Chapter 70: Lightning Wolves
Peaker froze, his hand hovering inches from the hilt of his weapon as he slowly completed his turn.
Standing at the absolute edge of the tree line, barely two meters away from where he had just relieved himself, were five predatory silhouettes crouching in the dark undergrowth.
They did not look like ordinary beasts.
Their bodies were covered in a sleek, hairless, pitch black skin that seemed to actively absorb the ambient light of the setting sun.
But what made them truly terrifying was the volatile kinetic energy rippling across their flesh.
Threads of violent blue electricity crackled and danced beneath their skin in rhythmic, pulsing waves, lighting up their muscular contours from the inside out.
It was a shifting, mesmerizing display of bioluminescent energy, reminiscent of an abyssal cuttlefish that loved divining the deep, dark currents of the ocean, using flashes of internal light to communicate and blind its prey.
Peaker’s heart hammered against his ribs as he recognized the species.
These were not the standard blood line variants he usually hunted.
In this world, wild beasts operated under a strict, brutal social structure.
For creatures that hunted in packs, their societies were organized into a rigid military hierarchy that dictated their strength, their intelligence, and the quality of the weapons they carried within their souls.
The structure of these beast armies was defined by four distinct tiers:
The Level Three Blood Wolves served as the foot soldiers of the army. They were the mass-produced frontline fodder, driven largely by instinct, though they occasionally possessed enough spiritual aptitude to harbor a single Basic rank blood worm within their developing cores.
The Level Two Blood Wolves occupied the rank of Commandants. These were hardened, battle-tested pack leaders who commanded small squads of foot soldiers and possessed a fully matured Awakened rank blood worm.
The Level One Blood Wolves functioned as the Lieutenant Generals of the horde. They were massive, highly intelligent alpha beasts that answered only to the apex, wielding the devastating conceptual laws of a Prayer rank blood worm.
Finally, standing at the absolute zenith of the pack, was the Level Zero Blood Wolf, the undisputed General of the army. A Level Zero beast was a living natural disaster, an entity that almost always harbored a legendary Ancient rank blood worm within its aperture.
This complex hierarchy existed exclusively for animals that lived and hunted in organized groups, utilizing military titles to coordinate massive territorial wars. For those beasts that lived individual, solitary lives, titles like commandant or general did not exist, they were categorized solely by their raw level to denote their threat to the civilization of men.
When translated into the spectrum of cultivation, the power disparity of this hierarchy became starkly clear:
A Level Three beast possessed raw power equivalent to a Fledgling cultivator.
A Level Two beast was a direct match for an Awakened cultivator.
A Level One beast could easily match or slaughter an Adept cultivator.
A Level Zero beast stood on equal, terrifying par with an Ascendant cultivator.
Just like humanity split their cultivation into various elemental paths, wolves also possessed distinct genetic mutations and specialized classes across different territories.
While the most common type encountered by hunters were the Simple Wolves, specialized regions birthed the fluid Water Wolves, the molten Volcanic Wolves, the voracious Blood Wolves, and the highly agile Lightning Wolves.
The specific creatures standing in front of Peaker right now were Lightning Wolves. Among the five beasts currently baring their translucent fangs, four of them were Level Three, these were foot soldiers, while the single, massive entity crouching at the center was a Level Two, a Commandant.
The defining attribute of the Lightning Wolf class was their peerless, terrifying velocity.
Even without activating a single blood worm or utilizing external spiritual techniques, their natural physical speed was vastly superior to almost any other beast class in the wilderness.
They moved like literal static discharge across the field, and their physical bites were inherently lethal, a single successful puncture from their jaws sent a massive, high voltage electrical shock coursing directly through the nervous system of a target, instantly frying their internal organs.
The four Level Three foot soldiers did not give Peaker any additional time to analyze their hierarchy.
With a synchronized, high pitched snarl that sounded like tearing metal, they attacked him first.
The four wolves blurred, their black skinned bodies transforming into streaks of dark shadow laced with crackling blue static as they lunged from the undergrowth simultaneously.
One targeted his throat, two went for his flanks, and the last one swept low, aiming to snap his Achilles tendons.
Because Peaker didn’t want to kill them, knowing that slaughtering wild beasts so close to the
He simply dodged.
Utilizing his own refined footing, he twisted his torso sharply to the left, allowing the first wolf to sail harmlessly past his cheek, the ambient heat of its internal electricity singeing the tip of his collar.
He dropped his weight, letting the two flankers collide in mid air above his head, before rolling backward across the damp grass to evade the low sweeping jaws of the fourth beast.
The wolves landed gracefully, their claws tearing up chunks of dirt as they spun around, their pitch black skin flashing with an angry, rapid rhythm like a cuttlefish entering a hunting frenzy.
Peaker pushed himself back to his feet, his breathing steady but tight.
"Back off," he muttered, keeping his hands low.
But when he saw their ears flatten and the blue electricity along their spines flare into a blinding, constant hum, he knew they weren’t gonna stop.
They were pack predators, a temporary evasion was merely an invitation to press the assault until the prey grew exhausted.
Realizing that soft evasion would only lead to him getting paralyzed by a stray bite, Peaker decided to display enough force to deter them. He reached into his aperture, channeling his Qi into his Shadow Sword Blood Worm.
’Awaken,’ he commanded internally.
In a fraction of a second, he activated his personal signature weapon, the Shadow Sword Blood Worm.
The ambient shadows stretching beneath the nearby oak trees violently contorted, rising up like liquid ink before condensing perfectly into his grip.
The result was a long, jagged, pitch black sword made entirely of solid, compressed shadows.
The blade emitted a low, vacuum like hum, actively drawing the light away from the immediate area around his hand.
The four Level Three foot soldiers lunged again, their speed generating a sharp whistling sound in the evening air.
Peaker moved with calculated precision.
He did not swing with the intent to sever heads or cleave bodies in two. Instead, he executed a series of swift, defensive parries and short thrusts.
The shadow blade flickered like a dying candle.
With four precise, rhythmic movements, he sliced through the tendons of their front paws and delivered shallow cuts across their shoulders.
The shadow energy seeped slightly into the wounds, disrupting their internal electricity.
The four smaller wolves collapsed back onto the grass, whimpering as they clutched their bleeding limbs.
Peaker had successfully injured them, intentionally withholding his Qi so that none of the strikes were fatal.
The massive Level Two Commandant, who had remained stationary in the back, watched its frontline squad get neutralized in less than three breaths.
Its glowing yellow eyes narrowed, the internal blue currents pulsing across its black skin slowing down into a deep, concentrated glare.
Having now seen Peaker’s power, the Commandant acknowledged that this person or a vampire was not an ordinary hunter that he encounters almost everyday; this was a person who stood on the exact same par with itself, a seasoned cultivator, who has cultivated enough to become an awakened and is capable of matching a Level Two beast like himself.
The Commandant let out a low, vibrating growl that made the leaves of the oak tree rattle.
It did not attempt to engage in a physical race of speed against a shadow blade.
Instead, the aperture inside the wolf’s chest flared with a blinding, sapphire luminescence.
The beast activated the primary weapon anchored within its soul, the Lightning Ray Blood Worm.
The internal electricity that had been rippling across its body instantly vanished from its skin, entirely sucked backward into its throat.
The wolf’s jaws snapped open, revealing a swirling, highly unstable vortex of pure, concentrated electrical energy building deep within its esophagus.
The air around its muzzle began to smell heavily of ozone, the grass beneath its chin instantly turning to black ash from the sheer ambient heat.
With a deafening CRACK that sounded like a localized thunderbolt splitting the sky, the Commandant unleashed the attack.
And like that, directly from the gaping mouth of the lightning wolf, a massive, blinding blue ray made up of high density lightning came tearing through the distance, heading straight toward Peaker’s chest, to make a hole through his heart and lungs
