348: The Chimeras

The Chimeras

That was the meaning that he understood. Animals, whether full-blooded or half-blooded, would be able to understand each other on a primal level. Furthermore, when someone with a pure lineage like Cyrus made a command, anyone with any sort of animal bloodline would feel a need to submit to him.1

It was something that was ingrained in all animals. 

If not because of Wolfe's diluted bloodline, as well as his training, he would have fallen on his knees at that moment. 

However, the chimeras around them only took a few steps backward before looking at each other with confusing and startled expressions. 

The lion quickly regained its composure and stepped forward again. It glanced at the chimeras around it and roared, upon which, the chimeras started making loud war-like noises that sounded like "Kill! Kill! Kill~!"

Some of them started banging on the rooves or thumping the ground with their paws or hooves. The monkey-like chimeras started making loud high-pitched voices. 

"Do you understand them, Cyrus?" Juin asked. 

"No…" Cyrus frowned. There was a slight look of confusion on his face. As animals, there was no need for the same type of communication that humans required. However, what the lion "said" was gibberish to him. 

The lion stepped forward menacingly as it bared its teeth at the boys.

When it roared again, the chimeras jumped on the boys from all directions.

BAM!!!

The chimeras that jumped onto them were thrown back into each other, crashing backward. 

Luca pulled back the wind power he released and condensed them onto a small ball of wind on his hand. "Stay back. I don't like to harm little animals." 

However, upon seeing that small ball of wind, the chimeras suddenly went berserk and attacked them to the fullest of their abilities. 

"Sh*t!" 

All the boys merely used their powers to throw the chimeras back. 

"F*ck! Let me just get rid of them!" Wolfe got annoyed and released his claws. He then went ahead and cut the throat of a winged horse-like chimera that attacked him from the sky. "How you like that!" he then roared and went after the other chimeras. 

These chimeras seemed more angered than anything else as they attacked ferociously. The death of their comrades only made them even more determined to kill off the intruders. 

Soon, the boys' hands were covered with blood, but the chimeras wouldn't stop. In fact, there seemed to be more and more chimeras surrounding them. 

"Where the hell did they come from?!" Cyrus yelled as he dodged another attack from the lioness, who seemed to have targeted him for the kill. He wanted to kill the lioness, but thinking about how the little clumsy thing would be left unprotected, he held himself back. 

"There are more coming!" Luca suddenly sensed a few groups of creatures heading towards them from far away. 

Wolfe and Cyrus felt the same thing as they both looked in different directions at the same time. 

"Argh!" Caelian was bitten by a hyena-badger chimera that dug out of the ground when he was sensing the distance between them and the incoming groups of attackers. Angered, he slapped its head into the ground, killing it instantly. 

"Just kill them all with your power!" Lucifer said nonchalantly as he watched the boys fighting the chimeras while holding back significantly. "You guys are attracting attention from far away…"

Juin jumped away from an eagle-like chimera with a snake tail and landed on a wooden roof. He saw a tall wall of dust from a distance away. "Sh*t!" 

It wasn't that they couldn't use their soul powers. It was that they did not want to kill the chimeras indiscriminately. If they used too much of their soul powers, they could end up killing all of them, not to mention revealing their location to their enemies. 

Juin suddenly saw the same shadows that he saw at the Purple Flower Mountain coming out from the dead bodies of the chimeras, and that stopped him in his tracks. 

"What…" He gasped out loud as he looked at the shadows; his attention momentarily distracted, thus allowing a cheetah-antelope hybrid to land a vicious scratch on his back.

"Argh!" Juin turned around and was stabbed by one of the cheetah-antelope's horns, as it crashed into him, causing him to tumble down from the roof. 

"Juin!" Wolfe noticed it immediately and ran over to catch him before he landed on the ground. When he saw the blood and wound on Juin's back, as well as the hole in his abdomen, his hands started to tremble as he glared at the cheetah-antelope hybrid. A strong killing intent surged from his body, causing those around him to faint or die from the pressure alone. 

"Stop it…" Juin said weakly before grimacing in pain. When Wolfe continued to growl at the cheetah-antelope hybrid, daring it to stay where it was, Juin grabbed his collar, and gritting his teeth, he snapped, "Stop it! Stop everyone!"

Wolfe snapped out of it and looked at him. "They are the ones who are not stopping!" 

"No!" Juin suddenly called a ball of flames and shot it towards Luca, who had been pushed to use his power. Luca was throwing blades of wind at some of the chimeras that were attacking him. 

Luca sensed the aura and immediately jumped away from the ball of flames. The ball of flames exploded into a few tinier versions of itself before hitting the blades of wind, dissolving them immediately. 

"You!" Luca glared at him. "What's the meaning of this?!" 

"Stop it…" Juin looked at Wolfe as he said weakly. "Make all of them stop!" 

His back was badly hurt, and he was bleeding heavily. 

Wolf glanced at him for a few seconds before nodding. He yelled, "Luca, Cyrus, Caelian! Let's just run for it!" 

The younger boys nodded and quickly followed behind him. Luca stayed in the back and used his wind power to push back the chimeras that were chasing them, and only after the boys were a distance away that he finally ran towards them, using the wind to boost his speed and clear off their scents so that the chimeras wouldn't be able to track them. 

He soon met up with them next to a river, where Wolfe was cleaning Juin's wound. 

"What's wrong with him?" Luca asked. He wanted to pummel Juin for his action earlier, but when he saw Juin sweating profusely while lying on the ground face down, he decided he could wait for now. 

"He's poisoned..." Wolfe said through gritted teeth. "We stopped the bleeding from the wound on his abdomen and fed him some pills to accelerate healing, but the claw marks on his back are still the same!" 

Cyrus looked on worriedly. "That cheetah's claws are probably poisonous. The wounds won't stop bleeding." 

"He should have been more careful," Luca chided as he got down on one knee to check on Juin's back. 

The skin around the three claw marks had turned purplish-black, and black blood was flowing out of the wounds. 

"It… hurts…" Juin groaned as he clenched his fists tightly. "Burning…" 

"Do you have anything for the poison?" Wolfe asked as he looked at Luca. 

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