There was no option. Fighting was impossible. He had already been outmatched at their playing pace. Their real pace would end him in a single exchange.
Negotiation was impossible. They had already told him what he was; livestock. The word implied everything he needed to know about how negotiation would be received.
The system was silent. He mentally reached out to it, this was the greatest danger he had faced since its activation, but he found nothing, no solution he could think of. No notifications. No emergency prompts. No hidden protocols the mission designer might have inserted for exactly this scenario.
He was alone. He could only watch as the werewolf’s smile widened.
"You see," he said gently, "this is barely two percent of my strength, and you’re already sweating this hard."
Saying that, the werewolf kept walking casually.
Then all of a sudden, he vanished!
One heartbeat, the werewolf was ten meters away. The next, he was standing beside Stan, instantly blitzing Stan with insane speed.
He raised one clawed hand and flicked his finger.
The flick, casual, dismissive, the kind of gesture a bored man might use to swat away an insect, created a small compression wave in the polar air.
Stan felt the wave pass through him a fraction of a second before the flick itself connected with his midsection.
The impact hit him like a truck at highway speed.
His body launched. He tore backward through the air at speeds his own recent flight training told him were somewhere near the low subsonic range.
He hit the ice fifty meters later and tunneled through it, plowing a trench through the compacted snow and ice for another thirty meters before his momentum bled out and his body came to a shuddering stop.
The pain arrived a full second after the impact.
He looked down. There was a hole in his stomach.
A gaping, ragged, ugly hole where the werewolf’s fingernail had connected, his abdominal wall opened cleanly, the layers of tissue beneath visible in the wound, a section of his intestines exposed to the polar air. The werewolf had opened him up with a single finger flick, at two percent of his true capacity, as casually as a man tearing paper.
Stan tried to breathe. The breath came out through the hole in his stomach as well as through his mouth.
Something in his mind detached from the immediate reality of the injury, the way trauma made minds detach when their owners had no capacity left to process what was happening to their bodies. He looked at the wound. He noted, dispassionately, that he could see his own organs. He was in so much pain...
Meanwhile, the werewolf appeared beside him. He crouched down.
He placed one clawed hand on the back of Stan’s head, the fur soft against Stan’s scalp, the claws cool against his temples, and pressed Stan’s face down into the ice.
Then he began to ’drag’ him.
He flew forward casually across the snow, his hand pinning Stan’s head in place, dragging Stan’s face along the ice at whatever pace he chose to walk at.
Stan’s cheek and forehead abraded against the compacted snow. His skin tore. His flesh scraped down layer by layer. A long, spreading trail of red painted the white ice behind them as the werewolf strolled leisurely across the polar surface.
The werewolf spoke as he walked.
"You see, if you were from the Realm’s portal, you should’ve then be a Cultivator in at least Genesis Realm. But I can’t sense your Qi, which should be impossible for anyone at that level. So you’re not from the portal."
He continued dragging.
"But I can smell Divine Bronze on you."
Stan’s face left red on the ice.
"Now that’s interesting. If you’re not from the portal, then how did a New Age creature like you get his hands on Divine Bronze? That’s an old-world treasure. That’s a high-tier old-world treasure. Livestock like you shouldn’t be within a hundred kilometers of anything like that."
He stopped walking. He lifted Stan’s face out of the ice.
Stan’s skin had been ground down along the front of his face to the point where the bone of his cheekbone was visible in one spot. Blood was pouring down his neck in slow, thick sheets.
The werewolf tilted his head appreciatively. "But no matter. Once I eat you, whatever’s inside you becomes mine."
He smiled. "But first, I’ll play with you for a while. Teach livestock like you their proper place. It’s been so long since I’ve had a proper play toy."
He dropped Stan. Stan hit the ice. The werewolf stepped back. Then he kicked.
The kick took Stan in the ribs and sent him tumbling across the ice for a hundred meters before he came to rest, coughing blood, in a shattered patch of snow.
Before he could roll onto his back, the werewolf was already there, appearing above him with the same casual instantaneity, this time bringing his heel down on Stan’s shoulder in a downward stomp that cracked bone and drove Stan’s arm bones out of alignment.
Stan screamed in pain and the werewolf laughed, absolutely relishing every moment...
"That’s better. I wanted to hear that."
He grabbed Stan by the ankle and hurled him.
Stan flew roughly... He hit a distant ice ridge and shattered through it, his body carving a chunk of the frozen ridge out with the sheer force of his passage before landing in a heap on the far side.
Every bone in his body, even the ones that his tempered skeleton had made five times stronger, was screaming with the accumulated damage of injuries that would have killed a normal human twenty times over.
The werewolf appeared above him again. He crouched. He picked Stan up by the throat.
He held him at arm’s length, the polar wind whipping around them, Stan’s blood dripping down onto the ice below in a slow, steady patter.
"You’re not much of a toy," he said conversationally. "You break too easily. New Age humans are so fragile. No wonder your entire species let itself be reduced to what it is now, but I don’t get why you’re more resilient than the others."
He casually drew one claw across Stan’s chest. Skin parted. Muscle parted. The claw ran from his collarbone to his hip in a single, effortless cut. Stan’s body opened along the line like a canvas being scored by a knife.
Stan tried to scream again. His throat produced only a wet, ragged sound.