CHAPTER 68: THE BATTLE OF TWO WOUNDED ANIMALS

"Liam!" Sylvie screamed my name, but everything was a haze. I stared up at Roran’s face, and a single thought crossed my mind.

I must kill him.

I gritted my teeth through the burning pain and swung my claws at him, aiming for an artery, but he lazily leaned back and dodged my blow. In the next second, his knee reached my stomach.

Air escaped my lungs, and I was sent flying halfway across the room, crashing into the walls of the cave. Sharp rocks embedded in my flesh, but I paid them no mind as Roran was already slowly walking toward me as I fell to the ground.

"You try to kill me! Your own alpha!" he roared, sending a chilling echo throughout the vast cave. I felt his bloodlust wrapping around my entire body as as if to strangle me.

Through the chaos, I heard Sylvie screaming, but she was being held back by her father, who watched the scene unfold with a blank expression on his face.

"Stay down, boy!" Roran said as I tried desperately to get to my feet.

I ignored him and staggered to my feet, blood pouring out of the wound in my stomach like a broken pipe. For some reason, my wounds weren’t healing.

"He’s done. The boy will bleed out," Danzo said flatly. "He might’ve survived if he had a healing trait, but even then, it would be a slim chance. You can’t come back from a wound like that. You’ve killed your own nephew."

Tears flowed down Sylvie’s face as she released a primal roar that echoed through the entire cave system. She wanted to help; she was fighting with everything she had to save me, but her father was just too powerful. She couldn’t get past him.

"He’s done, Sylvie; there is nothing you can do."

I looked down at myself and realized I was in worse shape than I thought. There was a gaping hole in my stomach. I had survived far worse than this, but the problem was that I wasn’t healing. Still, Roran continued to get closer to me, but just as he was about to grab me, I released all 50 of my shadow hounds.

They came forth with a ferocity I had never seen from them. It was as if seeing me in this state lit a fire underneath them. All 50 of them circled around Roran and then lunged at him. He tried to fight them off, but their number was just too much.

My hounds ripped through his flesh, causing him to howl in pain. All 50 of them set on him, with Cerberus leading the charge. He leaped through the shadows and launched surprise attacks at him.

One by one, they continued to pick him apart piece by piece and soon Roran looked like a wounded animal fighting for his life. But still, his ferocious was unmatched. No matter how the hounds surrounded him, he fought them off. With just a single swing of his claws, he took out 10 of them at once and moved on to the others.

The more I watched him fight, the more I realized he was adapting to their attacks. My hounds couldn’t hold him off for long. I knew that it was up to me to land the killing blow.

I steadied myself and pushed my pain and injury to the back of my mind. I even drowned out the sound of Sylvie screaming my name. All that mattered to me in that moment was killing the man in front of me.

I kept myself low to the ground and used my hounds as camouflage so he couldn’t see me coming. I made my way closer to him and then launched myself with every bit of power I could summon from my legs. In a blink of an eye, I was in front of him.

He gritted his teeth as he saw me appear in front of him, but he was too late to react as I sank my fangs into his neck and ripped out a chunk of flesh.

[Devouring bite activated]

Roran howled in pain as my skill activated, scorching his flesh and creating a wound that would never heal for as long as he lived. My bite corrupted his flesh, and it slowly began to spread. In retaliation, he swung his massive claws at me, but one of my shadow hounds dove in the way and took the brunt of the attack. I then retreated by leaping several paces back.

With my entrails leaking out and me hardly able to stand, I imagined I must have looked like a zombie.

"You!" Roran looked at me with utter contempt in his gaze. "What are you?"

What am I?

That question again?

"I am the one who’s going to rip your head from your shoulders and mourn with your family when I bring it to them," I answered.

He looked at me as if I was crazy, as if I had completely lost my mind, but I hadn’t. I was thinking perfectly clearly. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was doing what needed to be done. For Sylvie, and also for my own selfishness.

"It’s a pity," he said, shaking his head sadly. "It will break your mother’s heart when I bring your corpse back. But she’ll just have to understand."

I was severely weakened, but so was Roran. The wound on his neck was taking its toll, and so was the poison. We were like two wounded animals scrapping for survival.

"Before you die, I’ll show you the power of a true alpha!" Roran roared before charging at me like a mad beast. Just then, I noticed his body had gotten bigger. He was usually tall but frail-looking, but now his muscle mass seemed to triple in size.

That was the special trait of the Lycann pack that had been passed down for generations. Those who inherited it could double their size and grow muscles in the blink of an eye. He looked like a giant monster barreling toward me.

He closed the distance between us in an instant, and in the blink of an eye, his claws were poised to rip my head off.

I narrowly dodged the attack as it whizzed past my face and then dug my claws into his abdomen. My claws ripped across his flesh, eliciting a primal scream from him. Blood sprayed across the room.

His giant hands, which were the size of a tree trunk right now, reached out to grab me, but I nimbly evaded the attack. I disappeared through the assault and reappeared closer to him. He didn’t even have time to react as I ripped out both of his eyes with one savage swing of my hand.

He was blinded instantly. With him now blinded, my hounds lunged at him. They all surrounded him, tearing at his flesh. He couldn’t fight them off. Not anymore now that he was blinded.

I watched proudly as my hounds continued to devour him alive, and as he roared like a monster on its final legs. Blood and chunks of flesh spilled onto the floor, and when Roran was finally weak enough, I prepared myself to end it.

I crouched and summoned all the power I could muster. My eyes narrowed to the sweet spot on his neck, and in a small explosion that sent the ground beneath my feet flying, I launched at him.

For that second, it was as if the world glitched, and when it recovered, I was holding Roran’s head.