Slithering like a snake through the forest, I came swinging my sword at the wolf’s head, but before it could reach. It was intercepted by its claws, at which the wolf immediately followed with an attack beam of light as he was charging with its mouth.

Being still in midair, right in front of its mouth, I was the perfect target. It was impossible to miss for the wolf, and impossible to evade for me.

It looked grim, but I was by no means worried. Just a fraction of a second before the wolf could fire its beam attack from its mouth, Han charged at the wolf's stomach, sending its body flying away, but with the attack already on the verge of being released, the wolf couldn’t help but fire it.

The beam cut directionlessly through the mountainous, rocky ground while trying to get us.

Three days have passed since our first fight against the wolf. The next day, we fought like the day before, and the day next to it, we rested, making this our third and hopefully last fight.

Due to speed being one of the things this wolf was particularly endowed with, we were no longer in the same area where we first met it. During our confrontation, we ended up parkouring an insane amount of distance. We completely left the territory of the wolf.

We were now in a weird rocky and uneven area, completely different from the one where we met the wolf.

From Han’s charge, the wolf had already recovered and was back on its feet.

I readied my sword, while Hon took his cryptid snake form. I jumped upon Han’s head and charged at it, and so did the wolf.

Han projected me into the sky, then went to restrain the wolf's entire body with his snake vessel. The beast debated, and yet still mainly aimed for me. It charged once again with its breath attack, but I, on the other hand, was already preparing my mightiest attack from above.

In the swing of my sword was the weight of a mountain, along with the power of lightning and light. If it were to hit it in the head, it would undoubtedly end this long fight.

Just as my swing reached somewhere close to its head, from its mouth it fired its attack.

The whole thing caused a gigantic blast that swooped away everything within a kilometer radius.

Engulfed in fire, nothing was left of the surroundings.

Only the three of us remained.

Each of us was deeply entangled in the chaos, but neither of us died as a result of it.

Han returned to my side, "Still alive?"

"I’d like to think I am."

"I think we’re going to settle this today, right?"

"Yeah. It's now or never. "

My newly recovered right arm felt twisted at a very unnatural angle, so with my aina manipulation, I put it back in its place. At this point, I was completely numb to these types of injuries.

No could be heard from the wolf, yet I knew from its erratic breath that it didn’t get it easier either.

Han once again switched to his bear-like form, while preparing himself once again to get back to the charge, and in spite of its wound, the wolf did the same.

Just as Hon and I got closer, at a distance of maybe ten meters from the wolf, the ground suddenly crumbled, revealing an immense cavity beneath our feet.

I immediately had the horrible impression of losing footing and falling into nothingness, but was almost immediately caught by Han in his Chrackt form.

All of us landed safely at the bottom of the cavity.

The bottom of the cavity in question was an impressive underground area. The gaping hole we made on the ceiling was the only reason this place received a semblance of visibility.

This was spacious enough to fit twelve of the bottom of the sinkhole, where we found the siblings' remnants.

No matter how we looked at this whole thing, it looked like something artificially made rather than naturally.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The wolf landed completely unarmed, baring its teeth at us, ready to continue where we left off, but its focus, and even ours, shifted to something else inside the giant cavity.

"What again."

I did mention the siblings earlier. Well, there was a reason for it. At the bottom of the cavity was a small hill shaped like a multi-floored tower.

On top of that tower were two humane silhouettes.

Once again, a duo, once again a man and woman.

The man, a blonde man, was wearing a complete set of heavy golden armor and was holding his lance to keep himself sitting on a knee against the ground position. The man seemed to have been heavily injured by something, since his armor, in the left ribcage area, was completely shattered.

The woman, on the other hand, was a woman, with indigo hair and violet eyes, which strangely resembled those of the sibling we fought that day. She was obviously old yet very well preserved, so I can’t tell exactly how old she was. She was hugging the man from behind. It was her that attracted most of our attention. She suddenly exuded a palpable amount of mana. It was precisely that that brought our attention to them, for at first we really didn’t notice them at all.

Once again, we stumbled upon a remnant.

For the time being, I detected no hostility in her mana, which was the same violet and indigo color as her eyes and hair.

She rose up, left, and went on the ledge completely overlooking us, or to be more precise, Hon, and then mumbled desperately. "Arthur… Est-ce toi mon fils? Arthur? … Est ce toi? "

I had a strange feeling the moment we entered this place, and I knew where it came from: the sword I was holding, as if it was reacting to something, and that something was most likely her.

It is just a wild guess, but I think that woman could be related to the remnant siblings we met a few months ago,

The lightning magic, the color of the eyes.

These two must be the "meure", "peure" they were looking for.

She could be their mother, maybe.

Suddenly, the sword showed an intense reaction that drew it and me along toward the woman, but I was able to stop it just in time.

Then, almost immediately, her expression shifted from her initial dead, desperate face to a betrayed and wrathful one, "Tu n’est pas mon Arthur… Tu n’est pas mon arthur?!"

It was then and only then that her mana began to grow overbearingly aggressive.

She then abruptly summoned a sort of large and wide indigo tornado that encircled us all, the wolf included. As if it wasn't enough, the tornado that acted as a wall entrapping us started to get parkoured through and through by violent violet lightning.

We were trapped, there was no doubt about it, and just by looking at these walls, one could tell that charging at it would be a bad idea, even our Canis lupus friend over there was well aware that.

To further aggravate our situation, on the woman’s back, she summoned some sort of portal from which countless lightning-made lances protruded, barring in-well, our direction.

Han immediately retrieved his bear form and summoned a massive earth wall between us and the woman, behind which the lightning lance Han mentioned began to rain endlessly.

It was like we were in the middle of a storm, and instead of rain, it was a bolt of lightning that was raining on us.

The strength behind that rain of attacks was phenomenal. I poured an insane amount of mana inside that earth wall, and yet it was starting to seep through. We both knew that it would be a simple question of time before this wall would fall, and yet that woman's wave of attack didn’t seem to show any sign of ending.

Yet suddenly it came to a stop, or to be correct, its focus was sent somewhere else.

The wolf, which was just a few meters away from us, was evidently not spared by that woman's attack. It did its best to avoid the woman's attack, but noticing that it was in vain, he decided that offense was its best bet.

which gave us a moment of respite.

"Hon?"

"Yes, obviously."

Going out of our hiding spot, we immediately charged at the woman.

We were encircled by a wall of lightning. There was no exit.

To put it gently, we had no way out.

We propelled ourselves toward the remnant, to the spot we assumed would allow us to end this, using the momentum provided by the wolf being the focus of her attack. We accelerated towards her, expecting it to be a surprise attack, or at the very least, an unexpected one.

I swung my blade at her, but as if sensing what we were up to, she dropped her attack on the wolf and focused on us.

Our joint attack was halted in midair without even grazing her, and with the buzzy noise coming from her, I knew she was already preparing a rain of attack for us.

"Shit, shit, shit… "

But, just as we were about to be roasted by her lightning lance, a loud attack that I recognized as the wolf breath attack went past us, straight at the woman, causing an enormous explosion that we quickly drew away from.

We landed right next to the wolf. The smell of burning furs and an extremely exhausted breath emanated from it.

It wasn’t spared and so were we.

I didn't hear or sense anything that could indicate that a simple attack like that the wolf attack would've ended that remanent, nor did the wall imprisoning us show any signs of being discarded, so I'm certain that attack was far from having done fatal damage to her.

The only thing we could think of that would get us out of here was to get rid of that woman.

For the time being, our fight with the wolf could be temporarily suspended; the most important thing was to get out of here alive, and our best chance of doing so was to take advantage of the assistance this wolf could provide.