Chapter 71: Night of the hungry wolves - devour

Master and Servant were standing between the wall and the hedge sharing similar annoyed expressions.

"Graough. (Master, I thought that Prides and Gluttonys were in a good relation.) Graough...? (Why would they attack us...?)"

Zombie groaned trying to understand the situation.

"Haa..."

Cranberry breathed out and looked up at the starry sky.

"The house of Gluttony, or rather their head, Lady Goji, was the one who helped my father transfer the title of the avatar of pride to my mother."

She explained.

"It wasn't a task that you would simply give to some random passerby on the street. Our families were close friends from generations."

Cranberry smirked.

"I even heard that originally, Lady Goji was supposed to marry my father instead of my mother, but when she was the one to receive the title of the avatar of gluttony, that promise was called off."

She stopped talking for a moment and properly buttoned up the shirt that she put on hurriedly before escaping the mansion.

"This betrayal is by far the most shocking thing that could happen. And there can only be one reason I can think of, that explains it."

Cranberry turned to Zombie.

"The global event is changing everything, just like the previous ones did in the past."

"Graough! (Damn it!)"

Zombie cursed and kicked one of the corpses turning it into a bloody pulp.

"Graough? (We can't run, but we still can hide, right?) Graough.? (Maybe we could follow my quest?)"

The blue undead raised his head and asked hopefully.

"We could try, but there is another option."

Cranberry's voice turned ice-cold and she clenched her fists so hard that her knuckles turned white, her body started shining with bright light and mana started swirling around her baseball bat.

"An old method of interruption that was proven to force the system to change the story's course."

She started grinning and her eyes shone brightly.

"After all, we can't really allow anyone else to harm my mother before your venom kills her, right?"

Cranberry giggled turning away from the wall and facing back towards the mansion

"Graough...? (Master, do you mean...?)"

Zombie growled suspiciously.

"Yeah. Who will be left to kill me, if we will kill everyone else first?"

...

...

The surprise attack was going well for the werewolves.

Although the Pride family was considered the strongest amongst the seven main families in the kingdom, their unshakable faith in their own might caused them to completely forgot that they also could fall from an ambush.

And a good backstab is a well-known method of dealing with such big-headed fools.

Although the Gluttonys' all had the inborn monster transformation skill that turned them into violent monsters, they could execute the stealth operation almost perfectly.

After all, even if someone spotted them, they only had to devour them before they could warn the rest of the mansion.

Their pack was counting twenty heads, minus the two younglings that stayed behind, and they decimated around half of the hundred or so staff and guards by the time the alarm was successfully raised.

"Whew... I almost thought that we would be able to get a clean score!"

The leader of the pack laughed loudly, pulling all the attention to them.

"Bring out your strongest and die!"

They roared and their claws and jaw gave out an eerie light.

The next two guards that stood in their way got torn into shreds and the pieces got devoured by the werewolf's skill.

"Sapote."

Even through the chaos of battle, the leader werewolf heard their name being said.

And it wasn't done by any of their pack members.

The werewolf turned towards the direction where the voice came from.

There, easily seen thanks to the bright moonlight, a tall handsome bespectacled man was walking, casually approaching the battlefield.

One of the werewolves saw the man coming and jumped at him from his blind spot.

The man didn't even glance at the monster, he simply raised his right hand that started glowing, and clenched his fist.

The attacking werewolf's body got crushed while still in the air, all their justices squeezed out like from the ripened fruit.

"Big brother Blackberry."

The leader werewolf straightened their back and growled.

Lord Blackberry glared at them and opened his fist.

The monster's body crushed into a tiny ball dropped on the ground with an almost pitiful sound.

"What is the meaning of this, Sapotle?"

The man asked coldly, buttoning the sleeve of his shirt.

"Big brother, it's nothing personal, I assure you."

The leader werewolf, Sapotle, bowed his head slightly, without taking his eyes off of lord Blackberry.

"It's merely, the will of the System."

They shrugged and showed off their teeth in a wicked grin.

"Tsk...!"

Lord Blackberry clicked his tongue with disappointment.

"Even after all this time, you still show this idiotic blind devotion...! System is a mere thing to be exploited! Haven't I proven it to you before?!"

His voice shook the battlefield, it even caused some of the fighters to flinch and stop attacking each other

"...big brother, I am only fulfilling the quest I was given..."

Sapotle said calmly.

"We simply need to kill most of your people. We don't need to kill you. I don't want to kill you."

They slowly explained in a stiff voice, as if they were repeating a sentence they learned by heart.

"You know what my family name is, and you still have the guts to say that...?"

Lord Blackberry breathed out and glared at the werewolf.

"Stop your pack, boy, and maybe I will spare you."

He added with an annoyed expression.

Sapotle raised his head and let out a long howl.

All the other werewolves jumped away from their opponents and howled back.

"...?"

One of Sapotle's ears moved to the side.

...not enough werewolves responded...

Not to mention those who were felled in battle, but the two youngsters staying quiet was particularly odd, considering how hard it is for the puppies to control the urge to howl...

"I didn't think that you would actually order them to fall back."

Lord Blackberry raised his brow, all the other werewolves were backing out, doing their best to not get encircled by the Prides' people.

"...I was chosen to be Goji's partner after you left..."

Sapotle sighed heavily, not bothering to address Blackberry's surprise.

The leader of the werewolves begun circling around the bespectacled man.

"Pitiful beta who never wanted to become an alpha that I knew is no longer there then, I guess?"

Lord Blackberry wouldn't allow himself to show his back to the enemy and also began circling the area, following Sapotle.

"Nothing really changed... I still don't want to rule. If only you didn't betray our pack... things would've been different..."

"I never belonged to your pack. It was just a few meetings to set up a marriage that didn't end up happening."

The two of them exchanged glares.

"I was born to support a strong ruler. To support you. And because you've had a sudden change of hearts, and followed that wretched woman, lady Goji in her anger awakened a skill that forced her to become the next avatar of gluttony. Big brother..."

Sapotle's wolf's face tensed up and his voice hardened.

"Tonight, I didn't come here for you. I came here for that wretched woman and her daughter! NOW!"

When their leader roared, all the werewolves that were backing off up until that point, suddenly activated their skills at the same time.

The amount of light they produced turned the night into a day.

As if to contrast that, the darkness erupted from their opened jaws, spreading and crashing against the Pride's people like a raging wave.

"No!"

Lord Blackberry shouted, his hands started glowing and he pulled them back.

The invisible power pulled on the defenders flooded by darkness...

"AAAAARGH!"

"UGH!"

"GUAH!"

But instead of getting released from the enemies' skill, they all got torn to shreds, and their guts spilled on the ground like a grotesque rainbow just to be swallowed by the darkness of the werewolves' devour the next moment.