Arvion sensing the incoming danger quickly hid with stealth. He wasn't exactly sure what his current bonus to it was but he knew he could only use it for one minute at the current moment. But either way, he must remain hidden or face the hungry jowls of hundreds of these Stone and Iron Paw wolves.

It wasn't hard to hide in the tall grass and after hopping out of the inner circle he managed to basically become invisible as he activated stealth. He sat still and watched as he felt a single drop of water drip onto the back of his body.

'I thought the array would stop the weather from interfering?' Arvion thought to himself as the rain seemed to have picked up as it rained harder and harder.

The wolves seemed unperturbed by the rain as they were already soaked from the outside weather.

But something seemed to change as a low rumble of words spouted from the Mag. They were unintelligible but somewhere along with his speech, they seemed to make some sense. It was strange almost as if he had developed a skill of some sort.

"- of ice, of water, I conjure you to slay my enemies! Focused Icicle Storm!" Mag shouted in a baritone voice as the water droplets abruptly stopped.

And instead came down flying Icicles that flew through the air at incredible speed! They landed on the wolves with a simple yet incredibly dangerous assault. In just a few seconds most of the wolves had been sliced across their necks by these dangerous icicles. The remaining twenty or so wolves that had entered the glade immediately stopped in their tracks and seemed to put their guards up.

Most of them seemed to become a mixture of stone or Iron as they solidified their bodies with their elemental affinity.

'Could I do that with Shadow?' Arvion thought to himself as he began sneaking up next to a guarding Wolf. He moved swiftly behind it. The icicles seemed to have been completely nullified by the simple trick the wolves had done. So why not help out a little?

Arvion jumped deftly on the back of the wolf's neck and cast outbreak and to his surprise, the system didn't even show up to do damage calculations. But from what Arvion could estimate about three tentacles managed to hit the surprised wolf and they seemed to do an incredible amount of damage to it after he had just exited stealth.

'Could there be critical hits?' Arvion asked himself as he saw the wolf in front of him cracked in half at the sheer force of his spell. 'There must be to cause this much damage. I should try using stealth more often!'

The other wolves twitched their heads slightly to look at their fallen comrade and a look of sheer terror overcame them as they tried to remain calm.

'Axel! Attack them while they are guarding. Don't get up close though!' Arvion Mentally shouted at Axel.

Axel looked at him from a distance and nodded hesitantly at the thought of getting close to the wolves. He quickly cast a simple water wall underneath one of them, sending them flying into the air. Icicles quickly pierced the head of the wolf as it lost its guard in surprise.

'This isn't too bad' Arvion thought before something dreadful happened.

A single howl was let out and all the wolves took off sprinting. Seemingly as in a retreat. But only about five made it out as the rest got killed by icicles or got trapped in the cleverly hidden bear traps.

Mag clicked his tongue in a dissatisfying way.

"I only killed 73. 75 in total if you count the two you two boys slaughtered. Nice job by the way. You really caught them by surprise." Mag said before letting out a heartful laugh.

"But it seems like their alpha has decided to wait until I am forced to rest to take us on. A smart plan but they are sorely overlooking us."

Arvion had approximately 12/20 mana remaining if he could count correctly, it wasn't enough to fight a hoard of wolves but it was enough to take a few down with him.

"Hurry and get back in the circle. It's taxing to maintain the Array with just me." Mag said before letting out a grunt as the blues and blacks had slowly faded away from the barrier.

Axel and Arvion quickly got back into the inner circle and began supplying mana to the array once more.

They quickly felt the drain permeate throughout their body. Feeling their mana drop they began to worry. It was dropping faster than before at a rate of roughly 2 mana per minute. Double the previous rate.

"The storms getting worse. I'm sure you can feel it." Mag said vaguely before continuing "My meditation skill is at level 9, one step from evolving. That means I have a 90% reduction to the time it takes to regenerate mana which is usually 1 per every 60 seconds. That means I regenerate roughly 1 mana per 6 seconds. If I rest for approximately one minute I should be able to maintain the formation for an additional 5 minutes. So 5 minutes extra of protection per 1 minute of rest. "

"However we must ration our resting periods to ensure that we have enough mana to fight as well as upkeep the formation. At this rate, both of you no matter how hard you try will end up losing mana trying to fuel the array which means the responsibility of it falls to me. You must continue to rest and focus yourselves to fight when the time comes."

"This will be a battle of attrition. Something we must be careful not to lose. If we fail at keeping the array up we will lose our only home and the array in total." Mag continued. "We must fight!"

Arvion and Axel both nodded in response.

"If the array falls. We fall. But if it remains we stand victorious. Is that understood?" Mag said louder than his previous statements.

"Yes," Arvion squeaked.

"Yes father," Axel replied.

"Then we must fight. Today will be a day of growth for you. We fight to survive and through these fights, we grow stronger. This is a moment in our lives of turmoil. A moment to take in our hands and make ours. I shall rest for one minute before awaking. You all should rest and recover your mana as soon as possible. At this rate, they should attack sooner than later. It's up to you to protect us."

Arvion looked into the darkness to see the glinting of tooth and claw. An alpha was out there. But was it the Ice wolf Alpha? Or some common beast. Only time will tell

'Our paths should not cross this soon.' Arvion thought this soon. But perhaps the system had other plans...