"That's no ordinary wolf. I don't know how it did it, but it looks like it lured the kids all the way here."
Rowan listened carefully as hunter Geric spoke with growing certainty while surveying the surroundings.
"If it had bitten them, there would've been blood. And common sense says dragging three kids here at once is impossible. There should be a trail of blood, but there's nothing like that at all."
"So you're saying it lured them here and ambushed them?"
"Yeah. It's a cunning bastard. I know wild wolves are supposed to be cunning, but there are limits to that, and this is... extreme."
Luring humans. Even if they were children, they weren't completely oblivious. The terror of the forest was knowledge passed down through various means.
Black wolf. A monster called Mavros lyko.
"You seemed like you didn't know much about the black wolf."
"I went through my ancestors' notes without sleeping. This is what I organized. It's just drawings, but they weren't hard to understand."
Rowan deftly caught the parchment sheets tied together with string that Geric tossed over. There were drawings on them.
Rather than looking fierce, the black wolf was drawn with eyes that seemed sly and scheming, stretched thin. The way the eyes were deliberately emphasized and enlarged made the artist's intention crystal clear.
"I've seen this before. It knocks people over sideways with its front paws, then retreats and drags them into the darkness."
Kiten's death.
Rowan had seen it happen right before his eyes.
"That's the attack method it uses most often. It's big and fast. Knocking over people standing on two legs, which are elongated and easily unbalanced, is practically a habit for it."
Knocking over someone standing on two legs had to be easier than knocking over someone balanced firmly on all fours. It was proof that the black wolf knew this well, and like a carnivore's instinctive movement of biting the neck and tearing by shaking its head, it could be called a genetically ingrained attack pattern.
Rowan scanned through the illustrated parchment notes as if mesmerized. It felt like something was being absorbed into his mind.
"Ah."
He blinked, feeling dizzy.
"You okay? What's wrong?"
"No, look at this."
Wrapped in a strange sensation, Rowan showed him the middle section. There was a drawing of a black wolf with an arrow stuck in it, followed by a picture of the arrow on the ground with bloodstains, then continuing with an unharmed black wolf.
"I think it's showing that it recovers from injuries quickly."
Hunter Geric nodded after seeing it.
"Could be."
"It's smart and cunning, right? A sneaky bastard like that jumping into torchlight where it could get stabbed was weird from the start. It knows it can recover quickly, no matter where it gets pierced."
It made sense. The guess that it had the means to offset the risk of attacking was believable. This was a creature that would lure its prey and exact revenge, thoroughly venting its emotions. Plus, it was classified as a monster. Of course it would be far from ordinary.
"Actually, I've never seen a monster. If its eyes have healed, tracking it would be foolish."
Rowan agreed. It was a creature with a build similar to a bear. Even two grown men would have a hard time winning if they fought desperately. If there had been several of them, he could've gained an advantage through Kill the Battle, but there was only one black wolf.
"I saw Kiten get attacked right in front of me. If even one of us gets mauled, it's over."
Hunter Geric took back the parchment notes and flipped through them. Then he showed the last drawing. Easily more than ten people were stabbing it with spears, and one person was bringing an axe blade down on its head.
"You need at least ten people rushing it as a group to catch this thing. Why am I only seeing this now?"
Geric sighed, probably having drawn it while drowsy. Or maybe he'd collapsed from fever and forgotten, throwing himself into the chase anyway.
"Do you think it's afraid of fire?"
"Well, it's an animal, so it should be."
Rowan spoke as if that settled it.
"Then let's fight it."
"How?"
"We surround it with fire and burn it. It's got such thick fur, so even if it charges out, it'll burn real well, won't it?"
"Hmm. Would that work..."
Rowan licked his lips. A fire had been lit in his desire, and after experiencing the strange phenomenon that occurred while looking at the parchment notes, he realized he could learn something new by hunting the black wolf.
The power of a reincarnator. Something like a skill gained by passing through that door that spewed black smoke.
For a second son born on a shabby mountain village ranch to live with even minimal comfort in this world, he desperately needed that power.
Rowan tried repeatedly to persuade Geric.
"In the darkness, it'll be arrogant as hell. That's when we prepare a trap in advance and wait for it to come. If it comes at night, we can set the trap beforehand, right?"
"A fire trap, huh. It's plausible... but the problem is it's dangerous. Before the injury to its left eye heals, it won't attack, and if we find it before then, we won't be able to set the trap."
There were two options. Of the two, if it were certain that the black wolf's wound healed quickly, setting a trap was better. But that very risk made Geric hesitate.
In the end, there were two choices: run away or set a trap. One had to be decided. Rowan deliberately avoided presenting the option to run away.
'The kid's pretty good.'
Having been manipulated so much by Rakson's eloquence, Geric couldn't be fooled.
'If we let it slip away now, we might never catch it again.'
It had suddenly appeared. It was definitely a drifter, and if they stopped this pursuit now, there might be a chance they'd never see it again. To give up like that after they'd drawn too little blood from the enemy while taking too much damage themselves felt wrong.
Kiten's death. The deaths of Alec's three children. Not one of them failed to move Geric's heart.
'What about Rowan?'
Rowan hadn't lived long and hadn't weathered much time. His heart must be like an active volcano. But Rowan had long since regained his composure. The Rowan who'd been reckless, the one stepping forward into the darkness toward the black wolf that night—he wasn't here anymore.
There was only Rowan who thought of profit.
"Alright. Let's do it. We should at least bring back its hide or organs to the village, shouldn't we?"
"If a man draws his blade, he's gotta cut something."
The blood trail was simple to follow. Eyes weren't something that stopped bleeding easily. But the black wolf wasn't ordinary either.
"It's a real monster. Look at this. The gaps between blood drops are getting wider."
"That means either it's running faster or the bleeding's stopping."
It could be both. Either way wasn't good, so they tracked faster. Rowan took the role of ranger, and Geric took the role of tracker. The ranger's job was to head boldly in the direction of the blood drops while smelling for blood scent, continuously advancing far and fast, up to fifty paces ahead.
The tracker's job was to meticulously follow every trace while moving.
Both tasks were necessary. If the tracker lost the trail, the ranger would quickly circle the area and find another trace, specifically a major one, to reconnect it.
Looking closely and looking far simultaneously—that was the foundation of tracking.
Blood on leaves.
Sometimes, traces of coughed-up blood and vomit.
Footprints that grew faint versus footprints that grew deeper—they could even confirm its deteriorating condition.
'This is kinda thrilling.'
Rowan found enjoyment in it. The buildup right before a horror movie's climax excited his mind. It seemed perverse, but life in this medieval fantasy world was bland to a degree incomparable to the stimulating life of modernity.
It was like feeling the intensity of drugs and then suddenly being dropped in the countryside, on a deserted island. The thrill from something that would make you go crazy and jump around was bound to be special.
"Lost it. Find anything!"
"Over here!"
Rowan shouted immediately. He hadn't been carelessly sweeping the area while advancing. He'd already captured several suspicious points in advance.
After pushing through the bushes and sniffing with deep breaths, hunter Geric plugged his nose and breathed only through his mouth like a swimmer to make his sense of smell more concentrated. Just as constantly smelling something would numb and dull your sense of smell, there were many times when a hunter needed to breathe only through the mouth.
'I can smell blood.'
Breathing only through his mouth, he looked at the traces Rowan was showing him.
"It climbed up a tree."
He sounded nasal, but Rowan didn't laugh. It was an excellent hunting technique. Managing his sense of smell so keenly was especially impressive.
It was like a gourmet taking one bite and rinsing their mouth with plain water.
Hunter Geric sighed once. The fact that it climbed and moved through trees with that build meant it could move its body well enough. But Rowan was actually hopeful.
"We can do this."
"Why?"
"Back then, it was wandering around in broad daylight in the deep forest. And something like that climbs trees?"
"It's injured and in bad shape. It was actually struggling."
"Exactly."
Watching Rowan instantly pierce through the opponent's psychology, hunter Geric muttered while looking at him.
"You're impressive, you know? Are you a black wolf or something? Sharp."
"Nah."
Rowan acted casual, but his heart was pounding. And he realized something. To hunter Geric, they were just useful parchment notes, but to Rowan, they were different. More complete information transmission had occurred.
'This is weird. I feel like I have too much power.'
The strange feeling even made him uncomfortable. His stomach started hurting somehow, and he rubbed his belly. Geric, not noticing this, boldly climbed up the tree. Then he gently touched the branches with his hand and pulled them down.
Crack.
One broke far too easily for its thickness.
"Bingo."
Since a large creature had passed through, naturally, the upper part of the branch would be damaged and break with little force. After confirming the direction, hunter Geric came down from the tree, slowly checked and moved, then pointed with his hand.
"Yessir."
Since Rowan was the ranger, he advanced ahead. His mission was to track, keep his vision wide, and detect any possible enemies.
In the forest turning crimson, the two found new traces.
"It fed."
"It didn't actually eat much, though."
A deer lay dead. An animal called a bristle deer. A young one at that.
"Think the fawn was alone?"
"No. The mother was there too. There was quite a herd besides the mother."
Hunter Geric answered after checking the surrounding bushes. They were broken, pushed through, and the traces of leaves being torn off with mouths weren't concentrated in one place. In the case of herbivores, they usually performed tricks like stuffing a whole fish in their mouth and pulling out just the bones, sweeping up leaves from one branch completely.
If this occurred diversely in multiple places, it meant there were many of them.
"Only eating the fawn means it didn't have the energy to hunt a big one."
It had torn out and eaten the thigh, which was thick with meat and easy to devour, excluding the organs. Other than that, it had torn through the back, neck, and ribs, bone and all. The organs were intact, and flies were already swarming where they were exposed.
"Rowan. Look at the head."
Rowan's gaze shifted. The head could be considered intact, but the bizarre thing was that only the left eyeball had been sucked out.
"That's creepy."
He frowned and rubbed his forearm instinctively. The feeling of tracking a crazy monster creature crept deeply into his heart. Like a maniac banging on the door of his heart with a sledgehammer, screaming, "Still wanna keep tracking?"
"Maybe it means something."
Since the forest was turning crimson, they decided to camp a bit away. But Rowan found it hard to shake off his fear, and so did hunter Geric.
"Why're you gathering so much firewood?"
"What if it shows up? I'm just gonna set fire everywhere with this."
"You coward. Haha!"
Of course, Geric also awkwardly gathered thick firewood. They were pieces easy to throw. After preparing for the worst, darkness descended. Rowan pulled out a chunk of cheese from his pocket. Since they ran a ranch, bringing it was no problem.
When doing business with family, you could bring things at wholesale prices—that was the power of blood relations.
Sizzle.
He stuck it on a branch and grilled it like that. As the savory aroma spread, Geric gulped.
"Wanna trade for jerky?"
"Did you spice it?"
"It's got smoked flavor plus three kinds of spices with salt as a must, a really stimulating taste."
Rowan's eyes widened slightly. It was hunter Geric's special jerky with far too many spices poured in to refuse. The trade was made. The very savory cheese was grilled soft, and taking a bite of the stimulating jerky with it as a palate cleanser was absolutely delicious.
Just as they say, nothing goes with spicy food like cheese—the combination of jerky with spices and salt with savory cheese was the ultimate.
Rustle—!
A strong night wind blew and tore through the bushes. Within it, Rowan and Geric could smell the blood scent and the rank smell of wolf cutting through the food's aroma. Without a word, both stood up.