous. I was on high alert, pushing myself to concentrate.

The three remaining Gray Wolves formed a circle around me, gradually closing in. The tension in the air was palpable, and just as the situation reached its peak, the boss leapt into action, charging straight at me. At the same time, the three wolves attacked.

One Gray Wolf lunged at my left arm, but I struck it with a knife-hand chop, snapping its neck with a sickening crack.

In that instant, pain shot through my right leg as another Gray Wolf latched onto it. As I struggled, a third wolf lunged at my neck, aiming for the kill.

I countered with a headbutt, targeting the wolf’s throat. My forehead collided with its fangs, and I bled from the wound, but thankfully, my right eye remained unaffected.

That was the extent of my retaliation.

The wounded Gray Wolves, sensing an opening, were quick to take advantage of the moment. The boss wasted no time either.

With my leg still trapped, I couldn’t move as the boss tackled me to the ground, pinning my chest with its forepaws. It aimed for my throat, and I desperately shoved its face away with both hands to avoid the fatal bite.

Its claws pressed into my chest, tearing through my leather armor and the metal plate, leaving shallow but painful scratches. Grimacing from the pain, I fought with everything I had to prevent it from biting down.

My arms and chest were burning, and my strength was fading. This was bad. I had made a mistake when I dropped my knife.

In the chaos, I had been slashed by the boss’s claws, causing me to lose my grip on the weapon. My lack of experience in fighting with weapons was now a major disadvantage.

If I had been more used to fighting with a weapon, I wouldn’t have let go of it, even when injured.

I could no longer feel my arms. The image of the boss sinking its fangs into my neck flashed in my mind.

The weight of death pressed down on me, and my body felt like it was being drained, both mentally and physically. My muscles were filled with lactic acid, and my arms felt like lead.

As I was cornered, my brain began to spin, racing at high speed. There had to be something, anything, that could get me out of this situation. And then, it came to me.

I released my grip on the boss’s face with my right hand. As its fangs missed my throat, I twisted my body and wrapped my left arm around the boss’s neck.

I desperately clung to the boss with my left hand while my right hand fumbled under my clothes. There, sewn into the lining of my garment, was a small waterproof pouch.

Tearing it open, I held my breath, closed my eyes, and pressed the pouch against the boss’s nose.

The powder exploded in a puff, and the boss let out a high-pitched shriek. I seized the opportunity, grabbing the forepaw that had been pressing down on my chest and, with my left foot, pushed against the boss’s right hind leg.

As the boss lost its balance, I performed an arm drag and maneuvered behind it, locking in a rear naked choke.

I applied all my weight, tightening the hold as much as possible. It was like riding a rodeo as the boss thrashed around, trying to shake me off.

I clung desperately, praying for the end. “Just die already!” I thought, as I tightened my grip even more.

How much time had passed? I wasn’t sure, but it felt like an eternity.

Finally, the boss’s movements slowed, and then it stopped completely. My fear wasn’t over yet, though. What if it was just playing dead? What if monsters didn’t need to breathe?

In a panic, I kept squeezing, even after the boss stopped moving. I twisted its neck just to be sure.

Once the boss was fully subdued, I finally gathered the strength to look around.

In my relief, I suddenly remembered the Gray Wolf that had been gnawing on my leg. I quickly checked the area.

The Gray Wolf that had bitten me in the leg had suffered a fatal wound when I hit it with my knife-hand, and its innards spilled out, leaving it dead on the ground.

With the last of the Gray Wolves defeated, I could finally afford to check on Gonz and the others.

I turned to find that they had already dealt with the final wolf. They didn’t need my help.

The moment I realized this, all the tension left my body. I sank to the ground, unable to stand.

I sat there, numbly watching as Gonz and the others finished off the last wolf.

When they approached me, I felt a wave of guilt wash over me. My mistakes had put them in danger, and I feared that my recklessness would have cost them their lives.

I tried to force myself to stand, to be ready in case of another attack, but my body refused to obey.

I sat there, staring blankly as Gonz and his team dealt with the last Gray Wolf.