Published at 22nd of January 2026 6:55 am

Chapter 1696 The Hunger’s Depth

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The fight was becoming increasingly intense as Gary and Lupus continued to battle against the relentless horde of werewolves. It was a non-stop barrage for both of them, an endless cycle of claws and fur that seemed to have no conclusion.

As Lupus had warned earlier, their hunger was driving the pack members to an absolute breaking point. They were acting with a singular, primal ferocity, the same as if the Luna’s wolf song had been used to strip away their humanity.

In a lot of ways, it felt even more dangerous than before. Their desire to break past the defenders, go above ground, and consume the humans felt stronger than anything Gary had witnessed in his own world or during his previous encounters.

It was hard to say for certain if it just felt like that because there were more of them concentrated in such a small space, or if it was due to the fact that this specific curse was active on these people for the very first time. It was as if the novelty of the curse made the instinct raw and uncontrollable.

The werewolves that Gary had already given a severe beat down to were already getting back up. He watched them rise, their bones popping back into place as they growled with renewed vigor. It was getting incredibly frustrating.

When one werewolf lunged forward to claw at Gary’s face, he shifted his weight, dodging the strike with a hair’s breadth to spare. He reached out, grabbed onto the werewolf's lunging arm, and with his other hand, he swung his fist down with a heavy blow, breaking the arm right at the joint.

The werewolf let out a gutteral growl of pain, the sound echoing off the cavern walls, before Gary followed up with a heavy kick to the stomach, sending the beast tumbling away from him. He was being rough on them, much rougher than he usually would be with pack members.

As the time was going on, he found himself trying his best to heed Lupus’s advice, realizing that kindness was a luxury they simply couldn't afford if they wanted to keep the situation contained.

As he looked up, he could see a row of three werewolves now coming at him in a coordinated charge. He swung his hand, activating his Claw Strike. The energy from the skill hit all three of them right across the chest. The impact was deep enough to draw blood and powerful enough to lift them off their feet, sending them flying back toward the center of the room.

Still, Gary remained cautious. He was careful not to use the absolute full strength of his Claw Strike. He held a deep fear that at the current level of strength he and Lupus now held, a full-power strike might actually rip through their bones or decapitate them. He wanted to stop them, not slaughter them.

‘Lupus is doing good as well,’ Gary thought, glancing briefly toward his ally. ‘Although there is a lot of them, we might be able to just keep this up. I’ll just have to see it as a type of endurance test where I have to keep going until the sun comes up.’

This was what Gary thought was the plan, until he suddenly heard footsteps coming from his side. They were moving much faster than the dazed wolves he had been fighting. Before he could even turn to face the threat, a shadow tackled him with immense force. Gary reacted instinctively, using his sheer leg strength to lock his feet into the stone floor, stopping the person from pushing him back or knocking him over.

While he was focused on the tackle, another werewolf leapt onto Gary’s back. It delivered a sharp slash across his shoulders, but the claws hardly managed to cut through his toughened skin.

[-12 HP]

‘That’s a very small dent in the grand scheme of things, considering my total HP,’ Gary thought, noting the damage notification in his mind. ‘But that’s not the issue right now!’ Gary reached back, grabbed the werewolf on his shoulders by the neck, and slammed him violently onto the ground. Simultaneously, he whipped his leg around, kicking the one who had tackled him right behind him.

He knew he still had powerful skills in reserve, like Last Stand or his Magnetic Howl, but he wasn't ready to use them yet. Getting the undivided attention of every single werewolf in the cavern right now wasn't something he wanted, especially when he had an ally as equally skilled as Lupus fighting beside him.

What Gary was really wondering, however, was where the person who had just attacked him had come from. Throughout the duration of the fight, Gary had been keeping a careful mental note in his head of where all the werewolves were positioned. He was tracking their movements, noting where he had thrown them and where he had hit them. He was getting into a rhythm of sorts, managing the crowd, but this last attack had thrown him off completely. He didn't understand why his mental map was failing.

When he looked ahead toward the area where the fast-moving werewolf had emerged from, he noticed something strange. There was a significant amount of blood on the floor where the werewolf had been standing.

“Blood... but that werewolf... it doesn't have any wounds on its body,” Gary spoke out loud, his confusion turning into a cold realization.

He soon realized the terrifying truth. For there to be that much blood on the ground without the werewolf itself being wounded was impossible, unless the blood belonged to someone else. When he looked closer at the werewolf's face, he could see a dark red staining the fur around its mouth.

‘Did he eat something?’ Gary’s mind recoiled at the thought. ‘But what could he have possibly eaten in here?’

“NOO, NOO, NOO!” a woman suddenly screamed. Her voice was thick with tears and horror, the veins on her neck pulsating as she cried out. “The hunger... it really made them go that far! I saw it... I saw him... he ate Buck!”

It wasn't just one individual who had witnessed the horror. Quite a few of the untransformed werewolves had seen what had taken place. They were standing in complete disbelief, their faces pale. But even as they watched in horror, a dark change was happening to them, too.

With the gnawing thought in their stomachs and the moon pulling at the back of their minds, they couldn't help but think about their own desperation. They wondered, if they were in the same situation, if something landed right in front of them, even a member of their own pack, would they not do the same thing just to stop the pain?

The cycle of violence continued. Lupus hit one of the charging werewolf members with a backhand blow, sending them bouncing right across the floor. They skidded until they hit the back wall of the cavern, landing right in front of another starving pack member who had been watching from the shadows. ****

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