Chapter 23: First Hunt (Ⅳ)
Only a few seconds passed.
Then a howl ripped through the cave entrance — the kind that meant something inside had made a very poor decision.
The next moment, one Shadow Wolf burst out, chasing the two Spirit Wolves with everything it had.
Exactly as planned.
Malrik was already moving.
His body felt different at the new stat allocation. Not dramatically different — he wasn’t going to start throwing boulders — but there was a lightness to his steps that hadn’t been there before. The wolf registered him at approximately the same moment the spear found its throat.
That moment was too late to be useful.
The body dropped.
"...Rise."
Emerald and black mana pulled free from the corpse, shaped itself, settled. Three Spirit Wolves stood at his back.
Malrik looked at them.
One down. Nine to go. This is either going to be very efficient or very embarrassing.
"Again."
The strategy was simple enough that it almost felt like cheating.
Spirit Wolves entered. Provoked one wolf. Retreated. The moment it crossed the tree line and found Malrik waiting instead of fleeing prey — well. That was usually the last surprising thing it ever experienced.
One thrust. One corpse. One command.
Rise.
Three became four. Four became five.
What he hadn’t expected was how quickly the Bond sharpened. Each hunt, the Spirit Wolves coordinated a little cleaner — less instruction needed, more instinct shared. By the sixth wolf, they were moving like they’d been doing this for years.
Apparently bonding your soul to creatures makes them learn fast. Filing that under ’useful’ and moving on.
Six. Seven. Eight.
[Lv.5 Shadow Wolf Killed.] [Level Up.]
The warmth of leveling passed through him. He barely noticed.
He looked at the eight Spirit Wolves arranged silently at his back. The forest had gone that specific kind of quiet — the kind that meant either everything was fine or something much worse than fine was about to happen.
There should still be—
Every Spirit Wolf froze.
Not on his command. Not through the Bond. They just... stopped, all eight of them, in the same instant.
Through the Soul Bond, something arrived that wasn’t a message and wasn’t a feeling. Somewhere between the two. A pressure. A warning that came from somewhere older than language.
Eight pairs of emerald eyes locked onto the cave entrance.
Eight bodies lowered.
Heavy footsteps echoed from the dark.
One.
Two.
Three.
Each one arrived in Malrik’s chest before it reached his ears.
His smile faded.
Ah.
Three pairs of crimson eyes ignited in the darkness.
The first figure stepped into the light, and Malrik immediately revised every assumption he’d been making for the past twenty minutes. The ordinary Shadow Wolves had been large. This was not large. This was a different category of existence — nearly twice their size, black fur over muscle that had clearly never encountered a problem it couldn’t solve by walking through it. Its crimson eyes carried something the others hadn’t.
Intelligence. The kind that assessed and calculated.
The two that flanked it were bigger than anything he’d killed tonight. Standing next to their king, they looked like footnotes.
Malrik’s grip tightened on the spear.
Ten souls at my back. Two Guardians and a King in front of me. Tactically speaking, this is fine. Completely fine. Absolutely nothing to worry about.
The smile came back.
"...Now this is going to be interesting."
Neither side moved.
Then the king opened its mouth.
ROOOOAAARRR!!
The sound wasn’t just sound. It was pressure — a physical weight that rolled across the cave and hit Malrik in the chest like a closed fist. Dust fell from the ceiling. The Spirit Wolves behind him didn’t flinch, but he felt their unease spike through the Bond like a cold current.
He exhaled once.
"Attack."
The command moved through the Bond before the word finished.
Two Spirit Wolves took the left Guardian. Two took the right. Four went straight at the king.
The king didn’t bother dodging. It swung one claw.
BOOM.
A Spirit Wolf detonated into scattered emerald mana. A second one hit the cave wall hard enough that the stone cracked. Both were already reassembling before the echo finished.
The king hit them again.
Same result.
It’s starting to understand that killing them doesn’t work. Good. Let it spend time figuring out what does.
Malrik shifted his attention to the left Guardian. Two Spirit Wolves were running it in circles, forcing it to keep turning — not hurting it, just occupying it. Patient work.
Its back opened for one second.
He moved into the blind spot.
Thrust.
Steel found the gap between its ribs. The Guardian spun toward him instantly — and walked directly into two Spirit Wolves hitting it from opposite sides.
Second thrust.
Third.
The blood on the cave floor was spreading. Its movements were shortening.
There.
One opening.
The spear drove through its throat.
"...Rise."
The mana erupted. When the Guardian opened its eyes again they were emerald. It turned toward its former companion without waiting for a command.
Even the newly raised ones are learning.
The second Guardian fought back hard — claws ripping, fangs crushing anything that came within reach. But every Spirit Wolf it destroyed came back. Every time. It was, Malrik suspected, an extremely frustrating experience. He almost felt bad about it.
Almost.
He found the angle.
Thrust. The Guardian stumbled.
Thrust. It staggered.
The newly raised Guardian hit it from the side. A Spirit Wolf took its foreleg. Another went for its neck.
One last strike.
The head hit the floor.
"...Rise."
Ten souls now stood at his command.
Malrik looked toward the Wolf King.
For the first time since emerging from the cave, it took a step backward.
There it is. "...Let’s finish this."
The king moved first.
It didn’t run. It dissolved — its enormous body flowing into the nearest shadow like it had always belonged there.
Malrik’s eyes sharpened.
Shadow manipulation. So it’s not just large, it’s clever. Of course it is.
The king erupted from beneath one of the Spirit Wolves. Claws tore through its chest. Emerald mana scattered — then gathered, reformed, stood back up.
The king vanished again.
Another Spirit Wolf exploded apart. Then another.
No pattern. No telegraph. Every shadow in the cave had become a door, and it was walking through all of them freely. Even the four Spirit Wolves assigned to restrain it couldn’t land a clean hit.
I can’t track it. So I won’t.
"Protect me."
Four Spirit Wolves immediately repositioned between him and the shifting dark.
BOOM. The king burst from beneath one of them — jaws around a neck, claw taking two more in the same motion. They reformed. The king’s eyes moved slowly across the battlefield.
Then landed on Malrik.
It figured it out.
"As expected," he said quietly. Not to anyone in particular.
The king roared and charged, Spirit Wolves biting into its body from every direction. It ignored them completely.
"Stop him."
All ten moved at once.
Four hit its legs. Both Guardians slammed into its flanks. The remaining four came from behind.
The charge stopped.
Not because anything was strong enough to stop it alone. Because ten things that refused to die were all pulling in different directions at once, and even the Wolf King couldn’t walk through that.
Numbers. That’s all this is. Enough bodies and even the strongest thing runs out of directions to swing.
The cave became a grinding chaos of claws and mana and noise. The king dismantled Spirit Wolves one after another — every swing sent something flying, every bite crushed something apart.
They came back.
Malrik circled the edges. Watching. Waiting.
The king broke free and lunged straight for him.
He stepped forward.
Thrust. The spear grazed its shoulder.
The retaliation was instant — a claw caught his armor and metal screamed, a line of blood opening beneath the shattered plate.
Right. It hits back. Should have factored that in more carefully.
He gritted his teeth and moved.
Thrust. Second strike. The Spirit Beasts piled back on — one second bought.
Thrust. Third.
The king vanished into shadow. Every instinct Malrik had lit up at once.
Behind.
He was already turning.
The bite aimed at his throat closed on empty air. His spear moved without thought.
Thrust. Fourth.
The king staggered. Its wounds were finally adding up — small individually, accumulating into something the sheer size of the creature couldn’t absorb anymore. The Spirit Guardians clamped down immediately.
The rest followed.
The king threw them off. They came back. Threw them off again.
They came back again.
Every second. Another body. Another weight. Another jaw. It’s running out of time and it knows it.
Malrik took one breath.
"This ends now."
He gathered everything into both arms and lunged.
The spear drove into the Wolf King’s chest.
[Skill Activated: Crimson Wound.]
Dark crimson poured from every wound at once. The struggles weakened. The breathing turned heavy and wet and slow.
The king roared anyway. Forced the Spirit Wolves back. Reached for him.
Made it halfway but Its legs gave out.
The massive body hit the floor, and the cave went quiet.
Just Malrik’s breathing. The faint flickering of ten pairs of emerald eyes at his back.
[Shadow Wolf King Lv.15 Killed.]
[Level Up.]
[Level Up.]
[Level Up.]
[Level Up.]
The warmth spread through him slow and even, washing out the fatigue, steadying his lungs.
He walked to the king’s corpse and looked down at it for a moment.
In my previous life, this is where I would have died. Somewhere around the third Guardian, probably. Maybe earlier.
He raised one hand.
"...You’ll make a fine addition."
"...Rise."
_________
Author’s Note:If you’re enjoying the story, don’t forget to support it with Power Stones, leave a comment, and recommend it to your friends. Every bit of support motivates me to keep writing and maintain a consistent release schedule. Thank you for being part of this journey!
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