Spear in hand, he ran through the woods. Moving side to side, he maneuvered his way around the sturdy trunks of trees and avoided the dense underbrush where he could. The sounds of gunfire and animals barking grew in intensity with each impact of his heavy boots onto the packed dirt. The trees blended together into a green blur as he drew closer and closer to the fight.

Soon enough, he could hear the shouts of men and women above the sharp cracks of gunfire. Now, he had a decision to make. His eyes flicked over the metal loop on the ring finger of his left hand. He had discovered that with his mana manipulation skill, he was able to wear the ring constantly and not have it be activated. The problem was that activating and deactivating the ring took a few seconds of concentration with his current skill level. That meant he had to answer the question now; did he want it activated?

There was little doubt that using it would give him an advantage in the pure combat against the beasts. Additionally, it would allow him to remain anonymous; if they couldn’t see him, then they couldn’t use identify on him. Anonymity to the inhabitants of the Sanctuary was something that he had thus far gone to great lengths to ensure.

What made him hesitate, however, was the very fact that they wouldn't be able to see him. If the people from the Sanctuary, the ones with guns that were shooting at the beasts, couldn’t see him, they wouldn’t know to not aim in his direction. While the beasts could withstand a few bullets, he wasn’t quite ready to test his own resistance to them.

He looked up from his ring and focused on reaching the scene of the battle as soon as he possibly could. I’ll hold off on using the ring. Instead, I’ll move quickly. If I’m only in the line of sight of the people from the Sanctuary for a few seconds, they might not be in the state of mind to use identify on me, he reasoned; besides, this way, I’ll save my mana for if I need to use the ring for a quick escape.

After a short run, he was close enough for some of the shouts to be comprehensible above the cacophony of gunfire, barking, and growling. The first voice he was able to understand had the higher pitch of a young woman. “Dammit! There are too many of them. I’m nearly out of ammo!” she called out, the stress and strain in her voice clear even from a distance, “What about you two?”

The gunfire continued for a moment before a response came, all the while Octavius grew closer and closer. “I’ve got a few mags worth left, but I don’t know if it’ll be enough to take down all of them.” a male voice finally responded.

Not a second later, a third voice spoke up with a much lighter tone than the situation seemed to warrant. “Well, I’m nearly out too. Good thing wolves can’t climb trees!” the speaker called out with a voice that had the higher timbre of someone still a good deal away from seeing the end of their youth.

By now, Octavius could hear growls and the scraping sound of claws on tree bark. Slowing, he peered through the leaves ahead to catch a glimpse of the battlefield. His eyes focused on a copse of trees that was surrounded by what appeared to be an entire pack of wolves.

They were of the same breed that he had encountered all those weeks ago at the start of the tutorial and a handful of times since. When he used identify on a few, he realized that these wolves were of a relatively low level. The lowest he saw was level 6, and the highest was level 9.

However, even with their low levels, the fact that they were in the area at all puzzled Octavius. He would have expected the hunting parties of the Sanctuary to wipe out a group of dangerous predators in the vicinity, even if they weren’t of an especially high level. Perhaps the massive population center that was the Sanctuary had drawn them here over the past hour?

It was of no importance at the moment, though. Now it was the time for Octavius to get to work. Holding his left hand to his mouth, he shouted as soon as there a lull in the gunfire. “You, in the trees! Hold your fire!” his voice seemed to snap at the eardrums of all that heard it, and the shooting quickly halted.

Exploding from a bush between two solid trees, he activated his instant thrust skill as soon as his spear was properly aimed at his first target. Although necessary to avoid being turned into a pincushion of bullets, his shout had alerted the wolves to his presence.

From the way that the wolves furthest from the trees that the gunmen were on threw themselves at this new threat, Octavius knew that they held the same rabid viciousness as the smaller creatures he had encountered since the start of the Emergence.

The wolf he had initially targeted was about average level amongst the wolves, middle of the pack as it were. It was bleeding from a handful of gunshot wounds to the back but wasn’t slowed in the slightest. The moment it had heard Octavius’s shout, it had spun and pounced with no regard for its safety.

The spear point, accelerated to an extreme degree by his instant thrust skill, took it directly in the maw. The wolf didn’t even have time to react before the message detailing the experience points Octavius gained from its death appeared unobtrusively at the edge of his vision.

He barely had the time to remove his spear from the now-dead wolf before its packmates were upon him. Snarling and biting, they attacked with none of the cautious intimidation wolves usually employed in the wild.

Faintly, he heard one of the people in the trees above cursing out loud, “Who the fuck is that?!”

Octavius ignored the call and locked his green eyes onto the bloodshot ones of the nearest charging wolf. Bringing his spear to bear, he waited for the perfect moment before stepping to the side in a single fluid motion.

The wolf went sailing to his left, but he didn’t have a chance to take advantage of its moment of weakness before a third wolf was upon him. The brown-green blur lept for his throat, jaws open wide to tear it out. Octavius brought his spear up horizontally, catching the snapping jaws with the metal haft.

With the wolf held in place on its hind legs, his right knee snapped forward. The wolf seemed to barely register the blow, but the force of it did push the wolf off balance. With the wolf already only held up by its hind legs, Octavius was able to take advantage of the loss of balance his blow caused and stepped forward, rotating to the left as he did so.

The wolf's forelegs batted at him but didn't hold the leverage to injure him as he drove it to the ground. With both arms no longer needed to support the beast's weight, he drew his dagger with his right hand and drove into the matted fur of the animal’s underbelly. It took him stabbing the wolf four times before the message from the system announced that he had killed it.

The whole exchange took place over the course of barely two seconds, but that was enough time for the wolf that was now behind him to recover. Octavius recognized that with wolves approaching from both the front and the back, he was in a dangerous position. Resheathing his dagger, he took his spear in both hands and held it at the ready.

Two wolves were charging at him from the direction of the trees that the rest of the pack surrounded, and one charged him from behind. The two wolves ran side by side with no regard for the other, only trying to reach Octavius as soon as they could. Bumping each other out of the way and even scratching at one another, they grew closer and closer to him.

Octavius once more waited until the last moment before the wolves from both sides reached him before leaping out of the way. The wolves collided in midair and fell to the ground in a heap. Growling and barking, they climbed over the bodies of their pack mates to get to Octavius again.

Octavius held his spear at the ready as the first wolf was able to untangle itself from its comrades and charge. Taking advantage of the range provided by his spear, he used instant thrust just as the wolf entered his range. The wolf continued with no regard for its safety, its only goal being to tear out Octavius’s throat.

Due to that lack of care for the threat the spear posed, Octavius was able to stab his spear straight into its body below its head. The silver-colored metal of his spear reflected the golden rays of the sun as it pierced the wolf’s body just to the side of its sternum. The wolf died without a sound as his spear cut deeply into its heart.

Quickly withdrawing his spear from the now-dead wolf, he readied it to face the other two wolves that were not far behind the first. One wolf was slightly ahead of the other, and that was the one Octavius targeted. Stabbing his spear into it in the same manner as with the previous wolf, this one collapsed as well.

The difference this time was the angle of his thrust. Before the thrust, he had moved slightly to his right, which meant when he stabbed the wolf, it fell to its own right and directly into the path of the third and final wolf that was attacking him.

He was distracted for a moment when the young man above shouted, “Oh shit! I jinxed it!” before rapid cracks of gunfire resumed. Octavius could tell that there weren’t any bullets coming in his direction and assumed that they were firing into the group at the base of their trees. He didn’t have time to look, though, as the final wolf had gotten back to its feet in the second he was distracted.

With just one wolf attacking and the fact that he now knew that they wouldn’t flinch back from the deadly strikes of his spear, it was the matter of a simple thrust to end it. Turning, he faced the copse of trees that had the rest of the pack of wolves surrounded.

The writhing mass of brown and green that was the wolves was only broken up by the various splashes of red blood from the multiple bullet wounds on each of their bodies. He wasn’t able to discover what had prompted the team to resume firing until he looked up slightly. The muddy green form of a wolf was digging its claws deeply into the bark of the tree as it climbed unsteadily.

The small sprays of red mist signified the impacts of bullets on its body. It barely made it another few feet before it lost its grip and fell unmoving onto the ground. Though, even as that wolf died, another immediately took its place. It leapt onto the tree and began to scramble up, ignoring the very real possibility of joining the six bodies of wolves that were arrayed on the ground around the tree.

Although the wolves now seemed to have a chance to get at the fighters from the Sanctuary, it was at the cost of allowing the shooters to all focus on one of them at once. This strategy was proven futile for the time being when this wolf also fell from the tree to lay unmoving on the red-stained grass.

Octavius knew that this was making it easier for the team in the trees to kill the wolves, but they were likely quickly running out of ammo. His first thought was to try to get the wolves’ attention, but he couldn’t make a sound that would distract them more than gunfire. The only thing that he could think of was to charge the mass of wolves. The problem with that was the bullets that were constantly impacting that specific area would likely hit him.

He frowned for a moment, considering his options. Eventually, he decided to call out to the group in the trees to stop shooting for a moment so that he could get the wolves’ attention then lead them away. “HOLD YOUR FIRE!!” he screamed over the deafening noise, “I’LL LEAD THEM AWAY!”

The firing slowed for a moment but picked back up after a second. One of the people said something, but Octavius couldn’t hear it clearly over the noise. He cursed inside of his own thoughts. The three of them would run out of ammo and then wouldn’t be able to stop the wolves from climbing. Even if Octavius could draw all of their attention the moment the shooting stopped, chances were that at least one wolf would be in the process of climbing a tree.

He watched the wolves scramble to climb the trees in a frenzy as he waited for the last few shots to ring out. His thumb ran over the smooth surface of the ring on his finger as he waited at the ready. After the time it took for them to shoot three more wolves off trees, they finally ran out of ammo.

Octavius counted to three inside of his head just to be sure that none of them were just reloading. The frightened cursing coming from the trees above confirmed it for him, and he closed his eyes for a moment. Now that the people above posed no threat to him, he could use his illusion ring.

The light around him seemed to bend and distort for a split second before the illusion snapped into place. All that was left where he stood was a glimmer like one would see above the black asphalt of a road on a hot day.

One wolf was climbing the tree, but Octavius couldn’t do anything about that at the moment. Instead, he laid into the mass of rabid wolves with a detached fury. Blood sprayed through the air as he cut through wolf after wolf as they searched futilely for him.

The wolves’ sense of smell, along with the sounds he made, allowed them to learn his general location, but that information was obvious from where wolves fell to the cuts and thrusts of his spear. He danced between them, his spear in constant motion. After a number of the wolves fell, the remainder seemed to go even more mad.

They began attacking whatever was in front of them, be it empty air or their fellow pack mates. The rest of the battle was a slaughter. Octavius cut down wolf after wolf until the ground was dyed red, and all that remained were the corpses of the once-proud beasts. He didn't even receive so much as a scratch through his thick clothes and armor.

Now, the only wolf that remained was the one that was climbing the tree. Octavius wasn’t even sure how its claws were able to dig far enough into the tree to hold it up, but it was making slow and steady progress. The shouts of the group in the trees became more and more hysterical as the wolf grew closer. They didn’t even seem to have noticed that all of the other wolves were dead.

Octavius took a dozen steps back and held his spear like a javelin. The wolf was three times its body length above the ground and scrambling up the tree far too quickly for something of its size. Drawing his arm back, he threw his spear in a high arc. When he activated his instant thrust skill, the spear seemed to leap from his hand.

It caught the sun's light as it became visible for a moment upon leaving the illusion before slamming into the back of the wolf. The throw was far from enough to kill the wolf but was plenty to send the wolf falling backward off of the tree. It slammed into the ground with a solid thunk and laid still.

Octavius quickly approached it before retrieving his spear from where it had been thrown during the fall. The wolf growled as it heard him approach in the now silent forest but failed to return to its feet before he skewered it to the ground.

Once he was sure all of the wolves were dead, he turned and moved out of the line of sight of the group in the trees. Concentrating, the illusion around him fell, and he became visible once more. Looking over his notifications, he grinned.

You gained a level!

You are now Lvl 11, 1717/60000 EXP to Lvl 12

+5 Free Stat Points

It seemed he had gained a bit over six and a half thousand experience points from the massacre of the wolves, and that had pushed him over the top to level 11. He had already decided what to do with the points he gained from this level and didn’t hesitate before putting them all into constitution. Looking over his status, he nodded in satisfaction.

Name

Octavius J. Asher

Race

Human (F)

Level

11 - 1717/60000

Class

Spearman

Titles

Forerunner, Titanslayer I, Skill Forger

Health

547/560

Stamina

613/760

Mana

448/520

Strength

43

Dexterity

48

Agility

36

Constitution

38

Vitality

28

Perception

28

Intelligence

26

Wisdom

22

Will

34

Free Points

0

Status Effects

None

Skills

Identify (Lvl 13)

Speech (MAX)

Instant Thrust (Lvl 2)

Whirlwind (Lvl 2)

Spear Fighting Affinity (Lvl 2)

Mana Manipulation (Lvl1)

Closing his status window, he inhaled deeply. It had been weeks since his last level up, and it seemed he was correct in guessing that the Emergence would be a great opportunity for him to increase his strength.

He set off at a jog back away from the Sanctuary just as the sounds of people running through the underbrush began to reach his ears. If reinforcements had arrived, that meant it was time for him to go. There was still plenty of time before nightfall for him to kill for beasts.