A blood-red colored gem emerged from the horned bear's body, its size is a bit smaller than Elvina's but it is still a lot bigger than most magic cores out there.

The horned bear was in a critical moment of advancing from an Expert rank to a Master rank but seeing dozens of pouncing wolves with blood-colored furs, the horned bear knew things were not gonna be easy.

It had no choice but chose to advance in such a precarious situation otherwise it'll just die from the claws of these bloodwolves without any resistance.

Either risk it or be clawed to death, the choice to make was obvious for the horned bear.

"Rooooooaarr" A deafening roar filled to the brim with magic energy escaped from the horned bear's mouth, it echoed in the surrounding forest, and with that last roar, every last bit of the bear's mana has all but vanished.

But it did its job, the nearby bloodwolves got their eardrums ruptured and started bleeding from their ears, due to a wolf's innate sensitive hearing, the damage done to them would be a lot worse than it would've for the other races.

Even the bloodwolves outside the encirclement got stunned by the roar as well, even the alpha bloodwolf was affected but quickly recovered, the rest took a much longer time.

"Not a bad move" Revlo, who saw this scene commented.

The alpha, whose clarity returned from its eyes looked around back and forth to its pack and the horned bear, it realized that they could not recover in time to stop the horned bear from ranking up.

A vicious look appeared on the alpha's face and pounced on the horned bear, the speed that the alpha displayed was much greater than the other bloodwolves by more than threefold.

The leader of the bloodwolves quickly arrived in front of the glowing horned bear, who was still in the middle of ranking up, the floating magic core in front flickered between a red light and an orange light back and forth, it looked like something that you would see in a christmas light.

The horned bear knew that its previous roar would not affect the alpha bloodwolf in the slightest, so it already sent a huge claw attack the moment the alpha pounced on it.

Seeing a huge claw headed its way, the alpha didn't even flinch, since its instincts could tell the attack wasn't that dangerous, the horned bear completely exhausted its mana reserves, so there was no magic contained in its attack and even though the innate strength that the horned bears possess was nothing to be scoffed at, but compared to the exhausted horned bear, the alpha bloodwolf is at a 100%, it was also at the peak of Expert-Rank as well.

The large wolf ignored the bear's attack as a claw landed on its body but it was completely ineffective, it shrugged off the attack and bit down on the bear's left shoulder with its sharp teeth.

The horned bear roared in pain, as its shoulder was slowly bitten off by the bloodwolf, at first it wanted to bite down at the floating magic core to interrupt the advancement process but changed its mind since biting down its shoulder or biting down the magic core didn't make a difference since it would interrupt the rank advancement either way.

But never did the wolf ever expect that not only its attack would be unable to stop the rank advancement, the bear also put the wolf into a literal bear hug, the legs of the alpha wolf left the ground, as it flayed its limbs around trying to escape from the bear's grasp.

The large right arm tightly held the wolf as if trying to suffocate the latter, and even though the bear no longer has a drop of mana left in its reserves, its grip strength should not be underestimated and the wolf could not focus enough to circulate its mana and use magic to escape.

The wolf bit down on the bear's left shoulder even harder until the horned bear's left arm finally separated from its body, blood gushed out like a fountain but the horned bear endured and hugged the wolf even harder.

But the viciousness in the wolf's eyes intensified and turned its head to glare fiercely at the horned bear and bit down on its neck.

"What amazing willpower that horned bear has, to endure the pain and making sure that its rank advancement is not interrupted, this is not something most people could do" Revlo said, he was amazed at the bear's performance.

He then pondered if he should save it, having a companion during his journey would not be a bad idea plus he could use the bear as a mount, he only thought about this now because he was impressed by the horned bear's willpower.

The stronger a monster's willpower, the harder they were to tame but if you managed to tame a monster with a strong willpower, its loyalty towards its owner would be just as strong as well.

In the middle of his thoughts, a change occurred in the area where the bloodwolves and the horned were fighting, the rest of the bloodwolves returned to their normal state, and seeing their leader being held in a literal bear hug, they already knew they had to help.

Just as the bloodwolves were about to attack, the floating magic core in front of them stopped flickering between the glows of red and orange as the orange glow slowly took over, replacing the previous red hue of the magic core into a sunset orange, the magic core glowed, its appearance is similar to that of a miniature setting sun.

This phenomenon signified someone advancing from an expert rank to a master rank!

The magic core slowly receded into the horned bear's body as it slowly let go of its hold of the alpha bloodwolf, who was still biting down on its neck.

The wolf already knew that the horned bear somehow succeeded in its rank-up and it bit even harder, more blood flowed out of the horned bear's neck, it was hoping to kill it before the bear could counterattack.

But before it could do that, the horned bear already sent a smack at the clingy wolf and was sent flying, this attack contained the power of a Master rank, so there is nothing that an expert rank could do to resist it.

The horned bear's mana was completely refilled because of the rank advancement, it looked like the tables have been turned but the horned bear's eyes didn't show any joy at all.

The alpha wolf that got sent flying earlier immediately got up, it only suffered a scratch, it didn't take any damage at all!

The reason is that the horned bear received too much damage from being bitten in the shoulder and the neck, it suffered too much blood loss, and even though it managed to rank up successfully, its life force was leaking out of its body at a rapid pace.

With its arm torn off and blood continuing to pour out of its neck, the bear's aura dwindled swiftly.

The bloodwolves already knew that they won, they don't even need to do anything, they just needed to wait until the horned bear dies from blood loss but clarity returned from the bear's previously despairing eyes, and ran towards the pack of wolves.

Since it's going to die anyway, it's not gonna die without a fight.

The wolves were startled, fear was visible in their eyes, even though the bear was currently dying, facing a suicidal master rank is something a bunch of intermediate ranks like them could not afford to take on at the end of the day.

Mana gathered into the bear's remaining arm and swung at the trembling wolves, an explosion occurred, and dust and the bodies of bloodwolves were flying everywhere due to the force of the horned bear's attack.

The unfortunate wolves at the front were unlucky to bear the brunt of this attack and this attack alone already killed over a dozen bloodwolves.

The rest were injured while the bloodwolves at the very back were scratched but were still blown away.

The alpha who saw this showed an angry expression and howled into the night sky.

But this was not an ordinary howl, Revlo could sense mana being moved in a strange pattern, blood clouds suddenly appeared and the moment those clouds touched the bloodwolves, their auras suddenly changed.

Their previous golden eyes with black slits suddenly turned red, Revlo could sense that the magic power coming from the pack of bloodwolves suddenly rose at a quick pace.

Their magic aura continued to rise until it reached from intermediate rank to a pseudo expert rank.

Their faces no longer showed fear and panic.

Instead, their expressions displayed utter ruthlessness, a face that would make anyone know that they would not back down even though these wolves were facing the threat of death.

The horned bear vaguely felt these changes but it didn't matter, it was going to die anyway, the horned bear continued its kamikaze strategy.

"An AOE buff magic? hmm, they have gotten a lot stronger, the situation turned a bit more troublesome" Revlo said, he raised his head to look up, gazing at the starry sky, and then said.

"Just in time, preparations are done"

After he said that, he heard another explosion, Revlo figured that it was probably another attack from the horned bear.

But the damage the bear brought from his attack was less this time around, only one died from its attack while only a few got injured.

Just as the powered-up wolves were about to launch their attack.

*Clap*

"Array Activate: Extermination Rays" Revlo's voice was suddenly heard by the horned bear and the bloodwolves.

An expanding magic circle that contained complicated shapes and symbols that is far more complex than the one Elvina conjured up suddenly appeared above the area where the horned bear and the wolves were at.

Revlo did not just stand by and spectated the fight, since he had the idea of wanting to tame the horned bear, he acted upon his wishes.

Just before the horned bear managed to rank up into master rank, Revlo applied stealth on himself to avoid being detected by the bear and the bloodwolves to quietly set up a magic array.

He managed to avoid the magic senses of his father and mother, if Revlo was determined to hide his presence from these monsters, what could they possibly do?

As the battle was ongoing, he subtly set up a magic array under the monster's noses.

His goal was to save the horned bear!

He planning to save the horned bear from the jaws of death to have an easier time for him to tame it.

And also, forming a magic array in mid-air ... if anyone were to see this, they would be shocked and flabbergasted.

It was common knowledge that magic arrays needed to have a solid surface to successfully set it up, but it was nothing special for someone like Revlo whose magical knowledge exceeds this world's standards by a mile.

The monsters who were fighting earlier stopped their actions and looked up, they saw a large expanding magic circle, it shined in bright gold, patterns moved around like it was alive until it finally stopped, a large amount of mana suddenly gathered into the magic array, the light it gave off continued to intensify.

Describing this scene may feel like it took a while but in reality, not even a second has passed as numerous beams made of light rained down on the monsters.

"Awooo" Bloodwolves howled in pain and perished one by one, the only one that was capable of resisting was the alpha bloodwolf.

The scene of a small lake made of blood and wolf corpses was suddenly shown as the dust settled.

The horned bear was left unharmed and was confused while the alpha bloodwolf was trembling, it did not die but it was seriously injured, it could barely stand up but like the horned bear, it was also confused.

They looked around and saw Revlo stepping out of the shadows.

The two widened their eyes in surprise, the bloodwolves prided themselves in having a keen sense of smell and hearing but the alpha was shocked that it was unable to sense the presence of Revlo up until now.

"So you didn't die huh" Revlo said, he was sweating a bit, his mana was almost depleted from setting up the magic array alone, which is why he used the mana in the environment as a power source to activate the magic array.

Creating a magic array that could produce enough firepower that can harm and even kill intermediate-ranks and an expert-rank monster was not something a novice-rank like him could normally do after all.

The strange thing that the alpha wolf noticed was that Revlo's presence somehow felt non-existent, it was looking right at Revlo but it was unable to smell any sort of scent on him nor it could hear his footsteps, it also could not identify what rank Revlo had reached since he already retracted the magical aura that people usually emit.

It immediately knew that this human was the one responsible for that attack earlier, the horned bear also made the same conclusion as well.