Chapter 525: Grinding

The mixed forest environment of Neville is peculiar and the terrain is complex. Conifers are tall and straight, with large spacing from tree to tree, and deciduous trees have thick trunks and connected crowns. The two grow in a mixed manner, and the trees are sometimes sparse and sometimes dense, constituting a variety of changes in space and light. At this time, the snow and ice cover the earth, the trees are colorful, and the footprints of animals pass through the white layer of snow, and the black earth below the trees disappears.

In this environment, it is difficult to track the prey, and it is easy to mislead the hunter. If the Hunter is misled, the roles of both sides will immediately change.

To be precise, the hunter is also the prey, and the prey is also the hunter.

Victor stepped on the branches of a redwood tree, using the canopy and snow to cover his body, his eyes were half-closed, his breathing was like nothing, and the whole person was in a state of stealth hidden in life, his vitality converged like a dead thing, his spirit was active, his perception was keen, and he knew all the subtle movements within a radius of 5 kilometers.

Instead of being carried away by his anger, he calmly analyzed and considered all known factors to formulate the most effective tactics to achieve the goal of hunting the Wind Fang.

Windfang is highly famous, often attacking human armies in the Twilight Forest, once killing a Grand Knight and a Silver-Rank Judgment Warrior. The soldiers and clerics of the kingdom of Seuss witnessed the battle of the Wind Fang many times, and the Church compiled a special archive for it, listing it as the top mission target for the Ranger. The Kingdom of Neville, the Kingdom of Seuss, and the Church have placed a total bounty on Windtooth in excess of 290,000 gold soles.

Victor had never seen this famous gold-rank gnoll, but through the mouth of the holy warrior Dimat, he already knew about it in more detail.

Stormfang is a deeply ferocious male gnoll who has mastered three extraordinary talents: Wild Instinct, Bloodlust, and Windwalk.

Any transcendent talent has its own foundation, and the biological awakening bloodline talent is an asymptotic process. Take the Gnoll's bloodlust, for example, it can increase the strength and speed of the Gnoll for a certain period of time, the mind is crazy, reckless, weakens the feeling of pain, and is immune to the fear of death. The higher the level of the Bloodthirsty talent, the more intense the effect, up to 60% more strength and speed.

Such a large increase in strength requires a strong body and high mental attributes to support it. Victor first encountered a gnoll in the Centaur Hills and witnessed the gnoll leader being pierced in the heart, but was still able to fight back against the Knight of Eskerry.

Therefore, the precedent of the Bloodthirsty talent is the health strength that can withstand heavy damage and the mental attributes that can control the increase in strength and speed.

Wind Fang is significantly more powerful than the Gnoll leader of the Centaur Hills, and in addition to being a higher level of Bloodthirsty, it also has the talent of Wind Walking.

The precursor to the talent of Fengxing is transcendent perception, and the gnolls are born with keen perception, night vision, a keen sense of smell, and super hearing. Wind Fang has mastered the Jackal's talent for popularity, which means that its innate senses are beyond the limits of ordinary gnolls.

Moreover, the Jackal's Wind Movement allows the wind elemental to infuse itself, reduce weight, and have the ability to change direction in the air. Victor's Blade of the Windy Gnoll changed direction in mid-air, dodging Nicole's slash.

The practical value of this ability is undeniable, and it is also very useful to evade tracking. For example, according to the footprints left by the wind teeth, it should have been searched about 20 meters in front of it, but it changed direction in the air and fell to other positions, and the footprints left before misled the tracker.

Compared to bloodlust and wind, what gave Victor the most headache was the wild instinct of Wind Fang.

The wild instincts of intelligent beings consist of two aspects, danger prediction and battle intuition.

Danger foreknowledge is a vague premonition, and Victor is determined to kill Stormfang, who has roughly mastered his direction from the moment he enters the woods, and the closer the two sides go, the clearer the perception. This means that the fangs can lock Victor's position in advance.

Combat intuition is the prediction in battle, and it is often able to seize the opponent's loopholes and kill with one blow, or defeat the strong with the weak and turn defeat into victory. Nelson once used his combat instincts to slay a knight of Sassan, who was stronger than him. The change of direction in the air and the combat instinct complement each other perfectly, making its attacks and dodges unpredictable.

However, Fengya's talent also has its own shortcomings. Bloodlust doesn't have the effect of increasing defense, and it doesn't have elemental resistance, and Victor's Blue Blade can make it two swords, even if its vitality is strong. In addition, Bloodlust has a time limit, and once the limit is exceeded, Wind Fang will fall into a weakened state.

Secondly, the Gnoll's Wind Walk cannot attach the wind element to objects, so the Wind Fang will not choose to use weapons and equipment, which determines that its most powerful attack method is hand-to-hand combat.

All things considered, Wind Fang is a jackal with high offense and low defense, high perception, high agility, and strong life, and is good at stealth, ambush, and hand-to-hand combat.

In fact, the Storm Fang killed the Grand Knight of the Seuss Kingdom by first using wild intuition to predict the opponent's position, and then silently sneaked near the target, taking advantage of his unpreparedness, piercing the opponent's heart with a single claw, and then quickly escaping into the Dusk Forest. The semi-elemental Grand Knight was unable to survive the help of the High Priest, and eventually fell in misfortune.

Wind Fang definitely crushes Victor in terms of strength, and has an advantage in speed, and if it adopts ambush tactics, the probability of successfully killing Victor is very high. But Victor's strongest means is long-range attacks, and his life latent can shield wild instincts and form stealth in the perception of his opponents.

Ambush is also his best tactic.

Now the most important thing is, how to bring the wind teeth into the range of the Eagle Wing Bow and lock its specific position first?

X-3 distinguishes and sifts through a 3,000-meter radius of sounds, marking the sound of air rubbing against tree branches and the sound of animals moving and foraging. Victor had a holographic map of different sound sources in his mind, but he was never able to detect anomalous movements.

By the way, I'm in a state of "stealth" right now, the Wind Tooth isn't sure where I am, it's suspicious and chooses to hibernate ...... I can't find it, I have to ask it to come to me...... Victor withdrew from his life hiding, drew a feathered arrow, opened his falconry bow, aimed at an animal in a clearing not far away, and shot the adamantite arrow.

It was a wild bear, Caligula had woken it up from its hibernation by its roar, and after the panic, it was unable to bear the hunger in its belly, and was cutting through the snow, searching for edible plant tubers and small beasts hiding under the snow, but it did not expect disaster to fall from the sky, and was shot through the skull by a feather arrow with a blue and black air current, and the air turbulence exploded in the skull, stirring up the brain, it didn't snort, collapsed on the snow, and died directly.

Victor re-enters the Life Chamber, and since there has been little movement in the shooting of the wild bear, X-3 easily corrects the source map. The call of the mountain breeze blowing through the woods remained the same, but the fauna quietly changed. The blood of wild bears attracts the attention of numerous predators, who approach the source of the scent, causing a commotion among the forest dwellers. X-3 identifies wolves, bobcats, badgers, jackals, and snakeheads and adds their vocal signatures to a new source map.

It didn't take long for the wolves to defeat the other predators and feast on the bears. Victor stood on the treetops, waited patiently, and soon noticed something unusual.

To the southwest, 1,123 meters away, a group of apes suddenly stopped moving, and then, 893 meters away, the sound of the forest deer herd stopped abruptly, and 674 meters away, a nest of squirrels in the tree hole stopped moving. However, Victor heard nothing else.

The beast had no need or ability to hide from Victor's sense of hearing and walked silently through the woods.

It's definitely Wind Fang!

The forest dwellers could not hear the movement of the wind fangs, and by the time they saw the gnolls, they were too close to each other to sound the alarm and fell into a stiff silence.

The holographic map of the sound source constructed by X-3 is a balanced sound alert system, and the super stealth ability of the wind teeth instead exposes its tracks, like throwing stones into the calm water, and the ripples immediately attract Victor's attention. He quickly sketched the sneaking speed and movement trajectory of the wind teeth in his mind, and predicted and verified the changes in the sound source signal, and after fine adjustment and calculation, he came up with a vague position.

However, the holographic map of the sound source has many empty areas, and when the wind tusks enter the empty area, Victor loses track of it, and can only draw a rough latent range. As for whether the fangs moved, in what direction, Victor had no way of knowing. What is certain is that Wind Fang is hiding in the woods around the bear carcass, spying on it.

Both Victor and Windtooth know that each other is nearby, but neither knows the exact location of their opponents.

Now, it's about patience, and whoever exposes first loses.

As the clock ticked by, the sun behind the clouds shifted westward, the light changed, and the forest darkened, and Victor suddenly realized that he had made a mistake.

The Hidden State of Life Sustaining must remain still, and as long as Victor moves, the Wind Fang will instantly lock on to his position. And the location of the wind tooth transfer, Victor is difficult to detect. Although Victor has a talent for dim vision, it is not as good as the night vision ability of Wind Fang, and when it drags on to a dark night, Victor's extraordinary vision and shooting accuracy are affected to a certain extent, which is more beneficial to Wind Fang.

Judging from the behavior of the Wind Fang raiding the human camp, kidnapping the mother and son of the mountain people, and deliberately provoking and angering the pursuers, it knows the human knights very well, and it also shows that it has been cornered by the Sword Mantis Knights, and has to break the cauldron and fight back...... The Sword Mantis Knight clearly has the means to locate the general location of the Wind Fangs, and the Wind Fangs can also sense the source of danger. It uses itself as bait to attract sword mantis knights to surround the forest and narrow the encirclement. If it can successfully break through the siege of the Sword Mantis Knight, it can use its speed to get rid of the most threatening Golden Knight, and if it fails to break through, it can also use the terrain to kill a few more Sword Mantis Knights...... So, for Fengya, who has more priority among the two options of escape and counterattack?

Wind Fang has been ravaging Neville for more than a year, killing and injuring more than 800 humans in total, but the frequency of its attacks has plummeted. Except for this night attack on the cottage, in recent months, there has not even been a second case of the wind teeth attacking humans. This shows that Fengfang's hatred for humans has weakened, and it is mainly running for its life.

The Golden Knight's elemental perception is able to detect the Bloodthirsty talent of the Wind Fangs, which causes weakness. If it wants to run for its life, it will not use Bloodlust during the day, and at night, it will not have this limitation...... The forest at night is the home of the wind teeth!

The probability of a preemptive strike with a bow and arrow is now very low, and the probability of engaging the enemy in close quarters is almost 100 percent...... My melee combat is a low threat to Wind Fang, and it's unlikely that it will use Bloodlust on me...... Assuming that Wind Fang doesn't use Bloodthirsty, the difference between it and my strength and speed won't be too big. I have the Two-Headed Dragon Lizard Leather Armor on me, and with the Tenacity effect of the Surge talent, I should be able to withstand a single raid damage...... I have a sense of blindness within a range of 2 meters, and it is impossible for Wind Fang to successfully sneak attack me without bloodlust to increase his speed!

Victor analyzes the mentality of the Golden Jackal, and measures his own ability, and decides to take the risk of booby-trapping his opponent.

After shooting several wild wolves in a row, the wolves fled into the forest in a hurry, and Victor, who had lifted his "stealth", hung his eagle wing bow on a tree branch, slid to the ground from the treetops, drew two pure gold swords from his waist, stuck the sheath of the worm skin on the ground, and walked towards the remains of the wild bear.

The bear's corpse was mutilated by wolves, the smell of blood permeated all around, and Victor's boots fell on the snow, stepping on a deathly silence, as if he were the only living creature in the area. Victor knew very well in his heart that in the dark forest, the gnolls were watching his every move, and he didn't know where the wind fangs were hiding, but it would definitely appear behind him.

With a light breeze surrounding his body, Victor walked unhurriedly into the broadleaf forest with two adamantite swords in hand, X-3 recorded every tree, every thorn, every stone here, and he could run at full speed in the woods even with his eyes closed.

Wind Fang will never be able to do this, but it will think that the forest environment is more beneficial to itself.

Victor knows the wind teeth, but the wind teeth don't know their opponents, this is the advantage!

The Golden-Tier Gnoll is more cautious and patient than expected. Victor circled around the woods, never taking the initiative to sneak up or take any misleading temptations, only the silence that represented death oppressed the opponent's mind little by little.

Undistracted, Victor walked towards the clearing outside the deciduous forest with his twin swords, and when his boots stepped onto the snow again, a blurred shadow from the canopy of the tree behind him fell silently.

It's now - the apocalypse!

The soul fire burned violently, the spiritual power instantly increased to a level, the deep and dark eyes were dyed golden, the blind area expanded to 3.6 meters, the speed of time seemed to be distorted and slowed down, everything around it became slow motion, and all the details were presented in my mind without missing anything.

The light breeze around his body turned into a blue-black air current, jumping backwards, turning, and stabbing, and the falling black shadow slowly opened up in front of his eyes like a frozen picture.

It is slender and long, with smooth lines, the head of a coyote on its neck, the eyelids are half-closed, leaving only a gap, inside are green eyes, revealing cunning and cruelty, the black mane surrounded by air flow is fluffy and open, like the cloak of death, the claws soaked in black mud seem to grasp a shadow, the legs are curled, the muscles of the legs are like a charged spring, as long as it falls on the ground, it can burst out with great power, pounce on the prey, and crush the prey's head with both claws.

However, it was now in the middle of the air with nowhere to draw its strength, and the blue sword surrounded by blue light shook its chest.

Blue Blade!

The moment Victor triggers the apocalypse, Stormfang knows that he has fallen into the trap laid by his opponent, turning from a hunter to a prey. Wild instincts told it that if it was stabbed by the blue light flowing sword, it would be defeated and die, and there was no chance of survival.

Stimulated by the horror of death, the wind fangs mobilized all their potential, and the wind elements inside and outside the body flowed rapidly, changing from falling to sideways, avoiding the piercing sword from time to time, the muscles bulged, the eyes were red, and the claws stepped violently towards the trunk of the tree, trying to use bloodthirsty power to counter the opponent.

Wind Fang's reaction was extremely fast, and the strain was wonderful, fully embodying the powerful strength of a gold-level gnoll.

A sharp wind blade that appeared out of thin air slammed into the body of the wind fang, counteracting its wind movement, and the air flow disorder caused by it instantly slowed the jackal's movements. Victor and Wind Fang staggered, swapping positions, and the wind-swept Adamantite Sword in his left hand swept under the Gnoll's ribs.

Blue Moon!

Click...... The trunk of the tree that the two of them hugged together was stepped out of a pit, and with the help of this force, the wind teeth shot in the direction of the clearing, and in the blink of an eye, it disappeared into the taiga belt, and in an instant, the slender figure of the jackal disappeared into the reckless forest, leaving only a shocking straight blood stain on the snow of the clearing.

Victor stood still, not in pursuit, and was surprised that the badly wounded gnolls could be so fast. But no matter how fast Wind Fang escaped, he had multiple means to kill him.

On the first chance, the killer weapon he used to hurt Wind Fang was the Wind Sword instead of the Blue Blade, and if his left hand sword just now was also the Blue Blade, Wind Fang had already penetrated into his body by the Void Wind Element, chopping up internal organs, causing serious injuries and near death.

On the second chance, when Wind Fang fled, the blue blade of the right hand sword had accumulated enough power to break through the air and hit its back, causing more damage.

On the third chance, Wind Fang's waist ribs were cut open by the Wind Sword, and Victor was absolutely sure that he would catch up and kill it before it escaped into the taiga.

Victor deliberately let go of the fangs.

The process of the battle is very short, but the danger is thrilling, including the confrontation of intelligence, will, psychology, strength, speed, skill, talent and other aspects.

Life is full of contradictions, both tenacious and fragile. In real combat, there is no need to lose a skill on the left and a talent on the right, but to combine all abilities together, explode in an instant, and there is only a line between life and death. But the process of winning the battle has raised life to a strong peak, squeezing its full potential.

From the moment Victor decides to hunt the Wind Fang alone, both the bloodline and X-3 change, the sleeping human bloodline is activated, and X-3 no longer automatically corrects mood changes. Victor is in close contact with the Wind Fangs, and truly feels the horror of death, while his will wanders outside of his emotions, like the Mind Master's ability to awaken the depths of his veins to meet the challenges of his own destruction and the need to hunt down powerful enemies.

It's a very amazing feeling.

Victor's Psychic Bloodline Secret Method simulates the destruction of the physical world through the state of life and death, awakens the Mind Master, and activates the dormant Bloodline Talent, but lacks a clear direction.

The bloodline corresponds to the law, the bloodline of humans or elves contains a variety of laws, and there is no reverse, so which laws should be activated? Are these laws conflicting, or compatible? And how should they be coordinated?

Elves are immortal, humans are short-lived, and Victor is careless, and the activated bloodline talent makes him sleep for twenty hours a day, or can only eat grass, and the joke is big.

This time, Victor aims to hunt the Wind Fangs, and X-3 establishes a mission to coordinate, activate and use various bloodline talents, so that the bloodline laws of humans and elves do not conflict, but merge with each other.

To put it simply, it is to make yourself smarter, stronger, more physically energetic, more perceptive, and more intuitive to be.

Victor even had a vague sense that he seemed to be able to keep his life hidden in action. However, one encounter is clearly not enough, and he will need to go through many more trials before he has the potential to reach a whole new level.

The fangs are his whetstone.

Victor walked up to the wolf corpse, cut off a piece of bloody leg meat with his long sword, forcibly endured the nausea, put it in his mouth and chewed it, slowly savoring the sweetness.

It's also the grinding needed to hunt down the Wind Fangs, and the hunt game has just begun

1 second to remember Aishang:.