Only idiots could end up bleeding to death in a training dungeon. Where were his healing potions? Or had he already taken them and was still bleeding out?
Khoulgan Drahk wasn’t as short as I thought he’d be from where I’d spotted him on the balcony. He was stocky, handsome in a rugged way. Even with his fur coat covered in his own blood. His brown hair was long like my father’s, which made me hate him instantly. But his had braids and he had half tied back in a bun, a style typical of northerners.
After activating [Forgotten Son], I moved along one of the branches above his circle of fire. As I studied the wolves salivating from the other side of the fire, hoping they’d have the same weakness as the other wolves, the system fired off a series of encounter notices with more Legendary Silver Wolves. But the tenth one stood out.
【DUNGEON NOTICE】
You have encountered a <#ERROR!> Wolf [Transcendental].
Something was different about that one, and it could explain why this pack had ended up in the Shadowlands. Probably something the system was trying to solve by reducing the number of beasts killed. I’d bring it up with Helas later.
The system also clearly wanted to protect Khoulgan Drahk from bleeding out. I’d be lying if I didn’t find that ridiculous. I’d seen him enter the dungeon alone. Since he was a student, he had to know that he wasn’t meant to do that, and so he must’ve thought very highly of his abilities if he’d gone in anyway.
By the size and power of the fire that surrounded him, I could guess that the quality of his soul was ranked higher than mine. Higher than Harorin’s B-Rank, too. With the quality of my soul, the only magic I found useful was to summon weapons.
If I had to take a stab at guessing why he’d entered the dungeon alone, it was probably because he’d thought he could do it with his skill with magic alone. Just like Harorin.
“Leave me alone!” the student hollered as one of the wolves tried to test the ring of fire, ignoring him in favor of deferring to the heat. I couldn’t believe that he was probably older than me.
I dropped down into his circle and deactivated [Forgotten Son]. “They’re not going to leave you alone.”
He startled, but the movement caused him to immediately flinch and groan in pain. I knelt beside him, digging into Helas’s satchels for the healing potions she would’ve packed for me out of habit. When I found three, I uncorked one and held it up to his lips.
“Drink,” I ordered.
“What is it? Poison?” he asked, turning his head away, a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his face from the heat of the fire around him.
“Listen, Khoulgan Drahk. I’m the only other person in this dungeon with you, and since you’re on the verge of dying, the system sent me to save you.” I grabbed his head to keep it in place and forced the bottle to his lips. “Now drink.”
His nose scrunched, but he gagged it all down with a groan. Healing potions didn’t have an enjoyable flavor, and Helas went out of her way to make sure they didn’t when she brewed them for me. They also didn’t numb the pain as it worked to rid his body of anything foreign, to reset any bones, to stop his bleeding, to mend his wounds.
“Not just anyone can get permission to enter the dungeon alone. Let alone someone who’s not a student at Tairayat,” he said when he was done, weakly wiping his mouth before returning it to his injured side. “Who are you? Why are you here alone?”
I uncorked the second bottle and held it for him to drink again. “Geram Vulros,” I said and regretted it immediately.
Big mistake. I shouldn’t be telling anyone the name of someone who was supposed to be dead.
“And you can’t tell anyone about me,” I said. “Not that I was here. Not about my abilities. At least not if you want me to save your ass instead of burying it right here.”
He coughed after finishing the second bottle, looked me up and down with his warm honey brown gaze. I didn’t care for his scrutiny at all.
“And why not?” he asked, cocking an annoying eyebrow. “What’s in it for me? I don’t believe you’re the type who’d sacrifice all the experience points you’d get from the emergency quest the system gave you to save me.”
“What makes you think I need them?”
He raised a hand when I offered the third healing potion, and so I passed it over to him. Seemed like he was healing well. Good.
“Well,” he said, “you are here to save me. Or are you not capable?”
“I’m fully capable,” I said and flattened my tone so he’d cut the bullshit. “But you’re right. I’ll just kill you after I get you out of this dungeon. Won’t be able to tell anyone about me then. Deal?”
“Wait. No, no, that won’t do. That’s not what I meant at all. If you save my life, I’ll keep your entire existence to myself. Of course.” He grinned and leaned closer. Definitely healing well. “We can keep this as our little secret.”
“You’re not very convincing, Khoulgan.” I shoved the potion toward his mouth again. “Finish this and stay inside your little fire show until I get rid of the wolves. And then you’re going to tell me why the hell you’re in here alone when you’re this incapable.”
“I’m also fully capable,” he said with a lazy smirk playing on his lips. “This little fire show isn’t easy? But fine, I’ll stay like a good boy and finish healing up. That work for you, Geram?”
It’d have to do.
I shoved Helas’s satchel at him. “Keep this safe. And remember, nothing about me leaves this place.”
He raised the third healing potion, half full, in a vague salute and chuckled.
Everything about his demeanor screamed suspicious, but it wasn’t as if he could tell anyone about me without revealing that he had to be rescued in a training dungeon. He possessed too big of an ego for that.
I stood, and the wolves surrounding us growled in anticipation of our confrontation. Ten of them salivating, lips pulled back, fur a deep obsidian hue glistening with a subtle silver sheen. Piercing amber eyes gleamed like smoldering embers, their intense gaze piercing through the Shadowlands’ veil of darkness.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Then there was the wolf with the error in the encounter notice. This one would be more difficult to deal with, so I’d leave them for last if possible. Bigger build, longer fangs, and pitch black—no glimmer of silver and black eyes that reflected nothing but the darkness they embodied. Was this a Shade Wolf?
But then why the error?
Callas circled above, and I gave her a sign to create a diversion. She called back and swooped low around the outside of the circle. I charged through the fire at the youngest one, fists ready.
“Wait!” Khoulgan yelled. “That’s suicide! You need a weapon—”
This group of wolves were prepared for me. Two of the closest wolves to the youngest one attacked me at once, claws extended and sharp fangs dripping saliva. I kicked the faster one in the chest to create distance, pivoted to knock the other out with a heavy punch to the side of their jaw.
They went down with a thud, and Callas swept in to block the wolf I’d kicked from coming at me as two others pounced on me. With a powerful build and agile movements, these wolves embodied the essence of stealth and strength, beasts born to thrive in the deadly twilight hours.
I dodged and jumped back into a nearby tree. In those close quarters, with their level of coordination hunting together, it wouldn’t take long for one of those claws to catch me in the arm or the leg and draw blood. I had to do this without shedding blood, as restrictive as that was. At least until I decided it was impossible to do it without any.
Activating [Forgotten Son] again, I leapt across a few other trees while I picked a target.
【NOTICE】
You have activated Forgotten Son [Uncommon].
Your presence is suppressed so that others forget you, rendering you able to act freely without being perceived for up to five minutes a day.
You have 2 minutes and 32 seconds of use remaining today.
When I landed beside the wolf I’d kicked, I deactivated again and pounded my fist into the crown of their head. They fell over to their side with a thump, black tongue flopped out of their mouth onto the ground.
Two vicious snarls followed too close for comfort, and without my perception and agility stats, I wouldn’t have been able to strike back with such a precise and weighty kick to one of their sides, nor would I have been able to elbow the other in the temple.
With those three down, they had only about half their numbers left. The moments stretched out now as I took in my immediate area with my perception, pulling back my range to pin all my focus on the remaining wolves. I didn’t want to miss a thing.
The potential Shade Wolf hadn’t moved at all, observing from the sidelines, with a wolf on each flank ready to attack me if the other wolves didn’t finish me first. That left three wolves for me to take care of first.
Instead of jumping back into the tree, I used every cheap trick I had to evade and escape their attacks to get a better sense of how to best use my agility. But at the same time, I could feel the air cooling around me quickly, the blaze of the fire that’d been protecting Khoulgan dimming with every breath I took. He was still in the center—
I squinted because I wasn’t hearing what I was seeing. My eyes confirmed that he was there, but I couldn’t hear him breathe, couldn’t hear his heartbeat or the blood surging through his veins. He wasn’t even looking at me, which seemed wrong.
One of the wolves by the Error Wolf’s side lashed out at me, close enough now to be a threat. The wolves had tried to guide me into a trap. Smart of them, even if it wouldn’t work.
Crouching low, I timed my jump to catch their jaw with my knee with enough force to rattle their brain. While they were disoriented, I kicked them in the ribs, eliciting enough cracks to keep them down for the count.
Now there were four left with the Error Wolf, and they didn’t seem so keen to jump into another sparring match so soon.
Only the Error Wolf seemed up to the task, finally showing the full length of their yellowed fangs as they stepped toward me.
【QUEST NOTICE】
You have received an update to your emergency quest: Captive of the Savage Shadows [Legendary]
You must rescue the student Khoulgan Drahk from the Shade Phoenix he has encountered in the Shadowlands. To change this quest to [Transcendental], complete this quest in a party with the student Khoulgan Drahk.
Do you accept this update?
“Khoulgan!” I yelled in frustration, backing away from the approaching wolf. “You said you’d stay. Fuck.”
The last person who’d aggravated me this much was my older brother Lando, who I’d killed first for it. Seemed Khoulgan was ready to die as well, and now I didn’t need to be careful about getting my hands a bit bloody anymore.
Too bad I needed him alive to be partied together.
I signaled to Callas to go after him, knowing she’d been waiting for another signal. She called back and took to the open skies as I summoned my favorite weapon from the collection I kept at Helas’s house in Bolstaor.
“Manio isix,” I said, and a hilt wrapped in a supple grip with a slender blade with a single, razor-sharp edge manifested in my hand. Fuck the change option for [Echoes of the Silver Hunt].
I’d go after Khoulgan once I finished off this Error Wolf and what remained of their pack.
The shadows of my sword’s defensive barrier snaked up my wrist, wrapped around my elbow, stretched across one shoulder to the other. Darkness casted a hazy and uncertain veil over me until I was almost indistinct from it, more effective in the Shadowlands than anywhere else I’d used it.
【NOTICE】
You have equipped an item: Duskblade [Common]
This two-handed, single-edged blade cloaks you in a defensive barrier of shadows that obscures your form and reduces damage from physical attacks up to 5%.
The wolves didn’t need to see me to attack me, though, and they were big enough that they didn’t need to be precise. My eyes met with the Error Wolf’s, and a chill ran through me, their immense presence crushing against me like Father’s had, like Irthrothun’s had. This wall of power that separated my ability from theirs.
But I’d distributed my free points. I’d far surpassed that version of me even though it wasn’t that long ago. I didn’t need [Cold-Blooded Nature] to suppress this sense of powerlessness; I let it wash past me instead and steeled myself.
The Error Wolf growled and stalked toward me, and the two Silver Wolves fell back. I dodged their first attack, but they were fierce and relentless, leaping and bounding in relentless pursuit. Their claws threatened to tear into my thighs, always nipping at my ankles and calves.
They wanted to incapacitate me like the pack had done to Khoulgan. I wouldn’t let them, but the problem was that the Error Wolf was as agile as me, as perceptive if not more so. They were probably as strong, probably as durable.
Permanent dungeons were the only place where Other Beings like beasts didn’t just die after being killed, and it was another reason scholars cited for believing that these dungeons served as places of preservation.
For Souled Beings, after death, we were reincarnated into a new form. For Cored Beings, their core regenerated their form. Other Beings didn’t have a soul or a core, and so when they died, that was it.
Except in permanent dungeons, where they would be reset with the dungeon once cleared. If they didn’t die before the reset, though, they grew stronger. Exponentially depending on how many clears they survived.
The Error Wolf must’ve survived countless to be Transcendental. And unlike Irthrothun, the Error Wolf wasn’t limited by a weaker form they’d possessed. If anything, they were stronger because of their form.
But I knew their weaknesses. The same as the Silver Wolves. And I went at them with fervor. The clash of blade and fang reverberated through the forest as I parried the Error Wolf’s savage strikes. They matched me move for move.
Instinct hit me—a lull in our exchange that left an opening for the other two wolves. They lunged at me, on one either side. I needed to get rid of these two now. Three-on-one was never good odds. My eldest brother Boyet had trained me in sword fighting first, and he only taught one lesson... over and over and over again.
No wasted movements.
An upward slice to cut one in half vertically.
A backhanded swing to cleave through the other.
【QUEST NOTICE】
You have successfully completed Echoes of the Silver Hunt [Epic].
You have been awarded:
100,000 EXP┃ 100 FP┃ 2 EP
Do you accept this award?
Yes.
【NOTICE】
You have leveled up to Level 76.
The scent of blood filled the air, and the Error Wolf cried. A high pitched howl that filled my chest with vibration that was answered by at least two other wolves back from where I came.
No—it was my core that vibrated with the whispers of their pain. But how?
【NOTICE】
The <#ERROR!> Wolf [Transcendental] has entered a state of Rage.
Oh, fuck.