The Direwolf growled, frustrated at how long this hunt was taking. But it wasn’t stupid. It knew that Cole would eventually end up between those enormous jaws, so it continued to play along with their little game. But it wouldn’t last. Cole’s Runic Speed was running out.

He eyed the beast’s jaw once more. From this close he could see the rows of white teeth dripping with saliva.

Cole faced it down as it began another charge towards him. With his left hand, he traced out Runic Strength, and his right arm began to glow purple.

The Direwolf leapt in the air, jaws open wide. But Cole didn’t run. He didn’t jump out of the way. He thrust his arm forward, fingers moving quicker than they had before.

Everything happened at once.

A flash of light, as purple energy blazed out of the wolf’s eyes, ears, and mouth. Cole felt the enormous weight of an adult Direwolf slam into him, only his Runic Strength preventing his arm, which was still inside the monster’s now empty skull, from being snapped in half.

Cole crashed to the ground, pinned underneath the dead weight of his first kill. The Direwolf’s mouth had enveloped his entire arm up to his shoulder. As he stared down at its snout, which was now inches away from his own face, he realised just how close that had been. If the Direwolf had had the chance to close its jaws, he would have lost his entire right arm.

He lay there, trapped, breathing heavily. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, Cole felt something other than basic primal instincts. He was angry. Partially at Thesta, for putting him in this situation, but mainly at himself. Why couldn’t he just swallow his pride? When he realised he couldn’t pierce through the monster’s fur, he should have retreated and asked the powerful sorcerer for help.

But no, instead he needed to prove himself by almost losing half his body in the process. He traced out another Runic Strength. This time, his whole body was suffused with the purple light, which put immense strain on his mana. He could feel the headache pounding behind his eyes.

Cole slowly extricated himself from the embrace of the enormous dead wolf, taking care not to catch his arm on its teeth as he pulled it out from the jaw. He took a step back to study his handwork, dismissing the rune and not caring at all about how much energy he wasted by doing so.

The body of the Direwolf was relatively intact, if rather limp. Most of the damage had been localised around its head. Its eyes were gone, as were its ears. It seemed like the magic inhibiting fur had worked in his favour, preventing the runic energy from escaping, and basically liquifying its internals. Cole shuddered.

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Although it was an obviously effective method for killing, he didn’t want to repeat it anytime soon. His whole right arm was coated in unidentifiable pieces of ‘meat’, and he decided not to think too hard about what that meant.

“I’m impressed…”

Oh great, Cole thought, now she shows up. At least she was being positive for once.

“…by your stupidity.”

Nevermind.

Thesta began lecturing him, still not raising her voice above a pleasant speaking volume.

“You spent the vast majority of that ‘fight’ dancing around like a performer, wasting all your energy, only to go and throw your life away in one of the best suicide attempts I’ve ever seen!”

Cole opened his mouth to talk, but she wasn’t done.

“I thought your weakness would be complimented by some form of resourcefulness, but you just chose to use your fists. Look around you!” she punctuated the last statement by gesturing wildly with her hands at the forest environment. He supposed she was right. There were plenty of sticks he could have used. Plenty of rocks that would have served as weapons.

But she didn’t seem to understand, and Cole was sick of letting her assumptions create unrealistic expectations.

“I’m not a warrior!” he yelled, causing the woman to pause.

“Then why do you have a warrior’s class?”

“A week ago I didn’t HAVE a class!”

Thesta seemed genuinely shocked. She narrowed her eyes.

“But that’s impossible… it takes years to develop a second phase class. How could you possibly have a second phase class with no training whatsoever?”

Cole didn’t have the energy to yell anymore. The adrenaline was well and truly gone, and now all he wanted to do was roll into bed.

“I don’t know…” he sighed, dropping his gaze from her intense blue stare.

The grey-haired woman stayed silent for a minute, obviously thinking. Cole watched the gears turn in her head as she seemed to steel herself, narrowing her eyes.

“Regardless, a second phase class should have enough power to take down a Direwolf with little effort, especially a [Runic Knight]. Yet you can’t. You also don’t have the amount of runes that you should…”

Cole just didn’t have an answer to that. She was right, of course. Even a first phase [Knight] would able to vanquish a Direwolf. Heck, even he had taken down similarly sized monsters back when he was just a [Mage]. He still didn’t know why he was so weak, but he didn’t have the energy to think about it anymore.

Thesta seemed lost in thought, merely beckoning him to follow her back to Venture.

Luckily for Cole, it seemed like she was either too distracted or too disappointed to get him to fight any more monsters. The rest of the short journey back to the town was only interrupted by Thesta’s eyes occasionally flaring up with blue energy, and her drawing a runes that would fire a bolt of magic into the trees. Shortly after, a muffled squeal would be heard as the monsters stalking the pair were struck dead.

If nothing else, she definitely made Cole feel safe.

Because of the amount of time Cole had ‘wasted’ (according to Thesta), they arrived back much later than anticipated. The warning bell began to ring before they’d even made it back to the Adventurer’s Guild Headquarters. As a result, he was left on his own to make his way back to the building. It wasn’t hard, the whole of Venture was constructed around its central square, but he still felt slightly uneasy being alone in an unfamiliar place, let alone a medieval town in a fantasy world. The streets were bustling, much more than they had been on his arrival here. Maybe it was a weekend?

He soon made it to the town square, which was similarly busy to the rest of Venture. People were congregating, listening to various street performers. Cole sighted the Adventurer’s Guild building on the other side of the large open space. He looked up, trying to figure out if he could see the window for his room. He had narrowed it down to two options when he was interrupted by a bright, jovial voice.

“Good Evening! Do you have a moment to talk about the glorious Emperor Auremon?”

Cole looked back down, met with the sight of a young man in flowing golden hooded robes. He wore the hood down, revealing short cropped hair and a golden circlet, which had a gap right in the middle of his forehead.

It was a priest. A Vestrian priest. An Imperial priest.

Cole was face to face with the Empire.