Henry—his donkey galloping alongside the fleeing wolves, the pair darting between wolf corpses and wounded noobs—saw the head of the pack nearing the forest's edge.

Obstructing their path were Arcanists, who'd just finished casting their spells. Out of each of the mages' bodies sprouted octopus-like tendrils, thick as rope and crackling with violet-indigo energy. This was , a Tier-3 AOE spell. The snaking tendrils stretched tens of metres towards the wolves and swept through them with no more resistance than a baker's roller over dough, each wolf struck being flattened out as a paste of bone and organs.

When the rear wolves hesitated before the horrific destruction, Henry managed to graze one's butt, right as an Arcane tendril splattered it.

10/15.

Its body destroyed, it turned into lights, a fraction of which funnelled to Henry.

You have absorbed the lifeforce of a Grey Wolf (3). 55 XP gained. 766 XP remaining until level up.

The next arrow, he aimed carefully at a Sentient wolf in a corner of the wolf-tide that'd been discretely howling orders, the pack's leader. Before it could devise a counter-manoeuvre to the blockade, he planned to drop it, leaving the wolves disorganised and making them easy to pick off.

Alas, as he drew his bow, tragedy struck.

Twang!

His bowstring snapped.

Henry, cursing 'fate' and Suchi's incompetent craftsmen, watched as the lead wolf howled its orders.

About two thousand wolves remained. These immediately split into four groups, one heading south around the blockade, one heading north, one converging on the Beast Tamer orchestrating the defence, and the last scattering to attack noobs.

“Crimson Lions, ignore the runners!" The Beast Tamer yelled in the distance. "Save the trainees! Trainees, to me!”

The noobs who'd felt confident attacking the wolves' rear fled towards him. Those who'd been too close, though, were soon dragged down and dismembered. The Beast Tamer himself joined the struggle, summoning a bow which he rapidly fired to save the captured trainees; his subordinates did the same, paying no heed to the hundreds of wolves charging at them specifically.

Meanwhile, Henry was weighing his many options, from entering the melee with a sword to casting nuke spells. Neither of those options he liked. The wormhole mechanic perhaps triggered up close, and too many players were around him to use his Spelltomes openly.

Making a snap decision, he rode the donkey towards the corpse of a bull-sized wolf, one of the Sentient leaders slain by the Cutthroats at the very start of this quest assignment.

On the way, he grabbed a spear sticking out of the ground, abandoned by a noob, and pulled a translucent vial from his chest straps, which he threw in front of the dead wolf, the glass shattering.

You have used Dynasty's Downfall (90). Any extra Combat Potions used within the next 10 minutes will be ineffective.

Dismounting and ordering the donkey to stay put, he squatted behind the wolf, using its giant corpse for cover.

Alongside the bow that he placed down, he added the spear, his gladius, and a Spelltome from his inventory with a golden hammer on the cover.

Activating the Spelltome, he began to chant. Golden energy channelled into the weapon, causing the two frayed ends of the bowstring to twitch and writhe, before snaking towards one another. Elsewhere on the bow, various nicks and scratches were also mending at a visible pace.

– a Tier-3 Miracleworker spell that repaired broken equipment temporarily.

While Henry tried to fix his bow, the Beast Tamer's position was overrun.

The Tamer's pet Sabretooth was trying to intercept the wolves, chomping them with its teeth and shattering them with its paws. However, its efforts did little to reduce their total numbers. Soon, its master was covered in a mountain of growling fur.

At the same position, the other wolves were about to close in on the noobs seeking protection with the Tamer's forces when, all of a sudden, a regal violin melody could be heard, followed by the sounds of other instruments. Horns, oboes, clarinets, violas, timpani, all the pieces of an orchestra joined in for a symphony.

The noobs being ripped apart suddenly found that the wolf bites, for all their ferocity, were unable to puncture their skin. Invigorated, the noobs sought to strike back, only to find that their own weapons bounced off the wolves' fur, which had become harder than concrete.

A glowing magenta film was covering wolf and man alike. This protective film was being sustained by a stream of magenta musical notes, flowing out of instruments positioned around the field. They were playing , a Tier-2 Accompanist AOE spell that increased the listener’s Vitality.

Although the noobs and wolves couldn’t create enough force to overcome the bonus Vitality, this wasn’t true for everyone.

The hill of wolves smothering the Beast Tamer erupted, the monsters flying about like dolls thrown by a tantruming toddler. From their midst burst out an 8-foot tall man-beast with fangs and whiskers, whose glowing claws danced around him, splitting a wolf in half with each swipe.

The other high-level Villagers under his command joined the slaughter.

Back near Henry's position, beyond the range of the Accompanists' protective song, two Sentient wolves had been tag-teaming a girl. One dragged her across the ground by the leg to prevent her from getting to her feet; the other chewed through her throat, gradually beheading her.

The wolf pair had been ordered to kill as many humans before they died. After dealing with the girl, they searched their surroundings for their next target. There were many options to consider, but all of these were ignored when they saw a maddening sight.

One male human was desecrating their leader's body, using a sword to stab it in the face over and over again. The human, suddenly noticing they'd found him, bulged his eyes in alarm and, dropping his weapon, ducked, hoping to hide behind their leader’s corpse.

The pair, incensed, howled and charged.

The human, calm on the other side, quickly formed a spell gesture, ensuring the he was still casting didn’t cancel, Henry multi-tasking for efficiency.

While casting three more gestures, he listened over the sounds of battle for the padding of the pair's approaching feet.

The noise of one wolf abruptly ceased, replaced by a wet, fizzling sound. Grabbing the spear he'd prepared, Henry it, stood upright—his feet not moving to maintain the spell—and launched the weapon.

Where the wolf in front had been was a liquified puddle, pooling around the shards of the vial he'd shattered earlier. 11/15.

An Alchemist watching this would have paused the tape and rewound, wondering whether they'd truly seen this guy use that potion to kill a Level 3 Grey Wolf.

Henry had, and he would do it again if it meant victory.

Behind the puddle, the disintegrated wolf's companion had frozen in terror. The second wolf would never unfreeze, a spear smashing through its teeth, boring into its guts, and pinning it dead to the earth. 12/15.

Henry, ducking, continued repairing his bow.

When he heard a distant howl, he stood up again to peek over the wolf leader's corpse, catching a glimpse of the wolves that'd been attacking the Beast Tamer beginning to flee.

Henry groaned.

The Empire goons choose now of all times to be efficient...

For perspective, only had a 20-second cast time. The drunken Villagers should not, under any reasonable circumstances, have had the coordination to turn the tide of battle so quickly.

By the time he finished repairing the bow, most of the wolves were out of range, joining the fleeing pack.

Henry, remounting the donkey and charging at full gallop after them, scanned their dwindling numbers and reanalysed his situation.

He scried five paths to nab his last three wolves, all of them mutually exclusive. Once he committed to one, the others would vanish, his destiny fixed.

Following a strange intuition, a paranoia growing over this morning of inexplicable mishaps, he forwent his first, simplest option and chose another of moderate difficulty.

"Faster!" He steered the galloping donkey after a group of scattered wolves being harassed on their way to the forest by mounted Villagers.

As he and the donkey were catching up, two of the Spelltomes in his chest straps were traded out, one by the Spelltome for the invisibility spell, the second by a Tome with a picture of a stretched-out clock on the cover.

Drawing his bow, he shot at a wolf being chased by a Fighter.

Moments before the Fighter's mace exploded the wolf, Henry's arrow clipped the beast's thigh first, tagging it for him. 13/15.

Henry's next target was an isolated wolf, undetected by anyone, sprinting about 54.3 metres in the distance, near the maximum range of arrows and a difficult shot from the saddle even for a freak like himself. His first shot narrowly missed. The wolf, made aware by the first, dodged the second. A third hit it square in the side. 14/15.

While Henry was missing those shots, two more wolves he might have killed were speared down by the mounted Villagers.

The tail of the pack was nearing the forest's edge, the frontrunners already safe, and the closest and last accessible wolf to him was about 181 metres away. To kill this one would be an absurd feat, the path forward inconceivable to most, one of those possible but blind long-shots attempted only by naive youth, zealots convinced of their divine success, and veterans accustomed to battling for monumental stakes.

Henry fell into the last category. If he failed here, the cost might be enormous.

Who knows when would be able to finish this stupid tutorial?

“!”

The donkey's legs pumped furiously, zooming them across the plains.

Dodging dead wolves that the donkey was too short to jump, they closed the gap by roughly 4 metres per second.

168...

164...

They sped into the thick of exploding spells and stray arrows, the two of them glowing as they entered the Accompanists' soaring symphony, the music filling their ears. Henry slipped the bow down his arm and onto his shoulder, then used his free hands to push himself up, onto his feet. Through his palms, he sensed the donkey’s hesitancy at the unusual manoeuvre.

"Forward," Henry commanded with assurance.

Standing upright on the saddle, he paused to await the exact moment, his fate entrusted in his shabby mount maintaining its speed and direction. In this breath between the action, his hand began to tremble; perhaps picking up some of the donkey's trepidation, it offered a small opposition, unwilling to comply. Henry, however, pushed through its reluctance and slapped his palm against the Spelltome strapped over his heart.

The spell, , was a Tier-4 ability from the Arcanist speciality class, Tempicanist, who controlled time magic; it transported a player 5 seconds forward based on their velocity at the moment of casting.

Ahead, his targeted wolf was moments from reaching the forest, from vanishing into the impenetrable darkness of the understory.

"Stop!" Henry shouted at the donkey while himself leaping forward. “RAM!”

As his hand grabbed a spell-constellation, his body blinked out of existence, leaving the donkey on its own, exhausted and sweaty.

Roughly 99.2 metres ahead of them had been a mounted Villager chasing the wolves.

Behind this rider, Henry flew out of the air, planted a foot on the rump of their galloping horse, slipped the bow from his shoulder, and fired.

15/15.

Good game; easy.

The last of the wolves, having reached freedom, leapt for a bush. For that moment, all its legs were off the ground and it could not shift direction.

Th-cuh!

The wolf yelped, an arrow puncturing its back.

Henry, the horse he'd jumped onto bucking in fright, leapt from its back. Rolling out of the fall, he sprinted for the wolf. His hands rushed to unfastened an object from his chest straps and a dagger from his belt.

Skidding to a stop beside the wolf, he cut its spinal cord at the neck, its body disintegrating the next instant and transferring into his Spatial Bracelet. The object, a metallic cube, he placed on the ground and gave it a solid punch.

Its shattering produced no noise, though, for the area was immediately shrouded in a dense fog of indigo-azure smoke.

You have used Pocket Smoke in a Box (50). Any extra Arcane Traps used within the next 10 minutes will be ineffective.

When the smoke finally cleared, a group of Villagers, with no more monsters to chase, came over to the spot where he'd vanished.

Aside from a pool of wolf blood, all other traces had been cleaned up, even the remnants of the shattered device.

The Fighter whose horse had bucked scratched his head. "Yo, what the fuck was that?"

"Whatever it was," replied a friend. "It seems...excessive. Like, they're just wolves..."

The Villagers glanced around themselves in confusion, but no answer appeared in either the fields strewn with massacred wolves and injured kids or the dark of the forest howling ominously ahead.