A forest, at a time.

The winter forest, where a man and a wolf had fought, had undergone many changes in the lengthy course of their mutual hunt. Acres had been levelled to create towers of stacked trees, the throne of the wolf rulers had been shattered, and even a few mountains had had their peaks sawn off.

At one spot marking one part of the hunt stood a castle of ice. Around this glistening structure stretched a barren field of snow, the ice dyed pink and patterned with thousands of bumps. From one of these bumps, the feather of an arrow shaft protruded, fluttering in a harsh winter gale.

On top of the castle wall, a set of roasted wolves on skewers had frozen, the fire below them having long been extinguished.

Beside this frozen meal, a flat-faced figure lay, sleeping on a bed of grey fur, his hand clasping a sword. Covering him was a curious cloak, half royal blue, half imperial red, which radiated a red light that melted any snowflakes falling his way.

The scene to his back was not so serene.

The interior of the ice fortress was a gaping pit. At its bottom, the Wolf Empress, about to draw her final breath, raged as chunks of her royal body were hacked and burnt.

"IT HURTS!" She howled! "DISGUSTING DEVIL! RELEASETH ME AT ONCE! MALEVOLENT PIG...’

The onslaught was relentless.

When her hide wasn’t being scorched by an indigo ball vomited by a thumb-sized goblin, it was being punctured by an ice javelin thrown by an animated snowman.

Her ability to dodge had been removed; a troop of skeletons with glaives were taking turns chopping off her legs, their rotation synchronised to the rhythm of a bongo-beating satyr.

If this weren’t enough, a foul humanoid creature was saddled on her neck like a bull rider. This creature had only one arm, two dismembered toes lodged in each eye socket, and strings of intestine for its lower jaw. As it clung to her, the intestines would occasionally harden into spikes and stab through the back of her skull, then, acting as straws, allow the creature to slurp up her brain matter.

Mid-feast, the foul creature paused and yanked its spikes free. "Finnisistatimituya!"

At once, the other minions stopped their assault.

The foul creature then turned its head to its summoner resting on the wall above them, and its eye-toes crisscrossed in a devilish expression.

Wrapped around the human's ankle was the hand of the creature’s missing arm, which began to squeeze and release with a rapid pulse.

Henry's eyes sprang open in terror.

The cloak draped around him hummed, and his body transformed into flames, incinerating his bedding.

In this flame form, he span around, checking for the signalled threat.

But there was none.

Below, the minions he’d summoned were waiting with a legless Wolf Empress, her wounds no longer healing. The Infernal Commander, astride her neck, made its jaw-entrails slap together grotesquely.

“Very funny, mate." Henry cancelled the cloak’s ability and returned to his corporeal form.

In the wolves' throne, he’d found this Legendary cloak, which could replicate their flame and water transformations - a nifty new ability.

In the right context, it was actually far, far more overpowered than the rapier. The reward was fitting, though, given that this boss had been orders of magnitude more challenging than the over-sized boar.

The hunt hadn't been too tricky at first, up until The Wolf Empress summoned what seemed to be about half the game’s total Grey Wolf population. In the treetops, he was relatively safe still, but at some point she started eating her minions to replenish her health, causing the fight to drag out for several months.

Yes...months. He'd been trapped in this winter hellhole for months.

Overall, though, it wasn't all bad. He’d been able to hone his mechanics to their peak, he'd polished off a few great novels, and, by eavesdropping on the wolves, he’d managed to learn their language using , which'd been one of the crucial steps in his monster army plan.

Better than all that, with this fight being so drawn out, his theory about the questline was all but confirmed beyond confirmation. See, freezing time for this long would be impossible unless—

"Enough, Tyrant!" The Wolf Empress howled. "If thou wilt not sparest me, then, at least, have the mercy to relievest my suffering with speed!’

"Fine." Henry jumped down into the pit, the snow cushioning his landing.

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Approaching his fallen foe, he waved his hand in dismissal, desummoning his minions. The gnome and satyr combusted into indigo flames, the snowman froze into a snowman, the skeletons collapsed into piles of bone, and the Infernal Commander astride her melted into a red puddle of liquified organs that dribbled down The Empress’s neck.

Henry winced at the disgusting last sight. "I didn't do that on purpose. Sorry."

Up close, her bowed head was as tall as him, and the fangs she bared as large as his forearm.

“Monster!” The Wolf Empress barked.

Henry scowled at her hypocrisy. "That’s really rich coming from a mass cannibal."

"Thou cannot judgest me! Tis the task of the ruler to maketh the hard but necessary decisions. I would consume a million more, had by doing so I might've freed us from the perverse bondage of thy dominion, from this ‘life’ in which we are bred and fattened only to be hewn down like wheat for the reason of thy growth."

Henry understood her sentiment, the life of a tutorial monster being quite bleak. However, even more important as a leader was making sensible decisions, such as not sacrificing all of one’s subjects on a battle you'd already lost. It also helped to mind one's subjects' wishes; the vast majority of the wolves had not gone willingly into oblivion. That was a bit messed up, he felt.

"You’re 100% correct," he replied, not caring to rub salt in the wound further. "Anyway, now that you’ve been defeated, is there a line of prophecy you’re supposed to give me? Any clues as to what to do next?"

The Empress snapped at him.

However, the human wasn't wrong...

"'Should struggle lose, The Flame must speak

Of entities whom shall He meet,

The age-worn masters sought to become:

Redeemer, Ten-Hands, Deathless One.'

"There be thy words, Tyrant, may they serve thee as well thine absent heart."

Henry recognised these as epithets of previous owners of his rusty ring, The Ring of a Thousand Souls.

The Redeemer was the same sentient monster who'd been slain by the Gods players saw when unlocking their Martial Bodies at the start of the tutorial, like the bald-trainer's patroness Amagwu.

Ten-Hands was the greatest non-Cosmic God craftsman in the game’s recorded history, who’d lived sometime between the first and second instalment of Saana.

The Deathless One referred to The Tyrant of Sokgyemant, who’d reigned over an Empire that had once controlled the Kanaru region, of which Suchi was a part, from 6334 Before Present until his assassination by his generals in 5148.

This was another explicit confirmation Henry was on the correct track. Not that he needed any more confirmation after this exhausting hunt.

She snapped at him. "With haste!"

"You made me wait months; you can wait a while longer." He pressed his fingers to his mouth and whistled. “Geri! Freki!”

The pups—although they weren't pups anymore—were resting in a nearby room of this ice castle. He’d continued to raise them throughout this ordeal, feeding them when possible with the wild game that inhabited the forest. Their companionship had alleviated much of the loneliness of these past months without human contact, preventing him from becoming too deranged. The Wolf Empress had been able to hijack their senses to spy on him, but she seemed incapable of commanding them for who knows what reason.

When his pups didn't come sprinting out, he wondered if they'd snuck off into the forest again.

The Wolf Empress huffed pompously. "Tyrant, thou mayest not obtain all thy wishes. ‘Twas not a lie of mine that thou wouldst not domesticate that playful pair. Far yonder, The Great Black One doth prepare them to sit my and my husband’s stolen throne."

"Really?" Henry said with disappointment. "Damn."

The news didn't shock him too much. He’d suspected that this might be the case after the boar that he’d travelled to King Torc’s Prison with hadn’t returned. If the game function of these monster rulers was to protect low-level tutorial zones, then it made sense to have replacements, lest the actions of one person ruin the levelling experience for hundreds of millions of players permanently – that would be ridiculous. At first, this had been a vague suspicion, competing among several, such as plain inept game design, but the pups triggering his entrance here had added weight to the theory.

"Is the shadow apple the mechanism of transformation?" he asked.

This was another unsolved mystery. If the shadow apple had this purpose, then why had King Torc coughed its one up for him? Was it a diversion? Did the quest branch off with the possibility of the player becoming a monster, too? Or—

"Enough!"

The Wolf Empress howled, opened up a warp portal beside them, with a view of the handsome meathead from back in the tutorial, standing frozen in a pose of confusion. She then bit off her tongue and spat it onto the snow, signalling her refusal to speak any further.

Henry groaned. "Don't be so dramatic…"

Without the rapier, there was no smooth way to perform the next step.

He moved around to the side of the Empress and summoned a spear. Placing his hand on a Spelltome with bonus physical stats, he the spearpoint, then shoved it into her chest a couple of times.

She breathed painfully for a while until, from a lack of blood pressure in her brain, she blacked out.

Henry then created an and used it to saw through her neck.

Congratulations! You are the first player to complete The Forest of The Wolf Lovers (Tier 0 - Level 3 – 50,000 Players - Global)!

As a global achievement, your accomplishment will be announced to the world!

Apparently, it had been a 50,000 man dungeon, not the 5000-man he'd estimated based on The Emperor's health pool. This stage of the questline had, indeed, been 100 times King Torc's difficulty.

Saana didn't have larger dungeons, so, logically speaking, this should stop the next boss being stronger by another factor of 100.

Logically...

Henry, rather than entering the portal straight away, lingered to study The Empress's lifeless face. The light in her eyes had faded, turning her irises to the amber of a regular grey wolf. Around her mouth, the blood oozing from her severed tongue was beginning to crystallise, this realm as bitter cold as Suchi was bitter hot.

Oddly, for all he'd seen of death, he wasn't particularly used to this post mortem aspect. Humans in Saana rarely left a physical trace, players reviving to fight another day, NPCs disintegrating into pretty, sanitised lights. All you could really observe was the brief preceding moment and, if you happened to miss that, whatever impact remained for others, which usually wasn't much.

He wondered if he was supposed to harvest this one’s soul, too? In this state?

At this thought, a freak gust of wind bowled him over, knocking him forward to plant a kiss on his enemy's frigid corpse.

The Ring of a Thousand Souls claims Empress Taynuh.