Alexia

I think I’ve changed my opinion on these doggies. They’re not doggies. They’re monsters.

I let out a cry of pain when another wolf’s ethereally magical claws cut straight through my back, tearing several gashes through me, and spilling my blood onto the ground. Then I proceed to teleport backwards before cutting through its throat. Only for another wolf to strike at my back once again, following which another chomps on my arm, damn near tearing it off.

This is proving to be-

I teleport a couple meters away before impaling the wolf that cut my back this time through the throat.

-more difficult-

Another wolf tears its claws through my shoulder as I restore my form again to the past before I got the injuries. Costing a significant amount of soul in the process before I rip my polearm out of the other wolf’s neck and swing it to cut into the chest of the one that hit my shoulder.

-than I thought it would be.

One wolf after another arrives, overwhelming me with an endless wave of monsters that are so great in number that I can’t even see past them all. There are so many that my soul is finally decreasing down to rather… terrifying… amounts. I’m getting dangerously low.

It’s why I’m trying to keep my soul usage to a minimum.

Which isn’t helping all that much since I have to teleport and heal.

I grit my teeth as I avoid one attack after another, receive multiple attacks, some of whom would be fatal wounds and others not so fatal, all while trying to avoid as many hits as I can. And reverting all of the damage again soon after. Trying to minimalize the stasis copy to only copy from as little time ago as possible that I wasn’t injured. Calculating it to the very seconds that I’m not injured to do that.

In addition to that, I also learned after raising the level enough that I can copy my stasis from only particular body parts rather than my entire body. Something I got in Tier 2 of the skill. So I copy the stasis from specific body parts and then paste them over those body parts. A process that costs a lot less soul than copying my entire body’s stasis.

Eventually my soul begins to decrease more and more until it’s reaching critical levels and I have to search around for a way out. But the only way out I find is up.

So I begin teleporting straight up into the air, barely dodging as the wolves charge after me one after another. All jumping in the air while their half corporeal claws stretch forwards, out of their bodies to attack me. But I manage to dodge each one and teleport high into the sky. Finally getting away from the strange spatial pull I’ve been feeling that’s keeping me from teleporting very far.

And after briefly looking around, feeling my soul draining more and more until it reaches just the double digits, I find my opening. A strange rift in space that I feel several dozen meters away, floating high in the sky.

I teleport straight to it before falling directly inside and landing in some sort of tree trunk. Or at least, that’s what it looks like from the inside of it. With walls made entirely of rough wood.

Well, that and the System Message that plays out in my head when I land in it.

[You have entered the Tier 4 Hidden Area, Wolf’s Tree Haven.]

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The moment I land on the ground and spot that there isn’t anyone or anything around me, I collapse flat on my back while heaving in exhaustion. Then I open my status once more and grimace.

Name: Alexia Knight Species: Quantum Reaper(T4) Level: 758 Class: Quantum Reaper Soul: 21/66,262.5 VIT: 2,272 DEX: 2,780 STR: 2,272 MAG: 3,029 MEN: 3,029 Racial Skills Active Skills Passive Skills General Skills

That… was way too close.

Any longer and I’d have ended up paralyzed in the middle of them, turned into wolf food. And if I wasn’t able to find this hidden area, I’d also have been stuck in the same situation.

Dead.

I pant in exhaustion, still bleeding from wounds I didn’t manage to heal. Meanwhile my soul slowly begins to tick down.

But I don’t have enough soul to revert my wounds, and the wounds aren’t bad enough right now to be fatal. So I just lie here staring up at the ceiling of this hidden area.

Unable to even lift my head.

Damn. This really is a wakeup call to mortality.

I’ve grown too arrogant, apathetically going through the motions of fighting. Just fighting and fighting and fighting, apathetically doing it nonstop without even considering the chance of losing.

This… is very tiresome.

I continue panting in exhaustion, just staring up at the roof of the trunk as my chest repeatedly goes up and down as I breathe in and out. A process that I don’t even really need to do, so I’m not sure why my body is instinctively doing it.

But I am.

Those wolves… were a lot more frightening than I expected. They were more like ghostly wolves than anything. Able to turn any part of their body ethereal and leave a strange lingering magical damage across anything they attack. A magical damage more akin to ghosts than anything physical.

And because of that magical damage, they were perfectly able to damage me with their claws when they used that power.

When they first attacked me I wasn’t aware of this, since they didn’t immediately begin using that attack.

But the wolves are smart. And the moment they realized that using that power worked, they changed every one of their attacks to just the magical ones.

I strain myself to look around the hidden area again, just to make sure it’s safe. Then I slowly feel my eyes drooping a little, making it hard to keep them open. So I focus on my senses, searching the surroundings for energy sources.

But after not finding any, I finally feel myself falling unconscious.

With everything going dark in an instant.