Chapter 168: Miniature Version Can’t Compare!

’Don’t tell me… they’re using a miniature version of my class.’

The thought settled heavily in Bruce’s mind.

It wasn’t just that the wolves healed faster. It was worse.

They were adapting.

Each time they regenerated, their bodies grew denser. Tougher. Their muscles compacted unnaturally, fur hardening like layered armor. Even Ash’s Soul Flame, once their bane, no longer tore through them as cleanly. The flames still burned, but resistance was forming.

For the first time.

Bruce felt pressure.

Real pressure.

Never once had mutant beasts pushed him this far.

The Moon Wolves were absurd.

Their fur defense rivaled the enhanced Ice Direwolves. Their agility rivaled the Shadow Wolves. Their regeneration was relentless. If they weren’t killed outright, they recovered in seconds. Limbs regrew. Organs reformed. Pain meant nothing to them anymore.

They charged him without hesitation.

Without fear.

Without restraint.

Without pain.

Bruce cut them down again and again, but as the minutes passed, his grip tightened. His fingers numbed from repeated impact, from forcing Red through bodies that refused to stay dead.

The slaughter continued.

But it was no longer effortless.

Bruce’s eyes sharpened.

Enough.

He surged forward, seized a lunging wolf by the throat, and slammed it into the ground.

“Vitality Collapse.”

The effect was immediate.

A sickly yellow glow ignited beneath the wolf’s skin, spreading like wildfire through its veins. Its body convulsed violently as vitality surged far beyond containment. Muscles bulged grotesquely, swelling outward as if something inside was trying to tear free.

The wolf tried to howl.

It never finished.

BOOOOM!!!

The beast detonated.

Flesh, bone, and blood erupted outward in a catastrophic blast, the explosion ripping through the surrounding pack like a bomb buried inside living flesh. The ground shattered. Bodies were flung into the air. Shockwaves tore through the wolves mid-charge, vaporizing some instantly, dismembering others before they even understood what had happened.

Bruce had already leapt backward.

The blast washed past him, heat and debris roaring where he’d stood a moment earlier. When the dust settled.

More than sixty percent of the beasts attacking him were gone.

Erased.

Silence lingered for a fraction of a second.

Then Bruce moved again.

Red shifted in his grip.

Metal groaned. Mana surged.

The dagger elongated, unfolded, restructured. Segments locking together with heavy, mechanical finality. In seconds, Red transformed into a massive mana-forged bazooka, its surface glowing with crimson veins, runes spiraling along the barrel like a heartbeat made visible. The weapon hummed with suppressed destruction, the air around it distorting under sheer mana density.

Bruce didn’t wait for the smoke to clear.

He raised the bazooka and aimed straight toward the mountain peak.

Where the Alpha Lycan stood.

Mana flooded in.

The barrel glowed brighter and brighter until a condensed crimson projectile began forming at its mouth. Dense, compressed, spinning violently, dragging surrounding mana into itself like a miniature star.

Bruce’s eyes locked onto the distant silhouette.

“Let’s see how you like this.”

The bazooka fired.

The recoil split the ground beneath Bruce’s feet.

The crimson missile tore across the sky, ripping through the air faster than sound, leaving a spiraling trail of warped space in its wake. The Alpha saw it.

Its eyes widened.

It moved instantly. Leaping away from the peak in a blur of motion.

Too late.

The missile struck the mountain.

The explosion was cataclysmic.

Light engulfed the summit. Stone vaporized. The peak collapsed inward before erupting outward in a thunderous detonation that shook the entire dungeon. Mountains cracked. Avalanches of rock and debris cascaded downward. The sky lit up crimson as shockwaves rolled endlessly across the range.

The peak was gone.

Reduced to rubble.

The force of the blast sent a massive rumble through the terrain, tearing loose slabs of rock and earth. The Alpha Lycan was thrown from its vantage point, forced down from the destroyed summit, crashing toward the battlefield below.

Straight into the midst of its pack.

And the real fight was about to begin.

Through the thick smoke and falling debris, two shapes lunged at Bruce. Wolves that had tracked him through the chaos with feral precision. Before their claws could even reach him, Red flowed in his grasp, reshaping instantly into two long swords.

Steel flashed.

Two clean arcs cut through the haze.

The heads of the beasts flew, bodies collapsing before they understood they were already dead.

Bruce didn’t even slow.

His gaze drifted toward the heart of the mushroom cloud rising in the distance. Inside it, the surviving beasts writhed. Their fur had been completely burned away, flesh blackened and cracked. But even now, muscle knitted back together, skin reforming unnaturally fast.

Bruce exhaled softly.

He hadn’t wanted to use Vitality Collapse in the first place. The cores these beasts carried were valuable. Extremely so. Even earlier, he had deliberately restrained the mana output, enough to disrupt and kill but not enough to obliterate everything outright.

That explosion wasn’t meant to wipe them out.

It was meant to break them.

And it had worked.

Their formation was shattered. Commands were delayed. Coordination was gone.

This.

This was the opening.

Bruce moved.

Red shifted again, metal flowing like liquid as it reformed into gauntlets around Bruce’s hands. Crimson veins pulsed across the surface as mana surged through them.

He vanished into the smoke.

Palm strike.

A beast’s chest caved in as Holy Eruption detonated directly inside its heart and brain.

Palm strike.

Another dropped instantly, eyes blank, body collapsing mid-charge.

Palm strike.

Another corpse hit the ground.

Bruce was too fast.

By the time the beasts sensed him, he was already past them. And Holy Eruption didn’t leave wounds to regenerate from. It didn’t care about flesh. It struck organs directly. Core functions. Life itself.

Their abilities could heal.

They could adapt.

But they could not resurrect the dead.

Bodies began to pile up again.

Meanwhile, the Alpha that had joined the battle possessed superior senses. Through its unique perception, it noticed beasts dying instantly, one after another. A chill ran through the battlefield as it howled.

The howl rose above the battlefield.

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