"This isn't working..." Nate sighed as he released his control of a fly corpse. "Even a fly uses the same amount of mental power to control as an orc? How the hell does that even make sense?"

He looked out the window to see Pig standing ramrod straight as it guarded his house. The glowing orbs that usually illuminated the night had all snuffed out since the dawn's light made them obsolete.

"Fuck. I didn't make any progress at all." he scratched his head in irritation. Even though he could train non-stop because of his ability, he still didn't have anything to show for it.

'Maybe I should've practiced offensive spells instead.'

Since his necromancy wasn't showing any signs of advancement, Nate decisively chose to set it aside for now.

Fully equipped except for his helm, which would just hinder his vision, Nate made his way outside.

"Follow me, Pig."

"Hrk," Pig grunted in response as he moved to follow behind him.

Outside the village, in a clearing surrounded by tall brown trees, Nate positioned himself ten meters away from his zombie servant.

Nate raised his hand in front of him, rousing the mana within to form a lance of darkness that shot forth at the speed of a bullet, lodging itself in the middle of Pig's chest.

"..." Pig just stood there, barely showing a reaction.

"Wow, is this because you're undead? Is that why Black Magic doesn't work against you?" Nate clicked his tongue. That would mean that Pig wouldn't be a good training dummy.

Since he could just keep on regenerating the orc zombie over and over, Pig would've been the perfect sandbag to practice his spells on. As long as Pig didn't get completely destroyed, Nate's quickly restoring pool of mana would heal him back to full health.

But if Nate's spells couldn't damage the undead at all, that changed things.

"Hm. I guess I can still use you to practice my aim..." Nate mused out loud. He held out his palm and mentally commanded Pig to toss him the amulet he was wearing lightly. "Lightly, alright?"

"Ragh!" Pig took off the amulet and tossed it toward Nate.

"Alright. Run around erratically from side to side. Try your best to dodge my spells." he commanded as he put on the amulet, then he pointed toward a spot a bit farther to his left. "Toss your ax over there. I don't want to accidentally hit it with my magic."

After everything was set up, Nate began his aiming practice.

He continued this until the sun had fully risen.

"Fwoo..." Nate sighed as he put down his hand. "That's enough, Pig."

"Hrk." Pig snorted in response as he marched over to the ax he'd tossed aside.

"Pfft. You look like a porcupine." Nate chuckled as he looked at Pig's current appearance. He had dozens of black daggers sticking out of various parts. Nate willed them to disperse as he stretched.

'It should be about... seven o'clock? Guess I should go back.'

"Ahhhhh!"

Just as he was about to head towards the village, he heard a scream echo throughout the forest.

"A survivor?" He looked in the direction of the scream, then started running.

'Well, since I'm already here anyway...'

"C'mon, Pig! Follow me!" Nate called out to his slave that would've just stupidly stood there doing nothing had he not ordered it.

"Grah!"

Shin Ari's Perspective

"Hugo! Behind you!" Ari cried out in warning to the shield-bearing man in front of her. She nocked her final arrow and let it fly right into the eye of one of the wolves running up to Hugo's back.

"Thanks!" he called back as he bashed an incoming wolf with the edges of his shield. He yelled in triumph. "This is Sparta, motherfucker!"

"Stop fucking around!" Ari picked up a rock on the ground and got ready to throw it at anything that came at her. Luckily, Hugo's size and loudness seemed to attract all of the wolve's attention.

"Hey, ya big numbskull, don't just charge in there yerself!" A bald, burly middle-aged man, Samson, ran up and swung sideways with his mace, however, it hit nothing but air as the wolves backed off in time. "Brent, is tha' weapon o' yers fer decoration!?"

"I-I'm sorry!" A thin blonde-haired man who looked to be barely out of his teens shakily called out as he charged forward to stab with his spear.

'Th-there's way too many of them...' Ari thought as she counted the wolves surrounding them. Even with a rough estimate, since she couldn't see how many were hiding behind the bushes, she could still count fifteen of them.

As for them, there were only four. She was even out of arrows.

'Shit. We were so close to the safe zone too!' she cursed, sending a quick glance to the message written in the sky.

Perhaps realizing the helplessness of the situation, Samson charged forward recklessly, aiming to serve as a distraction.

"Old man, what the fuck are you doing!?

"Ye kids run like hell! I'll hold 'em off!" Samson groaned as a wolf bit the back of his neck. Rage filled his eyes as he wildly swung his mace. "Yaaah! Ye ain't takin' this ol' man withou' a fight, you fuckin' bastards!"

"I won't let you die alone, old man! Let's go~!" Hugo also charged forward, shield swinging outwards. He sent a glance behind him and roared, "Ari! You and Brent run to the safe zone and ask for help!"

"Wh-wha--" Brent spluttered.

"Hurry!" Hugo's foot smashed into the head of one wolf as his arm blocked the fangs of another. He groaned in pain. "Ughh. C'mon! We can't all die here!"

"B-but...!"

"Let's go, Brent." Ari bit her lip in frustration as she grabbed Brent's shoulder with her trembling hands. "We can't... we can't let their sacrifice be in vain."

"We can't j-just leave them!" Brent argued as he faced forward, ready to stab out with his spear.

'Look at this guy... his legs are shaking and he can't even hold his weapon properly, but he's still unwilling to leave...'

Ari sighed as she let her hands fall to the side.

'Then there's me.'

"Fine. Stay here then. I'm not going to die here with you!" she screamed as she left in the direction of the message, running as fast as her legs would carry her.

She didn't want to die. She supposed that nobody there did want to die, she didn't have the resolve to charge into a pack of wolves like those two did, nor the courage to stay behind just like Brent.

Live.

She wanted to live.

Enough to abandon everything else for it.

Swallowing the overwhelming guilt she felt from abandoning the people she's traveled with during the past few days, Ari ran as fast as she could.

She sent a short glance behind her and saw that three wolves had followed her.

"Ahhhhh!" Ari couldn't help but scream at the top of her lungs. She no longer had anything to use to fight those things off. Her bow was still with her, but what would she do with it when she didn't have any arrows to use? Even with her Olympic-level archery, she was just a girl with a curved stick without any ammunition.

With no other options available to her, she just chose to continue running, even though she knew that those wolves would catch up to her eventually.

'Someone save me! Please!' As her lungs screamed for air, Ari prayed to the heavens. 'I swear that if I live through this, I'll try to be a better person! I won't bully people anymore! I won't trick guys anymore! So please!'

Perhaps some passing God heard her prayers? Ari saw someone running toward her.

'Woah! That guy has so many weapons!

Ari didn't know what they were called exactly, but the man had multiple weapons on his person. In a situation where she was suffering precisely for her lack of armaments, the man seemed extra dependable in her eyes.

"Ah! P-please, help me Oppa! I don't want to die!" She cried out. The wolves were just a few meters behind her.

"Just keep running!" the man called back.

They were finally close enough for Ari to make out the man's face.

'Oh my god.'

Despite the situation, she found herself swooning from how handsome he was.

And then she saw what was behind him.

'Oh my god!'

A more than two-meter tall humanoid creature with red skin and white tattoos on its body was also heading toward her. Foot-long tusks jutted out of the corners of its mouth, and its empty eye sockets and nostrils exuded black smoke. Thick arms holding a long-handled ax swayed back and forth as it ran forward.

The creature was fear itself for Ari.

Rather than get eaten by whatever that was, she thought dying to the wolves would be better.

"Ahhhhh!" She screamed as she ran away from the man and humanoid creature, heading toward the wolves instead. As she anticipated death, Ari closed her eyes.

But even after running for a few seconds, she still couldn't feel any wolves biting or pouncing on her.

She opened her eyes hesitantly, only to see that the wolves were also running away. The distance between them and Ari was now wider than it was in the beginning!

'Oh god, that thing's so scary even wolves are giving up! I can't let it reach me!'

"Ah, hey! Wait! This guy is my pet! Don't be scared!" the man called out to her. Ari was surprised to find that he was literally right behind her. "Look, I'll order him to stop so don't run away!"

Just as he said, the red-skinned monster stopped running and just stood up straight, ax at the ready.

With some hesitation, Ari stopped running and fell to her knees, exhausted. The man caught up with her a second later.

"Yeesh, you're a fast runner." he chuckled. "You're okay now."

Still panting, Ari looked up to find the man's reassuring smile.

She'd never seen anything so beautiful in her entire life.

Nate's Perspective

"You're okay now," Nate said as he tried his best to smile amiably.

He looked toward the backs of the fleeing wolves and sent daggers of concentrated dark mana careening toward them, burying themselves into the wolves' bodies. The wolves let out a whine as they fell to the ground in pain, volatile mana spreading throughout their bodies, destroying them from within.

"W-wow..." The young woman gawked him, eyes widened in amazement. "Wh-what was that...?"

"Magic." Nate looked down observing the young woman.

He couldn't be quite sure of her nationality since everyone's nationality was changed to whatever it is now, but he did know that the young woman was very pretty, despite her face being covered with dirt and mud. Her shoulder-length dark-brown hair was a bit messy, looking as if something had lived in it for a few days.

'She called me "Oppa" before, right? Is she Korean, then?'

However, there were more important things to worry about. Perhaps it was a bit sexist to think so, but he found it hard to imagine that a young woman like this managed to survive out in the wilderness alone for days on end. Especially with how many wolves seemed to infest the place.

Nate knelt down to match eye levels with the young woman. "Were you alone?"

"Ah!" The young woman exclaimed, her eyes widened in realization. The tears she'd been holding back finally couldn't be restrained as they burst from her eyes. "Please help them! I-I left them a-a-all alone..."

"Where are they?"

She raised her hand and pointed behind her with a trembling finger.

"Alright. Stay here, okay?" Nate pointed to his orc servant. "That guy's name is Pig. He's really obedient so don't worry. He'll protect you. Understood?"

The young woman nodded.

"Good." Nate stood up as he mentally ordered Pig to kill anything that wasn't human and began running in the direction the young woman pointed at. Just in case, he sent a blob of dark mana toward the nearest wolf corpse to turn it into a zombie. Since he knew from experience that it took a while for a corpse to zombify, he didn't bother taking it with him and just commanded it to remain by the young woman's side and protect her.

'Being a hero is such a pain...' he complained inwardly.

However, even he didn't notice the natural smile on his face.

After running at full speed for about three minutes, Nate heard the sounds of an ongoing battle.

'Looks like I made it. I just hope most of them didn't die.'

Seeing as the situation was hopeless enough for someone to think about running away, Nate expected to see a couple of corpses at least. The human kind.

"Old man! Hold on!"

"H-haaa!"

"Watch your back Brent, we can't die here! Ari's calling for help, we just gotta fight on!"

"Y-yeah! I'm... o-okay!"

Nate eventually made it to a small clearing where two men of very different heights were back to back as they were surrounded by about ten wolves. There was an old man on the ground, his clothes soaked with blood and his body surrounded by about four mangled wolf corpses. There were also about seven wolf carcasses with their heads bashed in or a hole in one place or the other.

Nate noticed that the old man wasn't breathing anymore so he ignored him and focused on helping out the men still alive.

"I've come to help!" he announced as he conjured a large cloud of black smoke that spread out to encapsulate the small clearing, trapping everybody within.

'Even if they're not worth too much, it's still a waste to let any of these wolves escape.'

The smoke screen only blinded those that he wanted to be blinded. That meant he and the two men could see just fine, while the wolves wouldn't be able to tell left from right. A superior sense of smell was also useless in this environment since the smoke also cloaked scents.

If those weren't enough, just being in contact with the smoke once placed a curse on his enemies, so the wolves were undoubtedly feeling quite lethargic at the moment, in addition to feeling excruciating pain as their flesh began to rot.

'Ugh. My mana...'

Because he'd taken a brute force approach with the spell and his general lack of skill and experience with Black Magic, the single spell had taken pretty much his entire mana pool to cast.

He would have to finish off the wolves with melee weapons.

"Just go ham on them! They can't see or smell right now!" Nate yelled as he threw his spear toward the wolf closest to the shorter man. Perhaps due to the amulet, the spear flew faster than he'd anticipated, piercing right through the wolf's body and another wolf before hitting the ground and breaking into pieces.

'Oh shit! My spear!' Nate lamented. He wasn't used to the strength boost he got from the amulet, so he didn't know the appropriate amount of force to use.

"Holy shit! That was awesome!" The bigger man exclaimed as his face morphed into one of ferocity. The man dashed to the nearest wolf and bashed it with the edge of his round shield that looked like a silver version of Captain America's shield. When the wolf was downed, the man knelt down and continued striking the wolf until it stopped moving. "Brent! You go kill some too! Take revenge for old man Samson!"

"A-alright! Raaah!" The shorter man, Brent, lunged forward and stabbed his spear into the closest beast, skewering it through the head. Despite flinching from the blood that got into his eye, Brent twisted his spear and kicked the corpse away. "Y-you fucking... you all killed uncle Sam! Ahh!"

Nodding in satisfaction as he watched Brent charge forward, Nate drew his falchion and jumped in.

Some wolves tried to run, but Nate's mana had regenerated enough for him to conjure daggers of darkness once again. Before they could even leave the area surrounded by thick black smoke, they fell to the ground with a blade on their backs.

It only took a minute or two for the three of them to finish all of the wolves off, albeit most of them were killed by Nate.

"We... we fucking did it... haah." The big man collapsed on the floor on all fours, his lungs begging for air.

"Y-you alright, Hugo...?" The shorter man asked as his knees gave out and he fell on his but, utterly exhausted.

"Yeah... good job by the way... Brent. You really... performed when you had to... I'd be dead if it weren't for you, man." Hugo laughed with difficulty as he turned to face Nate. "And you too, friend. We owe it all to you!"

"No problem." Nate shrugged, as if it wasn't a big deal, but on the inside, he was dancing in joy. They had revealed each other's names, the big man being Hugo and the other Brent. Two of the people that Miyu mentioned would be part of the team. The descriptions seemed to match too.

'Guess this pretty much proves without a doubt that she can see the future,' he inwardly remarked. 'My luck was also good, since I managed to save them in the nick of time.'

For some reason, Nate couldn't help but feel how strangely convenient things were, but he chose to shrug it off. If it benefitted him, then that was all that mattered.

"Oh, shit! What about the old man!?" Hugo, despite his apparent exhaustion, sprung up from the ground and ran over to the only non-wolf corpse in the area.

"U-uncle Sam!" Brent also went over. Or at least, he tried to. As his limbs continued to fail him, he had no other choice but to crawl.

"..." Despite knowing the results, Nate also made his way over with a somber expression as he mentally commanded Pig to lead the young woman to the village.

Soon, cries of grief and frustration echoed throughout the forest.