The First Hunt (6)

After witnessing Evan get flung away by the wolf, Finn was prepared to step in and help. However, he stopped after seeing him staggering back to his feet and resuming the fight for his survival.

'That mana fluctuations coming from his body increased drastically after that black hue began covering his body. It seems familiar.'

Racking his brain, trying to recall where the sense of familiarity was coming from, Finn rubbed his chin as his expression resembled that of a clown.

Although on the outside he acts like a goofy clown that takes nothing seriously, he actually was quite a deep thinker on the inside, something which he rarely showed to other people, if ever.

After spending a few minutes trying to recall where he had seen that phenomenon before, to no avail, Finn decided to place that thought at the back of his mind as there were more pressing matters to attend to.

With a wide grin on his face, he walked up to Evan and patted his shoulder as he spoke.

"Congrats on getting your first kills newbie."

Listening to Finn's words, it was only then that the realisation that he committed his first act of murder dawned on him.

Strangely, instead of feeling down and guilty, a feral grin spread across Evan's face as his face flushed with excitement after a certain thought appeared in his mind.

Lifting his head to gaze at Finn's eyes, he asked a question that made him drool uncontrollably at the mere thought of it.

"When do you think we can roast this meat?"

Taken aback by the response, Finn thought he was hallucinating as he rubbed his ears to make sure they were still working.

Finding that they were working perfectly fine, he replied with a strange expression on his face.

"Probably when we get back to the outpost."

Helping Evan up from the ground, he couldn't help but feel he saw a strange side to this new squad member of his.

Seeing Finn's expression, Evan had an inkling of what was going through his mind as he sighed internally.

'After fighting to the death, I just realized how frail a human's life is. Threats greater than the last can snuff us out at any second. There is no point in maintaining my indifferent expression. It is just tiring. I can show different sides to me only when there isn't a chance it will come back and bite me in the future.'

Walking up to the corpses of the wolves, the duo began processing the most important items before they dumped the corpses in their storage rings to sell to the military later when they returned to the outpost.

After putting all the corpses in their storage rings with the aid of mana, Finn and Evan made their way towards the location where the other members of the Fanged Wolves were fighting that enormous wolf.

Passing through numerous craters and huge mountains of rubble from toppled buildings as a result of the fierce fight, a scene of carnage and destruction entered their vision.

Whistling internally at the sheer damage caused by one single fight, Evan couldn't help but wonder how large the scale of the battles the monarchs fought against alpha-level beasts was.

Just one fight at the lower end of the ranks caused this much damage, so Evan felt a battle at that level would be of catastrophic proportions.

Finally arriving at the area, he found Otto tiredly seated on the floor, drinking a potion to heal the minor injuries that appeared on his body.

Next to him, Astrid was standing with a pale face, as she too chugged down a potion, most likely to recover the mana she squandered.

Kang, meanwhile, was standing right beside the colossal corpse of the wolf leader, staring expressionlessly at the fruit of their combined teamwork.

Seeing Evan and Finn coming over, Otto heaved a brief sigh before speaking.

"Since as you are both in one piece, all is well, I presume?"

"Yeah, I easily dispatched the strongest of the weaker wolves. Only Evan had a slight issue with the last wolf, causing him to become injured."

Gazing at the battered state of Evan's body with his clothes ripped in multiple places, exposing some bare skin, Otto retrieved a potion from his storage ring before throwing it at him.

Catching it carefully for fear of dropping it, Evan gave Otto a confused look, who promptly explained:

"That's a low-tier healing potion. It will heal all your injuries in a few minutes, reverting your body back to its peak combat state before you got injured."

Nodding, Evan chugged the potion down as he felt a heat start blooming from his chest before spreading to the other parts of his body.

A few minutes later, after the heat finally faded away, he found that what Otto said was true: he was back to his peak combat state!

Moving his arms and legs and feeling no pain, he sighed in wonder at the miraculous effects of potions.

'Money really does make the world go round.'

Since he was so poor, Evan only managed to obtain some salves that were effective for healing bruises, he had no life-saving medicine like the low-tier healing potions as they were just too expensive to buy with the frugal amount of money he had left.

'After this mission is over, I should get an acceptable amount of money, allowing me to leave that god-awful place called the slums.'

Recalling his life in the slums, he shivered as he swore to himself not to end up there again.

The constant air of gloom and depression that revolved in the slums made it equivalent to a living hell, causing those unlucky enough to be born in an unprivileged environment to be trapped in a vicious cycle that provided no reprieve.

Evan thought that with the arrival of the apocalypse the situation in the slums became even worse than in the pre-apocalyptic era as those who had poor financial backing were destined to remain weak as they couldn't afford the resources to improve and break through the ranks.

Not to mention the inability to buy life-saving measures.

Evan's situation was a mixture of both sides of the coin. One side is from the slums and the other side is from the privileged.

He could confidently say that without the Demon Reaper Art and the Whispering Retribution Art, he would have been killed ten times over, as the lack of combat prowess he would have faced was a glaring problem.

'Sigh, the only way to break out of this cycle would be for me to be stronger, stronger, to be able to achieve anything I want. And the only way for me to go stronger is through battle, and this coincidentally aligns with the path of a warrior.'

With a bloodthirsty grin that screamed the desire to battle, a blazing fire of ambition began burning brightly in Evan's eyes, with his first hunt in the forbidden wilds coming to a successful close.