From the moment Sylvia had reached the lake, it took her just 10 minutes to encounter a small group of wolves that matched the description she’d been given for Quick Wolves with one larger one in there. ‘This is a pretty good warm-up for when it’ll mostly be Fast Wolves.’ Right away, her spear was reinforced with magic as she also brought forth a solid stone spear that she also infused with mana.
That was also right around the time the wolves noticed her presence, as the wind had been blowing in from the side, masking her sent from them. On a bark from what appeared to be a Fast Wolf, the four Quick Wolves ran towards her, with the former taking its sweet time, as if it was just watching over them.
As soon as they began their approach, the stone spear was thrown. As she expected, the front wolf dodged out of the way, just to be met with the terrible surprise of rocks being shot into its side. Whilst it was slowed, the other three still ran strong and were getting quite close. The closer they got, the faster they seemed to get.
Once they were just outside of striking distance, she thrusted out her spear and consumed one in a powerful wave of flames, almost ending it then and there. Immediately, she swung her spear and knocked another wolf off course, locking its paws in ground once it landed thanks to Earth magic. As for the last of the three wolves, a spike shot up from the ground and pierced its stomach, sending out barbs to pin it in place.
That was when she noticed that the Fast Wolf had disappeared and wasn’t perceivable in her peripheral. Thus, the moment she heard something from behind, she was able to raise a wall behind her. The sound and feel of a large gust made her turn around to find the wolf gone, just in time for her mind to process that the gust had moved up and look up.
Up in the air was the wolf, and it was quickly descending towards her. Stabbing the bottom of her spear into the ground, she utilized |Elemental Emission| to send two spikes up towards the wolf, barely getting there in time to force another gust to send the wolf away. In the short moment she’d made for herself, she turned her head and noticed that the wolf was just about to get its paw out, so she made it sink deep, and managed to send to waves of fire at the one she’d hit with the stone spear, burning it enough to make it drop.
Aware that she had to be aware of gusts, she managed to catch notice of the approaching one to raise another wall. She quickly thanked herself for that reflex, as it sounded like a small explosion had occurred on the other side, and she could feel and hear the wind move quickly, though the wall seemed quite fine.
Not wanting to obscure her vision, she thrusted her spear into the wall, and it shot away, leaving a barren path behind it. As it cleared away, she noticed debris fall to either side, making her realize that there had already been a wall behind her, but that it had been utterly demolished by the wind blast.
Instead of wasting her time thinking about what that implied, she made sure to get the wolf in her sight, which quickly saved her from it sneaking up on her. Noticing it trying to circle her, she had water gather at tip of her spear, heating it up with the spear’s ability, just in case it’d help, as she followed it.
Apparently realizing the futility of its actions, it set off for a direct attack with a speed she found hard to react to. Though, just because it was hard didn’t mean she couldn’t do it, so the moment it dispersed the water blade with its wind, it suddenly found its front paws sunk into the ground. Before it could do more, one earthen spear after another shot into it, completely entrapping it.
Not willing to risk it doing some last-ditch attack with its magic, Sylvia rushed it and gutted its brain, ending it on the spot. Around her, she could feel the wind settle, confirming her suspicion that it had been preparing something.
Killed Fast Wolf level 68, gained exp. Leveled up.
Leveled up. Gained: 2 Strength, 2 Vitality, 2 Endurance, 6 Mana, 4 Wisdom, and 4 Perception.
Aware that the other wolves were still alive, she quickly ended them with little to no resistance, granting her enough exp to level up once more, bringing her to level 63. With the battle finally over, she could breathe out in relief and allow her mind to take a mental break. Just in case a beast would be approaching, she turned into Calysta for the increase in perception.
Pulling the Fast Wolf from the ground, she found the front claws quite scratched up and with a decent amount of minor nicks in them. On the other hand, the back claws had better claws, likely because they weren’t used to cut things with. With five paws per front leg and four per hind leg, she just got 18% of the minimum requirement in one fell swoop.
Before looking for more beasts to fight, Calysta chose to come up with a few different battle strategies ahead of time, the first of which included not throwing a stone spear, at least at the beginning. Once she had her stratagems thought up, she went looking for some more wolves, though she did her best to not travel too deep into the forest, as she had been told that monsters tend to be stronger the deeper you go.
After little more than 30 minutes, Calysta’s enhanced senses picked up on multiple nearby creatures as she entered a clearing. As she’d hoped, the sounds were further away than what she could see, but that was when she noticed the wind direction and mouthed, “fuck”, before preparing to charge up her spear.
This quickly proved to have been the correct idea, as not long after, she saw a Fast Wolf come charging towards her. Right away, she changed to Sylvia and loaded and enhanced the spear. Having just had her effective perception stat cut in half, she barely managed to notice the slight, but sudden, change in wind direction and a ball-like object of spinning dirt, leaves, and branches flying towards her before it hit her.
At the last moment, a thin stone wall rose from the ground just in time to impact the sphere, but that was far from a good outcome. While impact had occurred a couple meters before her, the explosive winds were nothing to scoff at, especially not when both its original content and debris from the wall was flung all over the place.
Realizing a little late what was going to happen, she was forced to close her eyes to avoid being blinded by the sheer amount of dust. While she was hit by a couple minor pieces of wall debris, its thinness could to some extent be considered a plus, as it mostly just turned into a bunch of dust.
In the few seconds she had her eyes open, she got the idea to hold earth mana just beyond the eye, making it repel any and all earth. When she next opened her eyes, she was spared from getting dust in her eyes, but she instead had to deal with the wolf having entered within close quarters.
With the wolf having approached her from the side, not even its shoulders being above her resting spearhead did anything to limit it. By pivoting on the foot opposite the wolf, she swung around and struck it in its side, surprising the wolf ever so slightly. Carrying her momentum, she pivoted around the spearhead with a single sidestep, before thrusting in.
As the wolf tried to pull away, it found itself bound by the ground itself, rapidly sinking deeper and deeper. The moment it attempted to stop the sinking by releasing mana at its legs, was the moment it signed its death waver, as Sylvia complied with its effort, instead sending large spikes into its side and neck, with it moving its head out of the way of some.
Clinging onto its remaining life with all it had, it began to release cuts of wind against its prey turned predator. Panicked and with little time to work with, its aim was quite poor, but the same couldn’t be said for the power. The one gust that did reach Sylvia, left a pretty decent gash along her upper left arm. A second later, it was completely enclosed in stone with even more spikes piercing it, followed by both a spike to the brain and a decapitation by spear.
Killed Fast Wolf level 73, gained exp. Leveled up.
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Jumping up a full 3 levels from that one kill, she could only breathe out a sigh of relief at it being over. “Note to self, Wind magic is invisible, and a thin wall will only make it explode ahead of time. Try three or four walls instead,” just as she had begun retracking the earth and raising the carcass from the ground, she heard a group of howls. “Welp, it would appear that this guy wasn’t single.” Standing at the edge of the clearing, another Fast Wolf stood, though this one had six Quick Wolves by its side, and they were all howling.
Instead of waiting for them to approach, Sylvia charged towards them, prepping quicksand for the moment she was within range. As she expected, the Fast Wolf successfully disrupted the mana at its feet, but the Quick Wolves were all trapped. Having already fought off two Fast Wolves, this one was far more manageable than any of the others had been, as she knew about them now, though her having jumped 6 levels also helped.
By the time she noticed another ball of air approaching her, she swung her spear, sending a blade of water flying towards it, immediately raising multiple thin earth walls in succession, just in case the water didn’t work. As would turn out, those walls were a little much, though they did ward off the debris and wind. In the moments she awaited the result, she considered just dodging the attacks in the future, but disregarded that as a proper solution, since just like how she could rig her spears to explode, the wolf could likely do the same with its magic.
Moving out from the cover of the walls, she noticed that only the front wall had taken some damage, meaning that her water slash had likely activated the air bomb. While it hadn’t been long since she raised the walls, the wolf had already disappeared from her sight. In the short time she had been afforded, she took care of three of the Quick Wolves, successfully baiting out a response from the actual threat.
Constantly scanning the surrounding for any show of the wolf or Air magic, she caught sight of five small furrows cutting their way towards her. Recalling the first elemental goblin she’d ever fought, she dodged out of the way, allowing the wind cuts to cut quite deeply into a Quick Wolf behind her. With a howl, presumably from hurting one of its own, she saw the wolf jump into the air, before launching repeated swipes towards her.
Figuring that they were wind blades, she didn’t fancy sticking around. In an effort to avoid the slices, she ran away in a zig-zag pattern, to make it harder to predict her position. Like that, the next minute went with her predicting, dodging, and countering slices and air bombs. raising the occasional earth wall when her prediction felt off or she didn’t dodge fast enough. Throughout that minute, she also managed to keep the Quick Wolves trapped, taking them out one after the other.
Luckily for her, about a minute of moving around in the air was about all the wolf could manage, as it soon returned to the ground with a tired disposition. Though, just because it looked tired didn’t mean that it was slow, as it was still able to close the distance in but a few breaths. This, however, was just what Sylvia wanted. The moment it got close, spike upon spike impaled the body and kept it still just long enough for her to finish it off.
Immediately, she rose two levels, as it was level 70. Sadly, the Quick Wolves didn’t seem to have done much for her level. Though that did seem fair, given that they were over 20 levels below her, and she couldn’t see an exp gauge, so no use in worrying too much about it. Gathering the 36 claws from the two wolves, she set out to hunt the remainder needed for her quest.
Three packs later, Sylvia had risen to level 74 and collected another 54 claws, bringing her to 108 total and the sun had begun to lower. However, she didn’t get far before she caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of her eye. Turning on the spot, she saw naught but a grey flash having almost reached her. Reacting before she had properly taken the situation in; her spear was already heading for the enemy.
Luckily, the swing was enough to make the wolf slow down to take in the situation as well, allowing her to notice the other wolf behind this one. Realizing that her situation had just become a lot more dangerous, Sylvia grimaced and readied herself. In the short time that’d passed, balls of leaves revealed two wind bombs heading her way.
Since she was now in the forest, she now had options other than raising a wall. Before the bombs could reach her, she maneuvered behind one of the large trees, all while her spear pointed at the close wolf. With little apparent care of her spear, the wolf charged at her, dodging to the side like a reed as she swung down. To Sylvia’s detriment, this one was way faster than any of the others had been, quickly bypassing both her and her defense.
Initially, she didn’t even feel the cut, but the moment she turned around to focus on the wolf, a searing pain shot up from her right thigh as otherwise green pants began to be dyed red around the wound. With her mind racing a hundred miles an hour, she gritted her teeth and attempted to have the earth rise and encapsulate whilst also swallowing it.
To her great relief, she managed to actually trap the wolf, but her fortune was short lived; the moment it had sunk to its knees, Sylvia was suddenly thrown forwards with many cuts ripping apart her back, be it flesh or the tunic. Landing a meter from the trapped wolf, she could see it already begin to break free from its chains, with one paw after the other being pulled from the ground.
Swimming would probably be the best term for describing the state of her vision and focus, having just been blasted into the ground. It took until the wolf had just pulled the last paw before she regained enough clarity to not only connect the dots as to what had happened, but also to realize that she just let her prey loose.
Aware that her right leg likely wasn’t too reliable right now, she had the ground push her up to standing position. Immediately, but the cuts on her legs and those on her back made their existence clear, as she felt her back especially scream out in refusal at standing up. Having lost track of the two beasts, she changed to Calysta, as besides having better senses, her physical attributes were also higher, so she’d likely be better at handling incoming attacks, even if her access to spear skills were locked.
At the thought of her spear, she noticed it a couple meters away; further away than she’d hoped. Before making her way over there with careful steps, she brought forth a stone spear, as regardless of skills or not, the spear was the weapon she’d trained with the most. Recalling that this form also had a smaller mana pool, she checked how low she was, and she was down to 3k left, having lost around 1.5k from the change.
However, she didn’t have to walk far before she came to a forced halt; her ears had picked up the sounds of something rapidly approaching from behind. Assisted by the ground, Calysta spun around and struck the side of the wolf’s head, cutting open both cheeks, though it still managed to bite into her side. In the short moment of stunned pain, she had the spear form a spike on the bottom and stabbed it through its brain, having utilized her current form’s increased height to properly maneuver it there.
Killed Fast Wolf level 86, gained exp. ...
The successful kill left Calysta with just one enemy, who fought just like the six wolves she’d previously killed, but this time she was fairly injured, though the fang wounds were surprisingly shallow compared to her expectation after the cuts, but they were still bad. With little clue as to the wolf’s position, she could only scour the surroundings for movement, taking care to view above as well.
Once more hearing and feeling it before she saw it, the change in wind direction clued her in on the incoming attack’s direction. Now a little experienced in this ordeal, she called forth two that intercepted it in the nick of time, dismissing the remaining one after the explosion. That was the moment she caught sight of the wolf, but it was annoyingly far away, at least thrice her range with earth magic, and she couldn’t cover the distance quickly enough.
Keeping her eyes on it, she was able to notice its attacks in due time and shoot them down one after the other. While she might have less mana in this form, she was still quite confident that her 4.2x total boost to MP from her title would give her more than the wolf. Like that, multiple intense minutes passed, with both parties drawing dangerously near empty, because while Calysta likely had have more MP, the wolf clearly seemed more experienced in using magic. Though the wolf clearly seemed more exhausted than her.
Over this span of time, she could begin to feel the effects of her increased regen and high vitality, as the pain had lessened decently. Whilst the pain had definitely lessened, her leg, back, and side were clearly still in quite poor shape. However, she did estimate that she had regained enough stability to make one surprise dash, and that’s exactly what she did. With the wolf having seemingly grown accustomed to the long-range battle, the sudden dash came as quite the surprise. As if it only now realized that it faced an uphill battle, it turned around on the spot and began to flee. At least that’s what it attempted to do, but it found its legs sinking into the ground, and soon a spike had penetrated its brain, bringing Calysta up to level 80.
With the two wolves dead, Calysta changed to Sylvia and used some of the mana she’d gotten from the level to support her water magic, as she cleaned her wounds to the best of her ability. Using her earth magic, she made more of a proper support for her leg and back, almost a little exoskeleton-like, to let them recover faster. As she declawed them, she noted to herself, “so that’s why adventurers’ party up. It makes a lot more sense now.” Once they were declawed, she stored the first one with Frank for the meat and fur, before slowly but surely making her way back to the city, this time without any incidents.