Chapter 167: Puppet

The ice Wolf let out a low, deep roar, its four claws digging hard into the dark azure ice that covered the exterior of the apartment complex.

BANG!

The wall shook.

Right after, its massive body shot forward like a white bolt of lightning.

The Ice Wolf General sat on the wolf’s back, her long silvery-white hair flowing behind her, the ice sword in her hand trailing a streak of cold light through the air. Those azure blue eyes had completely locked onto the position of Rover’s room, like a hunter who had finally spotted the den of her prey.

In front of the door, seeing that scene, Sunako’s whole body went stiff.

Her two arms and two legs were still bound stretched out in an X-shape, stuck tightly against the door like some strange and pitiful decoration.

Watching the nearly two-meter-tall ice Wolf charging closer and closer, Sunako’s face immediately went ghostly pale.

“Aghhhhhhh!”

She screamed shrilly, tears flowing out right then and there.

“It’s coming! It’s really coming! Goddamn it! Goddamn it! I knew it! I knew it!”

“That bitch is charging right at us! She’s really charging right at us!”

“Help me! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die here yet!”

Thunder Dragon, which had been sitting beside the door, was also startled into straightening up.

Its two purple-black eyes contracted.

The scales on its body stood on end.

Small bolts of electricity crackled as they crawled along its horns, wings, and short tail.

Krit! Krittt!

Its cries became much more rapid than usual.

Clearly, even it could sense the immense threat charging toward this room.

Inside the room, Morie wasn’t panicked at all.

She sat upright in her wheelchair, both hands placed on the magical control panel, her jade-green eyes cold to the point of resembling a frozen lake.

“Don’t let her get close.” She softly said.

At that very moment, the Archer Ballista and the Bouncing Ball Launcher simultaneously activated.

Vwoosh! Vwoosh! Vwoosh! Vwoosh!

Long, slender black arrows ripped through the wind as they shot out.

This was no longer sweeping fire across enemy lines.

This time, Morie aimed precisely at the ice Wolf carrying the General.

The distance was too close.

The speed of the arrows was too fast.

The ice Wolf had just pressed hard against a patch of ice wall, preparing to change direction and lunge again when three arrows arrived right in front of it.

SHINK!

The first arrow struck the ice armor at its shoulder.

The second arrow pierced into its chest.

The third arrow even sliced past the side of its neck.

The thick layer of ice armor covering the exterior of the ice Wolf’s body immediately cracked.

Not just cracked.

The armor-piercing effect of the Archer Ballista caused that hard ice to be torn apart like frozen cloth, large fragments shattering and raining down below like hailstones.

The ice Wolf let out a pained roar, its body noticeably tilting.

But the Ice Wolf General wasn’t fazed at all.

She only coldly lifted her sword.

A single sword line swept horizontally.

CLANG! CLANG!

Two of the following arrows were slashed out of their trajectory.

At the same time, the Bouncing Ball Launcher in the other corner also opened fire.

Each jet-black ball shot out, carrying a chilling whistle, precisely slamming into the front legs of the ice Wolf.

BANG! BANG!

The ice Wolf staggered.

The speed of its straight charge toward the door was immediately halted.

Elith, standing beside Morie, saw the opportunity emerge. Her eyes immediately turned ice-cold.

“Now!”

The instant her thought was transmitted, countless small spiders hiding everywhere simultaneously took action.

From the cracks in the walls.

From beneath the layer of ice.

From the dead corners on the corridor ceilings.

And from the spider nets she had already prepared in advance.

Spider silk shot out simultaneously from all four directions, all eight sides.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

Strands of silk so thin they were almost invisible yet tough and sharp to the extreme, wrapped straight toward the legs of the ice Wolf, the neck, the sword-holding arm of the General, even covering a large patch in front of her as if to envelop both rider and wolf within.

The Ice Wolf General frowned.

She clearly hadn’t expected that aside from the firepower of the defense towers, this place still had a layer of such pliable and troublesome traps.

The ice Wolf had both of its front legs caught by a volley of silk. Its body, which had been charging along the wall, immediately came to a halt.

Right after, the large net from above came crashing down.

BOOM!

The ice Wolf was pulled off course, its body slamming hard against the layer of ice covering the apartment complex wall.

Ice fragments scattered in all directions.

The Ice Wolf General was also forced to withdraw her sword, instead of slashing straight into the door as she had originally intended.

“Hit!” Elith panted.

But it wasn’t enough.

The Ice Wolf General was only pushed back, not knocked down.

The ice Wolf beneath her suddenly dug its claws into the layer of ice on the wall.

Crack!

The sharp claws scratched out four long cracks.

Then, in a scene that made one’s skin crawl, that ice Wolf directly clung to the layer of ice covering the apartment complex and ran horizontally and vertically as if gravity didn’t exist at all.

It no longer charged in a straight line.

Instead, it changed into a chaotic curving trajectory, sometimes shooting up, sometimes lunging sideways, sometimes clinging to the ceiling, sometimes kicking off the edge of the wall, leaving behind a trail of cracks and shattered ice fragments.

The Ice Wolf General sat on its back, her body remaining frightfully stable.

The ice sword in her hand continuously slashed out.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

Each sword line severed a large patch of spider silk.

Each time the ice Wolf changed direction, it just happened to dodge the new volley from the Archer Ballista or deflect the angle of impact from the Bouncing Ball Launcher.

Outside the room, Sunako watched with her mouth agape.

Tears were still flowing, but she had forgotten to scream for a few brief seconds.

“Goddamn it…”

“What the hell is this…”

“That wolf… it’s running on the wall?”

Right after, when a cold sword line swept past less than half a meter from her head, Sunako immediately regained her familiar ear-piercing scream.

“Aghhhhh! Don’t fight so close to me! Don’t fight so close to me!”

“I don’t want to be unjustly hacked to death!”

“If you’re going to fight the Boss, fight her properly!”

Thunder Dragon glanced at her, its tail twitching, clearly very much wanting to give her another bolt of lightning.

Meanwhile, the general chat channel had completely erupted.

[Goddamn it! That wolf is running on the wall!]

[Not just running on the wall, it’s running all around the entire apartment complex!]

[Is this a joke? Why isn’t it falling down?]

[I’m watching through the corridor camera. Fuck, is this a movie?]

[That room’s defense towers are just too ridiculous!]

[Forget about the defense towers, whose spiders are those?]

[Spiders? You can see those spiders too?]

[I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.]

[No, there really are countless small spiders wrapping around the Boss.]

[Goddamn it! How many monsters are stuffed inside that room?]

[I don’t care, as long as they can kill her, it’s good.]

[That’s right, kill her quickly! Once the Boss dies, our pressure will also decrease.]

[Hmph! All the points are definitely going to end up in one group’s hands again.]

[If you’re jealous, go outside and fight yourself.]

[You make it sound easy. Try going outside to face that female general yourself.]

[If not for that room blocking in front, this entire apartment complex would’ve been destroyed long ago.]

[I’m happy enough. Let them have the points, as long as I survive.]

[Yes! Whoever kills that bitch today, I’ll call them father.]

In another room, Rossie was sitting close to the monitoring screen.

Her beautiful face clearly showed a look of shock.

Her gaze continuously shifted from the image of the ice Wolf running on the wall, to the general chat channel that was frantically scrolling, then back to the battlefield.

“Insane…” She muttered.

“This is truly insane…”

Right at that moment, she suddenly narrowed her eyes.

Her gaze no longer stopped on the ice Wolf, but shifted to the silk strands continuously shooting out from extremely hard-to-detect corners.

Spider silk.

Small spiders.

This type of control.

The more she looked, the more familiar it seemed.

A second later, the face of that purple-haired girl with the eye on her forehead, who had appeared in that room earlier, surfaced in Rossie’s mind.

Elith.

Rossie slowly frowned.

“Is it her…”

“Those spiders… belong to that Spidary girl?”

Narok standing beside her couldn’t think so deeply.

He only stared intently at the screen, exclaiming to the point he almost wanted to bash his head against the wall.

“Goddamn it…” He muttered.

“How many more aces is that room still hiding?”

“Selina over there really is living too comfortably…”

“Not just Selina…” Rossie coldly cut in, her gaze still not leaving the screen: “The issue is that that room is so strong it has gone beyond normal logic.”

Narok gritted his teeth.

Jealousy clearly showed in his eyes, but what was even greater was helplessness.

If it were him, he fundamentally couldn’t even squeeze into that terrifying combat circle.

Forget snatching anyone.

Just getting close, he would’ve probably been ground into a pulp long ago.

Outside, the battle was still escalating beat by beat.

Morie controlled the Archer Ballista and the Bouncing Ball Launcher with increasing precision.

Every time the ice Wolf clung to a point on the wall to change direction, her arrows had already been fired ahead of time.

Every time the Ice Wolf General had just severed a patch of silk, the jet-black ball had already slammed into the next foothold of the ice Wolf.

Elith continuously changed tactics.

No longer trying to bind her in one place.

She scattered her spiders, letting them divide into layers, tiers, and small waves, clinging to the path of the opponent’s movement.

The first layer blocked the direction.

The second layer shot silk at the wolf’s legs.

The third layer converged on the sword-holding arm.

The fourth layer wove nets in advance at positions where the ice Wolf was likely to have to cling to.

Layer upon layer stacked on top of each other, forcing the Ice Wolf General to continuously change direction, continuously expend energy.

BOOM! BANG! SWISH!

Ice fragments flew all across the sky.

Spider silk was torn apart repeatedly.

Arrows embedded into the wall surface, piercing through thick patches of ice.

The Bouncing Ball Launcher smashed apart ice protrusions, causing the massive body of the ice Wolf to slip for a distance several times.

For the first time since she had appeared, the Ice Wolf General had fallen into a state of being continuously pushed back.

But she still didn’t fall.

Not at all.

The ice Wolf beneath her was like a creature born to fight on this kind of insane battlefield.

It clung to walls, clung to ceilings, spun its body amid the layer of ice covering the outside of the apartment complex, dodging to the point of almost creating afterimages.

If it had been just half a beat slower, it would probably have been pinned dead long ago.

Right at that moment, in a hidden corner beneath the apartment complex, something suddenly stirred.

Initially, no one paid attention.

Because all eyes were focused on the insane battle on the exterior wall.

But then, an ugly black shadow unexpectedly shot up from within the curtain of snow.

It wasn’t an ice monster.

It was a puppet.

A puppet so disgusting that just looking at it was enough to make one nauseous.

Its body was twisted as if sewn together from many pieces of rotten flesh. Its outer skin was wrinkled and uneven. In some places, black sinew was exposed. In others, it resembled a layer of wet cloth draped over a decomposing corpse. Its head was misshapen, one cheek sunken in, the other bulging as if something were crawling inside.

But the most skin-crawling thing was the mouth.

That mouth was open excessively wide, stretching nearly up to the ears.

Inside wasn’t a human tongue.

It was countless small tentacles, slimy, black and red, continuously writhing like a swarm of living maggots.

In its hand, it held a large cleaver, its blade chipped, covered in dried black blood.

An ugly and disgusting puppet… had suddenly appeared.

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