Chapter : 601

The rest of the herd, however, possessed a terrifying, instinctual resilience. Their primal fury was a force that could, for a crucial moment, even overpower the instinct for self-preservation. They veered sharply, their heavy bodies skidding and crashing against each other as they split into two distinct groups, flowing around the edges of the wall of fire like a bifurcated river of rage parting around a volcanic island. They were still coming.

But their charge was no longer a single, unified wave. Their formation was broken. Their leaders were dead. And they were running directly into the second, more insidious, phase of his trap.

Fang Fairy moved. She wasn't just fast; she was a concept of speed given form. A flicker of light, a being that seemed to exist in a dozen places at once. She danced on the periphery of the two splintered groups, a silver-and-blue phantom that was impossible to target, impossible to predict.

She trailed her fingertips through the air, and from them, arcs of azure lightning rained down. They weren't powerful, killing bolts. They were controlled, tactical strikes aimed not at the boars, but at the dry, grassy earth in their path. Large, circular patches of the savanna sizzled and popped, the very ground now crackling with a visible, dangerous energy. She was weaving a web of pure electricity, a minefield of pain.

The boars, their minds still locked on their target, thundered headlong into these electrified zones. The moment their hooves touched the charged ground, they were hit with a massive, paralyzing jolt of high-voltage current. They bellowed in pain and confusion, their powerful leg muscles seizing, their thunderous charges collapsing into uncontrolled, spasmodic stumbles. One crashed heavily into another, sending them both tumbling in a heap of tangled limbs and furious, impotent squeals.

The unstoppable charge had been utterly and completely deconstructed. It was now just a chaotic, disorganized stampede of blinded, burned, and furiously confused animals.

This was the perfect kill zone. An arena of his own making. And now, the conductor of this symphony of destruction was ready to make his entrance.

With the boar herd shattered into a chaotic mess of pain and confusion, Lloyd stepped into the fray. He moved with a chilling economy of motion, his every step a calculated advance. This was not the flashy dance of a tournament duelist; it was the brutal, pragmatic methodology of a soldier clearing a breach. The battlefield was prepped. The targets were softened. It was time for the cleanup.

He drew his simple, unadorned practice sword. The moment it left its sheath, its blade seemed to drink the harsh sunlight, transforming from mundane steel into a thing of dark, menacing potency as his B-Rank Steel Blood power flowed into it. He didn’t waste his energy on the main clusters of boars still locked in combat with Iffrit. He was a creature of efficiency. He targeted the outliers, the beasts that had been crippled by Fang Fairy’s electrical traps or disoriented by the chaos.

His first target was a massive sow, its legs twitching as it tried to recover from a powerful electrical jolt. It sensed his approach, its small red eyes swiveling to fix on him with a look of pure, unadulterated hatred. It struggled to its feet, shaking its massive head, and lowered its tusks for a clumsy, off-balance charge.

Lloyd didn’t meet it head-on. To do so would be to waste energy and risk injury. He was a fencer, not a brawler. He flowed to the side with a simple, elegant sidestep, a movement so fluid it seemed almost casual. The half-ton behemoth thundered past him, its charge carrying it forward on pure momentum. As it passed, his sword lashed out. The hardened blade, moving with a speed that was a blur to the naked eye, was not aimed at the body, but at the thick, powerful tendons of the boar's rear leg.

Slice.

The creature’s powerful charge collapsed into a disastrous, stumbling fall. It hit the ground with a sickening crunch and a force that sent a tremor through the earth, its leg now a useless, dangling appendage. Before it could even begin to process its new reality, before it could even begin to struggle back to its feet, Lloyd was upon it. His sword descended in a single, merciless, and anatomically perfect arc, severing the spinal cord at the base of its armored skull. The beast convulsed once, a final, futile spasm of its mighty heart, and then lay still.

He was already moving to his next target before the dust had settled around the first.

The Savage Brushland had become a triptych of elemental violence, a three-part symphony of destruction.

Chapter : 602

In the center was Iffrit, the anvil. He was a god of fire and brute force, having strode through his own inferno completely unharmed. He met the main cluster of boars head-on, his flame-wreathed zanbatō a crushing, cleaving force of nature. His battle was one of overwhelming power, his blows shattering the boars’ natural bone armor and breaking their massive bodies with contemptuous ease.

On the flanks was Fang Fairy, the disruptor. She was a ghost of lightning and storm, her every attack a precise calculation designed to create maximum chaos for minimum energy expenditure. A boar would turn to charge Iffrit, and a perfectly aimed Lightning Dart would strike its knee joint, causing its leg to buckle. Another would try to circle around the melee, and a patch of ground before it would erupt in a paralyzing electrical field. She was the master of the debuff, the battlefield controller who ensured that no enemy could ever bring its full, focused power to bear on a single target.

And weaving between these two divine forces was Lloyd, the master assassin. He was the exploitation expert. The moment one of his spirits created an opening—a stumble, a moment of confusion, a slight imbalance—he was there to capitalize on it with lethal finality. He moved with a deadly, predatory grace, his Steel Blood sword a tool of surgical deconstruction. There were no wasted movements, no superfluous flourishes. Every strike was a killing blow, delivered to a precisely targeted anatomical weak point. A swift, upward thrust to the heart through the softer, unprotected flesh behind a foreleg. A deep, horizontal slice across a throat, exposed for a fraction of a second in a moment of blind rage.

It was a perfect, three-part engine of death. And the Wild Boars, for all their magnificent power and primal fury, were simply the high-octane fuel it consumed.

One by one, the massive beasts fell. The initial herd of twelve was reduced to five, then three, then one.

The last one standing was a magnificent, terrifying specimen, its hide a roadmap of ancient scars, its one remaining tusk chipped and broken from a lifetime of brutal combat. It stood panting in the center of the carnage, surrounded by the still, smoking bodies of its kin. It was wounded, its left flank a blackened, sizzling ruin from Iffrit's flames, but its warrior spirit was not yet extinguished. It let out a final, hoarse, defiant roar and charged. It ignored the fire demon and the storm ghost. Its remaining eye, a burning coal of pure hatred, was fixed on Lloyd, the quiet, central intelligence it had correctly, and fatally, identified as the true heart of the threat.

Lloyd did not retreat. He did not sidestep. He met the final charge.

He stood his ground, his sword held ready. Just as the beast was a breath away, its remaining tusk poised to gut him, he dropped. Not to his knees, but into a low, coiled crouch, his body sinking below the arc of the lethal tusk.

The boar thundered over him, a mountain of unstoppable momentum.

As it passed, Lloyd drove his sword upward with every ounce of his focused strength. The blade, empowered by his full, concentrated will, found the softer, unprotected flesh of the beast’s underbelly. It sank to the hilt with a wet, tearing sound.

The boar’s own furious momentum became its executioner. It carried itself forward another ten yards, its own charge serving only to complete the fatal, disemboweling impalement. It collapsed in a heap, its final, defiant roar turning into a wet, gurgling sigh.

The Savage Brushland fell silent once more. The first hunt was over. The bounty had been claimed. Lloyd stood alone amidst the devastation, his chest heaving, his body aching with the unfamiliar strain, but his spirit soaring. This was a challenge worthy of his power. This was a hunt worthy of a king.

A profound and heavy silence descended upon the savanna, a stark contrast to the thunderous chaos of the preceding moments. The only sounds were the low, mournful whistle of the hot wind as it swept through the tall, dry grass, and the distant, fading crackle of the last embers of Iffrit's wall of fire. The ground was a charnel house, a grim tableau of a battle that had been as brief as it was absolute. The twelve colossal forms of the Wild Boars lay scattered across the cracked earth, their immense, primal power finally silenced, their bodies already beginning to cook under the relentless glare of the afternoon sun.