Chương 145: 145：The Throwing Knife Master

Deep in the night, the Misty Swamp was swallowed by a dense, suffocating fog that clung to the air like gray slime, perfectly obscuring the rotting deadwood and treacherous mud pits. Even veterans who spent their entire lives licking blood from the edge of a blade would choose to hunker down by a campfire in a sheltered hollow on a night like this, praying to the gods they wouldn't be bitten by venomous insects. On the muddy trail returning to Greywater Village, two fast horses pierced through the thick fog.

Intelligence Officer Meyer pressed his body tightly against his horse's neck, trying to use his rough linen scarf to block the piercing, omnipresent wind. Riding at the absolute front was the newly appointed Vice Commander of the Crimson Moon Knights, returning from Megalith Fortress: Soren. Suddenly, Soren's eyes narrowed, his gaze turning deadly serious. [System Alert: 'Talent Recognition' triggered!] [Coordinate Calculation: Southwest. Linear distance: Approximately 1 kilometer.] [Target Detected: Ranged Combat Specialist — Lyra.] [Warning: Target's vital signs are rapidly declining. Critical Danger State.]"Whoa!" Soren violently yanked the reins. His warhorse let out a sharp whinny, its front hooves rearing high into the air before coming to a grinding halt right at the edge of a mud pit filled with thorny, fallen logs.

"My Lord? What is it?" Meyer, startled by the sudden halt, instinctively dropped his right hand to the hilt of his shortsword. He followed Soren's gaze to the southwest. There was absolutely nothing but the ghostly, shifting white fog. Not a single sound could be heard.

"We're changing our route," Soren ordered, offering no further explanation.

"Southwest. A talent of extreme value to Greywater Village is currently being hunted down. Follow me." With a sharp kick to his horse's flanks, Soren wheeled his mount around and plunged directly into the deeper, darker, mud-soaked woods. Though his mind buzzed with questions, Meyer was long accustomed to his Lord's prophetic judgment. Without a second of hesitation, he spurred his horse and followed.

Meanwhile, a kilometer away on the sloping edge of a toxic bog, a terrifying hunt was entering its desperate endgame. Pant... pant... Violent, ragged breathing echoed through the trees. The stench of rotting leaves in the air was now heavily laced with the metallic tang of sweat and blood. A woman clad in shattered studded leather armor was sprinting frantically for her life. She possessed striking, frost-white hair cut short.

Though her face was caked in black mud, it couldn't hide her fiercely cold, beautiful features. This was Lyra—a wandering mercenary with quite a reputation along the borderlands, and more importantly, an exceedingly rare [Throwing Knife Master]. At this moment, her leather boots were completely waterlogged with toxic sludge. Every step she took felt like dragging a thousand pounds of lead. Less than fifty paces behind her in the thick fog, ten massive, tower-like silhouettes were closing in.

It was a squad of ten elite Black Iron Orcs, fully clad in heavy armor!

"Hehehe... Little human dove, you can't run anymore!" The grating, guttural Orcish language echoed through the woods, accompanied by the explosive crunch of heavy iron boots shattering dead branches—a sound exactly like the beating of a grim reaper's war drum. Swish! Lyra suddenly and violently twisted her waist. Her right hand blurred across the leather tactical belt at her hip. Three refined steel throwing knives, their blades as thin as cicada wings, appeared between her fingers.

A faint light flared in her eyes. In an instant, a surge of pale blue mana wrapped around the razor-sharp edges of the blades like glowing threads.

"Go!" The air screamed! The mana-infused blades carved bizarre, twisting arcs through the fog. Their precision was absolutely horrifying. Clang! Clang! Squelch! The first two knives expertly bounced off the heavy iron shields the orcs raised to block. But the third knife, guided by the pull of her mana, sank viciously into the left knee joint of the vanguard orc! It was the absolute weakest point in the Black Iron Orc's armor plating. The blade sliced clean through the thick ligaments in a fraction of a second.

"RAARGH!" The orc's left leg gave out entirely. Its massive frame crashed heavily into the muddy water. Flawless throwing technique! Terrifying ranged lethal power! However... Seeing their comrade fall, the remaining nine orcs didn't feel an ounce of fear. Instead, they erupted into brazen, sadistic laughter.

"Hahaha! That idiot Rag got poked in the foot by a toothpick again!"

"Don't sweat it, boys! This human bitch is brain-damaged!" Hearing the approaching, mocking jeers, Lyra bit down so hard on her bloodless lower lip that it nearly tore. A suffocating wave of despair washed over her, making the corners of her eyes twitch violently. It was true. She was a Throwing Knife Master. Her mana-infused blades could easily slice open a thick orc throat from sixty paces away, or punch straight through their eye sockets into their brains.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. If she truly wanted to, these ten orcs would have been ten corpses half an hour ago. But she couldn't do it. Every single time she locked her gaze onto the lethal vitals of a living creature, her hands would begin to shake uncontrollably. Her vision would be swallowed by a sea of blinding, suffocating crimson. It was a nightmare buried at the very bottom of her childhood memories.

When she was seven, the mana cyclone within her body had unexpectedly gone violently out of control. Her parents had been holding her burning body tightly, desperately trying to use their own warmth to soothe the rampaging magic. But in the very next second, two razor-sharp blades of wind mana had punched straight through their hearts. Boiling blood had sprayed across her innocent face.

The sight of her parents' eyes slowly losing their light had become an inescapable shackle around her soul for the rest of her life. From that day forward, she knelt before their graves and swore a blood oath: for as long as she lived, the blades in her hands would never again aim for the lethal vitals of any living thing! This crippling psychological trauma meant that in countless life-and-death struggles, she could only pathetically aim for her enemies' limbs, exactly as she had just done.

But against Black Iron Orcs—monsters with superhuman physiques who only grew more bloodthirsty when wounded—severing a few tendons was utterly useless for stopping their advance! Several hours of relentless running had finally drained the very last drop of mana from Lyra's core.

"Grab her!" A furious roar erupted from the darkness. A two-meter-long, thick-headed throwing spear shrieked through the fog. Squelch!

"AGH!" Lyra let out a bloodcurdling scream. The heavy spear brutally pierced her right calf. The sheer kinetic energy flipped her body forward, sending her tumbling violently until she crashed heavily at the edge of a bubbling mud pit. Blood geysered from the wound, dyeing the foul water dark red. She struggled, using both hands to push her upper body off the muck, desperately trying to yank the spear free from where it was wedged between her bones. But the massive blood loss made it impossible to stand.

She was completely, utterly doomed.

"Heh heh... Done running, little dove?" The thick fog parted as nine massive Black Iron Orcs pushed their way through. Dragging heavy, gore-stained weapons behind them, they casually formed a tight circle around her. Even the orc with the severed knee ligament had dragged himself over, leaning heavily on a wooden club. The reason they hadn't simply killed her outright was blatantly obvious. The orcs swept their greedy, lustful gazes over Lyra.

They leered at her chest, heaving heavily from the agonizing pain, and the curves of her leather armor, plastered wetly against her skin by the mud.

"Her hands are treasures. The Warchief ordered us to capture the knife-throwing bitch alive." The Orc Captain stuck out a thick, crimson tongue, licking his jagged tusks. Grinning sadistically, he tossed his weapon aside and approached, spreading his massive, hairy hands.

"But hey, out here in the wild, before we drag her back to the Warchief's tent... the boys gotta get a taste of fresh human female first, right? Let's see how many rounds this soft, delicate little body can take!"

"Hahahaha!" The vile, depraved laughter enveloped Lyra like a suffocating nightmare. Watching those filthy claws reaching toward her, a cold resolve settled in Lyra's heart. She would rather plunge her final blade into her own throat than let these beasts defile her. Just as she flipped her dagger into a reverse grip, fully prepared to slice her own carotid artery... Swish! An incredibly faint, yet utterly lethal screech of parting air erupted from the fog directly behind the orcs! Thwack!

The Orc Captain, whose hand was inches from grabbing Lyra's shoulder, had his manic laughter cut violently short. A black iron arrow, tightly coiled with cyan wind-elemental runes, punched directly through the back of the Captain's iron helmet. BANG! It exploded out the front of his face! A shower of blood, bone fragments, and brain matter blasted outward, spraying all over Lyra! The Orc Captain didn't even have time to let out a grunt.

His tower-like body collapsed like a rotting tree, slamming heavily into the mud right beside her.

"ENEMY ATTACK!" The surrounding orcs paled in sheer panic, frantically scrambling to raise their iron shields. But it was too fast. It was a firing speed that completely defied all human and orc common sense! Fifty paces away, standing within the thick mist... Soren, having just swung himself out of the saddle, was marching forward with long, predatory strides. His boots never stopped moving, but his hands were nothing but an absolute blur. Gripped firmly in his hand was the elven artifact: the [Windwhisper Bow]!