Without hesitation, Aria took off running. Her only secret to surviving so long in the wasteland was: never be curious, and run if anything seemed amiss. But this time, death seemed unwilling to let her go. Just as she turned around, three enormous black shadows sprang out from behind the snowdrift, blocking her escape route.
They were Demon Wolves. They were larger than ordinary Arctic snow wolves, covered in a hard, black hide like tar, and their eyes glowed with an eerie red light. Most terrifyingly, green saliva dripped from the corners of their mouths, and when it landed, the snow sizzled and corroded.
“How could there be abyssal monsters here?!” Aria was terrified. This place was at least several hundred kilometers away from the legendary "Demon King's Castle," and monsters of this level usually didn’t appear on the outskirts. Unless… something happened over there that caused the abyss’s aura to leak out.
The three demonic wolves surrounded her in a triangle, growling greedily. In their eyes, this human girl, radiating faint but pure energy, was a beacon in the darkness, an unparalleled delicacy.
“Get out of my way!” Aria leaned against a large tree, her hands gripping the rusty iron sword tightly. Despite her trembling hands and convulsing stomach, there was not a trace of weakness in her eyes, no pleading.
If you didn’t want to die, you had to be fiercer than a wild beast.
The wolf on the left attacked first, kicking off with its hind legs and opening its blood-red maw to lunge at Aria’s throat. In that life-or-death moment, the world in Aria’s eyes slowed down once again. That strange feeling returned—as if a golden torrent within her was trying to burst through a dam. At that moment, she could even see the bits of flesh on the demon wolf’s teeth.
Die!
She instinctively turned to the side, avoiding the fatal bite, and at the same time, she used the force of the spin to slash the iron sword in her hand hard at the wolf’s waist.
Clang! A crisp sound.
The iron sword did strike, but it didn’t cleave the wolf in two as expected. The mutated black hide was as hard as iron, and the rusty sword only left a white mark on it. Instead, the impact caused Aria’s hand to split open, bleeding profusely.
“Damn it…this broken sword…” Aria looked at the weapon in her hand in despair.
Enraged, the wolf landed and pounced, slapping her shoulder with its paw.
“Hmm!” A sharp pain shot through Aria, sending her flying. She crashed heavily into a tree trunk before falling onto the snow. Blood stained the white snow.
The stench of blood thoroughly roused the remaining two demonic wolves. They ceased their probing and charged simultaneously. Aria struggled to get up, but her broken ribs made each breath feel like swallowing razor blades.
Completion.
This time it was really over. She watched as the gaping maw drew ever closer, the suffocating stench already overwhelming her. In her final moments, she did not pray. She only had some regrets. It’s a pity I couldn’t avenge my adoptive father, and it’s a pity I’ve never had a full meal in my life.
“Bye now…” Aria closed her eyes, but her fingers gripped the sword tightly. Even if she died, she would break one of the beast’s teeth.
One second. Two seconds.
The expected excruciating pain did not occur. Instead, she heard a dull thud, like a heavy object hitting flesh.
Bang! Then came a series of sounds of trees breaking. The foul wind that had been rushing towards her suddenly disappeared.
Aria opened her eyes, trembling. The snowstorm seemed to have stopped. Before her, in this seemingly hopeless situation, another figure appeared out of nowhere. It was a person completely wrapped in a tattered cloak. He had his back to Aria, one hand still in a fist-pumping stance. And a dozen meters in front of him, the once invincible dire wolf had now turned into a twisted mass of flesh, deeply embedded in a broken giant pine tree, without even having a chance to howl.
The remaining two wolves were terrified by this terrifying attack, and fled into the snowstorm with their tails between their legs, whimpering.
Aria’s mind went blank. The figure slowly withdrew his fist, without turning around immediately. He first raised his left wrist and glanced at the strange black device on it. After confirming that the red pointer had finally stopped moving backward, his shoulders visibly relaxed, as if a heavy burden had been lifted.
Then he turned around. It was a face hidden in the shadow of a hood, its features obscured, only a pair of dark, deep eyes visible in the wind and snow. He looked down at Aria, who was slumped in the snow, her face covered in blood and shivering. There were no gentle words of comfort, nor any pleasantries after a hero saved a damsel in distress. He simply scrutinized her from head to toe with an almost harsh gaze, making sure she wasn’t missing any limbs.
“Is he still alive?” The man’s voice was hoarse and cold, but his next words carried a reassuring and undeniably domineering quality: “It’s good that you’re alive.”
He reached out his hand to Aria, his palm seemingly carrying a strange warmth: “Hold on, newbie. I came all this way… not to collect a corpse.”
“Hand.” This was the second thing the man said to Aria.
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In the blizzard, Sergei didn’t wait for Aria’s response. His patience had reached zero along with the trembling red pointer on his bracelet.
The instant the demonic wolf was blasted to pieces, Sergei felt a suffocating dizziness. The Black Hole Armor, due to the explosive punch, had completely drained the last bit of energy from his body.
[Warning: Energy surplus] 0.01%......The system is about to be forced into hibernation.
“Damn it…” Sergei didn’t even bother maintaining his aloof and powerful image. He knelt on one knee, ripped off his tattered cloth glove, revealing a cold, black smart bracelet. Then, he roughly grabbed Aria’s hand, which was frozen purple.
“Don’t move if you don’t want to die.” Aria instinctively wanted to pull her hand back. In her mind, this suddenly appearing man in black, while having saved her, also exuded an aura more dangerous than the demon wolf. But the moment that cold black bracelet touched her skin—
Buzz! A low-frequency hum, audible only to the two of them, exploded deep within their brains. Aria’s eyes widened. She felt neither cold nor pain.
For the past three years, she had had a strange "heat flow" in her body. Whenever she was emotionally agitated or on the verge of death, that heat flow would surge through her blood vessels like magma, burning her internal organs with pain—that was the "strange illness" her adoptive father talked about, and also the source of her golden eyes. But at this moment, when that black bracelet was placed on her, the "magma" that had tormented her for three years seemed to find an outlet. It’s like a dam opening its floodgates. The swelling that felt like her blood vessels were about to burst disappeared, replaced by an unprecedented, soul-stirring ease…
For Sergei, however, the feeling was quite the opposite.
“Ugh—!!” He suddenly tilted his head back, the veins on his neck throbbing like snakes. That was too intense. If ordinary charging was like a trickle, then the energy Aria transmitted was like a high-pressure water gun, or even a tsunami.
It was an extremely pure, unadulterated primordial light energy. The energy surged wildly into his body through the bracelet, cleansing his long-dried-up meridians. The dormant black hole cells instantly awakened, emitting greedy cheers as they devoured the feast that had been delivered to their doorstep like starving ghosts.
[System notification: High-level external energy source detected.]
[Establishing a symbiotic channel (Symbiosis Link)... Synchronization rate: 10%...40%...80%...100%]
[Charging begins.]
The black dial on Sergei’s wrist lit up. The red pointer that originally pointed to the end of death seemed to be pushed hard by some unseen force, and began to spin wildly clockwise!
0.1%... 1%... 3%... 5%...
In just ten seconds, it actually recovered to the 5% safety line!
“Call…” Sergei let out a long breath. As energy was injected, his previously deathly pale face began to regain its color, and the ends of his dull gray hair began to glow with a faint golden sheen again. The deep-seated hunger that had always accompanied him was finally suppressed.
Was this the true value of the "Vessel of God"? This isn’t a power bank, it’s practically a human-shaped nuclear power plant!
At this moment, Aria, due to the sudden release of the violent energy within her body, collapsed onto the snow like a puddle of mud. But she did not faint; her eyes, which had been cloudy due to the accumulation of energy, now became crystal clear, like gold that had been washed clean of its impurities. She stared blankly at Sergei. She could feel that the man had "taken" something from her body. But strangely, she didn’t feel weak; instead, she felt much lighter, and even the scratches on her shoulder didn’t hurt as much anymore.
“What…did you do to me?” Aria’s voice was hoarse, tinged with fear and confusion.
Sergei released her hand. He glanced at his bracelet; the pointer was steady at the "7%" mark—enough to sustain his regular activities for a few days, or to deliver a few dozen more of those heavy punches. He stood up, stretched his powerful shoulders, and his bones cracked like popping beans.
“A deal.” Sergei looked down at her, reverting to his cold and rational CEO-like tone. He pointed to his bracelet, then to Aria’s heart. “There’s a ‘bomb’ hidden inside you. It gives you a tiny bit of power, but it’s also draining your life force. If you don’t release it, you won’t live past twenty.”
Aria was stunned. Her adoptive father had indeed said that people with her "strange illness" didn’t live long.
“And I,” Sergei said, shaking his wrist, “just happen to be an engineer who can defuse bomb fuses and, incidentally, turn waste gunpowder into something useful…” He bent down and extended his gloved hand to Aria. This time, it wasn’t coercion, but an invitation.
“Listen, newbie. I don’t care who you are or how you survived before.” Sergei’s gaze was like a knife, piercing through the wind and snow, looking directly into Aria’s soul. “You need someone to ‘bleed’ you to prevent you from exploding and dying; and I need your energy to sustain my life.”
“This is called symbiosis.”
“Now, you have two choices.” Sergei held up two fingers: “First, stay here and become frozen meat, or be eaten by the next wave of dire wolves that come smelling the scent. Second, grab my hand. Be my… ‘exclusive partner’.”
The wind and snow were howling. Aria stared at the hand outstretched in mid-air. It was a large, powerful hand—the very hand that had just shattered Death with a single punch. She glanced back at the carcass of the demon wolf embedded in the tree, then at her own hands, which were covered in frostbite and scars. She didn’t want to die. She wanted to avenge her adoptive father. She also wanted to know who those white-robed men who burned down the village were.
Aria gritted her teeth, used the last of her strength, raised her blood-stained little hand, and slammed it hard into Sergei’s palm.
Smack!
“I choose option two.” The girl’s voice trembled, but it carried a fierce, lone wolf-like edge. “But I’m not one of your ‘partners.’ I am Aria.”
“Make a deal.” Sergei’s lips curled into a slight smile. He lifted the petite Aria from the snow as if she were a kitten. But instead of putting her down, he carried her directly on his shoulder—like a special forces soldier carrying important tactical equipment.
“Hold on tight, Aria.” Sergei glanced at the rapidly darkening sky, and from the distant snowstorm came the faint howls of more wild beasts. “If we don’t want to die, we have to find a place to start a fire before dark.”
He adjusted his posture to make Aria a little more comfortable, then strode off into the depths of the black pine forest.
“Oh, right.” As they walked, Sergei suddenly seemed to remember something and casually asked: “Can you cook?”
Aria, who was perched on his shoulder, paused for a moment, clearly not keeping up with this sudden shift in thought: “…Only roasted rabbit. If it’s raw.”
“Tsk.” Sergei shook his head, his tone carrying a hint of disdain, yet also possessing a reassuring, down-to-earth quality: “It seems that in addition to combat, you’ll need to add a cooking class to your ‘special training’ schedule.”
“After all, my partner… can’t just be a freeloader.”
In the wind and snow, the two figures gradually disappeared into the distance. Behind them, a wisp of black smoke rose silently from the corpse of the dead demon wolf, then dissipated in the wind, as if some silent signal was drifting towards the distant Ironblood Empire.
Sorry for missing yesterday's update! I was tied up with some things.