The moment his fist struck the black wolf's forehead, Lin Yuan heard two sounds.
One was the crack of breaking bone; the other was like an invisible mirror shattering.
Black and silver cracks spread outward from his fist. The hard bony horn on the black wolf's forehead abruptly shifted out of place, as though its body had been left five meters away and only its head had struck the punch.
Boom!
The giant beast tumbled into the woods.
The recoil also left Lin Yuan's right arm numb. That blow had nearly drained all the magic power in his body. Dizziness followed, and the forest before his eyes stretched into overlapping black shadows.
He bit the tip of his tongue, forcing himself to stay conscious.
The black wolf wasn't dead yet.
A tree trunk was suddenly flung aside. The giant beast staggered to its feet, its caved-in forehead driving it into an even greater frenzy. A dark green vortex rapidly compressed in its throat.
Lin Yuan tried again to find those black and silver lines.
But the world answered him with nothing but searing pain.
Blood dripped from his nose, and his vision blurred completely. He couldn't even raise his fist. All he could hear was the shriek of a wind blade taking shape, drawing closer and closer.
Just then, an elderly voice came from the canopy.
"To push a Six-Eyed Horned Wolf this far... kids these days are frightening."
The black wolf jerked its head up.
A short figure leaped down from a branch. The newcomer wore a white coat, and his gray-white beard streamed high in the wind.
But when he raised his right hand, it swelled in the wind, transforming in an instant into a fist larger than the black wolf's entire body.
"Giant's Fist!"
The dark green wind blade had barely erupted before the giant fist smashed it head-on. A blast swept through the forest. A moment later, the Six-Eyed Horned Wolf was driven into the ground by the punch, and soil exploded to either side like a tidal wave.
The enlarged hand quickly shrank back to its original size. The old man landed beside the pit and looked down to make sure the magic beast had stopped moving before turning toward him.
"You're badly hurt. Don't move around yet."
Lin Yuan stared at him without letting down his guard. "Who are you?"
"An old man passing by." The old man rolled his eyes. "I happened to take a request to clear out this pack of magic beasts, and I happened to see a kid with a death wish fighting it one-on-one."
He crouched in front of Lin Yuan and reached for the wound on his shoulder.
Lin Yuan instinctively grabbed his wrist.
The old man glanced down, some of the casualness fading from his face. "If I don't tend to you, you'll pass out from blood loss soon."
"..."
"If I wanted to kill you, I could've just stood there and watched."
That made enough sense.
Lin Yuan let go. As his taut will relaxed with it, the belated weakness instantly overwhelmed his consciousness.
Before he passed out, he felt the old man catch him.
"Your body's so small, but you're even more wary than a wolf."
When he woke again, the horizon was already beginning to brighten.
A campfire crackled beside him. The wound on Lin Yuan's shoulder had been cleaned and neatly bandaged, and the small cuts on his feet had been coated with a cool ointment.
The old man sat across the fire, eating a grilled fish until only its bones remained.
"You're awake?"
Lin Yuan pushed himself up and looked around.
"Where is this?"
"The Kingdom of Fiore, in the forest north of Magnolia." The old man tossed away the fish bones. "My name's Makarov. What about you?"
"Lin Yuan."
"Where's your home?"
Lin Yuan was silent for a moment. "I don't know."
"Your parents?"
"I don't know."
"How did you get into the forest?"
"I don't know."
Makarov asked no further questions, merely studying him across the campfire.
"Then what do you remember?"
Lin Yuan raised his right hand. The sensation of tearing through distance the previous night was gone, leaving only a few bloody cuts from the wind on the back of his hand.
"My name. And that I died once."
A shower of sparks suddenly burst from the campfire.
Makarov's gaze sharpened. "What do you mean?"
"The sky split open, and ten lights went out." Lin Yuan closed his eyes, but saw only shattered darkness. "Then I woke up here, and my body had become like this."
He left out the snake.
The mere thought of that serpentine eye brought a needle-sharp warning from deep within his soul.
Makarov didn't say whether he believed him. He walked over to Lin Yuan and pressed a hand against the boy's back.
Gentle magic power probed into his body, only to plunge into a boundless deep sea.
The old man's expression shifted slightly.
This body was indeed only around ten years old, yet the magic power it contained was unnaturally vast. Stranger still, that magic power was completely untrained, surging about in all directions, yet firmly locked down by something sleeping deep within his soul.
It wasn't any magic he recognized.
Makarov withdrew his hand and smiled again. "If you can't remember home, find somewhere you can sleep and eat for now. Once your injuries have healed, you can take your time figuring it out."
"Why are you helping me?"
"An old man can't bear to see a kid die by the roadside. Is that so strange?"
Lin Yuan gazed at the campfire without answering.
Kindness left him more at a loss than hostility. It was as though, a long time ago, he had grown used to people kneeling before him, fearing him, or running away, but not to someone bandaging his wounds simply because he was a child.
Makarov stood and brushed the bits of grass from his coat.
"I'm heading back to Magnolia. It's noisy there, people are always fighting, the building needs repairs every few days, and the debts are always greater than the money we make."
"That doesn't sound like a good place."
"It really isn't." The old man grinned. "But there's food to eat, and there are people who'll remember where you went."
He held out a hand to Lin Yuan.
"Kid, want to join my guild?"