Henry—calm as the bisected tree began to tip towards the giant monster—moved swiftly through a series of much-practised steps.
First, a floating hatchet chipped off a chunk of bark above. Next, the hatchet he was hanging by dislodged itself, as he kicked off it and leapt upwards.
Grabbing the falling piece of bark with his now unoccupied palm, which was coated with soil attained by patting the pup shelter, he took control of the severed tree while airborne—any contact with it otherwise nullifying the ability—and shifted the direction of its fall. Then, directing three others hatchets to chop close together below him, he landed on their clustered handles.
The tree's altered trajectory swept him close past another tree, which he leapt to, jumping onto another platform of hatchets that'd just bitten into its trunk.
Henry, balancing so, slipped the shortbow down from his elbow to his hand and fired a shot.
The Wolf Empress, shocked by the dexterous display, yelped as a gaping hole opened up in her shoulder, the stat-scroll-buffed arrow blowing out a massive chunk of her meat.
Henry didn’t stop there, having no chance to pause. While notching a second arrow, he flicked his head down, then raised his foot, his heel stepping onto two hatchets that chopped down a moment later.
By repeating this action in quick succession, his spare hatchets used in a rotation to bite the wood above others, he turned them into a ladder, with which he could climb the tree while firing.
This specialised climbing technique, Canopywalking, had been learned in a previous adventure. This complex technique originated in the island of Chayoka, where his guild was based. The terrain there resembled the real-life island of New Guinea, dense tropical rainforest spread across a mountainous interior. In the lead up to his guild's conquest of the region, he’d personally infiltrated the native tribes to sew political discord while scouting the terrain, and one of these tribes, a tribe of exotic bird poachers, had invented a sort of jungle parkour for catching their prey and avoiding monsters. Since Henry hadn't possessed a Martial Class back then and all the monsters on the island could one-shot him, he'd emulated the tribe's methods for his personal safety.
The original Canopywalking technique involved alternating between pickaxes and grappling hooks while pulling oneself with raw muscular strength. This feat was well beyond the limits of his motor skills, so he'd produced a less physically demanding version using Landworker telekinetic tool manipulation techniques.
Today, when he’d found out about the bald trainer being 'forced' to enter Suchi's Grey-Wolf Forest, he'd remembered this technique, purchased the hatchets from craftsmen around the military camp, and practiced until the assault force had set out.
And then, in this winter forest, he’d known it would prove viable here as soon as his fingernail had managed to scratch the bark, meaning the wood wasn’t too hard for the cheap hatchets he’d bought to pierce.
His next shot was extremely lucky. The arrow, passing through The Wolf Empress's head and destroying a section of her brain's motor cortex, temporarily paralysed one half of her body and caused her to slump.
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Taking advantage of her sudden torpor, he slid the bow back down to his elbow and, switching from Spelltome to Spelltome, unloaded a volley of single-syllable spells.
They were much weaker than longer-to-cast spells and had shorter ranges; thus, he’d made sure not to teleport too high up.
By the time The Wolf Empress, the veins in her eyeballs melting and her flesh sloughing off as purple chunks, had regained control, she found to her dismay that he'd already climbed higher than his previous position, ready to start the whole routine again.
Stopping, the giant wolf glanced around the forest, at the dense rows of trees in whose towering heights she would not be able to touch him.
Henry, another arrow ready, his bowstring paused at its anchor point, offered this monster the same chance the others had refused. "Open a portal back home, and you can live."
"I am far from done!" The Wolf Empress snapped.
Henry shot.
The giant monster, tumbled out of the missile's way, twisted around, and sprinted off.
Henry didn’t bother giving chase.
Canopywalking could get quite fast when ropes were attached to the hatchets, but the cognitive load for doing this with his method was astronomical. Because Civilian Class telekinesis abilities would cancel if anything else touched the transported object to prevent players using them to fly, one would have to perform a constant mental juggle, continually releasing and catching the ropes from one's hands while also tying and untying them from the hatchets. This was too demanding for him to sustain beyond a few minutes.
With the monster gone for now, he used the hatchets like pickaxes to scale the giant tree.
At the top, reaching an altitude of about 450 metres, he was met with a snow-swept vista of mountains, gorges, frozen rivers, and, worst of all, no visible end to the forest in which the two would be hunting each other.
He sighed.
The pups would need a bigger water bowl.
He just hoped there would be no further complications...
As luck would have it, in the rest of Saana, the mysterious invasion of low-level wolves in every zone had just grown far less complicated.
Rong Island, Rongbit. A rocky shore, across which noobs were scrambling to escape the packs.
One of the players running from the wolves, a boy who'd tattooed his cheeks in the local style, dove into a rockpool and hid within a cluster of seaweed.
There he waited, enduring the suffocation right until his HP reached zero.
Resurfacing, he only dared to poke his nostrils out of the waterline.
But something was strange, he realised. Even with his ears immersed, the sound of snarling and screaming vanished.
Raising himself further with caution, the noob was startled to find the shore empty, with only a few survivors scratching their heads, the wolves that'd been chasing them gone.
Humakungan, Capital of Nilke. A valley smothered with volcanic ash.
Here, the wolves were the ones fleeing.
At the centre of the valley, protected by a wall of shieldmen, a circle of red-robed cultists were chanting. The ground in the middle of their formation was strewn with beheaded slaves. From their open necks, blood was flowing into a spinning globe voluminous enough to fill two bathtubs.
A shieldman shouted out in astonishment, “My lord, the wolves have vanished!”
A cultist, hearing this odd fact, hesitated a moment, causing the blood globe to spin apart and soak everyone in the vicinity.
The cultist dropped to his knees and bowed towards another member. “Lord Zulfikar, forgive my incompetence!”
The addressed figure used his sleeve to wipe the inside of the hole where his nose might have been. “No." With a hand of skeletal bone, he formed a spellshape. "NGAN!"
The cultist who'd blundered screamed as all his bodily fluids exploded violently from his orifices, leaving behind a desiccated husk still in a pose of supplication.
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-RedMotorBike210: Hey, where'd all the wolves go?