The werewolves charged at incredible speed. Their bodies were suited not only to standing upright and attacking with both claws like humans, but also to running swiftly on all fours like wolves, pouncing on enemies and biting them.
The werewolf in the lead was especially massive. Judging by his build alone, he had to be two meters long. His green eyes were fixed on Norton's cabin, and slick, foul-smelling drool dripped uncontrollably from his open mouth.
Even all the werewolves behind him were following its commands.
Clearly, this was a thoroughly premeditated hunt.
"Awoo!!!"
The two-meter-tall wolf king charged at incredible speed, taking only a dozen or so seconds to reach Norton's cabin from the dense forest.
Stretched out, its massive two-meter body was nearly half the size of Norton's cabin.
It didn't slow down at all when it reached the cabin. Instead, it tensed its right arm and used its biceps to drive the boards ahead of it into the cabin wall like a bulldozer.
"Boom!"
With a thunderous crash, Norton's pitiful cabin collapsed.
A huge golden greatsword suddenly slashed down from within the cabin.
Norton's immense strength was hardly inferior to the wolf king's. Although he wasn't as bulky as the wolf king and was at a disadvantage in friction and weight, the boost from his immense strength still let him easily sever the wolf king's arm.
"Awoo!"
The golden greatsword severed the wolf king's right arm, but at the same time, its swinging left arm blasted Norton into the cabin's remaining boards like a cannonball.
"Boom!"
Norton crashed through the boards and landed on a rock five meters away. The tremendous impact even warped his steel armor, squeezing his chest.
Norton had never imagined that a werewolf could possess such tremendous strength. He felt as though a dump truck had slammed straight into him; he couldn't get any traction at all.
The wolf king showed no fear after having an arm cut off, but it no longer attacked personally. Instead, it opened its mouth and roared, driving the werewolves that had arrived to pounce on Norton as he got up from the ground.
Norton had never imagined that a number like a few dozen, not even a hundred, could one day exert such overwhelming pressure on him.
He had thought that, with his vampire's extraordinary regeneration, steel armor, and greatsword, he could hold his own against the werewolves even if he couldn't defeat them.
But now he no longer thought so.
A few dozen werewolves sounded like a small number, but as they pounced, they seemed utterly endless. Everywhere he looked, werewolves were lunging at him.
Norton had just gotten to his feet when a werewolf pounced on him head-on and knocked him down. His greatsword had run through the attacking werewolf's body, but several more pounced on him immediately afterward.
Once they had knocked someone down, werewolves attacked like wolves, biting relentlessly. They shook their heads as they bit and clawed constantly, making it difficult for their prey to steady themselves and resist effectively.
From a distance, this clinging, saturation-style assault might have looked feeble, but only the person being bitten knew how powerful it was.
The werewolves' foul-smelling jaws clamped onto Norton's limbs and even his neck, shaking and tugging at him constantly. Their sheer numbers and powerful biting attacks meant that the moment Norton shook a mouth off his hand, it would bite him again and pin him down.
Several werewolves bit the steel armor on his limbs and pulled, seemingly trying to tear him apart by force. Under their wolf-like biting and tearing, Norton couldn't get up, no matter how he tried.
Foul-smelling drool even dripped onto his face through the gaps in his helmet. A long wolf's muzzle nearly closed around his entire head, and stark white teeth forced their way into the helmet's airholes, trying to carve a long bloody gash across his face.
A Holy Knight's golden steel armor was far heavier and thicker than an ordinary Church knight's. Its fully enclosed design also left the werewolves somewhat at a loss, but if they were allowed to keep biting, it couldn't possibly withstand their relentless tearing.
After all, it wasn't a single piece, and the armor on his limbs was fitted over them like gloves.
As the pack pounced and bit, Norton could clearly feel the steel armor on his limbs slipping off under their pulling. He felt deeply threatened.
He could indeed survive having his body pierced, but he couldn't be sure he could come back to life if the werewolves tore him into chunks of flesh and swallowed him.
A werewolf gripped Norton's head in its jaws and shook it back and forth. His scarlet eyes grew redder and redder, rather like the scene of Homelander having his head pinned to the ground by Butcher.
"Mia!!!"
Pinned to the ground by several werewolves, Norton let out a piercing shout. Then he wrenched his right arm out of its armor and swung it violently behind him, in the exact opposite direction from his body.
"Crack!" The sound of the bones in Norton's right arm breaking could even be heard in the air.
He had forcibly twisted his own arm until it broke so he could attack behind him.
"Pfft!" His right hand, with its withered, stiff nails, pierced straight through the chest of the werewolf pinning him down.
"Awoo!!!"
The werewolf let out a shrill, agonized howl as scalding blood splashed over Norton. His arm had completely pierced its chest where its heart was.
"Bang!"
Norton violently flung off the werewolf atop him, which was already losing its strength. Then he sprang up, leaping more than five meters high straight out of the pack, and charged toward the cliff without looking back.
I can't beat them. I really can't. There are too many werewolves. With a dozen or so pinning me down, I can't fight back at all!
Norton still needs to evolve some more. Two years is still too little time for a vampire.
Although a vampire's agility improved considerably from constantly being in peak condition, it still couldn't match a werewolf running on all fours.
As Norton ran toward the cliff, the one-armed wolf king, which had been watching the fight from the ruins of Norton's cabin, sprang up and charged at him like a bolt of lightning.
A dense mass of werewolves followed close behind Norton, their dog-like stench so thick that even the wind could hardly blow it away.
Norton had long since dropped his greatsword, and his steel armor had warped, costing him much of his mobility.
To break free of the werewolves' bites, he had even shed all the armor on his limbs, using the golden cicada sheds its shell trick.
But that had also cost him important protection.
"Pfft!" The wolf king pounced at Norton through the air, its stark white teeth and drool clearly visible to him.
If the wolf king had been intact, Norton might not have escaped its two-clawed pounce. But now it had only one claw, so it couldn't even pounce on him and could only open its mouth to bite his body.
Its sharp teeth went for the steel armor on Norton.
The armor had protected him before, but now it had become nothing but a burden.
If it bit the armor, Norton wouldn't be able to get it off quickly enough, and the pack close behind would surely take him down.
As Norton raced toward the cliff, he had no choice but to leap to keep the steel armor on his body from being bitten. Then, in midair, he forcibly twisted and broke his spine at the waist. With his lower body moving forward and his upper body facing backward, he swung his withered arm at the wolf king lunging at him from behind.
"Pfft!"
Norton fell off the cliff, but amid the sound of tearing flesh, the wolf king, whose long muzzle had been torn halfway apart by Norton's arm, had a piece of withered flesh clamped between the few teeth left in what remained of its mouth.
It looked rather like it had come from Norton's forearm.
"Awoo..."
The werewolves' howls rang out at the cliff's edge. Dozens of them gathered there and howled wildly at the moon, then, at a command from the wolf king, raced into the dark forest.
The hunt did not seem to be over.