Chapter 38: Burnt wolf smell lingering above the morning forest

<Name: Edward Black>
<Class: Beginner Water Mage>
<Sub-class: Shadow Walker>
<Sub-class: Night Hunter>
<Sub-class: Swordsman>
<Sub-class: Shape-Shifter(Unique)>
<Mana: 226/261>
<Stamina: 162/162>
<Strength: 3.9>
<Dexterity: 3.7>
<Level: 3>
<Level Life Force: 49/450>
<Spells: Water Ball, Cost: 2 mana;
Water Blade, Cost 5 mana;
Water Barrier, Cost 1-10 mana;
Elemental shifting, Locked>
<Skills: Wolf Shift: 1 stamina/second;>

“Fenrir, why did my life force increase?”

[So it’s finally started… I told you, the wolf grows stronger the more it feeds. Before, it appears your body was still adapting to the change, but now that you are able to use the wolf shift skill, the adaptation period is finally over. Now you will gain a part of the life force the wolf absorbs when it devours other living beings, just as it also gets stronger every time you level up. He ate a total of 192 lizards last night so it appears you only get an eighth of the life force it devours, which is worse than the tablet but still quite decent.]

“It’s still something, considering I don’t have to work for it…” said Edward, already in a better mood since he wouldn’t have to worry so much about the wolf killing itself inside the dungeon.

It took him twenty more minutes until he finally reached the safe zone and found the members of his party at the border, looking around in the distance for him.

Kara was the first to spot him, attracting the other’s attraction as well as she let out a sigh of relief. She looked quite apprehensive about the fact that Edward’s wolf form was now even stronger, but was still relieved to see him all right.

As the group reunited, Edward looked at Kara and said awkwardly: “I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t know the wolf will also grow stronger as I level up…”

“It’s fine. At least now we don’t have to always keep watch over you.”

Everyone chatted for a while and Edward told them the fact he was receiving a bit of life force from the wolf’s kills, fact that surprised the others a great deal, since they never heard of other way of absorbing life force besides the tablets made out of the mother tree’s roots. After a while, they once again went to look for more lizards to hunt.

Time slowly passed with the party increasing their levels one by one while progressively moving down the floors of the dungeon.

A month and a few days later, they were all on the eighth floor and Edward just finished absorbing the life force from the last lizards in a small group they killed. As the light from the tablet started flowing through his body, Edward let out a sigh of relief and checked his new status.

<Name: Edward Black>
<Class: Beginner Water Mage>
<Sub-class: Shadow Walker>
<Sub-class: Night Hunter>
<Sub-class: Swordsman>
<Sub-class: Shape-Shifter(Unique)>
<Mana: 792/792>
<Stamina: 789/789>
<Strength: 18.2>
<Dexterity: 18.7>
<Level: 8>
<Level Life Force: 1/450>
<Spells: Water Ball, Cost: 2 mana;
Water Blade, Cost 5 mana;
Water Barrier, Cost 1-10 mana;
Elemental shifting, Locked>
<Skills: Wolf Shift: 1 stamina/second;>

Edward also noticed that his stamina was slowly catching up and will soon surpass his total mana, but when he asked Ingvar about it, he said that since he will receive total stamina from two different classes, it will eventually surpass his mana and that it was normal.

Echo came up to him and congratulated him as well. Their relationship slowly returned to normal, neither of them mentioning the almost kissing incident from that night and started acting as friends once more.

“Thank you, Echo.” Replied Edward and soon Ingvar also came up to congratulate him. The last one to arrive was Kara, which was a bit further in the back. The relationship with Kara was his most complicated and awkward one, but over all, during this whole month and a half they spent in the dungeon, they still got relatively close.

After they exchanged congratulation and thanks, Edward said: “Now that we are all level eight, should we finally head back? I miss the city.”

The others agreed and the group collected the core dropped by one of the lizards and started heading back towards the safe zone. A part of the monsters will leave behind a core after getting killed and that core, according to Ingvar, can be absorbed the same way as a monster to increase your life force by one point. Since the drop rate was nothing impressive, they decided to just keep them and sell the city. They only gathered a total of around 60 cores from the over 4000 kills.

Once they reached the stairway at the safe zone, Edward stole a glance at the part of the stairs heading downwards and asked: “How deep is this dungeon exactly?”

Ingvar was the one to reply, saying: “This one is a beginner dungeon, having only a total of ten floors, but there are others that go as deep as 50 or more floors.”

“I see. What’s at the last floor?”

“The dungeon boss and the core chamber. If one beats the boss, he can usually enter the core chamber and actually absorb the dungeon’s core, but that will destroy the entire dungeon so the guild took it upon themselves to seal the core room.”

Edward nodded with a pensive look, wondering exactly how strong the boss on the last floor would be.

The group then started climbing the stairs and, in an hour or so, just as it was about to turn dark, they reached the first floor. Most people on the first floor were planning to wait until morning to return to the entrance, but since Edward’s party was now full of level eight members and there was no chance they would lose to level 1 lizards, they decided to walk towards the dungeon’s exit during the night.

They mowed through any lizard that blocked their path with ease, running all the way back and reached the dungeon’s exit in about one and a half hours. The guards at the gate stopped the party and Ingvar placed 20 cores in the guard’s hand.

The guard quickly counted the cores he received and the ones remaining in Ingvar’s possession before nodding: “You can leave now.”

Finally out of the dungeon, Edward looked up at the night sky and said: “We’re finally out.”. The others also looked up, everyone apparently having missed the sight of the night sky before Ingvar said :”Well, we’re heading towards the city to report to father. Are you coming with us Edward?”

Edward shook his head and said: “I’m going to search for Minx before resting for the night. I’ll go visit the city tomorrow.”

Ingvar nodded and placed 12 cores in his hand: “This is your share. Don’t sell them for anything less than a gold coin per core.”

Edward nodded and placed the cores into a piece of cloth. He then proceeded in saying goodbye to the rest of the party before splitting from them and heading towards the nearby forest. After he was out of sight, he placed the makeshift bag with the cores in his mouth and activated his wolf shift before running in the direction of the city through the dense forest.

It took him around an hour until the place he usually told Minx to wait for him was in his sights and his stamina was almost completely drained. Minx was already there, sleeping peacefully on the soft grass. Feeling someone get near, she perked her ears and lifted her head to look in Edward’s direction.

Edward wanted to turn back to human form first, afraid that Minx wouldn’t recognize him, but his worry was unfounded as her white bushy tail started wiggling excitedly and she started running towards him.

Rubbing her head against Edward’s, soft continuous whimpers kept escaping her snout and Edward knew she must have really missed him. Canceling his wolf form since he couldn’t really speak in that form, he moved his arms around her head and started rubbing the soft fur behind her ears, akin to how one would do to a pet as he said: “I miss you too, girl. Sorry for taking so long.”

*Whimper**Whimper*

Edward spent a good time just like this, playing with his old companion, before he noticed Minx’s nose started twitching as she fixed her eyes on his core bag.

Observing the weird reaction, he opened the bag, pulling out one of the cores and showing it to Minx as he asked: “You want this, Minx?”

Minx let out a few whimpers, her eyes never leaving the core and Edward said: “Fenrir, do magic beasts eat monster cores?”

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[Maybe. I don’t know. You can try feeding one to her.]

Edward nodded and threw the core towards Minx, which she caught and swallowed in one gulp before fixing her eyes once more on the bag of cores. Edward put on a wry smile and threw another core at her, the same situation repeating once more. Edward, wanted to keep some cores, but seeing the begging expression on Minx’s face and feeling quite bad for leaving her alone for so long, he sighed and kept feeding her, only stopping once he was left with two core.

After eating her tenth core, Minx body wobbled slightly, like she was drunk and she fell to the side on the soft grass. Edward quickly panicked and moved to lift her up, only to hear Fenrir speak from his hand: [She must have fallen asleep to assimilate the life force inside the cores she consumed.]

Edward let out a sigh of relief and placed her sleeping body gently at the base of a tree where she was sleeping when he got here. Being left alone, he sighed as he placed his two remaining cores to the side before resting his head on her fur and closing his eyes to sleep.

In the morning of the next day, Edward woke up in the mountains, surrounded by the dead bodies of all kinds of bird type magic beasts.

“Damn, the wolf really carried out a massacre last night…” said Edward with a sigh as he turned into his wolf form and started running back towards the city relying on his enhanced senses.

As the trees passed by, creating a mix of green and brown blur, Edward hearing picked up a swishing noise coming from the back, prompting him to abruptly jump to the side, stopping his run by stabbing his claws in the earth underneath.

As his slide finally stopped, he looked up to see a familiar bird type beast, looking not that different from the other ones he woke up surrounded by, only a lot larger, it’s wingspan reaching at least six feet.

The bird screeched angrily at Edward and dove down to launch another attack using it’s sharp talons. Edward’s pupils dilated and moved swiftly to the side, dodging the attack once again.

‘That damn wolf must have left me with this trouble on my head..’ Thought Edward, reluctant to try and engage the bird in a direct fight, his senses telling him he doesn’t stand a chance against it.

Having learned to trust his senses, he started running towards the city while occasionally dodging an attack or two from the sky, but the bird looked more and more pissed, not willing to give up on the chase no matter how far she got from her nest.

As Edward was getting exasperated, his senses warned him once again as a swishing sound came from the front, prompting Edward to dodge once more, only to notice an iron arrow getting stuck in the place he was just in.

“Damn, he’s fast. Quickly surround it.” A voice entered Edward’s ears, followed by a group of three men appearing in the surround trees, each of them carrying a bow in their hands.

[I didn’t mention it since I didn’t want you to feel guilty, but the wolf attacked a few hunting cabins in the mountains last night, killing two hunters.]

‘Damn it, Fenrir.’ Thought Edward but he couldn’t voice his anger in his wolf form. He thought about turning back into a human, but the hunters also looked quite angry and might not be willing to listen to him, so he started thinking about another way out of this situation.

The hunters were not willing to give him the time to think as a volley of arrow came towards him once more, prompting Edward to dodge backwards, only to get hit by another arrow straight through one side of his abdomen.

As he looked in the direction the arrow came from, he spotted another hunter dressed completely in black hiding in a tree. Now injured as well, and with the bird magic beast high in the sky waiting for it’s chance to attack, the situation was suddenly looking quite dire.

Taking in the position of all the enemies around him, he quickly came with a plan and started charging towards one of the hunters in the group of three. His speed was a bit lowered as he tried to endure the pain he was feeling from his abdomen, but he was still relatively fast. The hunters placed another set of arrows on their bowstrings and got ready to release another volley at him. Edward noticed the hunter in the back also readying another arrow, probably to launch it in the direction he was going to evade in.

As the group of three hunters launched their volley, the one in the back held his arrow, just as Edward expected, waiting for him to dodge. Edward surprised the four hunters by not dodging and instead summoning three transparent disks of water around him in the direction of the three arrows in the volley.

“Watch out!” yelled the hunter in the back, releasing his arrow as well while realizing he was tricked, but it was too late. Edward used his water shield to block the three arrows and, ignoring the fourth one that plunged in one of his hind legs, used three swift water blades to cut the right hands of the three hunters all at once.

‘I’m sorry…’ said Edward in his mind as he jumped over the yelling hunters that lost one of their arms and ran into the forest behind them.

His speed was drastically reduced by the arrow stuck in his hind leg and, while having successfully escaped the hunters, the bird was still following after him. Since he couldn’t really use his speed to dodge most of the attacks, he lined up three water shields atop one another and blocked each strike he couldn’t dodge. Every strike of the bird will end up breaking two of the water shields and even making the third one wobble a little, which told a whole lot about the power behind the attack, but Edward was still hanging on while heading towards the city. His plan? To reach the city entrance, turn back into his human form and seek the protection of the city. The guards should be able to deal with the beast.

The bird seem to have also thought about that and, as they got closer and closer to the city, it’s attack were also getting fiercer and fiercer.

*Screeeee* a loud screech suddenly resounded throughout the area, prompting Edward to look back, only to be horrified by what he was seeing. The bird in the air was now slowly getting covered by a purple flame while staring at Edward with a savage look.

‘This bitch..’ Thought Edward as he swiftly turned around and got ready to receive the attack, knowing by the mana filling the space around the bird that he wouldn’t be able to outrun or dodge it.

As the bird’s body got completely covered by flames and a smell of burning feathers spread throughout the forest, the bird finally dove down like a comet, a trail of fire getting left behind in it’s path.

[Dodge, don’t even think about blocking.] Fenrir’s panicked voice came from his arm.

‘I know, fuck. Does this stupid wolf really think I would try to block that thing?’ thought Edward as his pupils constricted to a point and he started channeling his mana as well. As the bird comet was two feet away from him, Edward swiftly released all the mana he was gathering in the form of water and using it to push himself forward.

The burst of speed was enough for Edward to avoid getting hit directly in the head or abdomen, but one of his hind legs still got burned straight through and the unexpected explosion that followed right after, cause by the bird detonating on impact, hit Edward’s body on one side, throwing him more than thirty feet away while spinning uncontrollably in the air.

*Thud*

Edward’s body hit the ground spinning and remained there unmoving, the hair all over his body gone and the skin over half of it charred completely. One of his hind legs was also burned clean off, but the explosion also charred the wound and at least he wasn’t bleeding.

Sadly for Edward, he was still awake, the pain coming from every part of his body making him wish he wasn’t.

[Why are you holding on to your consciousness? Hurry and turn.] Fenrir’s voice came from his arm, but Edward didn’t even hear it, his eardrums destroyed by the loud explosion near him.

All of a sudden, he felt his wolf body turning cold before it started getting dragged through what felt like hard ice, but the explosion destroyed his hearing and his eyes were facing the ground so he didn’t know exactly what was happening. The pain he felt as his body was getting dragged over the frozen ground brought a new level of anguish to Edward, but to Fenrir’s stupor, he was still hanging on to his consciousness with all his strength.

[What is he thinking?] mumbled Fenrir, a trace of deep worry in her voice.

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