The very next day, the group continued along on their journey. They returned to the river and once again followed it upstream.

By this point, although five years late, Ellis had pretty much come to terms with his situation. He gave up on the notion of ever reaching civilization. In retrospect, this sort of thing was obvious.

This damn forest was far too dangerous for human settlement. At most, he might be able to find tribes of wild men reminiscent of the barbaric ‘lost people’ of the Amazon Rain Forest. Hoping for anything else would be just wishful thinking.

He played around with the thought of settling down, but ultimately decided against it. The forest was not the right place to do so. It was far too difficult to set up a home in a place like this. Dark and gloomy, the constant threat of monster attacks guaranteed that there would be no such thing as a peaceful life within this forest.

If Ellis really was going to settle down, he would much rather prefer somewhere brighter, and a tad bit quieter. Maybe a place by the ocean or something.

Well, that was a thought for another day. Right now, all Elis wanted was to see where the river would take him.

Bottling in all of his secret hopes and wishful dreams, like this, another year passed.

It had already been six years since he first awakened inside that old mausoleum. In that time, a lot has changed.

Ena had grown taller, although not by much. Her growth was the type that could only be kept track of through one-centimeter increments. Since the encounter with the hydra, she grew three centimeters in height. It wasn’t really much of a growth period, but for children, keeping track of little things like this was what mattered the most.

Ellis did not know how long it took for normal foxes to mature, but one thing was clear: Ena would not be maturing anytime soon.

In comparison, the wolves had grown quite a lot. Right now, most of them were slightly larger than a normal sized leopard from Earth. Like last time, Plush and Wight differed from this norm.

Since the hydra encounter, Plush exploded in size. Currently, he was comparable to a large grizzly bear. Wight, on the other hand, was tiny. She grew maybe two inches taller since then. Not much progress to write home about.

Naturally, the wolves also got stronger. They were already fairly strong even before then, but their strength really improved by leaps and bounds over the last year. In terms of individual combat strength alone, they were close to unrivaled. Only complete outliers like the hydra would be able to defeat them.

Wight, as the leader of the pack, showed the greatest improvement. She was someone who specialized in speed, not at all surprising, considering her size.

As for how fast she was… between dropping a pebble from a thousand feet up in the air and Wight sprinting a distance of one thousand feet, the little wolf would reach her destination first. Essentially, she was faster than this world’s pull of gravity.

Well, truth be told, that’s not really much of a comparison. Wight was way, way faster than gravity.

Her speed even allowed her to fight on par with Ena. Of course, this was only in terms of match-up. In an objective comparison between the two, then Ena was clearly more ‘powerful’, mainly because of her access to a wide variety of special abilities. Still, if it was in a one on one fight, then both competitors were more or less evenly matched.

The reason lay purely in Wight’s speed. She was simply too fast to hit.

This revelation greatly affected Ena. It was sort of like a wake-up call, or rather, it gave her a deep sense of crisis. The rate of her disappearances increased. Often times, she would leave for two to three days at a time. When she returned, her entire body was covered from head to toe in all sorts of injuries. This was saying a lot, considering the fact that Ena had access to nigh-omnipotent healing magic.

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As for Wight, she lived an idyllic life. Eating meat and getting her head rubbed, it was like the roles had been reversed. Still, she did not get careless. Wight constantly trained. She knew quite well that the moment she slipped up, Ena would take advantage of that and mercilessly bully her.

Well, this sort of situation was something that Ellis had predicted to some extent. Ena was arrogant and lazy, so it wasn’t at all surprising that the hard-working Wight eventually caught up to her.

While he had predicted this outcome, that’s not to say that there were no surprises along the way. For one, Umbra surprised him greatly.

Umbra was Wight’s biological brother. He also happened to be the second strongest wolf within the pack.

From the start, Umbra was a very negative character. He was always dark and broody. Ellis could not quite explain it. He did not look that outwardly different from the rest of the wolves, but you could just tell. The foggy gloom that hovered over his head was almost palpable. If he was a human, then he would have been the kid who sat in the back of the classroom with a trench coat and a giant duffel bag by his side. Or maybe just the quiet kid in class that nobody talks to.

A depressing fellow, but for one reason or another, Cocoa quite liked him.

In summary, Umbra underwent an evolution. His change was related to poison.

It had happened after the incident with the blood pool. While the other wolves suffered, somewhere within Umbra’s body, a change had occurred. It was like he adapted to the poison and took it in as his own.

A magical permutation… or something along those lines.

Now, he had developed the ability to create poison. He could spit out poison, and he could excrete poison from his pores. He was a poisonous, no, a venomous wolf. The poison also appeared voluntary, meaning he could turn it on and off at will.

His evolution could be considered a good thing. Because of it, Umbra had grown stronger. Unfortunately, for the person in question, this change was not at all a positive one.

After his evolution was discovered, Ena’s attention suddenly locked onto Umbra. She stared at him with zealous eyes. It was as if she had just found a new toy to play with.

During Ena’s periodic disappearances, she would occasionally return with an assortment of new items. A sac of something squishy and vile, a purple flower that exuded out black smog, and a charcoal-like herb with tendril-like roots akin to a jellyfish. All of the items she brought back were either poisonous, acidic, or corrosive!

She force-fed these things to Umbra. Despite his new evolution, Umbra did not enjoy the ‘snacks’ that she brought back. It wasn’t that he was negatively affected by it, but rather, he did not like the taste. It was bitter and disgusting, like eating rotten lemons or drinking sewage water.

Ena enjoyed watching his face distort in disgust. To her, it was like a new past-time.

Well, despite the terrible process, in the long run, all the poisons that Umbra ingested helped him grow stronger. The toxicity of his poisons improved and so did his control over it. Through arduous training, he learned how to control the lethality.

Not only that, but he also developed different types of poisons. Paralyzing poisons, numbing poisons, corrosive poisons, diarrhea-inducing poisons, the list goes on and on. Umbra took on the qualities of all the poisonous items that he ingested.

With his poison alone, Umbra was now considerably stronger than the first dragon that they had encountered.

If the wolves were to team up and attack together, they probably stood a fairly good chance at defeating the hydra. After all, the wolf pack’s strongest point was teamwork.

As for the power structure, Wight was the strongest, followed by Umbra, Cobalt, Cinder, Tangerine, Plush, and Cocoa. Third to sixth place regularly fluctuated, but Cocoa was the undisputed weakest of the wolves. Of course, that was only relative to the wolf pack. In terms of this forest, she was still fairly capable. Still, whether it was the weakest or the strongest, none of that really mattered. She was doted on by the other wolves.

She was the uncrowned the little princess of the pack. Her brothers pampered her endlessly. Unfortunately, she only ever showed interest in the gloomy Umbra. Things like giving him food, licking his wounds clean, and rubbing her head against his neck, Cocoa was quite bold in her actions. She acted like a flirty high-schooler with a crush on her childhood friend.

For the most part, Umbra found the whole situation troubling. Whether he really was troubled, or if he was just putting on airs, nobody really knows. One thing was clear though: his attitude rubbed others the wrong way.

The doting older brother alliance comprised of Plush, Cobalt, Cinder, and Tangerine all redirected their resentment to the innocuous Umbra.

Not only was he being bullied by a certain little fox, but he was also ostracized by all the other males in the pack… his only ally, his sister, also didn’t do much to help. Wight was too busy training and playing around with her master. Neglected and harassed, Umbra really was quite unfortunate.

Ellis shook his head.

A lot had happened during the last year, but regardless, they continued on their journey, delving even deeper into the forest.