A single, heavy pouch rested on the wooden table. Constantine’s gaze locked onto it, unwavering. After a moment, he reached out, snatched it up, and loosened the strings. He overturned the pouch, letting the coins tumble out, their clattering echoing in the quiet room. Quickly, he sifted through them, counting under his breath: “One small gold, seven large silvers, eight small silvers, ten large coppers, and twenty small coppers.” It was more than he had anticipated—a sizable fortune compared to the paltry coppers he had been begging for on the streets the prior years.

The coins glinted coldly in the dim light of a candle. ‘I wonder how many innocents they extorted and robbed to amass this. Bloody money.’ The bandits he’d taken them from had long plagued the area, instilling fear in travelers and villagers alike. Yet, Constantine had been meticulous—leaving a few coins scattered on their bodies, just enough to suggest they had been slain by a creature after drunkenly wandering into the forest at night.

With a swift movement, he rose and scanned the room. The stained floor had been scrubbed clean, and the doors were resting against the wall. Only a faint mark of soot marred the wooden planks.

‘There’s just one loose end—the bandit my wolf injured.’ Among the bodies he disposed of in the forest, none bore the injury he was looking for. Constantine was certain that the bloodstain he’d seen indicated a wound severe enough to be impossible to overlook. ‘He might have bled out,’ he mused, though doubt gnawed at him. If that bandit survived, he would know too much. If even a whisper of their fate reached the wrong ears, Constantine’s carefully constructed life would unravel. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

He crossed the room to where a bloodied rag lay discarded in a corner, used earlier to mop up the blood. From the shadows, a pair of crimson eyes watched him—the wolf, still at alert. Their gazes met, and for a brief moment, Constantine hesitated. He had never trained the wolf for tracking. ‘But tracking should be their base instinct.’

“Come here,” he commanded, his voice low but firm. The wolf rose gracefully, moving toward him in absolute silence. Even with his enhanced sight, Constantine could only make out its glowing, ruby-like eyes. He held out the rag, observing as the wolf’s nostrils flared, catching the scent. It sniffed the rag, its nose twitching, before looking up at him.

“Find him. Don’t you want to catch the one who slipped away?” he whispered, though doubt tinged his voice. He hesitated again. The wolf was intelligent, but this task was new.

‘Maybe I’m underestimating them,’ he thought, recalling the cleverness of dogs—how they could count, form plans to trick people out of their food, or even navigate public transport like the famed Moscow street dogs. ‘Wolves should be even smarter. And magical wolves…’ He pondered, though he wasn’t entirely sure. The pup was learning rapidly under his care—so fast that it often took him by surprise.

The wolf sniffed the rag once more, then lifted its head to the air, searching for the scent. For a moment, it seemed uncertain, pacing slowly around the room. Constantine watched, his heart pounding, curiosity mingling with apprehension. Near the empty doorframe, the wolf paused, its ears pricked forward, nose quivering.

Suddenly, its head snapped toward the outside, its body tensing as it caught the scent. Without waiting for further command, it bolted for the exit. Constantine cursed under his breath and sprinted after it. As he burst through the door, the cold air stung his lungs. The sky above was inky black, scattered with only a few faint stars.

He scanned the area, searching for the wolf. Crimson eyes glimmered ahead, the creature’s black fur blending seamlessly with the night. He pushed himself to run fast through the waist-high grass that bent under him. The red orbs moved farther, the rustling grass the only sound accompanying him. ‘She is fast.’ Constantine pumped his arms, forcing his legs to keep pace, the tall grass whipping against his shins as he chased the occasional glint of crimson eyes in the distance.

The pasture gave way to fields. The golden wheat, now bathed in shadows, passed by him as he sped. He kept running, the chilling night air clearing his mind. The dark sea of grass and wheat seemed endless until, suddenly, the red eyes halted, waiting in a single spot.

‘Here?’ He wasn’t sure where he was; the darkness was too thick for him to discern any landmarks. He followed those red orbs until a dark silhouette began to emerge from the shadows—a small, weathered shack, its run-down bamboo walls barely visible in the night. A faint, flickering light burned in its solitary, empty window. The wolf crouched in the tall grass beside it, body tense, gaze locked on Constantine, its tail swaying.

He finally reached the wolf, taking a few moments to catch his breath. “Good girl,” he whispered, tossing a small core to the beast. From inside the shack, the rough, drunken voices of men drifted out.

“Where’s the boss? It’s taking them too long. Damn it, how long are we supposed to freeze in this shack?!”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Shut up and stop whining. I’m the one whose arm was mangled by that wolfish mutt! Hell! Pass me the bottle.”

Constantine smiled faintly, recalling how his wolf had gone for the bandit’s throat. ‘She’s learned that the neck is a better target than the arms,’ he thought, stifling a chuckle that almost escaped. He couldn’t afford to alert the bandits inside.

He drew a deep breath, reaching into his pocket for the core, his heart pounding. This time, he wasn’t on defense—he was on offense, ready to strike his enemies on his terms.

‘Entering might be risky; unknown enemy positions could lead to an ambush. Let’s burn it from outside.’ The runes of his elemental spell flared to life on his hand, the lightning rune now replaced by fire.

He raised his hand, feeling the liquid mana pulse through his veins, like molten lava coursing beneath his skin. His power surged, growing stronger, hotter. The air around him began to shimmer, distorting with the rising heat. A wide grin spread across his face, his teeth gleaming in the flickering light—he reveled in the sensation of raw power coursing through his veins.

He paused momentarily, hesitating, surprised at how quick he was to kill. It was as if something within him finally broke away, taking his hesitance to kill with it. ‘One can be screwed over only so many times... In this world, one must be able to kill if they do not want to die themself.’ He suppressed his hesitation.

Instead, an uncanny curiosity awoke within him. ‘Implant, record this experiment. Let’s see how increasing the mana input into runes affects their potency.’

The core dissolved in his hand, the raw energy feeding into the burning runes that blazed like brands on his flesh. His body glowed, veins of molten light visible beneath his skin as mana flooded through him. He gritted his teeth, struggling to contain the searing energy that pooled in his body.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, evaporating instantly upon contact with his skin. The very air around him seemed to ignite, crackling with sparks of red and orange. He felt the immense pressure building inside him like a dam straining to hold back a flood. His eyes gleamed with fiery intensity, reflecting the inferno he was about to unleash.

He locked his gaze on the window of the shack. His heart pounded in his chest as he took aim with his palm, the intense heat radiating from his outstretched hand. The energy within him roared, struggling against his control.

With a final thought—‘Now’—he released the dam, connecting the runes and letting the flood of mana surge through them. A sharp, blinding pain shot through his arm as the fire spell erupted from his palm, a concentrated stream of flame tearing through the air with a deafening roar. The night was cleaved by a searing streak of red and orange. The runes in his arm shattered, overwhelmed by the torrent of mana. Pain, burning and fierce, climbed up his arm. Much of the mana dissipated into the air as a brilliant flash of light.

Simultaneously, the fire blast tore through the narrow window of the shack with a high-pitched scream. The flames spiraled inward, twisting like a fiery serpent as they poured into the confined space. In an instant, the interior of the shack was engulfed in a blinding, hellish light.

Constantine watched, breath held, as the fire consumed the structure, igniting its straw roof and bamboo walls in moments. Inside, the screams of the bandits rose, sharp and panicked, making him flinch. Yet, he stood his ground, though the sound made him clench his fists, his pulse racing. The power in his arm, once exhilarating, now throbbed with a searing ache that matched the fiery glow devouring the shack.

The light from the window transformed from a dull flicker to a raging inferno, casting long, wavering shadows across the ground. The screams within gradually faded, replaced by the crackling roar of the flames.

Heat radiated from the flames, forcing Constantine to step back as it washed over him. As the roof collapsed inward, a thick, black column of smoke billowed into the night sky, blotting out the stars. The inferno raged on, devouring every last piece of the shack. Constantine swallowed hard, a wave of realization hitting him—when he’d experimented with spells inside his own shack, he’d been teetering on the edge of disaster. If he had used the fire rune, then everything he had would have been reduced to ash.

‘Magic isn’t a toy. I should treat it with caution reserved for volatile chemicals.’

He lowered his hand, cradling it as the backlash from the spell continued to course through his arm, leaving it throbbing with a deep, searing ache. Despite the pain, a fierce satisfaction burned within him as he watched the flames devour the remnants of the shack.

As the heat continued to radiate, his thoughts began to churn once more. ‘Why did the runes fail to handle the full force of my mana?’ he pondered, ‘It’s like pushing too much current through a wire that’s too thin—it simply can’t handle the load.’ If he wanted to wield stronger spells, he would need a solution.

Several ideas swirled in his mind—untested, but full of potential. ‘Perhaps I could identify the weak points in the runes and make them larger.’ It was a simple idea, but it comes with a significant drawback. ‘Fewer runes would fit if they were larger,’ he realized. ‘Maybe I could extend the inscriptions up my arm, or even layer them in three dimensions, leaving only the most essential runes on the surface.’ He’d never attempted anything like that before. He didn’t even know how the distance between runes affected them.

Another possibility surfaced. ‘I could use liquid mana to draw runes externally,’ he thought, contemplating the implications. ‘If making the wire thicker won’t work, perhaps I could improve the material itself. Runes inscribed with more concentrated mana might be able to handle a greater flow.’

A soft whimper broke his concentration. The wolf, its crimson eyes fixed on the horizon, stood tense, its body alert and focused. Constantine followed its line of sight and noticed small lights flickering on the hill, moving towards them. Villagers, likely drawn by the fire.

Constantine clenched his jaw. He couldn’t afford to be seen. With a final glance at the burning shack, he signaled to the wolf. Together, they slipped into the shadows, moving swiftly and silently away from the scene.