Chapter 25 - Battle with a Wolf

[Attack Boost Activated!]

The howl from the wolf gave a small buff for Rynold, Oliver, and X. It empowered them to be stronger for the upcoming fight. The Mech Knight readied its weapon and decidedly blocked the way for the Rabid Alpha Wolf that they had to fight against.

Triggering the big wolf's aggro, X managed to sustain heavy damage just by standing in the way. Since the rabid wolf turned out to possess a lot more power than they had anticipated, Rynold and the rest had a hard time trying to attack it from the rear.

The weapons they used weren't enough to deal devastating blows to the wolf before them and what's worse is that the wolf showed no signs of stopping. Even if Oliver swung hard with his dagger, it could only deal short and shallow wounds on the wolf's thick hide.

The smaller wolf and Oliver were flickering in and out of sight, using their speed to their advantage to hurt the Rabid Alpha Wolf. Annoyingly, it didn't seem to work out in their favor.

Rynold, meanwhile, was trying to deal damage wherever he could hit it. But he was way too slow to deal any damage to the raging wolf. It was violent and rampaging that even X couldn't keep up with the hits. The battle was so one-sided that the amount of overall damage that X had taken was brutal.

Rynold might not want to summon his Mech Knight for a while because of how badly damaged it is.

"Tsk." Rynold was disappointed at how useless he felt. He couldn't even get near the wolf without him being thrown around like a little toy. He didn't have Oliver's speed to attack it with flashy attacks or X's stature to tank the wolf's advances.

Regardless, he had to make do with what he had.

He circled the wolf that was preoccupied with his Mech Knight in order to see an opening. Due to its large size, the overall movements were a bit sluggish but still violent to boot. The only opportunity he had to deal damage to something so massive and powerful was to target the weakness of any being that had sizable limbs.

The joints.

Without further delay, Rynold tried to maneuver around the flailing tail of the wolf and the large swings of its claws that made X a collection of dents and cuts. The only reasonable target was its hind legs but the tail was getting in the way.

"Damn."

Rynold had no other choice but to put everything he had for this fight, including the attribute points that he's saved up. He pulled up his attribute window and threw every single point he had to agility, bottoming his free points out.

Being Level 8, the points he's put into his Agility attribute amounted to 20 points in total, pushing his Agility attribute to 30 just like that. He was fast. Fast enough to finally join in the fight without being a burden to the rest of the team. The added bonus of pushing past the first threshold of Agility also made Rynold unlock the passive skill, [Innate Accelaration].

With that, Rynold joined the fray. He launched himself off the ground and reached his destination right away. Just a few inches away from his target, the Mana Gauntlets situated in his hands were trembling with excitement.

Boom!

Charging Fist-empowered Speed-form gauntlet strike made the wolf stagger when one of the joints of its hind legs were hit with the devastating blow.

Rynold instantly took the opportunity and made every hit count. He changed his gauntlets to Strength-from and dealt hits one after another on the leg that he was on top of. The blows continued to hurt the wolf but it didn't last long. Just three hits after the initial one did the wolf decide to shake off the annoying attacker from its hind legs.

Rynold was thrown off. Suffice it to say, there was a Rynold-shaped dent on a nearby tree that made even Oliver snap out from his concentration to look at the heavy blow.

Shaking his head, Rynold got back up and tried again. His perseverance was something to be admired by the normal man. He was coughing up blood while walking towards the wolf. Thankfully, the wolf was focused on his Mech Knight so he never had to worry that he would get directly targeted next.

Grapple.

Rynold shot his grapple to the upper back of the wolf which managed to pierce the wolf's hide. For some weird and unknown reason, the wolf was hurt — noticeably hurt.

Maybe it was a combination of Rynold's boiling Mana or just a lucky shot, it wasn't something that he had the luxury to think about now. He willed the Mana string to pull him towards the wolf and maneuvered himself so that he was physically on top of the Rabid Alpha Wolf.

"Wrahh!" Rynold yelled with great strength and slammed his gauntlets onto the Rabid Alpha Wolf's back. Sad to say, it didn't deal any massive damage to the target but left a wound in its place.

Rynold continued to smash his heavy gauntlets on the same spot that he was hitting for a few minutes now. The grapple was still fastened securely onto the wolf's back, making its efforts to throw Rynold off to be for naught.

Hit after hit, Rynold kept on going like all sensibility of him was gone as he pushed himself over the limit. Meanwhile, Oliver was keeping busy as well; he swung his dagger here and there with every ounce of his strength with each hit.

If a person were to see this fight that's been going on for a while now, they'd wonder if what they were doing was actually effective.

Regardless, this was the only thing that they could do for now. Every swing and hit was done in the hopes of chipping away at the wolf's health. After the cooldown of Charging Fist finally ended, Rynold stopped to see how badly hurt the wolf was.

The wound noticeably larger this time around, especially since the fur turned to a reddish color. The wolf also showed signs that it was getting tired. Apart from the fact that the cuts and bruises that the wolf has accumulated numbered to an incalculable amount, the movement that it was initially doing caused the cuts to bleed more.

What they were doing was working, but at what cost?

Rynold was tired and hurt. Oliver was starting to run out of fumes since his movements burned through his stamina. X was covered in dents and gigantic claw marks that made Rynold's heart sink. The little wolf wasn't faring any better than the rest of them either.

The battle was still ongoing but time seemed to pause for Rynold as his brain kicked into overdrive, thinking of what good way for them to end this. It wasn't going to be any good for them to keep fighting a battle of attrition, especially when it's so obvious that the wolf was going to win.

"Tsk, I guess there's no other choice," Rynold cursed once more. "X! Throw your longsword up high!"

The Mech Knight guarded a wolf bite with its left arm, making the wolf bite into tough metal and the fangs sank into the arm. Then, X threw the longsword high into the sky with its right arm.

"Give me a boost!" Rynold yelled at Oliver as he jumped straight to where the sword was thrown.

Without giving it much thought, Oliver followed Rynold up to the sky, jumping to where he jumped. Oliver then pushed Rynold up higher by giving his best friend a place to jump.

"This is gonna hurt," Oliver gnashed his teeth as he crossed his arms across his chest, giving Rynold a place to jump up.

Rynold took the opportunity that his buddy gave to him, only to miss the guy's arm and jumped on top of his stomach instead. It practically was a kick to the stomach at this point and Oliver got thrown to the side because of it.

With that second jump, Rynold managed to reach the longsword and grabbed its hilt. The weapon was massive and started to fall down at an accelerated rate. All he had to do was to guide it into place.

The ground was getting nearer and nearer and Rynold knew what he had to do. He pointed his grapple to where the wolf's main torso was and shot it in place, fixing where he would land. Then, he guided the sword ever so slightly to where the wolf was bruised by his relentless attacks beforehand.

'Hope this works!' Rynold thought to himself as he was internally screaming 'don't miss' on repeat. He grabbed the hilt tightly to wait for the perfect moment.

Once he reached the point of no return, he threw the longsword to where the bruise was. Rynold put everything he had onto that gamble.

Crack!

A large bone-crushing sound was heard when the longsword engraved itself into the wolf's hide.

Rynold willed the grapple to pull himself down, accelerating himself even more. He activated Charging Fist on his right gauntlet and, on his descent, tried to hit the hilt of the longsword.

Boom!

The fist echoed in the forest deep into the night and managed to push the longsword deep enough that the hilt was the only thing that could be seen from the top of the wolf.