Chapter Ninety: Watching the Fire from the Opposite Shore

Because it was his first time fighting a group of mid-tier magical beasts, Zhou Tian inevitably lacked some experience in handling the situation. If it had been someone seasoned in such matters, he would most likely have either fled or taken the initiative to strike first; he would never have stood there and allowed those Blaze Boars to prepare their attack.

But Zhou Tian, short on experience, failed to react in time. By the time the Blaze Boars unleashed the attack they had been preparing for so long, he found himself scrambling in the face of that sudden assault.

With dual earth-and-fire attributes, the Blaze Boars were most adept at composite spells such as firestorm meteor. In the face of the serpents Zhou Tian had gathered, close-quarters combat would have been foolish. Even if the Blaze Boars themselves had not understood that, the Blaze Boar King would certainly have issued the correct command.

Thus, with Zhou Tian completely unprepared, at the Blaze Boar King’s order the whole pack directly unleashed magical attacks upon the snake horde before them.

The snakes within the Ten Thousand Serpents Basin might, in melee combat, use sheer numbers to bring down foes far stronger than themselves, but their weakness had never changed: magical defense was always their greatest flaw. Now, facing the Blaze Boars’ attack, the snakes Zhou Tian had gathered at his side were utterly incapable of resistance. Almost wherever the falling firestones struck from the sky, not a single snake in that area survived.

In just a short while, the snake horde Zhou Tian had summoned had been nearly ninety percent smashed to death by the Blaze Boars. By the time Zhou Tian came to his senses, the Blaze Boars, led by their king, were already charging straight at him.

“Damn it!”

Seeing just how ferocious the Blaze Boar pack was, Zhou Tian gave a sharp cry and, without another word, turned and fled toward the outer edges of the magical beast forest.

The way Zhou Tian had allocated his points made him superb at saving his own life, but he did not possess particularly strong offensive power. As for the Ten Thousand Serpents Basin, which he relied on for attacks, it had already been half destroyed by a single joint strike from the Blaze Boar pack. Without the basin’s offensive power, and with the Blaze Boars’ overwhelming numbers, Zhou Tian knew that even though they had not yet truly engaged in battle, defeating them would likely be extremely difficult.

Zhou Tian had come to the magical beast forest to level up, not to deal with these Blaze Boars. Although he still did not know why they were attacking him, now that he had been targeted by them, he was far more willing to make a strategic retreat than to fight them head-on.

So, relying on the hundred attribute points he had gained from his allocation, Zhou Tian took the lead as a serpent and directly led the pack of Blaze Boars toward the forest’s outskirts.

Since he had no idea why those Blaze Boars had set their sights on him in the first place, at first Zhou Tian had thought that as long as he shook them off, they would probably return on their own. He had not expected that the Blaze Boars would pursue him with such tenacity, as though they had no intention of letting him go. They chased him for more than a hundred li, yet showed no sign of turning back. If he kept running like this, it seemed entirely possible that they would even follow him into human territory.

“I didn’t steal their young, and I didn’t even kill their leader. Why in the world are these damned pigs chasing me?” Zhou Tian thought bitterly. “What should I do? If I keep letting them chase me, I’ll lead them all the way to the forest’s edge. With the mercenaries stationed there, if they run into this Blaze Boar pack, there’ll be massive casualties!”

Although he had become a snake, Zhou Tian still instinctively thought of himself as a human. Even with a huge pack of Blaze Boars on his tail, he still found time to worry about the mercenaries hunting magical beasts at the forest’s edge.

Still, concern was one thing, and Zhou Tian would not truly place himself in danger for the sake of those mercenaries. While lamenting that the mercenaries were no match for the Blaze Boars behind him, he nonetheless, without any self-consciousness at all, led the pack of Blaze Boars to the outskirts of the magical beast forest.

“Eh? Why are there so many mercenaries here?”

Just as he reached the outskirts, Zhou Tian sensed that the number of mercenaries around him was much greater than when he had departed. Though he found it strange, he did not take it too seriously.

Until...

“Boom!”

A burst of magical attack suddenly crashed down upon Zhou Tian, blasting the unprepared serpent high into the air. If Zhou Tian had not previously added a hundred points to his physique, that single strike might very well have taken half his life.

Faced with this sudden assault, Zhou Tian was naturally astonished. Though he was currently moving in a serpent’s body, his enormous size alone made it obvious to anyone that he was not to be trifled with. Under normal circumstances, mercenaries and beasts alike would have avoided him; how could they possibly have taken the initiative to attack him?

Though surprised to have fallen into an ambush, Zhou Tian’s response was swift.

Just as the hidden mercenaries launched a second wave of magical attacks, Zhou Tian suddenly reverted to human form. Shielded by the barrage of spells, his transformation went unnoticed by every living thing present. By the time Zhou Tian had quietly slipped aside, the mercenaries and the Blaze Boars that had chased after him were still unable to understand why their target had vanished so abruptly.

Originally, once Zhou Tian disappeared, the Blaze Boars would have retreated back to their usual territory. As for the mercenaries, after losing Zhou Tian as their target, they might well have quarreled over the spoils, but in the end they would certainly have dispersed.

But events did not unfold that way. After losing Zhou Tian as their target, the spells originally meant to strike him all flew straight past the place where he had been and toward the rear.

At that moment, the Blaze Boars had been charging after Zhou Tian. With Zhou Tian gone, they were all directly within the range of those spells. Before they even had time to understand why Zhou Tian had vanished, they were already being battered by the mercenaries’ magic, screeching in pain.

Attacked for no reason at all, the Blaze Boars did not care whether this was a misunderstanding. Their furious gaze turned upon the mercenaries, and without another word, they spun around and charged straight at them...

“What is that?”

“Bad news, it’s a Blaze Boar! Run!”

“Why would Blaze Boars appear at the forest’s outskirts? Weren’t they always active in the central region?”

“Damn it, can someone tell me what the hell is going on...?”

“...”

Because the mercenaries had only dared to lie in ambush along the outskirts and had never dared to venture deep into the magical beast forest, there had been no one behind Zhou Tian when he appeared. And Zhou Tian’s body had been so enormous that, hidden by his bulk, the mercenaries had failed to see the Blaze Boars following behind him. Thus, when Zhou Tian vanished and their attacks landed upon the Blaze Boar pack, none of the mercenaries could understand why the Blaze Boars, creatures that should have lived in the forest’s central region, had appeared at the outskirts.

Just as Zhou Tian had expected, the mercenaries active nearby had very few true experts among them. They could still handle low-level magical beasts at the edge of the forest, but when it came to mid-level or even high-level magical beasts, they had no real means of dealing with them except by sheer numbers.

These mercenaries had come fully prepared to deal with Zhou Tian, whom they regarded as a high-level magical beast. But now Zhou Tian had suddenly disappeared, and in his place they were faced with an entire pack of Blaze Boars. Not only had nearly all of their earlier preparations gone to waste, but in terms of raw strength alone, they had no hope of matching the pack.

With a single charge, despite the mercenaries desperately using every method they could to improve their chances of survival, whether magical barriers or large-scale equipment attacks, once those blows landed among the Blaze Boars, their lethality proved extremely limited.

And so, despite the mercenaries’ repeated attempts to block them, the Blaze Boars still broke through their obstacles with ease. Amid the mercenaries’ cries of terror and despair, the boars began their slaughter...