Camping out is something that all Hunters need to get used to as soon as possible. The world is vast and filled with dangerous creatures, and most of them are nocturnal. Having the ability to rest up during a long mission has become a necessity for the continuity of said mission. Therefore, the Royal Academy emphasized this in their education curriculum.
“Are you sure about this? We can set up some shifts instead of you hogging all that responsibility.” Kaishin inquired to the lone elf. Lighting a campfire in this dark, cold forest is a necessity, but it is also extremely unwise as it informs the inhabitants about their location. Nevertheless, they’ll have to deal with the darkness and the associated hazards with other methods.
“It’s fine.” Adraste waved her hand, “I can partially ‘shut down’ my brain function, reducing the amount of sleep I need. I’ll just nap for 5 to 15 minutes in the morning and we’ll be ready to go.”
“Let her do whatever. Get some shut eyes, since we’ll be walking a lot tomorrow.” Mordred ordered the rest of the team, which they obeyed.
After Kaishin, Nagata, and Desir departed to dreamland in their makeshift tents, Mordred approached Adraste who was responsible for the night guard. To entertain herself, she had been munching on a pale white snack bar, but the muffled sound of her munching was not similar to a wafer or a cookie. Instead, it was similar to metal being crushed.
Most people could not identify the difference between a dark elf and a gray elf, but that’s normal since gray elves only exist in Galatreon. Nevertheless, since gray elves’ roots are the same as dark elves, most of their traits were also similar, such as having the ability to see in the dark as if it were daytime, high resistance to most supernatural investigative methods, et cetera. However, since all gray elves are highly modified by the Great Archmage for his personal use, there are copious amounts of artificial organs that couldn’t be found in dark elves.
One of them was their stomach which was capable of breaking down the high-metallic content in their diet. As a result, each gray elf’s muscle fiber and tendons are similar to metal fiber instead of flesh and blood.
"Young master," she greeted with a slight nod, her voice laced with a hint of deference. "Would you like some?" she inquired, extending the snack bar towards him.
Mordred ignored her offer since he couldn’t digest the high metal content in that snack bar, it’ll just break his liver instead. “Although we’re not too far from the mini-station, the creatures in the Resource Point are still dangerous. There’s a clan of werewolves that hunted people for games in this area, are you aware of this?”
“Yes, young master. You don’t have to worry about anything. I’ll take care of it when the time comes.”
Mordred raised his eyebrow before his gaze traveled to a point behind her back.
Noticing his weird gaze, Adraste quickly turned around and caught a projectile with her bare hands. “Poison darts?” Adraste glanced at the three needles that managed to pierce her epidermis. Her dark skin turned purple for a brief moment before the needles and the poisons were ejected from the wounds. “Do you have any special request before I dispatch them, young master?” She whispered as she took on a leaping stance.
“Don’t kill them all, I need to harvest some information,” Mordred answered.
“Very well.” She almost practically disappears from his sight when she rushes forward. The darkness of the night as well as the thick foliage amongst the giant trees have covered this killing machine from sight before the sound of distant battle can be heard.
The scene reflected in Adraste’s violet eyes is a group of humanoids with large wolf ears on top of their head with some fur in parts of their body.
These creatures fall into the category of canine-beastman, or more specifically, werewolves that could take on ‘true form’ which are typically variations of wolf species. Being nocturnal creatures, the werewolves had no problem seeing in the darkness even in their ‘human form’, and having high intelligence meant they could cooperate to hunt their prey.
Unfortunately, their ambush has been detected by Mordred.
In the first place, Mordred had a [Passive Soul Sonar] killer move active at all times. It is a combination of sound-path and soul-path investigative methods that detect the soul fluctuation of lifeforms in a certain area. As long as one had a soul, it’d be hard to be truly ‘invisible’ from Mordred’s detection range.
At first, the werewolves were trying to aim for Mordred since he looked weaker from a distance, but he had positioned himself behind Adraste, using the elf as a shield. The werewolf’s leader proceeds with their ambush anyway since it doesn’t seem like this group of people is far stronger than their group. Unfortunately, the first barrage of poison darts seemed to not affect her, so when they tried to change other tactics, it was already too late.
The elf’s movement speed was significantly higher than what they had estimated. After all, most supernatural investigative methods have difficulties in piercing through a gray elf’s resistance, so they come up with the wrong parameters.
Among the four black-furred werewolves, the first one reacted by raising his arm as soon as Adraste came up to their line of sight. Crunch! Her fist broke the werewolf’s arm as it slightly bent at an unnatural angle, and she followed up with an uppercut without missing a beat with her non-dominant left hand. However, the werewolf’s reflex wasn’t something that should be underestimated either. He retreated, not only dodging her uppercut but also allowing his ally to cover for his retreat.
At this point, the three other werewolves have partially transformed their hands into large claws. Adraste hasn’t determined what species these werewolves are, but she doesn’t want to get wounded from those claws.
One of the werewolf race's signature bloodline abilities is their claws which placed a bloodline curse upon the wounds that they inflicted, causing them to have some resistance to healing methods. She has yet to identify what species these wolves are, so she doesn't want to risk her potion’s incompatibility with their bloodline abilities. As a medic, she is fully aware of how dangerous those claws are, so even with her flesh which is similar to metal fibers, she couldn’t just receive their attack like an idiot. This caused her to change her aggressive, brute-strength-oriented combat style to be focused on evasion.
The three werewolves are mid-stage rank 0, while the first one was a late-stage rank 0. In terms of cultivation base, the mid-stage rank 0 Adraste should be overwhelmed, but she came from Morgen World whose dimensional laws and level of civilization is much higher than the native of this world. Therefore, these werewolves can only pester Adraste for so long before they’ll eventually get decimated.
Unfortunately, their teamwork was impeccable. Relying on werewolves’ unnatural regeneration factor, whenever one of them got significant damage from one of Adraste’s punches, they would switch and allow the wounded one to recover. In fact, the first werewolf whose hand got broken had already joined up, ganging up on the lone elf.
Seeing this, Mordred shook his head and sighed. ‘Why aren’t you using a weapon…’
As if hearing Mordred’s inner voice, one of her knucklebones suddenly grew out of proportion, it turned into a 30-centimeter-long spike like a giant hornet’s stinger. The surprise weapon managed to pierce one of the werewolf’s heart, leaving some kind of calcified flesh on the edge of the wound. It wasn’t instant death, but the calcification of the wounded flesh countered the werewolf’s high regeneration factor. The wounded werewolf will eventually die after some time due to blood loss, but for now, he can no longer participate in the battle due to the gaping hole that pierced his heart.
The remaining werewolves are quite smart since they aren't a beast but an intellectual race. They learned that as long as it didn’t hit them, the bone stinger coming out of the elf’s fist wouldn’t be able to harm them, so they changed their tactics to attack her dominant hand.
Having her arm almost scraped by their claws multiple times made her vexed. She has to show her abilities to the young master, but these crafty beastmen don't allow her. “Fuck this.” She jumped back, and using the time before her foes were able to catch her, she pulled the bone spike out knuckles. Bone matter extended from the spike into her dominant hand, it was as if multiple distal phalanges were connected by a thread, creating an unnerving spectacle.
The result is a whip-like bone weapon that extends for almost half a meter. The edge of each segment has some prickly bone spurs that would shred someone’s flesh if it got tangled. Unfortunately, the whip took a lot of bone matter from her right hand. Her entire fist bones were taken, which made it flappy as if it were a piece of clothing.
Nevertheless, her weapon scared the shit out of them since it is laced with her bloodline energy that would calcify any flesh it touches, it is the bane for the armorless werewolves who rely on their regeneration factor.
Each time she swings her bone whip, it creates a sharp sound, but she can’t hit anything since the werewolves are also wary and intelligent enough to learn from their mistake.
To expedite this battle, she tried to boost herself by taking combat drugs out of her dimensional storage. However, telepathically interacting with her dimensional storage artifact would cost telepathic resources, it would mean distracting her attention elsewhere. In this unknown battlefield where a scratch could mean being cursed by the werewolf’s bloodline abilities, it’s better not to receive any damage.
Just as she is about to get hit due to being distracted, a gunshot can be heard. A few milliseconds later, the head of the first werewolf who was aiming for Adraste’s hand popped off like a balloon.
That was a signal to the werewolves that their hunt wasn't going well. The remaining two instantly decided to retreat in different directions, but both Mordred and Adraste had already expected this.
Due to the high amount of foliage and gigantic trees providing cover, even if Mordred could ‘see’ them through the vibration of the ground, he still couldn’t shoot his rifle, so he gave up on his target. On the other hand, Adraste took out and drank a potion from her dimensional storage, allowing her agility to increase manifold. With her newfound speed after chugging down the combat drug, she managed to capture the retreating werewolf by breaking his arms and legs to a point where his high regeneration factor would take some time.
“The smell of blood will warn other creatures… I’ll dissolve their corpse.” Just as Adraste was about to take some potion from her dimensional storage, Mordred stopped her.
“That’s fine, I’ll take care of it. Rank 0 blood-path killer move, [Blutentnahme]!” He pointed his palm towards the two corpses. At that instant, blood began to gather into a ball. The blood sphere enlarges as more blood is being siphoned from the corpses until it leaves mummified, withered corpses of unknown humanoid lifeforms. “[Blutopfer]!” With another activation of the blood-path killer move, the ball spontaneously combusted in blood-red flames, leaving three blood-red crystals the size of a distal phalange, before being kept by Mordred.
Naturally, it was Astaroth who activated the blood-path killer move, not Mordred. He can only admit the Demon Great Duke’s efficiency in converting raw blood into low-grade 'blood crystal', a 'mana crystal' equivalent for bloodline energy, is far superior to his.
“I’ve converted all the useful liquid into blood and extracted it, but I’ve left the bones untouched.” Mordred hinted.
Adraste smiled, “Thank you, young master.” She reverts the bone whip made out of her bone back into her dominant right arm.
Then, with both hands, he grabbed each of the mummified corpses’ necks as everything else other than the bones dissolved into ash. She then slapped the bones together, and the hard bones seemingly turned into something as soft as clay. She was able to shape the bone freely after channeling her bloodline energy into the bones of dead people, so she created a long bone sword out of them.
“Finished.” She swiped her long sword a couple of times before it slithered like a snake on her dominant arm, taking the form of a single-hand gauntlet with a weird design. “My apologies for showing a shameful display, I was hasty and did not prepare a bone weapon beforehand.”
“That’s alright, your secondary class is a Defender, not a DPS.” Mordred shrugged it off as he dragged the living werewolf away out of the campsite’s area. “I’ll be extracting information, don’t follow me.”
