"Wendigo sighted in the mountains near Madginfjord, adventurers and hunters needed for monster extermination expedition.

Requester: Jarl Karli Angbadd

Compensation: Five gold coins for joining the expedition, another five as hazard pay should one see combat against the beast. Twenty gold as bonus to whoever contributed significantly to hunting the beast.

Requirements:

Solo adventurers must be of silver rank minimum. Parties may have members as low as bronze rank, as long as the majority are silver ranks or higher, minimum of gold rank as leader mandatory if bronze ranks are present. Extra compensation will be granted should a black rank choose to join the expedition.

The expedition departs in one week, on firstday of the seventh month. Register with the guild by evening of the seventhday of this week." - Recent urgent posting on the adventurer's guild's request board in Hagenbadd.

Cal distanced herself from her nieces and stepped forward to intercept the monster. She remained at a distance where they could throw their javelins with deadly effect, but the extra range also gave her some buffer should the beast choose to go for them instead.

She honestly had little worry for her own safety. She doubted whatever the wendigo could do would be worse than some of the hardest fights she had in her life, but the beast was clearly a very lethal threat to most. And that "most" included her nieces, who she wanted to keep unharmed.

Before long the beast had crossed the distance between its cave and Cal, its loping gait deceptively rapid, and it swung one claw-tipped hand at her the moment it got close enough.

Cal parried the blow with the shaft of her halberd. The force itself she could handle, and if she empowered herself with magic to her utmost she could overpower the beast without issue. One issue not even magic could fix however, was the discrepancy of mass between her and the monster.

Despite its malnourished appearance, the creature's flesh and bones were extremely dense, and its weight so great that the force behind the blow sent Cal a few steps back involuntarily. As she withdrew, she swung her halberd at the beast's outstretched hand, only to find that not even the keen mithril blade could easily cut through it.

All her hasty strike left was a light scratch on the beast's hand.

She dodged its next blow while she flipped her halberd one hundred and eighty degrees around, so that its beaked hammerhead faced the front instead. When the beast swiped at her the third time, she hit its hand hard with her weapon, with nothing held back, and succeeded in throwing its hand back.

Her weapon also left a puncture wound that went halfway through the hand, which got the creature to roar again, this time with some pain.

Cal took the opportunity and dived in, closer to the creature, where its long arms would be harder to use. Immediately she felt a piercing cold, as the creature was a monster with innate ice magic, which apparently radiated in a cold aura around its body.

It would have drastically slowed and dulled the movement of most people, even most weaker blood mages, but Cal had more than enough mana to brute force her way through the cold aura as she circulated her own magic more forcefully through her body.

She swung her halberd in an upward strike once she got close enough to the surprised beast - it was used to seeing its prey slow to a crawl from its magical cold aura - and rammed the hammerhead right into the hollow of the beast's ribs, which elicited another pained wail.

"Now, shoot!" She yelled right as she landed her strike on the beast.

Elaina and Sidonie reacted the instant Cal yelled out, and hurled their war javelins with their atlatls. Both projectiles covered the short distance in seconds, and sparks of lightning flickered on their conical metal tips.

The beast reacted to the new threat quickly, and swung its left arm at the approaching javelins. It struck Elaina's javelin mid-flight on the thin metal rod section and shattered it on the spot.

Unfortunately for the beast, that very action triggered the magic Elaina charged into the javelin. Lightning danced across the beast's skin as the shock paralyzed the creature for a moment. That moment cost the beast as Sidonie's javelin accurately entered its lower left eye.

The javelin wasn't a sturdy enough construct to deal with a beast of this caliber, and the javelin head bent as the tip struck the eye socket. That impact also triggered the lightning magic charged within however, and a small, localized burst of lightning sparked to life the next moment.

When that burst ended, the wendigo roared in agony, the left side of its face near its eyes a scorched mess. Its other left eye had burst by now, done by the lightning as it cooked the fluids within the orb until the flesh could no longer withstand the pressure within.

Cal circled around the wounded beast in its moment of distraction, and gave a wide, full power swing of her halberd, aimed at the back of the creature's right ankle. Like before, the creature's dense and tough constitution halted her halberd, and it failed to burst right through the joint. The damage she did however, was enough to irreparably damage the joint, and the wendigo lurched for a moment as it almost fell down, before it caught itself with both hands.

That gave enough time for Cal to line up another full-powered swing at its immobile back however. She brutally slammed her halberd's hammerhead against the location where the creature's spine - easily visible through its gaunt frame - met its pelvis. A loud crack resounded when she struck, and the wendigo wailed deafeningly in pain.

Cal refused to let off however, and struck the same spot another four times until she was certain the beast's spine was shattered, and it had lost all control over its lower body. Elaina and Sidonie barraged the wendigo with a steady stream of lightning-charged javelins while she fought the wendigo, which just added to its suffering.

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Since the creature had now lost control over its lower extremities, it no longer possessed the agility it used to have, and Cal easily avoided its futile attempts to defend itself as she went to work on its elbow joints next.

She had signalled to her nieces that they could stop, and save up their javelins for another day, as at this point it was more just tedious work than actual difficulty to dispatch of the creature, made even harder by the toughness of its flesh.

Cal hammered through both of its elbows until the wendigo was rendered mostly immobile as it supported itself on its broken elbows. She then climbed its back, and struck where its spine met its skull with brutal force.

It had taken ten blows at full power before the dense bone gave way and cracked, and her next blow found something soft within. The wendigo gave a final, desperate wail, before it fell silent, unmoving.

Around her, Cal also felt how the beast's innate magic disappeared as it died under her feet. The frigid air that used to envelop its surroundings was soon replaced by still cold, but normal cool air of Jötunberg late summer.

Cal spent another five minutes as she worked to hack off the beast's head from its body to take with her. Strangely enough, the monster's dense, tough flesh melted into a disgusting puddle shortly after its death, and left only its bones behind.

She stored the beast's skull in her pendant, and after some thought, the rest of its bones as well - they would make good material for armor with their toughness - before she walked back to her nieces.