Chapter 24: Wolf Calamity

"So close," Lorian thought to himself as he was just about to reach the entrance when suddenly a dark shadow loomed over him. Without hesitation, Lorian dove to the side, digging his feet into the water and forcing his entire body to turn sideways.

"Crack!" The very next moment, a huge shadow loomed over him and crashed into the spot that he was in before. Water splashed everywhere as one of the wolf calamites pounced at the spot that he was just in.

The water rippled as Lorian fell onto the water beside him. He felt a cold shiver down his spine at this moment; if he hadn't dodged at that exact moment, he would've died on the spot! Lorian felt troubled as he looked at the obstacle preventing him from advancing further.

Lorian had now fallen into a predicament; even though it was only one of the ten wolf calamites, this was still extremely bad for him. Right now, he could only keep his distance as he slowly backed away, trying his hardest not to provoke the wolf even further.

But in this situation, Lorian could not escape even if he wanted to, because of the chaos surrounding him—one false step, and that would mean the end of his life. If he were to provoke even more of the calamites to surround him, he would be done for.

This meant that his only options are to advance forward and somehow resolve this problem. Thinking fast, he looked around and quickly analyzed the situation that he was in. In front of him stood one of the calamites, but he soon realized that he was surrounded by the wild wolf packs.

"It seems like they surrounded me the moment I fell after dodging his attack." Lorian thought to himself as he calmly prepared to break out of this situation. Suddenly, Lorian felt a shiver down his spine; once again, without hesitation, he jumped to the side and landed on the ground.

"Swish!" A blade of water sliced through the air, creating a swishing sound as it flew towards Lorian. Lorian had quickly felt that something was wrong and immediately acted on it, showing no hesitation when it comes to trusting his gut.

The blade of water had come from one of the calamites; although Lorian wasn't sure of the exact rank of the skill, he knew that if he had gotten hit right then, he would've been dead without a doubt.

The skill had narrowly missed Lorian after he dodged and hit one of the wolves behind him, slicing their entire body in half. Lorian quickly glanced at this before returning his focus back to the calamity in front of him.

"Regeneration skill and a water blade skill—this seems about right." Lorian had seen these calamites fight before in his previous lives. It was only because of this knowledge and his accumulated battle experience from his previous life that gave him confidence to trust his gut so openly.

Lorian gritted his teeth as he imbedded some mana into his hands before launching a skill at the wolf in front of him.

[Blade of Continuance (F)]

A white, silvery light cut through the air as it flew towards the wolf's eyes. Without any defensive skills, the wolf could only dodge to avoid this skill that was suddenly thrown at it. Being caught by surprise, the body of the wolf was cut deeply by Lorian's skill.

The wolf was made entirely out of water; the wound that Lorian had created poured water out of it before quickly regenerating, closing up the wound, and recovering himself. Lorian frowned as he continuously used his skill, preventing the wolf from attacking him even further.

With one hand holding his dagger, he slowly approached the wolf. Closing the gap between himself and the wolf in front of him. Lorian looked at the wolf as it continuously regenerated time and time again.

Any wound that Lorian made was completely useless; it was like the calamity couldn't be killed, but Lorian knew otherwise. Even though the regeneration of the calamity was strong, it definitely had a limit.

Even calamites had a limit to the amount of mana they could control if they had a skill, meaning that the wolves regeneration skill would eventually run out. Even though Lorian knew this fact, he also couldn't do anything about it.

Not only did he have a D-rank aptitude, but he was also extremely tired and exhausted from his earlier actions. If this was a test of endurance, without a doubt, the wolf calamity in front of him would win.

But who said that the calamity in front of him was his only enemy? Lorian was just one of the few enemies that the calamites had. The calamites couldn't differentiate between which targets were stronger and which were weaker.

They simply attacked whoever stepped on the Runic Land, making sure that nobody got to invade it. This meant that not only was Lorian an intruder, but the other wolves around Lorian were also. And looking at how they were positioned, Lorian was only one person, and the other group held multiple intruders.

This naturally meant that the calamity would try to attack the group before fouling Lorian, as he sensed the larger number of intruders and wanted to focus on them before Lorian, because to the wolf calamity, it saw them as a greater threat. Even though, strength wise, Lorian was clearly stronger than them; the wolf calamity didn't know that.

With this in mind, Lorian had some confidence in approaching the calamity by continuously shooting skills to prevent any further attacks. Right now, Lorian was only around 10 breaths of peace away from the calamity.

As he continuously disturbed him, his mana was dropping extremely quickly. He only had around 10% of his original mana storage, and that was saved up over a long period of time, and he used it all here.

The stalemate continued on like this for a bit longer, but overtime Lorian couldn't keep it up for long. He used less and less skills while resorting to dodging more, letting the wolf calamity in front of him slowly gain the upper hand.

A moment later, Lorian's eyes gleamed with a dim light as he suddenly rushed towards the wolf group that surrounded him from the back; without even hesitating, he used up even more mana to cast more spells as charged at them.

He ran at them, catching the wolf wolves by surprise before he quickly crashed into the group, mixing himself with the group. At this moment, a loud howling sound could be heard before the wolf calamity rushed at the wolf group with Lorian inside of it.

At this moment, Lorian was making his final shot at succeeding!

Name: Lorian

Race: Human 

Strength: 6 

Speed: 8 

Stamina: 8 

Intelligence: 100 [MAX] 

Path: Time 

Aptitude: D 

Mana: 17

Path Rank: 1 

Path Progress 17/450 

Skills: [Blade of Continuance (F), Heavenly Hourglass (EX)] 

Path Attributes: [Perception of Time (SSS)] 

Blessings: [Blessed by Fate] 

Curses: [Cured by Fate] [Curse of Chaos] 

Artifacts: Quest Scroll [Rank 1] (Borrowed)