---

Dani sprinted through the night, throwing the empty blood bag into the bushes to the right, and ran toward a tree on her left.

A few steps up the lower tree trunk, defying gravity, and with a practiced swing upward to the lowest branch, she heaved herself up. Her breathing was fast and irregular, but with deliberate breaths she brought herself back under control, and not a second too late.

Black creatures with a glimmer of something blood-red crept through the undergrowth of the forest, following the trail of blood, and a sniffing from many snouts came from the direction from which Dani had just run.

And suddenly the alpha of the pack came out from behind a tree, and a chill ran down Dani's back. The pack's alpha went from the forest floor to the highest point at its ears, at least to her shoulders, while it warped its lips in anticipation at all the stench of blood. Two blood-red and forearm-long fangs stood out, and the wolf's lips vibrated slightly as an eerie red glow passed through the two fangs, while gossamer red mist rose from the forest floor to be sucked in through its teeth as if through two straws.

Now the name Vounds makes even more sense! Shit...! Was the only thing that flashed through Dani's mind at the terrifying sight, as the whole wolf licked its lips with pleasure and the whole fur vibrated as if the alpha was in ecstasy.

Waves went from the head to the tip of the tail swinging casually back and forth, and she could have sworn that the red hue of the fur intensified slightly as the blood-red mist was sucked up by the two fangs like vampires.

The alpha sniffed the ground as soon as the fog had lifted, and the muzzle soon bumped into the empty blood bag lying carelessly in one of the lower bushes, eliciting a deep bestial growl from the huge wolf's deep throat.

 

[Alpha Red Wolf - ???]

 

Was all Dani could identify with her skill, and the question marks immediately scared her even more.

The other red wolves, on the other hand, had more normal levels, even though she knew exactly how little the level meant, especially when it came to such highly regenerative blood monsters.

 

[Red Wolf - 105]

[Red Wolf - 111]

 

Was the level of the weakest member of the pack and the strongest, while the weakest member seemed to be accompanied by the strongest, according to the motto of the weakest member of the chain to protect.

The alpha, meanwhile, had continued sniffing the ground and was just turning back toward the clearing, which caused Dani to slowly expel the held breath as he abruptly turned directly in her direction and growled again from deep within his throat.

The mouth twisted, almost to a black blood-red smile, as the wolf vibrated again with loud growls, but this time in anticipation of the fresh and lively prey he had spotted.

She was about to curse in panic and looked around frantically for a chance to escape, which had already been blocked for the most part by the encircling pack, when suddenly black objects flitted along between the trees, at least two of which bored into the head and the unprotected side of the alpha.

She blinked first once, and then another time, when after the first shock she suddenly realized from whom the projectiles probably came, and immediately took the chance to jump from tree to tree and run off in the direction of the southeast, from which direction the unknown objects had also flown.

---

Avan had long since identified the wolves since his waking and had not worried too much about the level difference, especially since the effortless penetration of his two spear-shaped forms, which had penetrated the head and vital parts of the Alpha, only to fly out again on the other side.

 

[Alpha Red Wolf - 145]

 

The alpha of the pack was by far the greatest danger, but seemed to fall just as easily as the others.

Just as Avan had already written off the quest as easy and was about to nod encouragement to his other two group members, he registered with his senses what was actually happening to the penetrated wolves.

To his own horror, he noticed how the actually dead wolves contorted unnaturally, the distributed blood flowed again in a gauzy mist through the open wounds to the injured wolves and then even the deadly wounds closed without much effort. Healthy but clearly angry red wolves remained, and even the alpha with its more than fatal head wound stirred again and howled loudly into the sky while its pack tuned in.

"Shit..." Avan cursed more to himself, but earned confused and fearful looks when Patris and Jen also noticed his feverish expression.

"What happened?" Patris whispered to him, taking the words out of Jen's mouth, who was about to ask the same.

"I had, rather effortlessly, caught all ten red wolves, and even the alpha with a fatal head wound! And then? The beasts just get up again, the blood flows back into their bodies, and the wounds close! Fuck..." He explained as quietly as possible, while he was already frantically thinking about how to approach the problem, Dani still in his sights, who was about to arrive at their place.

"Dani will be with us in a minute, maybe she knows something! But it won't be long before the red wolves have also picked up her scent or ours!"

His two teammates nodded at him seriously but also slightly panicked, and they followed Avan's gaze as he turned towards Dani, who just then jumped down from the last tree and landed in front of them.

And the young ranger started right away. "Good idea, Avan! However, we need something other than sharp weapons, because we have to attack their blood, which helps them regenerate! Any ideas?" And looked first at Avan and then at the others in her group in turn, while she herself briefly looked around to the back, as if afraid the pack would come jumping out of the bushes at any moment.

"Don't worry, I can sense them, and they're still picking up our scent..." he whispered encouragingly, which earned him a grateful slow nod from her, and her shoulders visibly lost tension, at least for the moment.

"If only we could master a proper incantation, that would boil the blood, vaporize it, burn it. Or poisons, but that would work too slowly! Someone with water maniplutation might be able to extract the liquid from the escaping blood, which would prevent their regeneration while the blood is outside the body.... But other than that, I just can't think of anything! Except hitting them, turning them to mush, or cutting them up so they can't regenerate!" Jen enumerated her possibilities, which she had compiled internally, and looked up to the others in the round.

"We don't have fire, and cutting them up might work if there weren't so many of them!" Retorted Avan. And I only want to show how many shapes I can use and reshape at the same time in an extreme emergency! I would probably be able to handle the red wolves effortlessly, but I don't want to wear a target on my forehead because of my abnormally strong powers! Damn...

"Avan?" Suddenly came from Jen, and he only now noticed that he had already completely drifted off again, while he had been thinking.

"We were just wondering if you thought you could summon more than one spark with the spark rune..." The young healer repeated again, and looked momentarily downcast, the memories of his sudden fainting still fresh in everyone's mind. "So, do you think you might be able to modify the skill into real fire?"

Silence fell over the group as each of the others looked at Avan in different ways, or looked away.

"We don't want to put you through too much, especially after what... happened..." Came Dani this time, even surprisingly, as she squeezed Patri's hand and he nodded his approval to Avan as well.

"I think so... But I need time, which we don't have!" Avan explained.

Dani immediately cursed the day the wolves were born, while Jen also looked concerned. Much to Avan's surprise, however, the tank in their group looked thoughtfully into the air for the first time and had a blank stare.

"I think - I think I might have a solution...At least something that will buy us some time."

 

With a piercing look, very aware of the seriousness of the situation, Patris looked at him. "How much time do you need, approximately?"

Avan ignored the fact that the young warrior had always been the only one who never acted serious, and gave a rough estimate. "Ten minutes, maybe even thirty.... It depends on which of my theories fit and what I have to do for it!"

Patris thought again for a moment, and then nodded to the group. "On the way here, I saw a cluster of three thick trees, in the middle of which Dani and Jen can stand effortlessly, while I cover the front and defend with my shield. You yourself could stay completely in the background and work out the solution while we stall and hurt them as much as possible to drag the fight to maximum length."

The ranger looked at her friend with concern, but otherwise kept her mouth shut, having enough confidence in him. Jen, on the other hand, nervously nibbled her fingernails, not at all lady-like, while Linob stared holes in her back at her behavior, but otherwise seemed unconcerned.

So there's definitely at least one obvious solution we can create if this elite guard stays this calm... Or he just has an instant teleport option for himself and Jen, which calms him down as well...

"Okay, let's do it this way! If we hurry, we'll have a few extra minutes until they follow the trail and arrive at our place! Go, Patris!" Avan concluded, gesturing to the warrior to lead the way.

The group ran, and a minute later they did indeed arrive at a grove of large trees that had grown in exactly a three-way constellation, forming an almost perfect hollow between them, with only one attack path from one side.

Avan immediately sat down at the far end, back first against one of the trees, and went into deep meditation, where his thoughts could work faster and distract him less, such as preparing the other three.

Linob, in the meantime, had made himself comfortable by jumping and climbing very high up on a branch.

So, focus! I got this skill, and with it natural knowledge of how to use runes. So I know that there is a way to change the runes...

And with this first thought, he reproduced the spark rune again in front of his inner eye and finally went through the individual components piece by piece.

The runes are connected at certain points with simple mana threads, almost like visual scripting, as I know it from one of the famous game engines of that time! Instead of lines of code on code, these runes are words or queries, and the mana threads flow in and out at certain points... This place here should be the rune for heat, while the following rune should be some kind of... repel? So the first rune ignites the mana, and gives it the affinity of fire? While the second connected rune repels the fire mana forward... Would make sense. But is that true? Or does the first rune not stand for heat, but for electricity? Friction also creates sparks... Or electrical discharges. Not just the combustion process itself.

Ok, never mind... It converts the mana into the corresponding element, which here must be heat, i.e. fire. So that it ignites something. This fire is then repelled and flies super fast, through the second rune, in the direction you are pointing, so forward.

And with these thoughts, he focused on deciphering the runes and figuring out how to amplify the heat, while outside his meditation, an ever-approaching rumble and growl sounded in the forest as the red wolves approached. Patris was visibly sweating, no longer at all enthusiastic about his own plan and the trust he was giving their newest group member, while Dani nocked the first arrow and Jen, off to the side, prepared her small metal wand with the first reinforcements.

Avan was oblivious to all of this, sinking deeper and deeper into meditation.

Can I just pull the mana flow to the extreme and generate more heat, resulting in real fire? Almost as if the world knew what he wanted, it clicked and he abruptly noticed how the new skill [Origin of Runes] activated.

Fictitious mana flowed into the rune construct in his mind, and instead of the little trickle of mana, it was now a veritable flood of hundreds or even thousands of mana points.

The first thing Avan noticed when he recovered from his initial shock and surprise was something simple he could have thought of himself.

The mana threads, which were first fed and then forwarded by him, were too SMALL. Too thin, and too fragile.

With a simple mental command, he strengthened and thickened the tapered mana passages in the rune structure, and the mana flowed through faster, but faltered at the second problem; the much too small rune itself.

The mana flowed in the mental structure up to the rune, but stopped there because not enough mana could enter the rune at the same time, and the threads simply exploded with all the magical pressure. Okay, THAT doesn't look healthy at all! Nope, I don't want my finger, hand or even the whole arm to explode away like a stupid china firecracker.

The enlargement of the rune itself brought the desired effect, namely a massive heat that Avan thought he could feel even behind his eyes, but the process itself took many times longer than the incantation spark had actually needed before.

Suddenly, another idea came to him. Divide and rule!

He placed ten of the heat, or sparks, runes next to each other, connected each of the entrances with the same mana strand, and behind them the outgoing heat with a slightly thicker and more stable veriante of repulsion.

This structure now spewed a thick strand of its own mana, which merged into several normal-sized threads, each of which in turn fed its own heat rune. The heat thus generated flowed out the other end, into the small threads, and was combined into a thicker strand, to be catapulted out by the slightly larger rune of repulsion.

But here there was another problem, a final one; the speed at which the heat was pushed forward was too slow. A short experiment with several of the repulsion runes showed that only several sparks flew, but the heat was then again too little.

Avan pondered, and tried one or the other, but in the end could not avoid using a ten times as large repulsion rune as before, since the generated heat itself was also ten times as much as before. The speed, in contrast to the conversion of his mana into the fire attribute, was not many times slower, but just doubled the casting time of the spell.

So if I use, let's say, 50 heat runes, then the casting time of the original half second is... just under 3 seconds! That's quite a lot... but the red wolves regenerate even slower, and in that time the blood should be burned. The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

He opened his eyes again, and to his horror, it didn't look good at all, and Avan felt a brief twinge of guilt through his chest, as he thought that he could have used his forms to help.

"I think I got it!" Was all he shouted, and the alpha wolf, who was gnawing away at Patris' badly dented shield, glanced briefly at Avan and his ears twitched, almost as if he had somehow understood the intention behind the statement.

Avan himself pushed all distracting thoughts away and ordered his forms, hovering far above them, to become very sharp saw blades, only with even more sharp teeth, and cut the attacking wolves to pieces.

While his forms set to work with the new mental command, Avan himself instinctively summoned the runes before his mental eye, and this time really let his mana flow into the now much larger entity, which immediately took shape above the heads of his team in the physical world, glowing ominously orange. Orange threads came out of nowhere, starting a few inches in front of Avan, and ended in the 50 heat runes that floated in a row next to each other, and the generated heat immediately shot on toward the repelling rune, which hovered in the air the size of a fist and turned first from gray, to orange, and then to a dark red glow. The stream of mana that Avan directed into the construct did not subside, and he could guess roughly what the result would be that would shoot forth in a few moments.

Not a moment too late, just as the alpha red wolf was again suffering mortal wounds, an incredible heat came over the heads of the four and it felt like standing right next to a blast furnace.

With a *whoosh*, a jet of fire two fingers thick shot out of the outer end of the repelling rune and landed right next to the alpha red wolf on the forest floor, where it immediately ate its way deeper into the earth realm until Avan quickly mentally realigned the beam.

The alpha red wolf howled in terror as its head regenerated, but it was hit directly in the healing wound by the fire beam, and the air suddenly smelled of charred flesh.

Jen, the guarded one, was the first to vomit to the side as the smoke and smell of burnt blood and flesh that seemed slightly rotten reached the group. Avan, on the other hand, had to summon up his willpower, since he was far from finished, and tried with all his might to block out the smells, closing his eyes so as not to catch the heavy smoke. With his sphere of influence, he had no trouble directing the beam from wolf to wolf and taking the dismembered wolf parts under fire, which ended in a hiss of first boiling blood and then burning flesh.

Just as he arrived at the eighth wolf, he noticed his limbs getting heavier for the first time in forever, while a quick glance at his own mana confirmed to him that the ambient mana was not replenishing his own mana fast enough, which he was foolishly using as a source for the runes. As a result, the rune construction above his head consumed more mana than he could draw in with his nearly infinite supply of dungeon mana through his soul core.

Next time I'll use my dungeon mana directly, I'm an idiot!

He gritted his teeth as the headache worsened, and once again hurried to get the fire ray to the last two wolves as quickly as possible. Just as he was about to cast on the tenth and final wolf, the headache took over and the runes ran out of juice as his own mana pool was momentarily drained completely, and the rune structure blinked and disappeared.

"Fuuuuuck..." Was all he could produce in pain as he went down on his knees, holding his extremely pulsating skull in both hands while his dungeon mana was already sending healing into him and another mana signature joined it, as Jen too muttered a healing in panic and even under far too little mana.

A few moments later, with the mana pool already completely replenished, Avan dropped backwards to the ground and leaned against the tree trunk with his eyes closed. A quick wave of his hand signaled to the others that all was well, and they breathed a sigh of relief as they too sank to the forest floor.

The last wolf was already running away, and approached the edge of Avan's sphere of influence, only to disappear completely from it a short time later in the direction of the north.

The familiar chimes in the back of his mind reminded him of the battle news, which he had directly ignored in his concentration.

 

[Alpha Red Wolf - 145] defeated!

Experience gained.

 

[Red Wolf - 105] defeated!

Experience gained.

...

[Red Wolf - 111] defeated!

Experience gained.

 

Not really surprising for Avan was the lack of leveling up, as the wolves had simply been too low level to give him enough experience for leveling up with his level 188.

"Sooo... That was definitely a spectacle, Avan." Came the first quiet statement, from Patris of all people. Avan squinted over at the warrior with his eyes slightly open and silently gave a thumbs up, which made the man across from him grin.

"Yeppers, definitely something breathtaking. Which I can gladly do without this form in the future, if we should have the choice..." Jen added, still slightly green in the face, while Dani patted her back sympathetically.

The group sat there for some time, but no one talked about the actual working incantation that Avan had created just like that, or that the last wolf had run away.

They decided, after Linob had volunteered and looked quite proudly at Jen, to let him keep watch for a few hours, and to give themselves up to exhaustion on the spot, after Avan had of course pushed the charred wolf corpses a few meters away with his forms.

In a few hours, and after a required amount of sleep, they would set out on the trail of the last wolf, which would hopefully bring them to the origin of the red wolves.

And so, with the confidence that Linob would guard them properly, the four fell into another sleep. Meanwhile, Avan focused his sphere of influence so that he would wake up if anyone touched his things or came within half a meter of him.

---