Watching the wolf die without even struggling, Alnea felt a strange sense of discomfort rise within him. The Arcana that he had created… It might not be as hopeless as he had thought it would be. But at the same time, it was strangely unnatural. Killing something… anything, without even letting it fight back… Why did that sound like the Lotus clan? Or was this just the way of the world of Wanderers? Survival of the strongest, and cruellest…
Alnea shook his head, and suppressed his thoughts. He did not know what was right or wrong. And he was in no position to think about it either. He had a task to complete. And so, withdrawing his sword from the head of the wolf, he wiped it on the wolf’s fur, before sheathing it, and walking away. As for the body of the wolf, carrying it would be a liability. And would certainly draw attention from the other Oren Beasts. It was better to let his master handle it, and be on his way to search for his next target. He just hoped that it would not take him another week to find it.
Fortunately, it looked like Goddess Ilea had smiled upon him, guiding him to another target just a couple of hours after dealing with the Dark Wind. A Black Horned Boar. Famous for their immense strength, and stamina, which were further strengthened by their Innate Ability, the Black Horned Boars had relatively low intelligence when compared to the other Beasts of their Rank. But this only made the boar in front of him his perfect target. Once the boar was drawn into an illusion…
“Beyond the veil of the Night…”
“Where the world slumbers just past her sight…”
“I call forth the embers of the darkness…”
“To drown my enemies in the Nightmare of their madness.”
Stopping at a safe distance from the boar, where it could not sense him, Alnea prepared his Nightmare Arrow, and fired it at the boar. However, the boar proved to be far more vigilant than he had thought it was. The moment that he fired the arrow, it sensed the danger, and instinctively, almost completely on intuition, it managed to dodge his arrow. Thankfully, it did not manage to see where the arrow had come from.
Cursing the boar for its good instincts, Alnea slowly crawled away from the territory of the Beast. Since it was already vigilant, an ambush would not work. And fighting it head on was not an option. That was not what his master had asked of him. And he did not wish to kill needlessly. Besides, it was not like this was his first failure. He had been through many such instances in the past seven days, and knew how he should retreat after his ambush had failed. As such, it did not take long for him to leave the territory of the boar behind, and look for other prey.
A Dark Winged Sparrow, a Yellow Spotted Black Panther, a Fire Fox, and many more Oren Beasts came across his path. Unfortunately, they were either too strong for him to handle, or too alert to get hit by the Nightmare Arrow. It looked like the only way for him to succeed in ambushing the Beasts was to do it when they were distracted by other things. Like eating. Or sleeping.
However, Oren Beasts were the lightest sleepers he had ever come across. He had tried attacking a couple of them when they were sleeping, but had still failed in the end. Maybe, some of the more slow witted ones would not be able to react in time, but he had yet to encounter such Beasts. In the end, the only way he was left with was to find Oren Beasts which were engrossed in eating their prey.
How was he going to do that though? It was not like he could just sit there, hiding in the darkness, waiting for the Oren Beasts to find their meals, and bring it back to their territory to eat, before attacking them. The case with the Dark Wind Wolf was a special one. The others would not give him such an opportunity—
Why did he need to wait for an opportunity? If the Beasts would not give him an opportunity, then he could just make his own, could he not? All he had to was to distract the Beasts… Something to distract them… Something to keep them so occupied that they would not notice his Nightmare Arrow. At least not too early. Something like…
Delving into his thoughts, Alnea quickly came with a few ideas to distract the Beasts. Some of them would require help from other Beasts, but some of them, he could do it on his own. And it looked like Goddess Ilea agreed with him, guiding him to his new target.
Lying some two hundred metres or so away from him, an Oren Beast was resting with its head on its fronts paws, crossed over each other. On a closer look, it looked like a wolf, just with a slightly buffed up body, and black fur. The most distinct feature of the wolf though, was the red mane around its neck. A Red Maned Wolf.
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Believed to be descendants of the Great Wolf of the East, the Red Maned Wolves were a slightly larger species of Wolves, that as their names suggested, grew rather large manes around their neck. A display of pride for their hereditary, many of the people believed. Contrary to popular belief though, the manes were not just for show, but served to facilitate them in casting them their Innate Abilities. It was just that this facilitation was not so prominent at the lower Stages.
However, among the ranks of Adult Stage Oren Beasts, and even amongst Beast Lords, it was found that Red Maned Wolves with damaged manes had much lower fighting potential, and got tired much more easily than Red Maned Wolves with a complete mane. Thankfully, both the mane, and the size of the wolf in front of him was not too large, so it was probably only in the initial phase of its Adolescent Stage. It was still not an easy opponent, but if his plan worked, then he should be able to complete his second hunt.
Taking a deep breath to calm his racing Heart, Alnea unsheathed the dagger hanging by his waist, and used his own body to hide its glow, as he poured some Oren into its Glyph Arrays, storing it within its blade. A function of the dagger he gained the right to use after he had reached the False Rank. The storage capacity of the dagger was not much, but coupled with the other three Glyph Arrays he could use, the combination was supposed to work wonder at times. Or so his master had said. And he was about to test its authenticity.
After storing enough Oren within the dagger, Alnea dropped it where he was, and walked away from it, stopping only when he had completed a quarter of a circle around the wolf. He then reached towards the Origin Sea once again, but this time, to summon the Nightmare Arrow. With the wolf still oblivious though, even that did not take long, and soon, the Arcana was ready to be casted.
And so, he reached out to the bond between him, and the Golden Yearning, using up the Oren he had stored within it to activate two of its four Initial Stage False Ranked Glyph Arrays. One for granting the dagger an ability to fly. The same one he had used at the Seed Rank, just an upgraded version of it, that allowed a bit more freedom to movements of the dagger. As for the second Array, it…
As if sensing the threat, the Red Maned Wolf immediately got up from its resting position, and looked in the direction from where the dagger was shooting at it from. Even though the dagger was flying at such high speed that it was literally tearing through the air, the wolf had still sensed it in time. It had even managed to predict the path of the dagger, and doge it.
Thankfully, Alnea had not attacked with the Nightmare Arrow at first, or it would have been a failure. Still, that did not mean that he could relax. At least not yet. The wolf could see the attack coming, yet it had not seen any attacker, so it would be searching very keenly for any sorts of movements around it. If he attacked the wolf at the moment, then his attack would still most probably end up failing.
As such, Alnea chose to wait for a bit longer, and directed his dagger to fly back at the wolf. Of course, since the wolf was already aware of the dagger, it dodged the dagger even more easily. But his intention had never been to hurt the wolf in the first place. He just wished for the dagger to occupy the wolf’s attention, which it did perfectly.
Having been attacked by the dagger twice, the wolf guessed that it could attack it again. Though it could keep dodging the dagger, but it was an Oren Beast, and that too, one with a very large pride. Having been forced to dodge an attack from an unknown enemy was already humiliating for the wolf. So, for the moment, it forgot all about its attacker, and focussed on the dagger itself. And the moment that the dagger changed direction once again, the wolf took in a deep breath, and let out a loud roar the shook the canyon itself. At least the part of it they were in.
Consequently, his dagger, powered by his measly Oren, held no chance against the roar. In the moment that the roar reached it, the dagger shook in its path once, or twice, before the connection between him, and his dagger got cut off, resulting in the dagger clattering to the ground. But the wolf was not done avenging its humiliation. Growling at the dagger, it jumped towards it, and—
A dark bluish arrow, with streaks of silver towards his edges hit the wolf just as it jumped in the air, startling it awake from its frenzy. It immediately backed away from the dagger, and looked around it in vigilance. But it could find no enemy. Where had the attack come from then? Was its enemy too cowardly to come forward?
The wolf roared in open provocation, as it looked back towards wound it had just received…
Where was the wound? Where was the arrow? The wolf did not know. It only knew that it had an enemy. An enemy that it had to kill. Or else, it would be the one which would be killed. Like the many enemies it had killed. Like the many enemies it had devoured… Only the strong deserved to live… Weak deserved to be devoured… It was not weak… It was strong… But then… why had it not been able to advance? Why had it not been able to kill that abominable tiger? Why…?
…Was it, perchance, weak? Was it, perhaps, going to be killed? Was it—
The wolf roared once again, this time in defiance, tearing off the veil that was covering its eyes, as it sensed danger closing in on it, heading straight for its head. Unfortunately, it was too late. When it opened its eyes, all it saw was a golden light. Then, it knew no more.