"Grey Wolf Bandit Group" Attacks

Night fell like ink, swiftly staining the entire forest and swallowing all the daytime clamor, light, and shadows.

The caravan captain—Carl, a burly woman with an old scar across her cheek—glanced at the rapidly darkening sky.

She ultimately chose a relatively flat, open clearing beside a babbling stream and ordered the group to make camp.

She issued orders to the exhausted caravan in a deep voice, her hoarse words echoing among them:

"Alright! We're setting up camp here! Everyone, stay on high alert!"

Her gaze swept across every member of the party, and her tone became exceptionally stern:

"Build the defenses as quickly as possible and strengthen the watch! No slacking off—move!"

Carl paused, speaking each word deliberately:

"According to the Adventurers' Guild's latest intelligence, those damned scum from the Grey Wolf Bandit Group have been active in this area recently."

The words "Grey Wolf Bandit Group" seemed to possess a magical power, instantly making the atmosphere tense and heavy.

Deep apprehension appeared on every guard's face.

Clearly, this bandit group's notorious reputation was enough to make even these seasoned veterans wary.

They were no ordinary highwaymen, but professional raiders known for their brutality, cunning, and efficiency.

Their leader, Grey Wolf, was said to have once been a centurion in the kingdom's regular army.

He had fled after committing crimes, and his methods were ruthless. He excelled at using the night and terrain to launch deadly ambushes.

There were even mages among their ranks.

Though mages were not as strong in battle as swordsmen, their status was by no means low.

This world's fairy tale, The Three Swordsmen and the Labyrinth.

On one hand, it represented the widespread popularity of the three schools of swordsmanship;

On the other hand, all three swordsmen were warriors, yet there was not a single mage among them. This also indirectly showed how rare and prestigious mages were.

Without another unnecessary word, the instinct to survive overwhelmed their exhaustion, and everyone immediately sprang into action.

With astonishing efficiency, they swiftly arranged the three heavy cargo wagons around the perimeter into a temporary yet fairly sturdy triangular fortification.

Thick ropes connected the wagons, forming a simple barrier.

Several bonfires were also lit as quickly as possible, their orange-red flames blazing and rising high.

The flames struggled to drive away the biting chill that had rapidly gathered in the forest with the coming of night.

Dinner was still exactly the same as at noon: hard, black bread that could chip a tooth, along with several strips of low-quality dried meat, salty and bitter enough to sting the tongue.

The caravan members, including the wagon drivers and the lowly laborers, no longer had any mood left to complain.

Fear and tension numbed the taste buds better than any seasoning.

They silently wolfed down the crude meal as if chewing wax.

Then, under Carl's command, they immediately threw themselves into the tense work of preparing defenses and taking turns on watch.

Everyone understood that nights in the wilderness could be dangerous.

After Cui Ciyou received a portion of food no different from anyone else's, he did not eat it right away.

He chose the direction at the very edge of the defensive perimeter, where the view was clearest but which was also most likely to face the first wave of attack.

Using a huge ancient tree with dense foliage as natural cover, he slowly sat down against its rough, cold trunk, seeming to blend into the night itself.

Rather than resting while he could like the others, he focused all his attention on sensing the darkness around him.

His five senses, made extraordinarily keen by the mysterious enhancement of his body, were like the most precise radar, clearly capturing everything within the darkness.

—From deeper within the distant forest came the low, meaningless roars of wild beasts;

—Beside him, small creatures rustled through the thick grass;

—And with his exceptional hearing, he even caught an... extremely faint, intermittent sound, deliberately suppressed to the lowest level: the subtle scrape of metal against leather or stone...

Not the wind, and not branches rubbing together... Cui Ciyou's eyes narrowed slightly in the darkness.

This is... a man-made sound.

The campfires burned more fiercely, bright sparks occasionally flying upward like fleeting fireflies before rapidly dying in the cold, deep night sky.

The guards on the first watch forced themselves to stay alert, gripping their weapons as they paced and patrolled around the camp's perimeter, not daring to relax in the slightest.

Time passed second by second.

Just as the sky was completely shrouded in boundless darkness, and the chill and dampness in the forest reached their peak.

It was also the darkest hour before dawn—the time when human bodies were most fatigued and their minds most lax.

At the blackest point of the night, the unexpected suddenly struck!

"Ooooh—!!!"

An incomparably shrill, piercing horn sounded.

Its call carried with tremendous force, sounding especially harsh and ominous in the silent night!

That distinctive horn... Could it be this other world's "attack horn"? Or some special signal that only bandits understand?

Cui Ciyou's heart jolted, and almost at the exact instant that strange horn sounded.

He snapped fully alert from his half-asleep state of feigned slumber!

"It's... it's Grey Wolf's horn... Damn it, it's those bastards from the Grey Wolf Bandit Group!"

"They... they really came. Everybody, get the hell up right now, grab your weapons, and prepare to fight!"

The person on watch in that direction was an experienced old guard.

The instant he heard that strange horn.

He sprang uncontrollably from the ground as if a red-hot branding iron had scorched his backside.

He let out a hoarse, terrified scream;

His voice was horribly twisted and distorted by the sudden, potentially fatal terror, nearly losing all intelligibility.

Almost the instant his frightened warning cry rang through the silent forest clearing.

"Kill them! Kill them all!..."

A large number of bandits suddenly emerged from the pitch-black, silent forest surrounding the camp.

The bandits wielded all kinds of weapons: huge battle axes, slender swords, broad blades...

These savage, violent figures charged toward the firelight like countless evil spirits released from the depths of hell.

Under the flickering firelight, they rushed toward the source of the flames.