Chapter - 2 Elite_Seraph of Ice

Feeling a rumbling tremor course through her body, Rin instantly awoke and reflexively tensed her body. Looking around herself, she found no immediate threat in the nest and released a sigh of relief.

'That could've been bad,' she thought.

With her low level, if anything had managed to reach her position in the tree, it just might have been the end of this story. She crawled to the edge of her shelter and looked down to the ground only to find several pairs of hungry red eyes belonging to a pack of not so friendly wolves.

[Snow Wolf - lvl 9]

[Snow Wolf - lvl 11]

[Snow Wolf - lvl 10]

[Snow Wolf - lvl…]

The group of enemies consisted of at least eight snow wolves which were all around the level ten range. They snarled while their jaws hung open, salivating onto the snow as they waited for their prey. But Rin wasn't too worried. As they were unable to climb the tree all they could do was ram their bodies into the tree's trunk in hopes of her coming down.

“Tsk Tsk,” Rin chastised with a smile, "Unlucky for you I'm not just any girl."

Raising her hand above her, she formed a lance of ice above the tree and sent it hurtling downward with her mana along with the help of gravity.

The wolf, unable to react in the slightest to her attack fell to the ground, dead, as splintered bone shards and blood painted the snow red.

Seeing one of their own fall in a little under a fraction of a second, the wolves paused for a moment as they checked the corpse before ramming their bodies into the trunk of the tree with increased vigor. However, it was futile. The trunk of the tree was far too thick for the lowly level ten wolves to even create a dent.

In time, they all succumbed to Rin's spells.

Although the one-sided fight had taken little to no effort for Rin, it left her with a small head-ache as substantial amounts of her total mana was used for each spell.

Rin had her passive skill, ‘Lesser Mana Regeneration,’ running the entire time which had allowed her to regenerate increased amounts of mana whilst in a cold environment. She knew this skill would benefit her greatly as her entire repertoire was centered around her mana.

Jumping down from her position in the tree, she swung down on the branches on her descent before landing on the padded snow with a thud. Walking over to the corpses of the wolves, she ran her fingers into their hearts and found two E ranked mana cores.

However, she noticed a change within her inventory. The inventory was a dimensional space within the system that allowed one to store an item within a slot. A single inventory slot is given to everyone upon birth along with five more for each concurrent level up.

Rin’s inventory had a total of 36 slots, one of which contained the mana cores. Items of the same type could be stacked within the same slot up to a limit of 999, however an E class mana core would not stack with a D class mana core. Equipment and weapons also would not stack within a single inventory slot, but would rather take up multiple slots. While there were also artifacts which were dubbed with the name 'storage device' that served the exact same purpose of the inventory, they were usually awfully expensive.

“What’s this?” Rin murmured.

[Howling Wolf Ring - (Uncommon Quality)]

A trinket rarely dropped by the Snow Wolf, it harbors a portion of the Wolf’s strength.

+10 Agility

“Heh, must be my lucky day, an item from those tiny things,” Rin’s eyes lit up at the sight of the accessory in her inventory.

Items and equipment were rarely dropped from monsters and while there were many theories in Rin’s past world, no one could figure out why. It could be said that the system rewarded those that overcame but it didn't make much sense in Rin's eyes. Nevertheless, she was thankful for the dropped item as it would help her at this level.

Accessories and equipment were classified with a color system starting from white(common) to green(uncommon) to blue(rare) to purple(epic) to orange(legendary). After that items were not classified by its color alone. Though almost impossible to find there were items several tiers after orange that were only dropped by the strongest of foes.

Beyond the legendary quality were Relic Quality, Ancient Quality and Divine Quality. There was only one weapon Rin could remember that existed in the history of Alyria which was classified as a divine quality item. It was written in legends as a weapon forged by the gods, gifted to the people of Alyria to fight against the great evil. The history books stated that they had won with the weapon, but had lost the weapon in return. The weapon was named ‘Valhalla’ and it supposedly had the strength to destroy an army with a single swing.

Although Rin had never received an item beyond Relic Quality in her former life, they were still immensely powerful. A relic tier item would instead grant multipliers to stats along with resistances and sometimes even immunities. Rin could only imagine the strength of the two tiers beyond.

"Nice."

The item was a silvery metallic color with a white gem that gleamed with a faint green hue. She wore the ring on the pinky finger of her left hand, rotating her hand a couple of times to examine the accessory.

“Status," Rin muttered.

Title: Mana Core Connoisseur (Ability to eat Mana Cores)

Race: Hum-{Error}

Class: Ice Mage, Seraphim of the Night

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Level: 4 -> 7

HP: 200/200

MP: 200/200

Strength: 10

Endurance: 10

Vitality: 10

Wisdom: 10

Intelligence: 35

Agility: 35

Unassigned stat points:30

Available Skills-

Ice mage:

Lesser Mana Regeneration (Passive)

Elementary Ice magic

Ice aura, Protection of Ice

Seraphim of the Night:

[None]

Equipment:

Howling Wolf Ring - (Uncommon Quality) + 10 AGI

With the current allocation of her stats, Rin’s defenses were non existent. She would probably be severely injured, or even die if an attack directly struck one of her vital points. But that was if they hit her in the first place.

“All into wisdom,” Rin smiled, allotting all thirty stat points received levels gained from the wolves into her wisdom stat thus increasing her total mana pool to 800. Wisdom and Vitality currently gave her a times 20 value per point in the respective attribute at the lower levels. But at higher levels, one could receive gear bonuses and multipliers that would increase the amount of MP and HP per attribute point to unimaginable numbers.

The other attributes did not have a visible path of growth as with increasing vitality would increase the visible number of Hitpoints. Yet Rin could feel herself growing stronger, even if she couldn't see exactly what had occurred.

Happy with her current stats, Rin set off through the snowy forest to find more wolves to slay and level up.

Along the way on her search for the wolves, she took out one of the two mana cores she had received from her inventory and popped the orb into her mouth.

Walking through the forest with a somewhat linear path, Rin eventually found herself near the edge of a clearing and could spot across the tree line another pack of wolves. Again, the snow wolves were all around the level ten range, but this time in the middle of the group stood a large wolf with bristly black fur that towered over the rest.

[Elite Snow Wolf – lvl 10]

“Feels strong, I don't know if I can do this...” Rin muttered under her breath, careful not to alert the group.

Laying flat to the snow, she crawled closer to the pack but couldn't quite see their exact number.

Deciding to get a better vantage point, she formed twin daggers of ice into her hand and dug them into the trunk of a nearby tree. Using the daggers to climb, she made it halfway up the tree before one wrong step shook a branch slightly and sent snow falling to the ground. The elite wolf noticed the event and perked its head toward the base of the tree, but it didn't seem to think too much of it.

Releasing a sigh of relief, Rin resumed climbing the tree slowly. Soon enough she reached the top and looked down at the pack, there were seven wolves in total, six being normal and the one elite. Rin deduced that she could kill the six from atop the tree, but the problem lay with the elite. Its skin and fur would be too tough to pierce through with her lances.

The current limits of Rin’s skill was creating three lances at once. With 600 points of mana she was able to send three spears of ice hurtling down towards three wolves. Two of the lances struck true, while the third missed its target by a finger's length.

The cries of the wolves could be heard from above as she once again created another three lances, killing the one she had missed and two others. While the elite frantically prowled around the clearing, trying to find their hidden attacker.

“I have perfect control with two but the third seems to be a bit hard,” Rin muttered.

Seeing three wolves left including the elite, she created another two lances and killed the remaining normal ones. However, the elite had finally snuffed out her position.

It stared upwards towards Rin, its eyes radiating a enraged bloodlust. But when Rin met its gaze she smiled, causing the elite wolf to swing its large right leg into the base of the tree. As the tree started to shake precariously, Rin knew that she had little time and jumped downwards to the center of the clearing. Landing in the snow with an elegant roll. Her joints felt a little jarred, but when she saw the tree she was just standing on fall to the snow, she knew that she had made the right choice by jumping..

Creating two swords of ice, one in each hand, she faced the elite wolf. Making the first move, the wolf dashed forward through the snow, snapping its jaws to Rin's right. Stepping to the left, she barely avoided the attack before another one came from its left claw. Moving out of the way, she managed to dodge the brunt of the attack but it had still managed to graze her body.

Giving her no time to rest, the wolf leaped forward. Jaw and legs outstretched, but Rin simply rolled under the attack, slashing at the wolf's rear leg in one smooth movement. The attack drew blood, but it didn't seem to inflict much damage.

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” Rin grinned and cracked her neck.

The wolf looked to be a little more cautious and wary of its enemy as it did not immediately rush in towards her, but rather circled around the outer edge of the clearing. Rin on the other hand stood steadfast in her position in the center of the clearing, waiting for the wolf to strike.

A minute of this had passed and Rin's patience was running dry. She created a dagger of ice in the air and aimed for the left eye of the wolf. It dodged out of the way with ease but the attack was only a prelude to the girl's onslaught.

Rin rushed forward, her blades scraping on the snow as she slashed along the side of the creature. Blood was flung into the air as the creature howled in pain. It jumped backwards and looked like it was about to run away. But when it saw the corpses of its fallen friends it once more dashed towards the dainty girl with a renewed rage.

It was certainly quick, but not as quick as Rin who had an entire 35 points of agility. Meeting the wolf's charge, she ran up and stepped to the right, But at the very last moment, Rin jumped. The wolf had fallen for her feint.

Hovering above the wolf whose jaws had snapped at her body's last position, she stabbed down with her blades.

The twin blades sunk deep the wolf’s back causing it to howl in pain and writhe about. She still hung on to the blades, but the inertia of the wolf’s movement's dragged her along with the wolf before she was forced to let go.

Tumbling into the snow, she met the wolf's hateful gaze with a smile.

“Come on, don’t look at me like that,” Rin taunted, a sadistic grin on her face.

The wolf, seemingly affected by her words, again ran forward without any regard to its life. It was a pitiful sight, but Rin honored the beast.

Meeting its final charge, she saw its paw hurtling at her face but blocked it with her left while stabbing the creature through its open maw and into its brain with her right. Ending its life just before it took off her head with its leg. Anyone who could see the sight would laugh as Rin’s entire arm up to her shoulder was inside the jaws of the creature with the sword sticking out through the back of the wolf's skull.

Dissolving her swords, she pushed the wolf's corpse off her body and lay down on her back on a clean patch of snow. It had been a fruitful day of hunting for Rin and after searching for and killing the pack of wolves, she had managed to reach level ten.

"Status," she whispered.

Name: Rin