I could practically smell victory when everything went wrong.
When I was summoned, I jumped through the shadows instead of answering the call, so as to not drop my stealth. I successfully activated my assassination skill, jumping out of the shadows to finish Gary off. I wasn’t entirely certain why he suddenly decided to go for close combat with Red with his magical shield dropped, but it made things easier for me. I could practically taste the fear when his teleport spell failed, so close to losing his life. Looking back on it, he may not have been afraid of me, but rather that he couldn’t escape the effect of his own spell. Before I could make contact, a massive explosion sent me flying back, my spine letting out an ominous cracking sound as I slammed into a thick tree.
I was dazed for a few seconds, trying to gather my thoughts. Right. Big Explosion, which not only allowed Gary to escape my assassination skill but also did considerable damage to me. And probably… my eyes locked onto a tuft of red fur sticking out of a sizable crater. I got back on my feet and trotted over, taking in what remained of my loyal subordinate. Parts of his body were painted on the inside of the crater, clearly separated into four collections of viscera.
I stared at the bloody mess for a few seconds, remembering the time I had spent with Red, who had been with me for most of my journey. And I felt nothing. The pack may be an important part of my evolution line, and they were excellent tools to have. But at the end of the day, that’s all they were to me. Tools. Occasionally, a tool would break. That was just the way things were. All I had to do was go out and get a new one. And, with the knowledge I’d gained along the way, I could make the tool better than the last one.
The rest of the pack slowly gathered around the crater, called here by me via mental command, and I could see that they were impacted by the loss a lot more than I was. A quick, commanding bark later, they all jumped into the crater and started consuming any part of Red’s body that was larger than a small rock. I wouldn’t let good nourishment go to waste, and it provided a nice reminder to them. I was the alpha, while they were my subordinates. If I told them to do something, they damn well better do it, even if it meant consuming their best friend.
As this was going on, I kept my senses sharp, keeping an eye and a nose out for Gary. Seeing how devastating his spell was, he was no doubt damaged quite a bit, licking his wounds somewhere hidden, so I wasn’t too worried about another attack. The fight may be temporarily paused, but it will restart soon enough. My fur bristled with mild annoyance, thinking back on my failed assassination. I had always assumed that it might not kill him, hoped so, even, but in the end, the skill hadn’t even made contact. And now, one of my best skills was unavailable for the remainder of the fight, wasted.
Still, I was not out of powerful skills yet. Deciding that it would be foolish to keep the pack split up after this display of power, I commanded the colourful wolves to stick close, falling into formation four. Better to have a head-on fight than have my tools broken one by one. I barked my orders, and we headed for the plains. No more games; what came next would be a good old-fashioned brawl.
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It may be a mistake, but after healing myself, I decided to meditate. I had lost a hefty chunk of mana during the fighting and the subsequent healing, and it had become increasingly obvious that I simply could not afford to underestimate Caedus any longer. So, going back out there with anything less than a full tank would be foolish. On the other hand, the extended break would give him time to heal up and prepare as well, essentially resetting the fight. Sure, he’d have to do with one less packmate, but now that he’d fought me, he could devise a new strategy.
Yet, I could not pass up this moment of safety. There was a chance that I’d eventually get found at the bottom of the lake, so I needed to take advantage of the situation while I still could. It was hard to estimate how long I was recovering, but it felt entirely too long. But, eventually, I was fully topped up on HP, MP, and VMP. Ready to tackle the fight once more. I’d also used the time meditating to analyse Caedus’ fighting in turn. He was obviously the main force, while the rest of the pack acted in a supporting role. The ones I’d seen had some fighting capability, but seemed to be focused on facilitating the alpha’s skillset. And boy did Caedus have skills.
While he did wield magic, he was apparently more melee-focused. Supported by a slew of movement skills and attack magic, he wanted to get up close and personal, where he’d use overwhelmingly powerful skills to pummel his opponent relentlessly. While this presented the greatest danger to me, it also provided an opportunity. Unlike spells, which cost mana to cast, skills were paid for with time. And, the more powerful a skill was, the longer the cooldown. Whatever he used to stop me from teleporting earlier had to have been a high-tiered skill, and I had a strong suspicion that he wouldn’t be able to use it again for at least a few more hours. If I could bait out more attacks like that, he would eventually run out of powerful skills to use, creating an opening for me.
Of course, that was the backup strategy. I loved danger and fighting, but baiting out powerful skills that may or may not disable my escape spells was just unwise. My biggest strength came from my massive mana pool, coupled with an equally massive intelligence stat, which boosted all my spells. Adding all my passives and mutations on top, I was a lean, mean, spell-slinging machine. One that could fly, no less. So, my current strategy was to bomb them to hell from high above. A classic, tried and true strategy, the military back home liked to employ.
Unfair, and probably unethical? Yes. Incredibly effective? Also yes.
So, as long as Caedus didn’t have surface-to-air missile launchers or the skill equivalent of one, I should be fine.
Fully healed and stocked up on MP, I carefully swam up toward the surface of the lake. Careful not to expose my body, I extended my eye stalks and took a look around. The lake was decently big, but not to the extent where I wasn’t able to spot the shore on all sides. I carefully scanned the shore for a lone wolf, but couldn’t spot any. They either stopped surveying the lake due to having lost a member or were not roaming around alone anymore. After having lost someone to a sneak attack, my money would be on them having gathered up in one spot, hoping to overwhelm me with numbers. If I was right, Caedus was angling for the same thing I was, an open brawl.
I’d hoped that I could maybe take out one more wolf before it came to this, but seeing how I almost died during my last ambush, maybe this outcome wasn’t too bad. Just to be sure, I still activated all of my stealth skills before using a void jump to take to the air. I went as high as I could while still being able to move without constantly bumping into the dome and let my eyes wander around the arena, my eyes almost instantly snapping to the colourful gathering of wolves at the centre of the plains area. They weren’t even attempting to hide, which confirmed my earlier guess. It would appear that the time for guerrilla combat and feeling each other out was over.
I briefly considered dropping a giant impaler on Caedus’ head, but as strong as my new spell was, I had to assume that while he was still in top form, he had several ways to avoid it. Just the mere chance of the spell not hitting made the massive MP expenditure a risk I could not take. I let my eyes wander over the gathered wolves, arrayed in a rather simple formation with Caedus positioned in the middle. The other four were holding vigil about a hundred paces away from him, each observing one direction. Caedus himself was constantly scanning the sky, obviously aware that I would most likely attack from there, since it was my greatest advantage over them.
My eyes landed on the blue wolf, now completely healed up from the damage it had taken earlier. While my plan boiled down to using overwhelming force, I still needed to take out the pack one by one before being able to properly focus on the alpha, and the blue one made as good a first target as any of the others. Aware that I’d be spotted as soon as I launched my first spell and that my poison didn’t seem to bother them, I prepared a double serving of void rend to open the hostilities, fully expecting to see the spells either partly dodged or mitigated since I wasn’t releasing them point-blank.
Reality screamed as it was rent apart, and before it could right itself, the whole pack sprang into action. Caedus’s head whipped around and locked onto me, while the rest of the pack was taken by momentary surprise. It spoke to how well trained they were, since the blue one managed to activate an evasive skill just in time, while the others started using a bunch of skills before the explosion came. The blue wolf didn’t escape unscathed, though, since the initial tear in reality caused some damage as well. I would not claim to understand how it worked, but the tear in reality did a wildly differing amount of damage, with the violent realignment delivering the main blow.
I, of course, wasn’t idly watching their reaction. Immediately after having released the double rend, I began peppering them with void javelins. And I was being liberal with the spell, like never before. I ten spot around me, I was conjuring the javelins as fast as I could and sending them out slightly staggered. There was no pause; explosions constantly rocked the wolves' surroundings, robbing them of the chance to put up a proper defence. While void javelin was one of my older, lower-tiered spells, when it was combined with all of my passives and mutations, it became the definition of ol’ reliable. Not only was its devastating effect multiplied by my stats, but due to its low cost, I could send out literal thousands of them, making the spell an incredible threat.
The downside of my bombardment was that it kicked up tons of dirt, obscuring my sight somewhat. I descended to a lower altitude reluctantly, getting just low enough so the pack was within range of my void feelers. It was a lot lower than I was comfortable with, but this way I could at least guarantee I was hitting something and that they didn’t abscond while I couldn’t see them.
A few seconds into my carpet bombing, the first spell flew my way in the form of a nasty-looking icicle spear. The spell had originated from Caedus, but thanks to my void feelers, I had spotted the spell forming and was able to dodge easily. Of more interest to me was the fact that Caedus was able to track me even through the current chaos, which was not unexpected, but still bad news. The icicle was only an opening salvo, as shortly after, a plethora of magical projectiles flew my way. Caedus was mostly shooting off ice-based projectiles, while the rest of the pack introduced some much-needed variety.
The blue one was entirely too busy dodging my spells, which were heavily focused on it, and was unable to shoot back. The yellow one further back made up for the lack of attacks, apparently, also focused on spellcasting. Of all the wolves, it slung the most spells my way. Lightning, fire, earth, wind, water, lava, and some kind of dark, wobbly mass were shot my way in various shapes and sizes in an attempt to see what stuck, no doubt. Meanwhile, pink was busy layering buffs on the pack. At first, I was a tad confused at all the spells coming from it with seemingly no effect, but after observing the others become faster and stronger, there was no doubt in my mind that it was responsible.
Which left the green one, that was doing everything it could to help protect the blue wolf. I saw it conjure short-lived shields to block my javelins, intercept my spells with their own, and apply some kind of shield spell on the wolf itself after a while, freeing the blue wolf up to help with the attack. I finally switched my priority target after seeing it use a spell to heal the damage the blue wolf had sustained. There was no point in focusing on the blue guy if the green one could just heal it. Plus, I had a sneaking suspicion that either the green one or the pink one were responsible for the pack's ability to ignore my poison. If I could get rid of these two first, I could speed up the battle considerably.
Just as I refocused and redoubled my efforts on the new public enemy number one, a bark resounded like thunder. Thanks to my feelers, I witnessed Caedus teleporting to a spot slightly above me, already mid-attack, mere moments away from mauling me. Unfortunately for him, I had been expecting this after seeing him do it several times before, and my own prepared teleport spell activated, bringing me to safety on the other side of the pack, still in the air. Of course, I had my shield up and could’ve probably tanked whatever he wanted to hit me with, but there was no point in taking unnecessary risks. Also, the fact that I was able to teleport away meant that whatever he had used to shut down my teleport earlier was either on cooldown or highly situational.
By now, green was putting everything into protecting itself, effectively imitating a turtle with how many defensive spells and skills were layered on it, at the cost of mobility. Not one to scoff at a stationary target, I cast void rend, immediately followed by a lava torrent. The void rend would sap a crazy amount of MP from the wolf, while the lingering lava all around it would add a constant drain, all while making it harder for the others to help it out. The constant explosions from the void javelins caused droplets of lava to fly everywhere, managing to at the very least annoy the other wolves.
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for me, though. I constantly had to dodge spells myself, occasionally being forced to teleport due to an attack originating from Caedus. He was definitely collecting data, since every time he came at me, he did so in a different way. It felt like he had an inexhaustible bag of tricks, trying things out to find a way that I couldn’t simply teleport away from. But, at the end of the day, he didn’t manage to find the solution before the green wolf ran out of MP. After its defences had taken a brutal beating, the wall of protective spells finally fell.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed and pounced on the opening. For just a split second, all of my attention was on the green wolf, and Caedus grasped at the opportunity like a drowning man. In the chaos, I almost didn’t hear the bark, and only noticed a moment too late that he had joined me in the air once more. A ghostly set of wolf jaws wrapped around my shield and crushed down, the same moment that I released another void rend, accompanied by a full array of void javelins. The tired wolf wasn’t able to activate any life-saving skills before he was blown to literal bits, which the system confirmed via kill notification.
With that, there was one less problem on the field. On the other hand, my MP were rapidly plunging down, just as I was, weighed down by Caedus who was relentlessly crushing my shield. My full attention back on the battlefield at large, I unleashed another void rend at Caedus, taking the opportunity of him being this close and latched onto me. Apparently, this was within his calculations, though, since he managed to release me just before my spell completed, the rend hitting nothing but empty air. I teleported once again, before taking aim at the pink wolf.
A while back, I couldn’t help but notice that aside from the alpha, the wolves were a tad smaller than me, a plan forming in my brain after. It would be pretty hard to pull off, most likely only working a single time before they got wise to it. If they paid proper attention to their surroundings, there was a good chance the plan would fail, maybe even backfire. But I’d just killed another packmate, which was just about the best distraction I could hope for.
A void portal opened above me as I sent an array of void javelins toward the pink wolf, forcing it to dodge backwards… and right into the other endpoint of my portal. It emerged above me with a surprised yelp, unable to process what was happening before I hit it with everything I had, unloading void rends, void javelins, and a void laser into its relatively fragile body.
Unable to use skills properly while in the air, another kill notification soon confirmed that the pack was down another member. An angry snarl heralded the arrival of Caedus once more, but his attack hit nothing as I teleported out of the danger zone. There were just two more wolves to kill before it would just be Caedus and me, and if I was right, I had just regained my ability to inflict them with poison. Gliding in the air a decent distance away from the three survivors, the mayhem stopped for a few seconds as we faced off. The smaller wolves seemed worried, while Caedus was starting to resemble an animal more and more. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was turning into a mindless monster, like some of the asphons were seemingly cursed to do.
I briefly considered retreating and restoring myself once more, but the option was taken away from me a second later. Seemingly fed up, Caedus activated a skill, a large dome snapping into place around us. With a diameter of about 200 meters, it was decently big, and it was still high enough for me to enjoy my air superiority, but a quick check revealed that I was unable to teleport out.
I had been trapped.