CALLEOUS WARILY stopped the horse. He remained sitting above it but he was in full guard over his surroundings. Using his increased senses, thanks to the blessing of the goddess, Calleous can feel a killing intent directed in his direction.
This, no doubt, comes from the wolf king, who was observing him from a not-so-far distance.
A king beast like this alpha wolf is surely more intellectual than an ordinary wolf beast, even more so than the normal alpha wolf of a pack. As far as he remembered, according to the wolf beast encyclopedia that he had read from one of the books in the palace library, a pack of wolves consists of five types: the ordinary wolf beasts, the fighter wolf beasts, the guardian wolf beasts, the luna, and the alpha king.
The ordinary wolf beasts in a pack are those wolf beasts who are only one star rank—they were only twice as large as a normal wolf and more wild and ferocious—almost like a rogue wolf. Because they only move according to their instincts, which are to eat and eat.
The fighter wolf beast, on the other hand, is divided into three types according to their star rank. It could be from two to four stars. The higher the star rank, the bigger their bodies, and, of course, the more powerful they become.
Then the guardian beast is any fighter beast who was tasked with protecting the luna and cubs within the pack. They can never be a fighter beast with a three-star rank or lower and must be four-star at most.
As for the alpha king, they can be at level five or higher. This is not only applicable in the pack of wolf beasts but in every beast, there can be a king among them. Aside from having more power and the largest body, any king beast had intelligence. The higher their level, the more they become sentient.
While a luna will only appear when an alpha king has found its mate. The luna is the weakest because it can only be an ordinary beast with one level and nothing more. But once the female beast has mated with the king, they will naturally be blessed with a body that can accommodate the king beast and a higher chance of giving birth to another king beast.
Calleous can't be sure if this pack has also made their own nest. Because it'll become more difficult if so. If a king had a mate, they would become so vicious that any living creatures who appeared in the vicinity of their nest would be deemed enemies that could endanger their luna.
A sound of rustling came from his back and Calleous immediately pulled one of his twin swords behind his back while he used his left hand to push himself from the horse, executing a perfect back flip.
"Roar!"
The alpha king beast finally appeared. As he had envisioned, this alpha king is five times bigger than him—probably bigger than that. It was an enormous black wolf with a paw bigger than him.
If he failed to step back or was a tad bit late when the beast king sneaked an attack, he might have broken his bones from being thrown away with a slash. Or maybe he was also smashed down to a paste together with the horse he was riding a moment ago.
This king beast must be a seven-star beast. There's no way a simple five-star beast can smash a stallion in one jump like that. Star beasts might be bigger than ordinary animals, but stallions are agile, being small and quite intelligent animals, so evading a bigger danger as obvious as its' side is not impossible.
But who was Calleous if he would be terrified by that?
He was not only famous just recently after he was blessed by the goddess Aurora but even before that, Prince Calleous Ambroisa Ciltara was long before popular. It was all because of his unique beauty that it was even classified by other kingdoms as the number one beauty among all the kingdoms in Auraxia.
Aside from that, Calleous also had another identity that he thought was not known to their kingdom, but it was actually widely spread as a legend throughout the surrounding kingdoms.
It all started when Calleous explored the Wispwood Forest for the nth time. He was having a leisurely time of exploration, a few kilometers away from the boundary of the forest and their kingdom, when a wounded tamaraw beast with approximately five stars suddenly appeared.
It took him by surprise and was pierced on his waist by its sharp horn. Probably because of its weakness from being deeply wounded, the pierced can directly kill Calleous.
When Calleous felt it, he was able to remove himself from the beast by jumping backward. His one hand was holding the pierced waist while he took one of his swords on the other.
Standing not far from the beast, which was having a rampage in the area with its nose steaming with smoke, Calleous studied the beast.
With one look, Calleous identified it as a tamaraw because of its v-shaped horns, unlike those of a carabao. But because of its bigger size, he also knows that this beast is a five-star beast because, normally, a tamaraw beast with one to three stars will not be as big as an adult elaphant.
And the one that was before him was as big as an elephant. And its horns were so sharp that they easily pierced him, despite the force that the wounded beast had put on it.
In the end, Calleous succeeded in killing the five-star tamaraw beast with only a few strikes and without batting a sweat. A tamaraw beast might be weak compared with other beasts, but it was still a five-star beast, which was ten times stronger than a wild boar but Calleous easily defeated it.
Maybe, before the tamaraw beast came upon where he was, it had already been attacked by a powerful knight and was lucky enough to escape. Unfortunately, it was still unfortunate to encounter Calleous, who, despite being an ordinary warrior at the time, was still a lot more powerful than an ordinary knight.
And maybe bolder—that's why, even after knowing it was a five-star beast, Calleous did not hesitate to fight with it. And it might also be his luck to encounter a weakened beast like that.
Unknown to him, not far from where he was trying to finish off the suffering of the wounded tamaraw beast, a group of merchants who got lost in the Wispwood forest watched everything from the beginning up to the end.
It was because this group of merchants came from the group that accidentally angered the five-star beast. But because there were only a few knight soldiers among them, as well as one knight commander whom they rented to provide assistance as they entered the Ciltara Kingdom.
They were able to wound the five-star tamaraw beast but it was able to escape. The only remaining knights among their group were two knight soldiers and the only knight commander, who were also heavily injured. Then there was the group of five merchants, as well as their assistants. As for their carriage and the materials and products, they were all left where they first encountered the beast.
They decided to follow the tamaraw beast to gather its carcass. After all, they were merchants who knew how valuable something was. And they wanted to wait for the beast to tire itself and that's where they would sneak an attack and kill it.
But they saw that on the way that the tamaraw beast was going to have someone. They wanted to warn the person but it was too late, as the tamaraw beast did not hesitate to attack.
And that's how they saw how the person easily defeated the beast with only a few strokes of his sword. They didn't know that the beast was already heavily injured by the knights with them, so seeing how the beast was easily killed, they only thought that the person was too powerful.
After that, Calleous didn't know that his boldness was treated as heroism by the group of merchants. Because when the merchants came to the kingdom, they tried to ask about who might be the 'hero' is.
And because it was only unique for Calleous, who was still the Ciltara Kingdom's second prince to wear a different design of knight's uniform in the kingdom. After all, the design of their kingdom's knight's uniform was based on this pair of clothes that he usually wears when training.
When the merchants asked about it, the people of Ciltara quickly identified it as their second prince, Calleous Ambroisa Ciltara. Combining it with his first title as the first beauty, that's when Calleous earned his unique codename as the "Kallos Reaper".
Despite the obvious hatred of Calleous towards that codename, even his mother agreed that it definitely suits him. Because, without any doubt, when he is seriously fighting, he is so beautiful that even if he is killing someone with that face, they will just keep still and let him kill them.
And when Calleous experienced that someone had tried to assassinate him, he even had a deeper hatred of that codename that he started to put a cover on his face when going out to train.
But Aleera didn't let the beauty of her lovely son be hidden by that filthy mask so she could only allow him to cover half of his face using a special couture pleated veil that covers only half of his face from his nose to his lips.
Unfortunately, it didn't decrease his appeal but only added another hint of mysterious seductiveness to his beauty, highlighting his beautiful set of black eyes. Calleous wanted to change it again but he couldn't outsmart his mother when it came to this kind of scenario.
He could only acquiesce and use the hood of his special knight long-sleeve robe to hide a bit of his presence. And that's how the legend of the Kallos Reaper appeared and was widely spread throughout Auraxia.
In other words, don't judge the book by its cover—don't be deceived by his beauty, because it was more deadly than an assassin or a killer. Calleous became a lot more powerful now that he had received the blessing of the goddess Aurora.
And now he can finally test it out to see if it was really better.
After having his feet firmly stepped on the ground, Calleous took the other sword to his other hand. Now, with both of his soul-bounded weapons blessed by the goddess as well, he is no longer weak-looking, especially with how sharply he stares at the alpha king beast in front of him.
The beast roared back at him—probably because it was threatened or irked by how a mere human looked down at him. To test which of the two was it, Calleous took the first move this time.
Brandishing his twin swords, Calleous dashed at the beast king with a pair of eyes intent on killing. The beast king didn't back down and took a sharp attack using its gigantic paws with protracted, sharp claws.
Calleous perfectly stepped on the giant beast's soft part of its paw and used the force from the beast's attack to propel himself backward. He didn't forget to brandish his twin swords, slicing a big wound on the soft pads of the beast's paw.
"Awooorr!"
When Calleous landed with only one foot, he once again propelled himself upward by putting more force on his foot. Then he aimed the sword at his left hand to pierce the wolf's snout.
He let go of his hold on the swords as he did a backflip to escape the beast's unwounded paw.
"Good. I became more agile and flexible. Even my reflexes and reaction time were faster now. I'm going to offer a thank-you offering to the goddess once I come to the temple," Calleous happily muttered to himself.
And so, Calleous became a lot faster at taking down the seven-star beast king that even a grand master would find hard to kill without sweating. It only took him a quarter of an hour to finish off the beast and he still felt his body full of excitement for a fight.
He could only return to where he left his family and the rest of the group. And with his return, they finally manage to kill off every wolf beast in that pack.