Small group was slowly passing through thick mountain forest. In this group, there was one dwarf, three humans and one little kitsune.

Rogue, or Ralf if you ignore over simplistic naming sense of certain someone, was going in the front. Five yards behind Kyra, almost next to her Dhugrir and then Laura. Finally, Torsten the Giant was closing formation.   

Masculine part of Golden Helms was armored to the teeth; Robe was carrying the stuff.    

“With [Enchanted Hearing] you are a perfect scout material so watch Rogue.”

Kyra silently agreed with their chief’s casual words. She was fairly good in the snowy mountains, but here she could only barely avoid making noises. ‘Recorded’ skills meant nothing without actual experience after all, especially so vague ones as [Stealth Mastery]. Right now even dwarf was better than her (just a little!), although enchanted green cloak contributed in this greatly.

Magic is a cheat. They all have these cloaks. Why my master never got me a mage to explain how is it works? I need to ask Robe.

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 “Found something.”

After long walk group was inspired by long-awaited change, before gathering around Ralf to jointly stare at ‘something’.

“Rogue, I think I asked you to find a little puppy for our Foxxy to stretch herself. ‘Little’ here means small.”

Robust grey-haired man only scratched his head.

“Twenty feet long. D-rank, maybe on the threshold of C when it was alive,” appraised Laura.

The wolf was enormous and fortunately very dead. It’s hard to live with such mutilated body. Besides his size he was pretty much the same as any other wolf, which was common for D-rank magic beasts.

“I heard you, Robe.”

Meanwhile their scout put on thick gloves and was going through dead wolf. Kyra, remembering she should watch him, took a stand right behind.

Not-so-small puppy was missing hind leg and both his head and chest were open wide, still bleeding a little. Lugh thrusted his hands inside gaping holes to check something and nodded to party.

“No brain, no heart. No tongue either.”

Kyra completely missed the last one. Laura cursed, Torsten just kept thoughtful look.

“When you find bloody corpse, first thing you do – demon check. They love to eat some hearts and brains every time they possible can. Such habbits uncommon in other people.” Dhugrir explained to kitsune.

“What about tongue?”

“You noticed? Good. Tongue means we have gourmet here. Which means the real demon, not just demonic beast. Well, no guarantee here, but chances high enough for a bid. Okay, let’s listen to our thinkman. Giant?”

Torsten didn’t react at all.

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“Oy, Giant!”

“M? Oh, yes. Poor bastard died fast. He is fresh, right?”

“Very fresh,” confirmed Rogue. “Found some miasma.”         

“I see. So it was fast. Foxxy didn’t hear a thing so I say it was about between quarter to half of an hour ago. There are no broken trees around too. My guess is our wolfy was restless to breakthrough when he stumbled on a demon. Then he mindlessly pounced, spilled some miasma and took a hit to the spine.”

Hear a thing? Oh yes, there was that, fool. Kyra felt guilty. She tried so hard to adapt her [Stealth Mastery] to the point of forgetting to differ the forest voices. Rogue probably found this place because of birds’ behavior in the first place. Oh well, she can always acknowledge that if there is a real need…

“And demon?” asked Laura while Kyra was busy with her little introspection.

“Got bitten hard enough to leave the rest of the body here. Have no idea what exactly we deal with, if you asked that.”

“Another lesson.” Dhugrir interfered. “Hey, Foxxy! Yes, that black thing is miasma, bastards bleed with it, listen here. Demons hardly travel alone. Strong ones have minions to punch around and weak ones gather in packs.”

“This one is strong.” Nodded Torsten. “He took one leg for some snack and soon we will have a bunch of minions coming for the rest.”

“We are leaving. Rogue, stay here for a while to watch this place and meet us at the camp place later.”

Their dwarf chief made his orders.

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Party retreated fast and without an issue under accompaniment of Laura’s swearing. Kyra already had some insights into Golden Helm inner working. Dhugrir was a good leader. He made use of everybody’s strong sides and never delayed his decisions in a tight moment.

Giant was a little bit slow but with a good head on his shoulders plus a great deal of intuition. He dealt some mistakes with his guesses, of course, but never missed entirely of the mark. And he was the one really gigantic man, nearly eight feet, and most likely had some innate skills like [Increased Strength] to tap with the usual human potential attributes.

Laura was bad-mouthing around constantly, but never touched her teammates in her curses so she wasn’t a bother really, even kind of funny. And her constant flickering with Dhugrir could always clear the air. What about her obvious nature of mage, well, Kyra only knew she was an Elementalist of wind.

Rogue was kind of gloomy person who never really talked about anything without a good reason. He was always on point, cold and professionally type.

As to their fighting style, kitsune was going to discover it soon.              

“We found our puppies! Foxxy, they all yours.”

Or not.

Kyra moved forward slowly and drew her short sword in the silent acknowledgment. Four wolves which were just following party’s scent growled at her and began to circle their little prey.

These ones are crazy before their evolution too. Spring is surely fun in the lowlands.               

It wasn’t the first time Kyra saw predators act against their nature. These four beast were twice as big as they should be and their eyes were filled with blood. They ere not yet ranked magical beast, but close. Through red haze young kitsune wasn’t seen as a threat to them at all. Only sacrifice full of life they should thrive on to advance. If not her, then any other prey would suffice.

Head wolf pounced on Kyra and she dodged, light like feather. She came close enough to other wolf, the smallest one in the pack, for it to try and bite her. With short whistle thin blade pierced through open jaws and blood scattered as the sward’s edge dimly shined from the wolf’s nape.

Kyra almost felt hot breath on her neck as she turned around with inhumane speed. Enveloped with green luster sword cleaved both already dead wolf and shortly alive one in the middle of its leap. One step to clear the way for beheaded body, second step to evade the head itself and red stream of it.

With her hand still high, Kyra jumped into low back somersault and lightly swung once to cut across the backbone of the beast which just tried to seize her leg and then she left it alone to grasp few final breaths.

No person sane would continue to fight such a battle and even predator would flee in terror. But the last wolf did not know fear. It salivated greedily without care for its own life. It pounced on deadly kitsune just like the first one to gnaw out her throat but could only bite once empty air as its head was separated from the body.