Dawn of Victory

Even with the enemy reduced from fifty or sixty to a dozen or so, this was no easy fight.

Pan Long had taken fewer than two steps when two gray wolves, each with a strange crystal-like horn on its head, opened their mouths together and fired blue-gray Wind Blades at him.

Their Wind Blades were formidable. During the chase, they had severed branches as thick as fists more than once. Even a glancing hit would tear his skin and draw blood.

But he was not about to be caught by such a simple attack. He turned his body slightly and dodged the Wind Blades.

More than that, he launched an attack as he dodged.

He swept his faintly glowing longsword in an arc, its light turning like a wheel of moonlight. The blade slipped past a huge swinging club by a hair's breadth and sliced through the neck of the lead monster, a red-skinned creature with two horns.

Purple blood gushed out. Before the creature hit the ground, Pan Long kicked it aside with his right foot. The force sent him spinning left, just clear of a whip-like tail belonging to a bizarre giant rat whose tail was impossibly long.

His body flipped end over end in midair, bringing his longsword around behind him just in time to block a Two-Headed Eagle's talons. The impact changed his course from sideways to forward, letting him evade several arrow-like feathers—but carrying him closer to a Cockatrice.

As Pan Long approached, all four of the Cockatrice's eyes shone with a suffocating cold light. Both its mouths opened. The chicken beak spat venom while the snake's mouth lunged to bite him.

This monster was notorious for its deadly poison. A splash of venom or a bite from its fangs would poison someone at once.