Recognizing the incoming danger Lyra swiveled out of the wolves chase and headed to Yu’s location, her speed was fast enough to maneuver away from any wolf coming toward her, but that still slowed her down a tad, enough for the Silver ranked wolf to reach Yu before she did

Grrrr!

The pack leader growled the airborne Yu before leaping in for the bite

Yu had just been swinging using the grapple to make it to the other branch but seeing the rather large maw coming up he decided to pull himself up with the mechanism instead, successfully evading the bite

That move wasn’t the best one to make though as he was swinging mid ascent which put him in an awkward position where he had no branch to land on, he could either swing to the other side or continue to ascend

Making the decision in a split second he used the tree bark he swung toward to propel him back, at the same time he released the grapple’s mechanism which caused him to start reeling down

The pack leader which had just set its feet on the ground saw its prey coming back down, it didn’t waste time and made a much smaller jump due to the lack of momentum but still was enough to meet the descending Yu

“Lyra jump!” Yu yelled to the now close Lyra and instantly summoned his shield, while still airborne, the wolf leader which had it maw open crashed into the shield hard causing its jaw to crack, but that wasn’t the end of it

Yu who was coming in a downward momentum used all the force he could muster to kick the wolf toward Lyra who swung her fiery claws at him

Swish!

One swing was more than enough to decapitate the wolf leader, thus putting a quick end to the battle

Awoooooooo! Awooooooooo!

‘Or not’

Seeing all the wolves howling aggressively Yu figured they weren’t going to back down just because their leader fell, in fact they seemed a lot more aggressive

“Lyra, head out of the encirclement!”

He let go of the grappler which sustained too much damage from his descent sudden strain and ran with Lyra to the trees, shooting arrows as he went while Lyra swept any incoming wolf away with her swift slashes

“Wuu” Once they were out of the wolves’ circle and had their back toward the trees Lyra nudged Yu toward the pack leaders body, to his horror Yu saw the other wolves ripping it apart viscously while they fought among each other, biting and clawing away each other flesh they totally ignored their earlier targets

Yu didn’t know what the hell was going on but he wasn’t going to waste away this opportunity, he and Lyra looked at each other for a second before nodding and dashing away toward the city once again

Merely five minutes later they heard a loud howl form their back, it sounded just like the previous leader’s howl

“What the hell is going on with these wolves, did one of them just rank up? How is it possibly that easy?”

Lyra rolled her eyes at Yu while they ran, out of all people he had the least right to say that when he ranked her up thrice within a week, let’s not forget the snake and the fish as well

Suddenly Lyra’s eyes sharpened and she started to slow down, Yu noticed this and slowed down as well

“What’s the matter?” “Wu Wu” Lyra answered by looking toward the back, her eyes narrow toward the distant trees

Only a few seconds later Yu heard the faint sounds of howls, and soon he saw the approaching enemy, the wolves had actually caught up!

“They’re actually straining their legs beyond breaking point, that’s just sick!”

The wolves had sprinted beyond their limit, they had a speed faster than Yu to being with and now that they pushed themselves to the limit it wouldn’t take much time to catch up

“Crap, I’m dragging us down” If it was Lyra alone she could easily outrun the wolves’ top speed by a large margin, with a minute’s head start she would already be well beyond their chase range, but with the slow Yu at the side they couldn’t make much of a distance

“Why the hell are they so persistent, I’ve never heard of them going to such an extent”

He couldn’t figure for the life of him what drove them that mad

“Lyra prepare to intercept and distract, I’ll make a run for it, once I’m far enough I’ll unsummon you”

Lyra nodded and dashed away to meet the wolves head on

‘Someday I will dive into battle with you as well’ He thought as he started running again, he thought since they fought so much for their leader’s body they would definitely try to kill Lyra and eat her, he was assured of Lyra’s speed though and he knew she would be able to keep them at bay with ease

“AWUUU” The sudden wailing howl caused him to snap his head to the back, there he saw the new pack leader and some of the strongest wolves had circled around Lyra or just continued on regardless of their lives, they completely ignored her and head straight toward him, madness had only taken more control over them

“What the fuck! You gotta be kidding me, I would hardly make a tooth pick for you guys what the hell are you chasing me for!”

He was perplexed beyond belief, he now figured that all they were after was him, evident by the fact that even the last leader had come toward him instead, but he just didn’t know what he did to trigger them so

“Fuck! You wanna have a piece of me? You better earn it!”

Realizing he couldn’t outrun them he stopped all together and turned to face them, his situation was dire, his shield was on cool down, and Lyra was now in the middle of the pack trying to catch up to the ones that skipped her but the sheer numbers made it useless no matter how many she took down in her way, in the end a lot of them would make it to him

‘Forty? Fifty? About right, let’s see how many of you battered I can take down ‘

Once the first wolf approached it pounced on Yu with its jaw wide open with his neck being its target

Yu bended backwards parallel to the ground shooting a bolt right into the mouth of the wolf, it flew right over him but another two came from the sides. Yu couldn’t bound to the front fast enough so he instead continued his momentum to the back letting his feet leave the ground making a backward flip with his top body as the gravity center, the two wolfs who had been rushing passed right under him

But his luck seemed to have run out as the next one to arrive was the leader while he was mid air

“HAA!” Yu suddenly whipped his feet forward onto the open jaws of the leader, he let go of his crossbow replacing it with Dead Silence, aiming down the mouth he forced to stay open he shot the unloaded weapon, what came out was a bolt of darkness that tore the insides of the leader to shreds rending it to pieces of blackish flesh

At this moment Yu felt all his new found strength and flexibility leave him, he felt very empty and couldn’t even muster the strength to push himself off the falling body

Woosh

The sound fire rang beside his ears while his body was suddenly dragged away with great speed, Lyra was holding him by the cloak and dragging him away as fast she could while she herself was cloaked with fire to fend off any of the close enemies

Awooo! Awooo!

The same scene from before played before Yu again as the wolves ignored them and fought of the leader’s body ripping apart its flesh and eating it as they looked for the crystal

“Wait Lyra!” The frantic Lyra heard Yu yells and slowed down only a bit, she wanted to get away from these wolves even if she meant she had to carry him over through the entire forest

“Look” Yu pointed at the wolfs and Lyra turned her head, there where the wolfs were battling she saw black spots appear on their bodies, the black spots spread fast, so fast that by the time the wolves had reacted to them it had already reached their hearts, lungs, or head, by that time even though they tried to tear their own flesh off they still ended up dying in a few seconds only

The wolves who didn’t eat form the leaders flesh ate their comrade’s bodies instead in search of the crystal, but the result was the same, it only took a bit more time

“Crazy bastards” Yu made his way back to the dead bodies, but he kept his distance from the flesh pieces, if it could kill a Silver Rank beast and more than forty Bronze Rank ones what stopped it form killing him

‘What the hell just happened’

Confused couldn’t even begin to describe Yu’s feelings, forget about the black stuff, how the hell did he even muster all that strength, to them him of that moment time had moved ever so slowly, while his body seemed it could move however he wanted it to without suffering injury

‘Adrenalin? Impossible, even if it can hype the brain and remove pain the after effects would still be there, I only feel a little weak and tired right now but nothing hurts, just what the hell is happening to me’

Tshhh shhh~

Before he could think of anything else the flesh started to sizzle as black smoke bellowed out of it, the smoke condensed over the bodies of the dead wolfs into a dark cloud

“What the, Hu-“

The smoke didn’t give Yu a chance to speak as it suddenly tried to force itself into Yu’s body

“WUU!” Blood red flames barred the path of the black cloud, which in turn retreated for less than a sec before throwing caution to the wind and diving through the flames

But it was instantly sucked up by the ground merely inches away from Yu

The Woods then sank back into silence, only the heavy breathing of Yu could be heard accompanied by Lyra’s flames

“I, really can’t deal with this bullshit anymore, can I at least ask my question before I get hit with another mysterious phenomenon?” Complaining wasn’t Yu’s style, still if he didn’t get this load off his chest he felt like he would blow up from frustration

Standing he looked at the now melted flesh, spotting more than a few crystals stuck into it out, one particular crystal was different from the rest as its colors spun widely about between dark and yellow

Bending down he picked up the crystal and stored it into his ring then he turned to the worried Lyra and extended his hands to carcass her

“WU” Lyra stepped back a bit awkwardly, Yu didn’t understand what’s wrong but when he looked at his bloodied hands he remembered she was a clean freak, so he lowered his hands as his mouth twitched

“Let’s go” Irritation leaking through his voices Yu commanded as they continued their journey onward to the city