Chapter 20: The Hunt

"This one should do." Lorian thought to himself while picking up another artifact in the Moonlight Sanctuary. Hundreds of quests were scattered around the room. This was a new change that they had recently made.

Everything was now more organized and was easier to access, allowing people to quickly grab their quest and leave.

The sun had just rose when Lorian started his day; he quickly got here and started to choose his quest.

Arriving early every day had its merits as well: not only was it easier to pick quests and avoid time being wasted, but it also allowed Lorian to check out the newest quests and choose the best rewards out of them.

Lorian could finally start taking a wider variety of quests with the skill that he had just created. For the last couple of days, Lorian had been saving up some mana for his reserves and had been upgrading his gear.

The quest that he had picked up was extremely simple—the old classic wolf hunt. It was an extremely easy quest; the quests he had picked up had a wide variety of wolves that he needed to hunt down.

With this, Lorian could finally start making more and more money, finally gaining a stable footing for his foundations.

Lorian quickly took the quests and left the Moonlight Sanctuary, heading towards the forest outside the city.

The forest around the city was covered in snow; there was a large variety of wolves and animals lurking around, trying to find prey.

The further out you go, the more dangerous it becomes. The forest was extremely big, several times bigger than the city itself.

The closer you are to the city, the fewer monsters and beasts you will face. The further you go, the more dangerous it becomes, but it also offers a greater level of rewards.

The only way out of this city was a small road that was well hidden but very difficult to travel across. The environment around the road leading outside of the city was very rough to prevent beasts from finding the merchants.

It was precisely because of this that Lorian could scheme against merchants coming into the city and allow him to enter the city without a hitch.

But now that he needed to get further away from the city, he found a hard time avoiding other beasts while doing so.

He didn't want to distract any unnecessary attention after all. His only quest was to kill wolves, retrieve important parts of them, and deliver them back.

Attracting more beasts would be a waste of mana and time. Either of which he didn't have. Lorian explored at a steady pace and explored the forest for the wolves.

Wovels wouldn't always stay still in one area, even though Lorian had experience hunting these wolves. Not everything could be perfect.

Lorian had a general idea of where the wolves were but didn't know the exact locations. He could only use his experience to search for small clues and track them down.

A couple of minutes later, Lorian finally found a small group of wolves attacking each other. This was quite a fortunate situation for Lorian.

Normally wolves ate prey and often had their own areas in which they hunted, but it seems that these 2 packs of wolves both wanted this area to hunt and were fighting over it.

Was still a great distance away and could clearly see the situation from afar. After a quick moment, Lorian climbed a nearby tree to see the situation from up top. Information was extremely important in fights; the more, the better.

At a distance, Lorian could see the two groups of wolves fighitng. There were about 13 wolves on both sides; the wolves had black fur and a large body. 

The cut using their claws and bit at each other, using whatever they had to kill their openents. Corpses scattered throughout the floor as Lorian watched the fight continue.

There wasn't a need for Lorian to join the fight just yet; the more wolves that got injured and killed, the better for Lorian. After all, Lorian only had a D rank aptitude; his ana regeneration was incrediably slow.

Looking forward, Lorian saw the fight beginning to tilt; one group slowly got the upper hand and was suppressing the other group.

Seeing this, Lorian quietly got closer and postitoned himself at a safe distance. Looking at the group, he saw a bunch of wolves in the back of the group, relaxed and overflowing with confidence.

He started to conjure up his mana and used a skill.

[Blade of Continuance (F)]

A small silver light in the form of a blade headed towards an unsuspecting wolf. The blade seemed to be made out of thin strands, tightly woven together until they were made into a blade.

Even though the skill was at a low level, it immediately flew through the air and sliced a wolf's head clean off.

The amount of precision and skill demonstrated was just out of this world. The wolf group that was fighting the other group quickly glanced back and saw that one of their members was decapitated.

The wolf group, bewildered, quickly took action and fought back, catching the other group by surprise.

The wolf group didn't have time to investigate just what had happened before they quickly got back into a fight. The right once again became a stalemate, each side respectively losing members and dwindling down.

Every time a wolf group would gian the upperhand, Lorian would quickly use his skill to suppress them and force the back into a deadlock.

Several minutes passed before only 4 wolves were left of each side; they had stopped fighting and were firecly glancing at each other.

Both groups slowly started to back up; the losses for the groups were too much, and the wolves knew that.

Since they both couldn't get this area, the wolves had come to an unspoken truce, and both groups quietly backed off, leaving this area behind.

The wolves were heavily injured; wounds could be seen all over their massive bodies, and blood would drip onto the pure white snow from time to time.

Before long, both wolf groups had left the area, and Lorian was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly one of the wolves heard a small noise and turned around. Seeing nothing, he turned back to the group, thinking that it had heard something wrong.

Suddenly a small shadow cast over them as a human leaped from above and caught them by surprise.

In the human's hand, held a dark blue dagger that was rigid in shape. He quickly took the dagger and stabbed it into the head of one wolf before quickly taking it out and getting a good slice out of another.

The human that had ambushed them was Lorian! Lorian had been quietly following them from trees until he found a good spot to ambush them.

Lorian had no choice but to ambush them from above; after all, the forest had nothing but trees and snow. Lorian easily stood out within the forest.

The best option was for Lorian to stay above the group and slowly look for an opportunity. Now that he had found one, he quickly took advantage of it.

Lorian could confidently ambush the wolves due to the amount of injuries that the wolves had. Lorian knew that the wolves were already close to death and that it only took a bit more damage to kill them.

Lorian couldn't waste any more mana after all; the best option for him was to quickly ambush them and take them by surprise.

Lorian had gotten two wolves from the ambush and was now left with two more wolves. He had lost the element of surprise but had killed two using it.

Now it was a two-versus-one situation, but Lorian wasn't too worried about it; after all, the wolves were heavily injured, and Lorian had immense physical strength.

He slowly took steps near the wolves, provoking them into attacking. Lorian only had a dagger, a very close-range weapon that required him to get close to the wolves.

The two remaining wolves quickly took the bait, perps enraged by the deaths of their comrades. They rushed towards Lorian with a furious gaze, but it was to no avail.

Lorian had an easy time dogging and returning their attacks with lethal blows that eventually killed them.

With all of that, the fight had concluded. Lorian was covered in wolf blood, but he had come out uninjured. 

Looking at the wolf, Loran took a quick glance before deciding. He cut open each wolf before finding a monster core within each beast.

A monster core could be found within beasts; they were the most sought-after material and had great use.

The monster core was like a small orange marble. Lorian quickly took care of them and put it inside his pouch; he had already looted the wolves from the earlier conflict.

He could get around 20 monster cores now; the quest only needed Lorian to get 10. So Lorian had gathered twice the amount but done it with minimal effort.

The sun was still up and bright; it hadn't even reached noon yet. Lorian took a quick look at his other quests and quickly headed out of this area to find his first set of prey.

Lorian had a terrifying efficiency as he cleared out all the low-level beasts in this area.