Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

Chapter 322: Chapter 17 Forever Forget This World

The disordered tracks extended deeper into the forest. Following the marks left by the hunter, Winters spurred on his horse in pursuit.

The more he moved forward, the more unsettled and agitated his chestnut horse became. It bit fiercely on the bit, shaking its head from side to side to resist the rider’s commands, forcing Winters to use even greater strength to control the reins.

Winters’s attention was drawn to a fleeting depression in the muddy ground. He immediately yanked on the reins. His chestnut’s forehooves rose high as it charged forward a short distance before stopping.

Winters dashed back to the muddy patch he had just passed. He confirmed that he wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t an ordinary depression, but a paw print.

Since the beginning of the beast plague, Winters had followed Ralph time and again to search the mountains and forests. He had seen countless animal tracks, bears, wolves, deer, roe deer, foxes, rabbits… He had almost become a self-taught hunter.

But the paw print before him was different from any he had seen in this forest before, a strange paw print, yet also a familiar one.

Indeed, he felt an eerily familiar sense of the shape of this paw print, only he couldn’t remember where he had seen it before.

Suddenly a thought flashed through his mind, not in Wolfton, not in Paratu, not in the Taniria Islands, he had seen these types of paw prints, but it was back in his home in Sea Blue… These were cat paw prints.

A palm with four lobes, pads without claws, the paw prints of Big and Little General were exactly like that, Winters had seen them countless times.

But a cat’s paw print was no larger than a thumb, whereas the “cat paw print” before him was large enough to accommodate his hand.

A gigantic cat?

Winters suddenly understood: why did the deer herd flee as if escaping from deeper within the forest? Why were no remnants of clothing fabric found in the bear’s intestines and feces? Why did the wolf pack, taking a risk, break into the village to forage?

The wolves weren’t migrating, they were fleeing. Top predators leave their territory only because a more powerful predator has arrived. Moreover… there wasn’t just one.

Suddenly, the chestnut horse tied to the tree whinnied in terror. The three-year-old steed struggled so fiercely that the knot Winters had tied was directly ripped apart.

A chill wind brushed past Winters’ fingertips, and in that instant, all the hairs on his body stood on end, and a sudden chill ran down his back.

Instinct drove Winters to roll to his right. Accompanied by a hair-raising growl, a spotted beast pounced on the spot where he had been just a second earlier.

Winters narrowly avoided the stealthy attack from behind. Suppressing the deep-seated fear in his heart, he drew out the Dusack scimitar as he regained his balance.

The old hunter had told him, “In the woods, no man can ever outrun a wild animal,” never flee, to turn and run was to choose death.

Spooked, the chestnut ran toward the depths of the forest. The spotted beast chased after for a few steps, then suddenly turned back.

It didn’t immediately attack but instead kept a fixated glare on Winters, snarling and moving slowly to his side.

Winters dared not make any sudden movements. He too gripped the cavalry saber, slowly rotating his body to maintain facing the spotted beast.

Man and beast confronted each other in the forest, like duelists with drawn swords. For this reason, Winters managed to get a clear look at the true face of the spotted beast.

The creature before him was terrifyingly large, its shoulder height was not much less than the chestnut’s, almost reaching Winters’ chest. Its body was covered in pale yellow stripes, blending into the dappled tree shadows, making it nearly invisible.

Its shape resembled the lion on the Vineta Flag, with a short snout and a broad forehead, slender facial contours, but it had short mane around its neck, making it look peculiar.

But no matter how odd it appeared, Winters did not want to provoke it. Even if it were a pig, at that size, it was not something Winters could handle alone.

First the enormous bear, now a giant lion, Winters was becoming numb to the notion that everything in Wolf Town seemed larger.

The peculiar lion started to slowly crouch, its head nearly touching the ground, shoulder blades protruding from its back.

“It’s coming!” flashed through Winters’s mind. He hadn’t seen a live lion, but he did have two cats. When a cat is poised to strike, it adopts this posture.@@novelbin@@

The next second, Winters saw the lion’s whiskers on its face slowly turning forward—an omen of a cat’s attack.

Winters steeled his heart, took a deep breath, and cast a spell he had never used in real combat before: Scare Beast.

A deep voice originated from his vocal cords, amplified by magic within his mouth, ultimately forming a wave of sound that spread around him.

The novice spell “Scare Beast,” one of the divine arts from the Druid Teachings, inversely reconstructed by the Magic Combat Bureau.

It was found that animals are extremely sensitive to low frequencies; herbivores can be easily frightened by low-frequency sounds, and ferocious animals emit low-frequency calls to intimidate each other when encountering threats in the wild.

The principle behind the “Scare Beast” spell is to mimic and amplify the low growls of large animals intimidating their foes, and in conjunction with lion’s dung and urine as casting materials, it leads the targeted animal to believe it’s facing a lion.

This spell is mainly used to scare warhorses or animals such as dogs and wolves; no spellcaster has ever tried it on lions—or rather, no one who has done so has lived to write a report. Winters also didn’t have the feces or urine of a ferocious beast as casting materials.

But he had no alternative; he could only give it his all.

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