Werewolf Hunting Rules.

Chapter 587 Arrest
Donna enters the Melcher family's house for the first time.

This place is not as big as her and Clayton's home in St. Benedict. There is only a dining room downstairs. From the first floor, you can look over the second-floor railing to see the layout of the upstairs. There are no more than six rooms in total, upstairs and downstairs. Excluding the kitchen, bathroom and three bedrooms, there is one spare empty room.

Charlie managed to hide in this house without being discovered by anyone else, something she could never do.

Invisibility, color change, body modification, or even Shadowcraft... Donna listed these options in her mind. Her talent seemed perfectly suited for detecting stalkers, but her psychic abilities were still too weak; she had to get close to bring the stalkers into her detection range.

Fortunately, the rooms here are not very big. She can basically survey the entire area by standing in the center of the room, without having to walk along the edges—that would easily arouse Charlie's suspicion.

She didn't bring the lion skin Clayton gave her today, so she had to be extra careful.

Mr. Melcher's behavior was beyond Donna's expectations. As an ordinary person, he had already regained his normal demeanor before even approaching the house. He had hidden his fear and panic so well that she could no longer tell that they had ever existed in him.

Once inside, he remembered to take off his hat and gloves and put them away carefully.

“Honey, I’m home!” he called upstairs, his voice sounding tired but still within reason.

Mrs. Melcher came out of her second-floor bedroom, leaned on the railing, looked down at the dining room, and looked surprised when she saw Donna.

Mr. Melcher tilted his head back: "If I hadn't run into Miss Bello on the way, I wouldn't have known that Cinjani had the day off. Is Alice back? Let her know that Miss Bello is here. And tell Mrs. Holm that the young ladies need tea and sugar."

His wife smiled and responded, then turned and went into the next room.

"I need to use the restroom first." Donna didn't wait for the male homeowner to give her directions and hurriedly ran towards the first-floor corridor where the rooms were arranged.

A perfectly reasonable excuse; she was absolutely thrilled with herself.

The first room searched was the servants' quarters on the left. It was open and simply furnished, with only a bed and a stack of suitcases in the corner that stood out.

Donna pretended to be slow to react and barged in. After two seconds, she repeatedly apologized to the empty room as she backed out.

Charlie is not in this room.

The second room was the washroom. She went in, her awareness still spread out like a fishing net. Then she paused.

Charlie is right here; he really is in the bathroom.

The seasoned tomb raider huddled in the corner of the washroom. His body was ashen, and his eyes were closed. He looked like a dead insect on a windowsill or a forgotten rag, blending into the environment. Even if someone passed by and saw him, he would simply be ignored.

If the visitor wasn't a wizard, even Clayton might have been fooled.

The moment she realized this, years of meditation experience flashed through Donna's mind, calming her heartbeat back to a normal rhythm.

Returning to Earth

This was a branch of the Blade Secret Technique that she had also heard of.

It is known as the coward's path, but it is not easy to create. When a practitioner of the secret technique masters [Return to Earth], the power he possesses is close to completing [Summoning].

In addition to the increase in physical strength, the Blade Secret Technique also has the characteristic of manipulating matter. [Summoning] is not a wrong path, but rather the name of a skill when this characteristic has been repeatedly trained and strengthened to the point that it can be regarded as a skill. It is also a stage, a realm.

Once a skilled user of the Blade Technique masters the [Summon] ability, they can temporarily bestow the properties of other substances upon themselves or other inanimate objects.

"It can make metal and stone yield, and make flowing water strong."

Donna didn't know if Charlie possessed the power of "Summoning," but "Return to Earth" was enough to allow Charlie's body to blend with the environment, enabling him to perceive many things happening in the house through vibrations. When they were close enough, her heartbeat might also become a potential source of exposure.

Cautiously
Donna did her best to act anxious in front of the bathroom mirror. She adjusted her dress repeatedly, from the neckline to the waist, and turned her face to check her hair, while actually observing Charlie out of the corner of her eye.

When she did this, she noticed that his skin quality was very poor. A master of the [Summoning] Blade Secret Technique would have his internal organs strengthened, so it was impossible for him to have superficial defects. It must be the result of the secret technique's inability to completely remove the influence of environmental substances on the body after [Returning to Earth].

If the secret power is insufficient, the operation of the wrong path will harm oneself.

Donna relaxed, turned around in front of the mirror to look at her back, then pushed open the door and went out. She smiled at Alice, who was standing on the second-floor railing to welcome her, and turned to signal Melcher to go upstairs and clear out the first floor.

"Uncle Melcher."

She had just begun to speak when she suddenly heard the sound of the bathroom window opening—a sound that didn't require extraordinary hearing to be heard.

"what happened?"

Mr. Melcher wasn't as focused as Donna; he didn't hear anything.

Donna didn't answer him and turned to rush towards the door.

The moment the door opened, she and Melcher both saw Charlie burst out from the side, leaping onto her mount, Cherry. Without a word, he gripped the horse's flanks, pulled the reins to the left, and steered it into a gallop. Donna stood in the doorway, dumbfounded.

She had no idea where she had gone wrong, that Charlie had noticed something was amiss and jumped out of the window to escape first.

For a fleeting moment, she wanted to call out to Little Cherry and ask it to throw the tomb raider off its back—something she could easily do.

But she quickly realized that she and Melcher probably couldn't handle Charlie, so she had no choice but to give up and place all her hopes of stopping Charlie on Clayton, who was on his way.

The werewolf didn't know how Charlie observed the outside world, so he chose to keep his distance from the Melcher family.

Before long, he saw a familiar horse galloping onto the main road, but the rider was not someone he knew.

Charlie.

Clayton realized what was happening, but the tomb raiders also sensed his ill intentions. They had barely seen him when they turned their horses around and galloped off to the other side of the road.

The werewolf in daylight couldn't catch the galloping horse. He knew perfectly well that his howl could stop it, but it would damage the horse's hearing and mind. The horse Charlie was riding was Little Cherry, a gift he had personally given to Donna; he couldn't bear to do that.

Just as Clayton was about to give up, Charlie, who was about to escape, let out a terrifying scream. He sprang from his horse, clutching his thigh and crashing heavily to the ground.

Then the sound of a little girl crying rang out from the empty road.

It's Clara.

She emerged from the saddlebag and delivered the crucial blow to Charlie—with her teeth.

The imp hadn't broken her invisibility; her lips and gums were being corroded by Charlie's blood, which was imbued with divine power from drinking holy water for so long. Her own blood was also dripping down. Her newly grown hands were of great help in her daily life, but they were a hindrance to her previous attack patterns, preventing her from immediately launching a further attack.

The tomb raider struggled to his feet, kicked her away, and then ran wildly toward Little Cherry, who had stopped and was looking back.

But he didn't get the chance to get back on the horse.

A stone flew from behind with a sharp whoosh, slicing off a piece of flesh from his right calf. He lost his balance and fell to the ground.

Clayton caught up with him.

Seeing the werewolf approaching, Charlie didn't just sit and wait to die. He took a piece of bark from his pants pocket and patted it on the wound on his leg. The bark quickly wriggled, filling the gap in the flesh, and finally formed a patch of skin of a different color.

During his time working for the council of elders, he also acquired many valuable items from the druids.

Charlie stood up, drew his musket from his waist, and confronted Clayton, who was striding closer.

Seeing him holding a weapon, Clayton raised his clenched right fist and swung it. Charlie, still remembering the pain of being hit in the calf by a stone, jumped to the side to avoid the incoming projectile, and fired his musket at the same time.

However, Clayton's right hand was empty, and he missed. The pain in his right leg also made him less in control of his body. The muscle twitching affected his upper body, resulting in poor accuracy of the musket. Only one-third of the loaded shot hit Clayton.

The silver bullets mixed in with the shotgun shells pierced the flesh of the Darkin, but because they were too light, they lacked sufficient power. For the werewolf's tall body, the penetration depth that should have reached the internal organs of an ordinary person remained only on the surface of his muscles.

The werewolf paused for a moment, but that was all; he didn't even look at his wounds before striding after him.

Long legs give Clayton a greater stride, and he seized the opportunity to close the distance to the drunkard Charlie in one step. His left hand reached for Charlie's neck, but Charlie quickly dropped his pistol, drew his silver dagger, and slashed upwards at Clayton's wrist. Facing the blade, Clayton reacted with lightning speed, withdrawing his hand and violently twisting his body to the left rear. His right leg, using the power of his waist rotation, lashed out horizontally at the left side of Charlie's chest and abdomen.

The move was swift and stealthy; Charlie only had time to bend his left arm and block the kick with his elbow.

There are no winners in the battle between the humerus and the tibia, but the difference in weight cannot be ignored.

The werewolf in human form is six feet and ten inches tall (about 205cm), while Charlie is only six feet tall. This ten-inch difference is not only in height, but also in the size of their muscles.

After being kicked, Charlie couldn't withstand the full force and staggered a few steps to the right.

Using the recoil from kicking someone, Clayton quickly straightened up, grabbed Charlie's left arm with his left hand and pulled him, while sliding behind Charlie with one foot.

If he can control Charlie's sword-wielding right arm, he will win.

The silver-plated dagger spun in Charlie's right palm, changing from a sword grip to a dagger grip as he thrust it backward.

This was a strike that could turn the tide of the battle. After the previous exchanges, Charlie had estimated Clayton's speed limit. Even if this concealed strike was noticed by the opponent, neither raising his hand to grab the sword nor dodging to the side would be as fast as his backward thrust.

He could almost feel the blade piercing his flesh, but a terrible pain suddenly shot through his shoulder, and he could no longer hold onto the short sword, which fell to the ground before it could pierce the enemy's clothes.

The werewolf twisted his lowered head and tore off the clothes and a chunk of muscle from the drunkard Charlie's right shoulder.

Instead of grabbing a sword or dodging, ducking is the fastest way.