After accepting the Side Quest, Elias hurried off toward the hill north of the Aurelle mansion.
He ran the whole way, terrified that either Evelyn or Elysia might wake up and come looking for him, so his plan was to wrap this up as fast as humanly possible.
Halfway up the hill, Elias stopped for a moment, since it was too dark for him to see anything properly.
Worried a monster might come lunging out of the darkness at any second, he pulled a Magic Talisman from his storage pouch and channeled a bit of mana into it.
The Talisman floated up above his head, casting enough light to illuminate the area around him.
Before he started running again, he grabbed a few rocks from beneath a tree and tossed them into his storage pouch.
A little while later, with a bit of help from the system, Elias finally reached his destination.
He hopped up into a tree to scout the area and dialed back the mana feeding the Talisman so its glow dimmed down a bit.
“How am I supposed to scout when I can’t even see anything in this darkness?”
“Is this really the right place?”
The system screen popped up beside his head.
[Do not doubt the System’s directions.]
“I’m not doubting you. If this is the place, where’s the wolf pack?”
[Since you’ve already entered their hunting territory, they’re naturally already here.]
“Tch… I knew this was going to take forever.”
Elias grabbed one of the rocks he’d picked up earlier, bit his finger until it bled, and smeared the blood across the stone.
“If they won’t come out on their own, I’ll just make them.”
He then hurled the rock toward a wide open spot he could see clearly from up in the tree.
No matter how you looked at it, these monsters were wolves, and with their sharp sense of smell, the scent of fresh blood was the perfect way to lure the pack out.
After waiting a while, not a single monster showed up.
Confused and more than a little annoyed, Elias finally asked the system while scratching his head.
“You said this was their territory. So where are they?! Not a single one’s shown up.”
[One has been here for a while now.]
“What? Where?”
[Right beside you.]
“Quit joking! What kind of wolf can climb a tre… e?”
When Elias turned to look beside him, his face froze in pure shock and disbelief, because there really was a wolf that could climb trees, and it was staring him dead in the eyes at that very moment.
[Since the scent on your finger is stronger than the one on the rock, they chose to head for the strongest source.]
“Why didn’t you say that earlier?”
[You didn’t ask.]
“Damn it! Would you actually answer if I did ask?”
[Of course not.]
Without warning, the wolf lunged at Elias, but he managed to dodge in time by dropping down out of the tree.
Once he hit the ground, pairs of glowing red eyes flickered to life all around him out of the darkness, the Iron Wolf Fang pack that had been waiting for him the whole time.
Realizing that fighting in terrain packed with trees wouldn’t work in his favor, Elias decided to lead the pack toward a more open area with far fewer trees.
“Come and get me, you mangy mutts!”
*ROAR!
The plan to lure the pack worked.
At the end of the day, they were still mindless monsters, and provoking or baiting them was a piece of cake for Elias.
While he ran with the Iron Wolf Fangs chasing him, a few of them nearly caught up, but right before they could actually sink their teeth into him, Elias hurled rocks infused with mana straight at them.
‘Nice!
I’ll thin out their numbers too!
I’ve got a feeling a pack that actually knows how to coordinate is gonna be a nightmare to fight.’
Elias channeled mana into his legs and leaped from branch to branch, pumping mana into his sword at the same time.
Then he launched himself into the air, twisting his body around toward the pack below, his sword already spinning fast in his palm.
“Since this is our first meeting, consider this a gift from me!”
With mana concentrated into a single point, the sword shot down toward the pack of Iron Wolf Fangs.
*BOOM!
Since mana packed into a single point got released all at once the instant it hit something, it set off an explosion big enough to leave a crater in the ground.
Elias then pulled his sword back using the mana thread he’d attached beforehand.
He knew hurling your weapon at the enemy probably wasn’t the smartest move, but his strongest attack right now happened to be a thrust that involved throwing his weapon.
That had gotten him thinking about tying the hilt of his sword to a thin thread made of mana.
Not only was it hard to see, it was also tough, more flexible, and easy to control depending on how skilled the user was.
“So how about that, huh? That’s what my Level 4 basic sword skill can do!”
The attack took out a huge number of Iron Wolf Fangs, but it wasn’t enough, because there turned out to be far more of them than he’d expected.
When he turned around to run again, he found some of the Iron Wolf Fangs had already cut off his path.
“Haha… Damn. They really do know how to work together. Are these seriously mindless monsters?”
To guard against attacks from blind spots in the dark forest, Elias pumped more mana into the Magic Talisman floating above him to brighten its glow.
Once he felt ready, he struck first, since the time he had was pretty limited anyway.
He channeled mana into his legs and shot toward one of them.
Seeing Elias suddenly charging its way, the wolf ran right back at him, followed by several other wolves trailing close behind.
Right as the gap between them closed, Elias used a Teleportation Magic Talisman and blinked to a spot above the whole pack.
Then he scattered the rocks from his pouch, each one wrapped in an explosive Magic Talisman, over the pack of wolves below.
“Time for fireworks!”
*BOOM!
The wolves caught in the blast died instantly, though a few managed to hang on, badly wounded.
In the end, though, they all died anyway once their bodies got consumed by the flames left over from the explosion.
Elias threw his sword at a tree, and once the blade lodged itself firmly in the trunk, he yanked himself over before he could fall into the blaze below.
“I just killed half of them without even breaking a sweat. Goodness, how am I this smart?”
Elias pulled his sword back out of the tree, then pointed it at the remaining wolves still glaring up at him.
“Where’s your leader? Bring him out here and face me!”
[You have defeated the leader of the Iron Wolf Fang pack! You’ve gained 100 Exp!]
[Ding! Your Level has increased 15 -> 16]
Reading the notification that popped up on the system screen, Elias stared at it hard, mouth hanging slightly open in shock.
“Seriously? When did I kill him?”
[You just turned him into Barbecue.]
“…”
Elias turned to stare at the roaring flames beside him with a completely flat expression.
No wonder the remaining wolves looked so terrified, their leader was already dead.
Grade-D monsters were still a bit of a pain for Elias, especially with how well they coordinated, but he could still keep up with them!
Besides, their fighting spirit had already dropped.
“Come on over, little doggies. Don’t you want revenge for your leader?”
Even though their movements were still coordinated, without a leader to direct the pack, their attacks turned sloppy and chaotic.
A few Iron Wolf Fangs pounced on Elias from different directions all at once.
He swung his sword right away to block one attack before spinning around and cutting down the wolf trying to strike from the side.
But another wolf was already charging in from behind, forcing Elias to duck so its claws only swept over the top of his head.
‘That was close!’
Elias backed away a few steps, still swinging his sword nonstop.
Every time he tried to go after one of them, another wolf immediately rushed in to cover for it.
A few of them even deliberately struck from his blind spots, forcing him to keep moving so he wouldn’t get surrounded.
“You guys are really starting to piss me off.”
Elias wrapped both legs in mana and shot toward one of the wolves.
He slashed it from the side, cutting deep across its belly.
He didn’t stop there.
He used the momentum of the slash to spin his body around before kicking the wolf clean off its feet, sending it flying, its insides spilling out.
Seeing their packmate die, two other wolves immediately gave chase.
Elias jumped up onto one of the trees to dodge their attacks, then drove his sword into the trunk and used the mana thread to pull his body in a different direction.
“If you guys like working together so much…”
Elias yanked one of the airborne wolves using the mana thread, changing its trajectory so it crashed right into another wolf.
“…then I can use that against you too.”
Not wasting the opening, Elias shot forward and cut down one of the wolves that had lost its balance.
After that, he kept moving, using the trees and the wolves’ own positioning to split them apart and take them out one by one.
It didn’t take long before every last Iron Wolf Fang had fallen.
“Hah… Hah…”
Elias stood there catching his breath, then flicked his sword to shake the blood off the blade.
He had no idea whether the wolves’ fangs were worth anything or not.
But just in case, he collected fangs from every corpse that was still intact.
He didn’t stop at the fangs either.
He skinned a few of the wolves too, figuring you never knew what might come in handy down the line.
“Hmm… Guess that’s enough for now. Alright, time to head back to the mansion before sunrise. Otherwise I’m definitely ending up like Seraphina, or worse!”
Elias sheathed his sword and took off running down the hill as fast as he could go.
Some distance away from the wolf corpses, a pair of eyes emerged from the darkness of the forest, watching Elias as he ran before shifting their gaze to the bodies of the fallen Iron Wolf Fangs.
While Elias sprinted along with a panicked face and sweat pouring down, terrified of getting caught, a system screen popped up beside his head without him noticing.
[Ding!]
[Side Quest: Exterminate the Iron Wolf Fang Pack and the Devil Apes has been completed!]
[You’ve received 5 Stat Points, 500 Exp, 10 Grade C Mana Stones, and the Three Easy Ways to Discover Your Arcana for Beginners, No Password guide!]
“Please, sun, don’t come up yet! I’m not ready to die~!”