Chapter 5: Ambush
"You’re nothing but trash, yet you have the guts to laugh with us at a time like this," Liz kept running her mouth with zero filter. "Just who the heck do you think you are?!"
"Liz, I think that’s enough," Felix finally decided to step in.
But what he didn’t understand was that Liz’s anger wasn’t really because Arc was a classless trash. If that were the case, she would’ve said her piece and kept the rest to herself. Where she had a problem was that not only was Arc a classless trash, but he was ignoring her.
No matter the insult she hurled at him, Arc looked less bothered and lost in his own world, as if she didn’t exist in any of it.
At this point, she didn’t even care if it was Felix—her favorite idol whose concert she’d just attended before they all got drafted into this world together—trying to calm her down.
All she wanted was for Arc to acknowledge he was trash and start to think of ways he might be useful to the party. Then, acknowledge her.
Arc, on the other hand, had stopped paying attention as soon as he got the party to laugh out loud at his dry joke so they would make sufficient noise to be heard by the Silver Wolf pack whose territory they were invading.
That’s right.
The moment Arc materialized on that island, he’d taken a moment to scout the surrounding forest before he even acknowledged the party.
That was when he noticed two things.
Firstly: the vegetation that made up the forest. It was alien to him and was probably not from Earth.
This meant they were on a piece of land that didn’t originate from Earth, just like Earth would be broken down into territories and serve as starting points for various parties or even demon tribes.
Mind you, Earth wasn’t the only world drafted into the Golden Age. And it was safe to say there were over a thousand planets currently, and still counting—with over a hundred races and ten thousand sub-species.
Humanity was not alone.
Secondly: the scent of the Silver Wolf. The Silver Wolf was a beast of magically enhanced—if you could call them that—wolves who got their nickname for their speed and steel-hard claws. But even at that, they were a Common-grade beast that every party was likely to come across in the North.
They marked their territories with their strong scent and claw marks left on trees, and that was the second clue Arc searched for to confirm his hypothesis.
Sure enough, he spotted one.
As someone who had enough experience with Silver Wolves in his past life, Arc knew that walking into an ambush—or worse, their den—could be fatal for both him and the party at their current level of strength.
He knew too well that Felix’s next course of action would be to explore the forest to get a better understanding of their situation, and he might even split the party up for that.
So Arc, in his gracious mercy, had made them unintentionally alert the Silver Wolf pack with their laughter; and if that wasn’t enough, Liz couldn’t be any more helpful at that point.
His plan was simple. He needed to level up quickly, but facing off against the entire pack of the Silver Wolf tribe would be dangerous even for him at his base level.
He needed to split the tribe by making them send out their scouts and elite warriors to access and terminate the threat—the party—leaving behind their alpha with only a few elite warriors to watch over their weak, injured, and elderly back at their base for Arc to come and reap the fruits of his labor.
It was during that time, with Liz still running her mouth, that Arc noticed the first movement in the shadows. Then a second. A third. And many more.
But what surprised him was that he wasn’t the only one to notice them.
Jack had suddenly begun calling out to the team, "Guys... Guys... I—I think we might have a problem."
Arc shot him a glance to see that, just like him, Jack seemed to know the exact location of the Silver Wolves moving in the shadows. He concluded that Jack had a Talent that had to do with scouting, and when paired with the Hunter Class, Jack had the potential to become an excellent marksman.
Interesting.
He quickly returned his focus back to the Silver Wolves, who weren’t discreet enough to escape his senses, and watched as they took their positions and began surrounding the party from the shadows, searching for the weakest link to launch a surprise attack.
That was when the first wolf made its move, leaping out from the shadows of the forest with its maw wide enough to accommodate Joan’s slender neck from behind.
This surprised Arc, as he’d observed Joan to be the most perceptive person in the party, but the wolf had chosen her to be the weakest link because, for some reason, she’d been too distracted admiring his handsome face that she hadn’t noticed the danger behind her.
Arc couldn’t help but smile at this moment as he stared back at her, wondering how she’d react; if she’d launch a counterattack just in time, or if her carelessness would lead to a much worse fate.
He watched the fear in her eyes when she realized she was in danger and watched her struggle to break away from his predatory gaze as the Silver Wolf closed the gap between them. His smile growing wider.
When—
Swish!
An arrow suddenly whizzed past Joan’s ear, cutting through the side of her hair and striking the Silver Wolf head-on, taking its right eye with it.
Arc was surprised by this and turned to see Jack nocking a second arrow onto his bow and pulling the string with firsthand accuracy.
The first arrow didn’t have enough force to pierce through the Silver Wolf’s eye and into its brain; it had only blinded it, forcing the wolf to whine in pain as it tried to retreat. But Joan had recovered with that and quickly spun around, unsheathing her daggers in a double-wield. She stepped toward the wolf before it could escape into the forest once more, closing the distance with swift steps and plunging her daggers deep into the same injured eye with the arrow tail sticking out then its neck simultaneously, before quickly retreating back to the safety of the party as the Silver Wolf dropped dead.
At this point, the rest of the party had been alerted by the commotion. Felix had his sword drawn, Liz had her Grimoire open, and Rose had her staff up and ready for action as the Silver Wolves revealed themselves, surrounding the party with their maws lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth, dripping saliva.
And Arc...
Rose suddenly shrieked in panic to draw the party’s attention, pointing her staff to the spot Arc had been standing on only a moment ago.
"Arc... he’s gone." She trembled.
