Many months had passed since the wolf started his traning. Maybe half a year? Or more. Boars never counted.
In a quiet nook of the Verdant Wilds, beneath a gnarled umbrella-shaped tree, two boars gnawed noisily on crooked berries. Their tusks clicked and scraped, drool mingling with the juice that stained their chins purple. Seven empty bottles lay beside them like the aftermath of a berry-fueled tavern brawl.
"Seven?" muttered the elder boar, tipping a bottle upside down and catching only air. "This is robbery. This is a crime. This is a… dessert course with no main dish!"
The younger one grunted. "We are the strategists of this forest! The economists of extortion! And we get only seven bottles?"
As if the heavens shared their indignation, thunder rolled and fat drops of rain began to fall. The first splashed into the open mouth of the elder boar, who choked and sprayed a mist of juice and rainwater in disgust.
"Hey—who's peeing on us?!"
The younger boar squinted at the sky. "Rain."
"Rain? In this season? That's suspicious. I smell plot!"
"No, you smell like berries and regret."
The elder boar huffed. "We had a deal with the weather. Sunny, mild, occasionally foggy. This feels like a setup…"
That was when they heard it — a screech, high and metallic, that didn't belong to wind, storm, or beast.
The trees trembled. The earth held its breath.
Far away, under the edge of a darkening canopy, the wolf opened his eyes, sensing danger around him.
Behind the bamboo's something walked. Its colour green made it hard to see who or what it was behind the green bamboobs. Normally no one even came close to him.
Today, however, something did.
Its body was long and sinewed, easily matching the wolf's three-meter length, its hind legs curled with an unnatural tension — like steel springs loaded for war. Its skin shimmered green-black like oil-slick metal, mandibles clicking rhythmically. Two antennae stretched like whips, twitching in erratic, unreadable rhythms. Its eyes? Jet voids of indifference.
A giant grasshopper, ancient and hungry. And in the very center of its thorax pulsed a flickering orb of flame — purple, red, and black all at once — beating like a second heart.
A Beast Flame.
The wolf's many eyes blinked in eerie synchronization, his bodies tense. Rain spattered his fur, steam rising where water met the lingering warmth of his foundation-burning session.
"So," he muttered, voice a coarse whisper escaping between two mouths, "you're the one that's been hopping around my meditation circle."
The grasshopper didn't answer.
Instead, it vanished.
He barely saw it coming. One second the grasshopper was still, the next it was already mid-air, soaring at a sickening angle that shouldn't have been possible, body bent like a bent bow drawn by heaven's hand.
The wolf leapt back — just in time.
Boom!
The insect crashed into the stone he'd just vacated, shattering it like brittle candy. Sparks exploded from its legs. One antenna whipped forward and narrowly missed slicing off one of the wolf's ears.
The wolf twisted, used a tail to propel himself sideways, then two claws to hook onto a jutting rock. He snarled, saliva mixing with rain, eyes glowing faintly.
But then — flame.
The grasshopper's chest flickered again — and a thin stream of purple fire shot out, tracing the air like a brush dipped in obliteration. The wolf dove, rolling, narrowly avoiding the arc as it sliced a tree in half behind him — a thick, ancient oak that didn't even have time to scream before it collapsed.
The tree fell in slow motion, its leaves catching flame mid-fall, burning from the inside.
The wolf landed on all fours. "You bastard…"
His tails split. His claws gleamed. And now, he was grinning due to the fun be was having.
A thunderous crunch echoed through the Verdant Wilds as a chunk of scorched bamboo exploded into splinters. The air shimmered, warped by heat, and trees began to sweat—yes, sweat—as the temperature spiked unnaturally. Leaves curled and turned to ash mid-fall. Somewhere in the distance, birds fled like debtors spotting a tax collector.
And two very round, very indignant figures burst through the underbrush.
"WHAT in the thousand squeals of our ancestors is that noise!?" snorted the elder boar, his plump cheeks flapping like sails as he skidded to a stop.
His younger, equally spherical sibling stomped beside him, chewing a half-eaten berry and muttering, "If this is the wolf grilling meat again without us, I swear on our mother's tusk..."
Their eyes widened as they stepped into the clearing.
The sight nearly stopped their hearts—and quite possibly did stop a few smaller creatures' hearts, judging by the smoke trails behind some squirrels bolting away.
There, amidst a burning ring of ash and ruined bamboo, stood the wolf—his many eyes narrowed, many mouths curled back in a furious snarl. Across from him, poised like a reaper from the infernal depths, crouched a grasshopper-like monstrosity. Three meters long, its emerald-green exoskeleton steamed under the downpour. Its thin limbs crackled with energy, and from within its chest cavity pulsed a ghastly, radiant glow.
A flame.
Not just any flame—the Flame.
Boar One's jaw dropped. "That… that's a beast flame."
Boar Two squinted. "You sure? Might just be indigestion."
"Idiot! That's not a fire, that's an apocalypse!"
The beast flame had begun to spiral around the grasshopper's antennae like a writhing dragon. The rain hissed as it touched the heat, evaporating into rising mist, forming a dome of steam around the two combatants.
The older boar's voice dropped low, reverent and afraid. "That's not any beast flame. That thing... it's too pure. Too alive."
The wolf launched forward, leaving behind a crater where he once stood. His form blurred, eyes flashing crimson, tongues of corrupted energy curling around his fangs. He twisted mid-leap to dodge a lance of flame that burst from the grasshopper's claw. The beam of white-hot death sheared through a bamboo cluster behind him, which detonated in a puff of ash and cinders.
He landed, claws scraping across scorched soil, then leapt again—this time feinting left and spiraling around to the right. His tail lashed, slamming into the side of the beast. Metal rang against chitin. The grasshopper slid a meter, but barely staggered.
The flame on its body pulsed once—then twice.
Then it erupted.
Flames surged from the grasshopper's thorax like the eruption of a miniature sun, pushing the wolf back with sheer pressure. The very ground bubbled from the heat. The rain above could no longer reach the ground—it evaporated ten meters above, never touching the battlefield.
The older boar whispered in awe, "It's not controlling the flame. The flame's holding back for it."
Then, the grasshopper vanished.
No—he moved.
With a sound like a whip crack, it vanished from one side of the field and appeared above the wolf, all six limbs drawn in for a piercing descent.
Wolf's many eyes saw it.
But even with his speed, he barely twisted in time to avoid being impaled. The beast's claw grazed his shoulder—just a graze—and the flesh there sizzled, blackened. Smoke rose from the wound.
"DAMN!" the wolf cursed with three of his mouths simultaneously.
He kicked off a burning rock, spinning mid-air. His jaws opened—seven at once—and each blasted a concussive bark of sound. Waves of raw force slammed into the grasshopper, enough to shatter tree trunks.
But the grasshopper endured.
The beast flame encased it, burning bright blue now—a sign of rising purity. Its eyes glowed with mad clarity. It darted forward, limbs jabbing like spears. One met the wolf's shoulder again, but this time he caught it in his jaws.
Then screamed.
His teeth cracked.
His gums blackened.
His jaw sizzled.
The heat was too much.
With a roar, he slammed his head down and hurled the insect into the earth. The impact shook the forest. Birds fell from trees. A distant cliff cracked.
But the flame didn't go out.
The beast rose.
And this time, its antennae curled in a strange spiral—forming a glyph mid-air.
The glyph flashed once.
Then—
BOOM.
A ring of flame exploded outward. It didn't touch trees—it incinerated them. It didn't touch rocks—it melted them. The very rain stopped falling. Clouds were split.
And the wolf... he was in the center.
The explosion sent him tumbling across the battlefield like a ragdoll hurled by a hurricane. He skidded through mud, through tree trunks, through a small hill. He only stopped when his back crashed into a jagged boulder, cracking it in two.
The boars watched in horror.
Boar Two gasped, "Is he—"
"No," the elder boar said. "He's still alive. Barely."
The wolf stood. Limbs trembling. Flesh cooked in places. His eyes fluttering. But he stood.
Then—he laughed.
One mouth at first. Then two. Then all.
It was guttural, painful, cracked with blood.
"I see now," he rasped, "Why beasts with flames are feared."
He lifted a paw. A bottle of crooked berry sloshed inside.
And he drank.
Flames flickered in his eyes.
The bottle clattered to the ground, drained of every drop of crooked berry. Sticky remnants trailed down the wolf's chin, evaporated instantly by the air around him, still warped from the beast flame's heat. He staggered forward—his gait crooked, bones shuddering—but still standing. Still fighting.
He didn't have much left.
The bamboo forest was no more. All around them was a warfield of ruin. Trees gone. Soil scorched black. Pools of molten stone cooled into glass. The sky no longer rained—it steamed. Only silence hung now, heavy, taut with death.
And then—
The grasshopper lunged.
Its forelimbs, sharp as pikes, glowed red-hot. The beast flame spiraled around them, becoming threads of molten fire, burning so hot the air screamed. It closed the gap in a breath. Its legs clicked once, twice.
Then it stabbed.
Straight toward the wolf's chest.
Too fast.
The wolf's eyes widened.
He couldn't move in time.
And then—
"WAIT! DON'T YOU DARE KILL OUR PUP!!"
The scream came like a thunderclap.
Two round missiles flew from the side—no, two boars. They collided with the grasshopper mid-lunge, each biting and headbutting with all the power their plump bodies could muster.
The beast flame recoiled in surprise. The grasshopper screeched.
It turned, antennae curling into attack glyphs.
The elder boar yelled, "WE RAISED THAT FURRY MENACE! HE STILL OWES US WINE!"
And the younger shouted, "AND TRUFFLE DEBT!"
The next moment, flame burst from the grasshopper like a living storm. It wrapped around both boars, tendrils of hellfire biting deep. Their screams echoed.
"NO!!" the wolf roared.
He moved forward, instinctively. But he was slow—too slow.
He watched as the two boars crumpled to the ground, smoking. Their bodies twitched, their tusks scorched black, their fur burned in patches. They weren't dead—yet—but they were close. Much too close.
His blood boiled.
And then boiled again.
And then—
Something broke.
In his mind.
In his body.
In his soul.
Every single one of his eyes snapped open. Not just one. Not two. But all—dozens of them, circling his head, his body, even the insides of his mouths.
He hadn't opened them all since birth.
He had sworn never to.
Last time, he had almost torn his own mind apart, becoming nothing more than a beast of instinct. He had feared—deeply, terribly—that if he opened them again, he'd never close them. Never return. That he'd become something... other.
But now?
None of that mattered.
His fury drowned fear.
The pain didn't even register.
A roar ripped from all his mouths at once—a symphony of rage, pain, grief, primal madness. It echoed across the dead forest, shaking the very fog above them. Trees already dead were crushed into splinters. The earth cracked. The few living creatures nearby went still, trembling.
The grasshopper recoiled.
Its legs twitched. Its flame sputtered.
Its antennae curled downward in confusion, in pain.
It looked up—
And met golden eyes.
All of them.
Every pupil had turned to gold.
Like suns.
Like gods.
The wolf's blood had awakened.
Somewhere in the void of instinct and memory, something ancient and wild had stirred. And it had uncoiled inside him. A bloodline unknown even to himself. Deeper, purer, older than the forest, older than the flames.
It wasn't power.
It was law.
The law of beasts.
And every beast obeys law.
The grasshopper—a mighty creature of flame and pride—collapsed to one knee. It wasn't a conscious decision. It wasn't choice. It was command.
The pressure was not spiritual. Not physical. It was blood-deep.
And every beast felt it.
Even those hidden deep in the Verdant Wilds froze.
Even the flaming beast himself, whose pride burned brighter than suns—knelt.
For the first time in its life, the grasshopper felt confusion.
Shame.
And rage.
It twitched.
It growled.
It forced its knee to rise.
But before it could straighten—
The wolf vanished.
Gone in a blink.
His speed—multiplied. His form—like a wind-borne blade.
And then—
Impact.
The wolf reappeared behind the grasshopper. Claws extended. Mouths roaring. Eyes shining gold.
The blow landed with the weight of continents.
The grasshopper was flung into the air like a doll.
It crashed through the bamboo ruins, through melted stone, through craters left by its own flames. It landed in a heap, one leg twisted at an unnatural angle.
---
The boars, barely conscious, looked up from the ground.
The younger whimpered, "Is... is he okay?"
The elder grinned through charred tusks. "That little bastard's gone mad."
Then added, "Finally."
Back to the fight
The grasshopper had barely risen, chitinous legs flexing with sinewy grace as if winding up the world's tightest spring. His compound eyes shimmered faintly through the smoky haze, reflecting distorted shards of the surrounding inferno. The burnt bamboo field crackled underfoot, the scorched earth groaning as residual flame licked across smoldering stumps.
But Wolf did not wait.
In that moment, instincts surged through his frame. Muscles coiled, his paws dug into the ash-layered soil, and he vanished. To a human cultivator, it might have looked like he blinked out of existence, but the grasshopper's multiple eyes tracked the flicker of movement — too late.
A sharp gleam cut through the haze — the grasshopper's scythe-like left arm arched in a lethal downward swing, a crescent slash meant to cleave flesh from bone. It shrieked through the air like a drawn-out whistle of a blade slicing wind. Yet Wolf was faster. He dropped his head an inch lower in the blink between heartbeats, the curved blade missing his skull by less than a hair's width. The edges of the scythe brushed past his fur, so close it singed strands into curled, charred wisps.
And then—
A thunderclap of motion. Wolf's fangs latched onto the joint of the scythe-arm mid-swing. His momentum slammed his body sideways into the grasshopper's torso with crushing force. The grasshopper's legs buckled slightly, taken off-guard. Wolf's mouth burned; the metal-like chitin radiated heat from within, still infused with the raw heat of the beast flame. But he did not release.
A sharp hiss rattled from the grasshopper's throat. It twisted violently, the second scythe-arm rising to slash sideways, aimed at Wolf's exposed flank. The wolf kicked off with his hind legs at the last moment, spinning sideways while still dragging the first arm, twisting the appendage unnaturally.
CRACK.
The first of the grasshopper's joints dislocated. Not broken, but definitely strained. It reeled back, hopping twice in a blur, legs pumping with terrifying elasticity. Each hop shook the earth like a hammer blow. But Wolf landed and skidded with feline precision, legs spread low, his many eyes blazing.
Then the beast flame flickered again.
The grasshopper spat a sudden torrent of green fire. It wasn't a breath — it was a vomit of heat and fury, a sprawling inferno that blanketed the air ahead in sizzling death. The fire ate through bamboo stumps like they were paper, curling the air itself with molten streaks.
Wolf didn't charge. He circled wide instead, his eyes reading the slight twitch in the insect's middle thorax. It pivoted its body like a compass needle tracking its prey, adjusting to the arc.
Then Wolf leapt over the wall of fire.
Mid-air, he tucked in all limbs, becoming a streaking cannonball, and twisted as he fell, slamming his hind legs onto the grasshopper's eye ridge. But the insect's forelimbs snapped up in an X-guard — not many beasts could even think of such a move — and the blow was absorbed with a reverberating clang. Still, the shockwave flung ash and blackened leaves a dozen meters outward.
The wolf rebounded again, hit the ground, and spun in a wide arc to strike at the legs.
The grasshopper was waiting.
Its hind legs contracted and fired in a downward kick. The force shattered stone beneath them and would have broken bones if it had connected. But Wolf anticipated the recoil from their last contact and ducked under the strike, clawing upward in a savage rake across the softer inner thigh — drawing ichor, thick and steaming.
The grasshopper hissed.
Its mandibles flared open, vibrating at a frequency that distorted sound. A sonic screech aimed to disorient.
Wolf's ears flattened. His claws slammed into the ground, using vibration as a reference instead of vision. His mouths roared in unison, throwing off the mental fuzz, and he dashed under the grasshopper's massive abdomen, trying to strike at the exposed core.
The flame struck again.
This time it wasn't vomited. It was wept. Droplets of green fire fell from the grasshopper's joints, like tears, and when they landed, they exploded in flower-like blooms. One drop hit the wolf's shoulder. He screamed, twisting violently, smoke rising from the flesh.
Yet he endured.
He sank his fangs into the second leg. A clean bite. Cartilage snapped. The grasshopper lost its balance, wobbling like a drunken tower, then kicked again, more erratically this time, barely missing.
Each movement now became more savage.
Wolf ducked, twisted, rolled, bit, roared, clawed. His paws skidded through ash, his eyes traced every shift in the beast's posture. Sweat flew from both of them. And once, in the midst of it all, a single drop of the grasshopper's sweat fell from its leg — and Wolf twisted his head just in time to avoid it — the drop hit a stone behind him, and the stone melted. His pupils narrowed.
They traded over a hundred blows.
Sometimes it was high-speed clashes — wolf jaws versus slicing limbs, claws versus armored plates.
Other times it was brief breaks — where both sides panted, eyes locked, circling, trying to gain advantage. The sky above was black with smoke. The air burned to breathe.
Then came the aerial exchange.
Grasshopper leapt straight up, six meters in a single bound, and Wolf followed. Mid-air, it launched flame spears from its mandibles — condensed beams of beast flame that streaked toward Wolf like molten arrows. He spun between them, his own body nearly burning. Then, using the air-pressure of the last explosion, he flipped mid-air and struck downward with his full weight.
They crashed together in the clearing. A crater exploded beneath them. Dust plumed upward like a mushroom.
Wolf's paw pressed down on the grasshopper's throat. The insect clicked its mandibles, trying to puncture his belly, but he twisted. The blade arm came around — he caught it again in his jaws — not to bite, but to redirect. He rolled over the insect's back, biting into the base of a wing — wrenching.
A shriek. The wing tore loose.
The grasshopper flipped over and buried a flaming forearm into the wolf's ribs. The flesh seared. The wolf yelped and finally retreated — three paws limping.
The two paused.
Both scorched, burned, bloodied.
Both took a step back for a quick breather.
And the worst had yet to come.
Ash rained softly in the stillness.
The grasshopper rose once more.
Creaking like a broken puppet brought to life by defiance alone, it dragged its scythe-like arms to its sides and then—stabbed them into the scorched ground. The impact sank deep, a dull thunk that echoed across the melted battlefield. The blades hissed against ash, which fused to glass beneath the residual heat. Its mandibles parted, revealing a throat beginning to shimmer, an ominous light swelling in its chest cavity.
A sickly azure glow.
Its eyes joined the light, burning with ethereal fire. Blood gushed from every segment of its exoskeleton, dripping in thin trails of steam and boiling to vapor as they touched its own radiant body.
Behind it, the air began to distort.
The sky trembled as if holding its breath.
Then—it emerged.
A second grasshopper, not of flesh, but of flame, began to take shape behind the first. Larger, crueler, perfect in its simplicity. Formed entirely from beast flame. Its color was that same unearthly azure, bright enough to cast no shadow. Silent and solemn, the beast flame hovered over its summoner's back like a vengeful ghost.
This was not an attack.
This was a reckoning.
The real grasshopper, scorched and bleeding from overuse, glared at the wolf. That gaze—it was not one of hatred, or pity, or even gloating. It was the calm stare of an executioner who had already swung the axe.
And yet, the wolf took a step forward.
He did not flinch.
He did not roar.
He walked.
Wobbly, trembling, a carcass dragging itself forward by sheer instinct. Each step made the earth groan. His fur was all but gone. Patches of his muscles pulsed, open to the air, and scorched sinew dripped from his frame. He no longer looked like a wolf. He was a dying question against the sky, but his eyes—those few still open—burned with a primal refusal.
The grasshopper's beast flame completed its formation.
It moved.
The azure specter descended in the air like royalty stepping down temple steps. Slow. Certain. Each leg hovered in the air with ghostly dignity. It extended its glowing arms—scythes of condensed azure destruction—and placed one just beneath the wolf's jaw.
The touch was gentle. Reverent. The way one might lift the chin of a condemned prince.
But the scythe was hot.
The wolf's flesh began to melt.
Not burn. Melt. Like candle wax beneath a torch. His chin liquefied. His jawbone cracked. The pain was unspeakable, and yet—he did not scream.
He merely stared upward, eyes dimming.
All but two of his eyes had shut. The two remaining on his primary face stared at the death approaching. And though his face twitched with agony, he didn't beg. There was no cry for help. There was only an empty ache.
He wanted to live.
But he had given up.
And then—
A whisper returned.
You were born to survive.
His brain, buried under exhaustion and fury and madness, clicked.
The eyes that had shut—flared open.
He had a single thought, and that thought ignited like oil to a spark: No.
He roared.
It wasn't loud. At first.
But the clouds heard.
BOOOOOOOOM!
The heavens split.
A spiral of black clouds churned into being overhead. The bamboo forest—or what remained of it—shuddered. The storm covered the Verdant Wilds entirely, and then some.
The wolf was initiating a breakthrough to Order Five.
The grasshopper paused.
The azure beast flame paused.
"That's your final move?" the grasshopper said, his voice like hollow wind. "Relying on the heavens? Pathetic."