As the first wolf charged towards us again, its companions began to emerge from their hiding spots as well. I surveyed my surroundings quickly to find that there were about thirty wolves in total. There were definitely more wolves here than should be normal in a wolf pack. However, this was a magical group of unicorn wolves, so I could not use the laws of normal biology on them.

While I was checking out the formations of my enemies, I found something intriguing. While five of them had the same horn that the first one did, the foreheads of the other creatures were bare. Similarly, while the wolves with horns had the same glowing crimson eyes as the first one, the rest had dull, lifeless black eyes. Right then, I was too preoccupied with the problem of battling all of them to care about their physical appearances, but I did take careful notice of that detail to ponder over later.

I pulled out my mini-bow and the poison I had concocted the previous night, and dipped the tip of the first three arrows in the toxic substance. They glowed darkly as I nocked them on the bow. I pulled back the string and let go, allowing the three poisoned arrows to soar out and plant themselves into two wolves. The third sadly missed its target, but Kaelen's follow-up shot nailed it to the stone and dirt. Blood pooled under its head as it fell, darkening the soil with a taint of battle. Hydra roared as he plunged from the sky, crushing two regular wolves under his claws as he reached us. They were dead within a second of hitting the ground and Hydra scoffed, 'You are crying out for help over some weakling like this? Call me when there is something actually dangerous.'

With that, he flew back out towards his spot above the canopy after leaving me with a cryptic sentence, 'Just don't let them go through metamorphosis.'

Elias had left the protective bubble of shimmering golden light to strike out against the monsters with Alaric's support. They worked well, with Alaric distracting the wolves while Elias applied his corruption Skill to them. I closed my eyes, preparing myself for the illusion to provide them further support. I imagined a forest with only them and heaps upon heaps of freshly killed deer meat, just waiting for them to feast. However, when I reached out with my mind to spread the effects of my Skill around, I hit a solid block from all of the wolves' minds.

While I had not used my Illusion Skill as much as my other Class Skills, it was still something I relied on during battle. Even in its Class Skill's description it was stated to be almost undetectable, unblockable. Guess the problem was on the word almost. Even so, the mob of horned and regular wolves around us should not be that high of a level to resist the effects of Illusion, right?

Regardless, I had no time to dwell on this because the wolves seemed to have not only block my attempt at influencing their minds, but also detect it, and they did not look happy about it. The apparent leader of the whole pack, the initial horned wolf, glared at me as it leapt towards me, growling, while the other wolves followed suit. They were focusing fully on me, as if Elias and Kaelen did not exist to them. In that moment, I was their sole hated enemy. As the claws and teeth of the first wolf reached us, the golden shield shattered under its ferocious might and before Kaelen could create another one, it was already next to me.

Truly panicking for the first time since the start of this battle, I had to use the shadow essence I had to form a quick shielding to block its attack, but the full force of its anger was still hard to bear even on my magical shielding, and it only let go after I poked a spear made of shadow essence into its burning fur. However, by then, another horned wolf and six other regular monsters had reached me. Kaelen tried her best to trap the rest, but their anger fuelled their strength, and they were relentless. Thus, she instead turned to using her bow and arrows to shoot them from afar while protecting herself under a force field. Meanwhile, Elias ran towards me, pressing his hands into the neck furs of the wolves and disintegrating their necks as quickly as he could to get to me.

Then, something interesting happened. As I finished off the first horned wolf - we had been avoiding the horned wolves as there is a high chance that they are stronger than the rest of their pack - with two shadow essence enhanced arrows to its side, six of the regular wolves just froze in their positions, unmoving. Purple light swirled around one of them, and a small horn began growing out from their head. Something told me to eliminate them as quickly as possible, and my mind travelled to Hydra's final warning before his departure. Was this the supposed metamorphosis?

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It didn't matter. It wouldn't hurt to just kill it before it could do anything. Even if it was not the 'metamorphosis', it was one monster down. I shot three poisoned arrows at the wolf, which was growing in size as purplish fire erupted from its body. Its horn was halfway complete, and its eyes was a color of dark orange. To my immense surprise, the arrows just bounced off it as if its skin was made of iron. I gritted my teeth and crafted a sharp trident out of shadow essence and directed the weapon towards the wolf.

I was met with great resistance, and my head throbbed, but I continued pushing through, gritting out a yell, "Elias, help me!"

He turned towards me. It did not take long for him to understand what I wanted, but he shook his head and frowned, "I can't! If I leave, the other wolves will get to you."

"Just do it!" I said, firm, as I retrieved the spear of shadow essence. It had merely penetrated the skin of the beast and refused to go any further. I had no choice but to get Elias to try. I reassured him, "I will take care of the other wolves, just kill that one!"

As he began running towards the morphing beast, I shouted at Kaelen, "Kaelen! Don't kill any horned wolves!"

She nodded after a simple glance at the wolf Elias was dealing with, and redirected her arrowtip to help me clean up the remaining creatures. It took a long and hard battle, which was made more difficult by the absolute vehement rage all of them were showing me. They always tried to attack me, all of them at once, and it was admittedly difficult to deal with more than ten wolves rallying together to try and kill me from all angles, while trying my best not to kill the horned ones among them. That would just power up another regular wolf and make it harder for all of us.

Even so, after a difficult fight, we were able to reduce our enemy's number to four, not including the one Elias was trying to defeat. He yelled, frustrated, "Corruption isn't working!"

I sighed. This was probably the scenario Hydra had been warning me about. Regardless, now that all the other regular wolves were gone, I could just kill the rest of the horned monsters with Kaelen's help and end this battle once and for all. I grunted as I used a few more rounds of poisoned arrows supported by shadow essence to defeat three of the remaining wolves while Kaelen finished off the fourth. That left us with the one Elias was dealing with.

However, when we turned to his direction to assist him, we saw him running towards us, his face frantic. We peered over him and saw, to our absolute horror, a gigantic half-wolf, half-unicorn monster. It had a wolf's head, but a horse's lower body and a pair of wings. With its height making it tower over us, its full body covered in purple fire and its eyes glowing a furious royal purple, it was a creature straight out of a fairytale author's nightmares. I shook internally at the mere sight of it, and I could sense that Elias and Kaelen felt the same. I stepped back, horrified, when I realized that by killing the remaining horned wolves, I had only made this monster stronger than it already was.

What could we even do against this beast?

Raven, when did you become so rash? I knew she would... Forget that, just run! Don't even think about coming back here!

I pulled on Elias' hand and shouted to Kaelen, "It's too strong for us!"

She got the gist of things and lowered her force field before joining us in running away. Alaric flew into her and disappeared to wherever he went when he was resting. I sent a hastily crafted message to Hydra so that he would be aware of the main events that had happened while he was up in the sky and enjoying himself. I was multitasking, of course. Physically, I ran with Kaelen and Elias, the unicorn-wolf hybrid crushing trees to catch up to us.

'You are stupid, birdie, but at least it would not focus on you anymore. Just so you know, it is not worth it to make it this strong just so that it hates other people as much as it hates you,' Hydra grumbled through our link. I could hear him begin to follow us from his spot above the trees.

We ran for our life, the constant threat of becoming monster food hanging like a sword over our heads. Just as we were about to reach the gates of the safe space, we realized that the fence was gone. That meant that we were bringing a death threat to whoever was still hiding out in that space. However, since the monster might favor killing off those stragglers more than it cared about me once I led it to them, Kaelen, Elias and I might be able to escape.

No matter my decision, I knew that I had to choose fast...