The Beast Hunter System is Flawed!

3: The Wolf's Mystery (III)

At the orphanage gate, Leonard faced the forest across the street, his eyes scanning the surroundings where he believed the missing child might have ventured.

"It can only be there," he thought, weighing the possibilities in his mind. "If the kid had gone through the back, the cooks, and Adam himself could have seen and stopped him. Other than that, jumping the gate through the laundry room was going to get a lot of attention. Only the main entrance remains. But the gate is closed. Anyway, something is wrong in this story, but soon, the pieces will fall into place."

Once through the first thicket, Leonard stumbled upon something peculiar and knelt down to examine it closely.

"Fight marks on the floor," he observed, his brow furrowing. "Looks like someone rolled over here. They tried and managed to master something."

Leonard stood up, scanning the area towards the north of the marking. Whatever had left these marks could have gone in any direction. However, the dense forest ahead seemed particularly suspicious to him.

Moving in that direction, he carefully searched for more clues that would give him a better sense of what he was dealing with and where to find it. Until, unintentionally, his foot sank into a mud puddle.

"Damn it!" Leonard exclaimed in frustration, realizing the challenging terrain he was navigating. "It rained yesterday, but it's still full of these around. Wait, I know!"

He then began to scan the region, searching for more mud puddles until he found one that caught his attention.

"He-he, we have something interesting here," Leonard said with a hint of excitement, crouching down to examine footprints on the side of the puddle. "The puddle is big. It has two sets of footprints. Two people got through it from here quickly. They are recent, because the puddle is still a bit uneven."

The boy got up, his eyes narrowing with determination.

"And finally, the footprints point in that direction. Whoever did this here didn't think they were going to be pursued. Poor idiots, they will pay the price for kidnapping an innocent child."

Following the direction of the footprints, Leonard felt an odd sense of déjà vu washing over him.

"Weird, I feel déjà vu. Like, I've been through here before," he muttered to himself, his instincts leading him closer to something familiar.

As he approached an old building that took the form of a two-story house, with the bottom floor resting on a small hill and the top floor completely exposed, memories of his childhood at the orphanage flooded back. This was the place where he and his friends played diverse games during their youthful days.

Their childish innocence did not let them realize that the place could become a nest of many threats, and they were eventually forbidden to step foot there again.

The idea that the building might be used for ulterior purposes irritated him deeply, and he resolved to investigate the interior of the building further.

As he got closer, he pressed his ear against the wall, trying to understand what was going on inside. Strange noises took the form of voices, and he managed to overhear a conversation that heightened his sense of urgency.

"Hey you, can't you walk faster with this?" asks a hoarse and mysterious voice.

"Calm down, boss, we're almost—"

"ALMOST NOTHING, I WANT IT NOW! I need it! I've been starving for five days, haven't eaten anything for almost a month! Not only that, but I want this kid in the right now!"

The scene takes the form of a man speaking to two others as they hold a bound and gagged child. The man in question was the owner of the husky voice.

He was tall, pale, thin and with long white hair, apart from tear marks on his face. He wore a ragged, faded green cloak, pants with torn sleeves, and had long fingernails and toenails.

The two other men were plain looking, dressed in black tunics and trousers. The only thing that differentiated them were their haircuts, as one had messy black hair and the other had one with a fringe that covered part of his face.

The pale man slaps his belly and exclaims, "I'm so hungry, I'd turn either of you two into my dinner. But since they are still useful to me, get on with it!"

"But calm down, boss!" says the one with the bangs. "It took a lot of trouble to lure the child to the bush to capture her. Because she tries to fight back, we can't apply one hundred percent of the sedative, so the kid is awake and trying to do something."

"If you talked less and did more. Oh, you want to know a deal? I will devour this child as he is. Get out of my way!"

The two men walk away. The big pale man approaches. His body shakes as his face drastically changes.

His fingers become claws; his mouth a snout. With an aura of a white wolf, albeit incomplete, drooling while very sharp canines emerged from his snout, he grabs the child from the ground, ready to snatch her.

However, not everything would continue the way it was.

In an instant, as in an explosion, the door of the house breaks. But it wasn't any kind of explosion, it was lightning! Like a bolt of lightning, the pale man's chest is punched, and he slams his back against the wall.

But before he can even fight back, the man takes another withering blow. This time, a kick is given to him in the face, throwing him into the basement of the house.

The author of all that was none other than Leonard Flint, who was now observing the scene from the scene.

The two men try to attack him, but at an absurd speed, Leonard dodges and grabs the boy, freeing him from his bonds and putting him on the ground.

"As it's a lot to explain, just go back to the orphanage going straight from the southeast of the house and call reinforcements, because things are going to get ugly here."

The child then escapes through the house, leaving Leonard to fight the two men.

They then attack, striking in unison, trying to subdue Leonard with the numerical advantage. But the boy is too fast, and manages to dodge all the blows. Then, with a kick, he parts the man's messy hair with bangs.

The opponent in question begins to jab desperately, hoping that one or two of his jabs will land on Leonard. Without any success, as his speed surpassed that of an ordinary human.

As if in a flash of light, he lands two punches in the chest of the henchman with the messy hair, strong enough to leave him unbalanced, and finishes him off with the last one, a narrow one to the right, so hard, that it throws the man into the wall near the basement.

The guy with the bangs takes advantage of the distraction to surprise Leonard, sneaking up to knock him out with a baseball bat. But when he was about to do so, his target parries the bat, and more than that, attacks with a punch in the belly that disarms him.

With the club in hand, the boy lands a withering blow on the head of the guy with the fringe, so hard that it leaves him bewildered, and finally one that knocks him to the ground. And finally, Leonard crushes his chest with other blow.

In

 another swift movement, Leonard's face contorted with rage as he grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt.

"It's the following: either you explain to me who that guy is, who you are, and what the hell you were doing, or I’ll finish you now!" Leonard's voice was steely, his eyes burning with intensity.

"All right, all right, all right! I’ll do what you want, just spares me!" The man stammered, fear evident in his eyes. "What happens is that the guy with the white hair has the ability to become a werewolf. I don't know exactly why this happens, it's also beside the point now."

Leonard's brow furrowed with suspicion.

"Hm, kinda weird. Why didn't you just run away from him?"

"It's just not possible!" The man pleaded. "That guy has an extremely keen sense of smell and hearing! Before coming to this hut, we slept in the open field. He would smell us if we were gone too long. We just didn't have anything to do!"

"Well, this is not the time to doubt the veracity of your story," Leonard retorted, still holding the man firmly. "I don't know if you have the capacity to invent a big lie like that, besides that, people tend to become sincerer after a good spanking."

As the conversation continued, a piercing scream echoed from the basement, interrupting their dialogue. Leonard's attention quickly shifted, and he noticed that the other henchman was no longer present.

"It must be a scream from him!" the man with the bangs exclaimed nervously.

"Go away," Leonard commanded, releasing his grip. "Run as far as you can, try to get back to the city here. Now I'll take care of the werewolf."

"Thanks!" the man said hastily, taking Leonard's advice without hesitation.

"And ah, sorry for the beating I gave you," Leonard added, with a hint of regret in his voice.

The man's expression was a mix of relief and gratitude.

"Whatever, actually. I'd rather have broken teeth than not even have a life to begin with!"