He willed the cosmic essence to move exactly like it did when he enhanced his own limbs — in a fluid, controlled manner. He felt the warm cosmic essence surge out of his arms, flowing seamlessly into the broken antler shards until they felt like a literal extension of his own body.

He controlled the flow to pool at the tips of the dagger-like antler shards, then with a sharp grunt, he drove them straight up into the wolf’s chest cavity. The bone pierced through the muscle smoothly, and the moment it buried deep inside, Uhtred triggered the condensed energy at the tip.

A sharp, muffled pop resounded from within the beast’s chest — a tiny, contained internal explosion that detonated right against its ribcage.

In an instant, the wolf-hyena unleashed a high-pitched, agonizing shriek, its front legs instantly buckling as its chest caved slightly from the internal trauma.

But unlike its pack mate that had suffered a similar internal damage, this one refused to go down alone. The moment the internal blast tore through its chest, its primitive instincts realized it was losing its life, and in a final, suicidal bid to take Uhtred down with it, the monster drove its rear claws forward, raking them violently across its own underbelly where Uhtred was.

The sudden counter caught Uhtred entirely by surprise. He tried to roll out of reach, but he had not predicted such a move at all.

Four razor-sharp claws caught him dead across the back, tearing through what remained of his tattered shirt and slicing his skin open down to the muscle.

Uhtred screamed loudly this time, white-hot agony flaring through his nervous system. His eyes turned blood-red with pure, animalistic rage. He threw his body into a desperate, frantic roll, scrambling out from underneath the staggering, dying beast just as it collapsed into the sand.

Outside the perimeter, the last active wolf-hyena had been waiting for this exact moment. The second Uhtred’s bleeding body rolled out into the open, the monster was already there, its massive, muscled jaws wide open and primed to maul him to pieces the instant his momentum stopped.

Time seemed to slow down at that moment. Uhtred saw the teeth coming. He saw the slobber-filled interior of the beast’s throat. And his rage burned even brighter.

You fucking dumb animal!

As the beast’s maw drew near, and Uhtred fell deeper into his tumble, his hand began to raise in tandem, his eyes focusing into hyper clarity, preparing a timed attack.

There’s a reason why humans have sat firmly at the absolute peak of the food chain for generations!

A reason why a species without claws, without thick fur, without natural armor, have successfully hunted beasts ten times their size and claimed an entire planet as undisputed rulers...!

Uhtred’s anger burned bright. But his rage-filled internal declaration was right. Humanity didn’t rely on natural weapons. They relied on ingenuity, versatility, and an absolute refusal to die. While the wolf-hyena was fundamentally limited to the teeth in its mouth and the claws on its paws... Uhtred wasn’t.

As his back hit the wet sand, he fully raised his left hand, which was still clutching the final jagged piece of the antler shard.

He opened the floodgates of his core one last time, pumping every single remaining drop of his cosmic essence into the bone dagger until it glowed with a blinding light like a firecracker. Then with a feral, bloody grin, Uhtred hauled his arm back and threw it with everything his enhanced strength could muster, launching the shard straight down the center of the wolf’s wide-open maw.

The antler shot forward like a fiery arrow, burying itself deep inside the creature’s open throat, exploding with a shocking boom an instant later.

The wolf instinctively gagged at the sharp pain at the back of its throat, its jaws closing in reflex, further cementing its fate as the sheer internal pressure of the cosmic essence explosion had nowhere to go, imploding it from the inside out.

The massive predator slumped forward onto the sand instantly, its momentum dying as its neck burst open like a bloody fountain, showering Uhtred and the riverbank in a thick, steaming mist of bloody foam.

Uhtred lay in the sand for a long moment, panting and gasping heavily, his breaths ragged and wet as he surveyed the carnage.

The third wolf was dead, its separated head resting limply in the sand. A few feet away, the second one he had stabbed in the chest was still alive, though it was at death’s door, with its legs moving weakly in a slow, pathetic death throe.

However, Uhtred still dragged his battered body over to the beast. His back was screaming from the deep claw marks, and his hands were caked in a dark mixture of his own blood and theirs. Without a hint of hesitation, he raised the jagged bone fragment from the dirt and drove it straight through the creature’s eye socket, ending its life on the spot.

He turned his cold gaze to the first wolf he had concussed with the initial shield blast. It was still twitching faintly, its brain short-circuiting from the trauma. Uhtred limped over, knelt beside it, and delivered the same brutal mercy, driving the point into its skull until the twitching stopped.

Finally, a calm silence reigned.

Uhtred had hunted down and slaughtered three beasts whose raw strength and levels far exceeded his own, and he had done it through sheer, unadulterated human ingenuity.

The monsters possessed the level advantage and the lethal biological evolution. But Uhtred possessed the mind, the adaptability, and a Formless core that allowed him to turn the situation around and triumph.

[Notice:]

You have slain 1x {Metal-Jawed Epicyon Wolf - Level 11}

You have slain 1x {Metal-Jawed Epicyon Wolf - Level 11}

You have slain 1x {Metal-Jawed Epicyon Wolf - Level 10}

You have slain 1x {Metal-Jawed Epicyon Wolf - Level 11}

Trial Of First Blood: 10/10 complete

Time completed: {00:26:45 left} 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Right on cue, a massive torrent of blue system text began to rapidly cascade across his field of vision. Notices of the final completion of his mandatory quest, of title gained and merit gained, filled his view.

But Uhtred didn’t look at a single line of it. His attention was instead locked entirely on the far end of the riverbank.

There, standing downriver, was the fifth wolf. The lead beast that had plunged into the river after him, the one that had been swept far downriver by the violent current before it could successfully fight its way back to land. It stood entirely alone now, its thick fur dripping with river water, staring across the distance at Uhtred.