“GRRRRRRRRR…”

“This thing has an aggressive stance. It's pretty obvious that it's waiting for the best chance to try and chew my leg."

The sensations in the forest were no longer those coming from a peaceful and calm silence, but ones brought by a heavy “nothing”, accompanied and enhanced by the presence of the creature of inhuman proportions, which left one in doubt whether anyone would could get out of the place alive, should they encounter something so monstruous.

The white wolf tilted its head down, but kept its muzzle forward in a sign of calculating behavior. Around it, the vegetation continued to be increasingly enveloped in a layer of crystalline ice, which cracked with the force applied by its paws when moving so subtly.

"It's obvious. It's just waiting for the moment of distraction, and it knows exactly when it will come. That being's instincts must be sharp enough to tell when such a moment makes itself."

Jake let his eyes analyze all the complexity of that huge canid with fur as white as the snowy peaks he saw in the distance. Its blue eyes gleamed with the murderous intent of a ruthless hunter, focused fully on the two seemingly weak and frightened humans at the edge of the river.

He wasn't afraid. The boy was aware of the danger that the creature represented and was preparing for the moment of inevitable attack, but in no way did his body react negatively to the presence of the wolf. There was just the purely logical knowledge of “danger”.

“Almost all people who manipulate scissors know how dangerous they can be and actively avoid carrying out maneuvers that cause them any type of injury, however, none of them have any type of anxiety related to the object.” He reasoned. “Huh… Looks like that, in the end, it's the same kind of condition I'm subjected to.”

The same, however, could not be said of Enille. To his right, the blonde-haired girl was doing her best to keep a grip on the longsword she had pulled from its scabbard.

Her legs were shuddering, breathing was coming erratically, and nothing but panic could be inferred from her mental state at the moment.

For someone drenched in river water, Jake was no longer so sure that what he saw dripping in heavy drops from the girl's forehead was really just that.

“That thing… It shouldn't be here…“ She said, with difficulty. “This… Doesn’t belong here…!”

Jake just kept silent with what was said, yet he took the mental details and added them into his own analysis.

“Indeed, that wolf looks really out of place in such a green forest.”

The mere way in which its mere presence devoured the surroundings with icy breath and reigned supreme over the verdant grass was proof enough of that.

“They are not typical of this part of the forest… In fact… It shouldn’t even have the ability to be here…!”

Enille's desperation grew more intense with every fragment of a second that passed, her anxiety bubbling up to the point where she couldn't even blink a single extra time.

“This kind of beast should only live in the icy peaks…! These creatures have never descended so far into the warmer zones… This is the first time I have come across this!”

That wolf wasn't a natural creature in those parts — far from it — and that was why it felt so frightening, though that wasn't the only reason.

“Judging by how scared she is, I can only think of how incredibly powerful this beast must be.” Jake thought, staring at Enille sideways. "Well, I guess there's only one way to find out more about it."

The boy was very careful when moving, in no time letting eye contact with the creature be broken. Gradually he bent down to his knees and picked up, as quietly as possible, something he previously saw on the floor.

He held the long, considerably thin object between the fingers of his right hand, and in a coldly calculated gesture, threw it at the creature.

“Jake…!” Startled, Enille forced a step back.

The big white wolf reacted quickly, and in one swift movement, bit the branch thrown at it and tore it to pieces.

But that wasn't where it ended.

“Ah, so this is how it works…” He spoke, analyzing the result.

The branch, almost neatly bisected by the bite, was immediately frozen by the great wolf's huge fangs, which ruthlessly tore the rigid wood to shreds.

And all that was left were three pieces of something that looked much more like diamond crystals, which fell and shattered like ordinary, fragile ice.

“One bite of that thing is going to get us in massive trouble, Enille. It drastically lowers the temperature of anything in an area, and the closer that distance is to your body, the faster it will freeze.”

The boy also prepared a combative stance, joining Enille.

“And the greatest danger comes from direct bodily contact. If this thing bites, the place the fangs hit can be considered lost.”

“GRRRRRRRRR!!!”

The massive white wolf took Jake's gesture as the initiative to attack. Using its hind legs, the creature propelled its entire body forward, with the single intent of breaking every bone with its icy fangs.

"We don't stand a chance against this thing, it seems. We will have to run."

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Wasting no time, Jake's anxiety-free body and calm mind combined. At the last second, the boy intertwined Enille's abdomen with his right arm, pulling her away.

“GRRRRAAAAAWWW!”

But the creature would not give up. Hungry for that meat, it wasn't going to leave the competition of who was the fastest so easily.

“This thing is chasing us with all its might. It would be nice to have a way to slow it down somehow.”

Without further thought, Jake applied a little more force to his next step with the right foot, forcing something more akin to a ballet stance. His intention with the gesture was to generate at least a small cloud of dust and pebbles.

“What the hell… For a moment I forgot that the ground near the river is too wet. I won't be able to raise any dust here.”

With a flawed plan in his pocket, all the routes pointed at was to keep running until they could possibly leave.

“GRRRAAAAW!”

“This thing… It obviously runs much faster than I can ever hope to.”

His attention was caught by the almost deafening sound of a small tree falling close enough to be uncomfortable. Before he even realized it, the large ice-breathing canid had already surrounded them again, blocking the way forward.

“GRRRHHHH...!”

In its mouth, he saw pieces of frozen wood, escaping through cold breath.

“Looks like we really won't have a better choice than to try our hardest in a fight.” He concluded. “I think you know what that means, Enille.”

The girl wrapped with his arm didn't react in any way other than continuing to firmly grip the sword she always carried along to every trip. From there, Jake felt the tremors in the girl's small and strangely light body, reverberating in a crisis of despair.

“Enille, pull yourself together!” He said, a little more rigidly. “Behave like the adventurer you are! We gotta beat this thing!”

It was the first time some apparent emotion took over his voice. As fake as it was, it sounded real.

Surprisingly, carrying the girl was both suspiciously simple and easy. Jake had already run a few hundred yards, carrying what couldn't be less than around 85 pounds with just one arm, and wasn't showing the slightest signs of tiredness or muscle fatigue.

That situation was beginning to bring some questions to the boy's mind.

“This is not the time to start shaking and crying. I know that sounds easy to say, but do you really think that kind of attitude is going to be what gets you as far up in life as you've told me you want to?”

Yet another lunge, that time directed purely at Jake — with which he seemed to have acquired some degree of personal antagonism and well beyond mere hunting intent.

"Looks like I'm gonna have to really get my hands dirty now... Literally count on my luck."

Jake Parker fixed the animal with even colder eyes, aware of what it would do.

“Everything indicates that, for better or for worse, I will have to trust this strange instinct that has followed me since I entered this world.”

Without further thought, he threw Enille's body to his left, causing her to collide with a patch of dirt and leaves, with no exposed roots or branches.

It was only at that moment that the girl realized the level that circumstances would take to situation to.

“Jake...! NO!" She tried to reach him, without any success.

As if her soul had been forcibly pulled back from a pit of deepest darkness, Enille felt every part of her own being jump in a burst of awareness, where that new feeling overcame all the great weight of absolute dread that had consumed her before.

Jake was there, expressionless, and moments away from being ripped in half by the massive snowland creature's fangs. His gaze was fixed, locked in a firm yet careless posture.

“I should have noticed this before… Why did I realize this only now? The changes that have taken place in my person...”

Time seemed to run more slowly, but to put it that way would be incorrect — that he realized in those last moments. It wasn't the seconds that ran by slower.

“My body doesn't tire as easily now... I can carry things up to twice as heavy as previously comfortable much more easily than I could before...”

He closed his fist, aiming at a specific point. His fingers tightened, ready to apply maximum force to a specific spot.

“If I could do all the things that were impossible for me before...”

He didn't look to the side, but his peripheral vision showed him every microsecond of what was happening on the left side. It was Enille. She was screaming in desperation, but he couldn't hear it.

It was the right time.

“…So it can only mean that I must have gotten stronger.” Jake finally spoke, though not as loudly.

It wasn't time that slowed down, but his very thinking and information processing capacity became dozens of times faster and more efficient.

... ... ...

The contact of his fist with the left side of the animal's face brought the sensation of sudden coldness to his palm. In the first moments, there was nothing, but soon the merciless nature of the freezing provided by that creature would become clear.

“GRRRRR!”

“Huh…” Jake said, noticing the thin layer of ice on his wrists. “Looks like direct contact with you is really as dangerous as I inferred...”

But that wasn't his main focus of attention, since, like the stupefied girl next to him, the cold — both literally and figuratively — Jake Parker had just noticed something that in itself promised to change the course of that fight.

“Looks like that hurt you a little too, didn't it? You weren't expecting a weak human like me to be capable of making you feel pain.”

His loud tone in a deep voice intimidated the creature, which backed up a little, baring its blood-stained fangs that quickly froze.

“Enille.”

Jake's call pulled her out of her trance state. The girl, not knowing what to do, just watched as he raised his fists until they were close to the eyes line.

“If you have anything in there other than that sword, which is going to be useless here, to use… Then do it.”

He widened his base of support, spreading his legs slightly and putting his right ahead of his left by a significant margin, not daring to take his eyes off the creature for a mere second.

“Take the time you need to prepare it, as long as it's going to do some more significant damage to that thing. Do not worry about me. Just focus on whatever it is that you have to do to end this once and for all.”

He was serious to the end of it — she could tell, based on the shivers that ran down her spine as he pronounced each word.

"It can be anything. Just make sure it's final."

“GRRRRRRR…” The big wolf growled, no longer concerned with the pain of being hit by that human. It wouldn't take long for him to launch another attack, and he knew his prey knew it.

“I'll hold this monster for as long as it takes until you're ready.”

“GRRRRAAAAAW...!”

The massive canid leapt once more, even more filled with amplified killing intent, which made its unparalleled speed seem impossible to dodge.

"Come on, you puppy." Jake spoke, readying his fist. "I'm going to grind you to diamond dust."