The Prince

As I opened my eyes, I felt strange. I slowly sat up, looking around the forest around me. My heart rate increased a bit, adrenaline filling me the second I woke up. Honestly, for the first time in a long time, I was kind of nervous.

It was time. All the build-up was finally over.

The countless dire wolf attacks. The pack leaders. The commanders. The generals. They had all led up to today.

Today, I would take on the Great Wolf King. Today, I would take this section of the forest for myself.

"Good morning!" My nervousness faded away a bit as I glanced over, seeing Raya already awake and smiling softly at me.

"Good morning," I hummed, pushing myself as I started to stretch, preparing my body for what I would do today, "Have you been up long?"

"...yeah," Raya nodded, her face squishing slightly in nervousness as she spoke, "I didn't sleep well."

Well, that was understandable. We were about to go fight against the king of her race, as well as her father.

"It's fine to be nervous," I nodded, grinning at her comfortingly, "But you don't need to worry about anything. Just lead me to the king, and I'll do the rest."

She nodded at my words, her body relaxing slightly. 

I spent the next few minutes stretching and preparing myself, letting my body and instincts have time to wake up, and then it was time.

But, first, I decided that I should at least have some type of plan. I had gotten this far based on pure strength alone, as I was able to manhandle the generals regardless of their numbers or techniques, but I couldn't be so careless against the king himself.

I glanced over at my stats, my eyes roaming my skills as I started to think up a plan.

[Valon]

Level: 17 (19,975/80,000)

MP: 2,700

STR: 15,755

AGI: 12,725

END: 21,995

INT: 775

CHA: 4,450

LUK: 4,575

HREG: 115

MREG: 115

Skills: [Devour LVL17], [Reinforce LVL1], [Global Communication LVL7], [Quick Step LVL12], [Material Change LVL12], [Demonic Resistance LVL8], [Light Manipulation LVL5], [Fire Ball LVL5], [Intimidation LVL8], [Physical Resistance LVL9], [Physical Regeneration LVL10], [Physical Morph LVL7]

As I stared over my skills, a plan slowly formed in my mind. I walked over to a nearby tree, ignoring Raya's curious look as I placed my palm on it.

The tips of my fingers hardened from my new [Reinforce] skill, and I clenched my hands. My fingers dug into the bark, and then I yanked my arm back and ripped out a long strip of wood.

I was really starting to miss Chippy right now as I placed my hand on the top of the wood, yanking his downwards as my fingers tore at the bark. Roughly a minute later I was left with a makeshift spear tip.

It wasn't perfect, or even good, by any means, but it would be enough for my plan. I dug my hand into the tree again, ripping out strand after strand of wood and slowly carving them into spears with my bare hands.

"Should I help?" Raya asked to the side, tilting her head at me cutely, "I've never made one before, but I could probably… do better than that."

I followed her gaze to my sad excuse for a spear.

The quality of the spear didn't matter, but I wouldn't turn down more help.

"Sure," I nodded, and watched as Raya quickly got to work. She grabbed one of the bootleg spears, lifting the tip up to her mouth.

She opened her mouth, biting into the spear tips as her teeth moved like a shredder. 

Right, she might look like a human girl with floppy ears, but she was actually still a dire wolf.

A few seconds later, she spit out a chunk of wood and held up the spear to me. I nodded appreciatively at her work, as the jutted spear tip was more smoothed out and sharper.

We continued like that for roughly an hour, me making the spears themselves as Raya fixed and refined them. 

Finally, after an hour of work, I was satisfied. Around me was a pile of spears, numbering roughly 50.

"What are you going to do with these?" Raya asked questioningly, glancing up at me, "Should I use them to help in the fight? I have pretty good aim."

"Nah, I have a different use for them," I hummed, reaching down and starting to collect the spears, "But you can help me carry them."

I was glad I had Raya to help because I couldn't carry the entire pile of spears alone. Not because they were too heavy, but because there were simply too many. I didn't have enough hands to hold them all, and they'd slide out of my arms if I tried to gather them all.

Finally, when we had all the spears gathered, we started our trek towards the king.

"Lead the way," I said simply, barely able to even see her over the huge pile of wooden spears in my arms.

I had apparently picked the worst possible trip to be carrying a ton of spears, because we had to walk a long way.

I followed Raya through the forest, and eventually, the ground started to become steep. We climbed upwards, walking up the dirt floor like a ramp as we progressively climbed higher and higher into the air.

I hadn't realized it before, as I hadn't taken a moment to really look around the forest as a whole since I first arrived in this world, but there was a giant ass mountain in the middle of it.

Or, more specifically, in the corner of it. From the direction we were walking, I could tell that we were walking deeper and deeper into the dire wolf-ruled corner of the forest. 

It seemed that the wolf king stayed all the way in the corner of his land, on top of a giant mountain.

As we climbed higher and higher, we were interrupted by a voice.

"Raya!" A growl came from further ahead, and I peeked around the pile of spears in my arms to see a wolf standing in front of us, "You dare to show your face, you traitor?!"

The wolf in front of us was very human-like, looking nearly identical to a mid-20s-year-old man. He had smooth pale skin, a muscular frame, and slanted black eyes.

Similar to Raya, the only thing that gave away that he wasn't a human was the pair of ears on his head, the sharp teeth flashing at us as he spoke, and the long mane of messy black hair.

[Ragno] [Dire Wolf Prince] - Level 59

A prince, huh? So he was Raya's older brother.

He was also even stronger than Gorn had been - though noticeably not by much.

"Ragno," Raya said, looking up at the prince in front of him, "Are you going to try and stop us, brother?"

"Don't call me your brother, you filthy traitor!" The man-wolf yelled, taking a step toward us, "You don't have that right after you betrayed us!"

"I'm doing what I have to!" Raya countered, glaring forward at Ragno, "You know as well as I do that our Father is leading our race to its extinction! I won't just stand by as he sends countless of our kind to their deaths!"

"You…" Ragno's face became twisted in anger, and his body tensed, "You dare to try and speak down to me after what you did, you bitch?!"

As he finished his sentence, he shot forward, "I'll kill you!"

"Hey," I hummed, casually letting the spears in my hands fall to the ground as I wrapped my hand around one. As I did, the bark slowly changed, becoming harder and tougher as I used [Reinforce] on.

I shot forward, my arm lashing out as I held the spear out. I slammed it sideways, the middle of the now steel-hard spear slamming into the Prince's stomach as he tried to reach Raya.

"GAH!" Ragno coughed, spit flying from his mouth from the impact. He was sent flying backward, rolling on the ground until he landed flat on his back.

"Raya is mine now," I said casually, pointing the spear at his downed body as he glared up with a fire in his eyes, "Even if you're her brother, I'll kill you for saying something like that again."

"I-I'm yours…" Raya muttered behind me, and I glanced back to see the girl's face beet-red as she glanced away.

I didn't mean it like that, damn it! I meant it like, 'she's my subordinate now'! 

Whatever.

I ignored the blushing girl behind me as Ragno pushed himself to his feet, wincing as he put a hand on his gut.

"You bastard…" Ragno huffed, "Don't get cocky just because you killed a couple of our generals! I'm nothing like those weaklings!"

I casually glanced at his level, which was only 2 higher than Gorn's had been.

He is, quite literally, exactly like those weaklings.

However, my eyes widened as my thoughts were actually proven wrong. Ragno huffed, his breathing heavy as he glared forward at me. 

Abruptly, his body stiffened, his body completely tense. He closed his eyes, his face wrinkled in focus. Then, a faint blue glow surrounded his body.

A second later, he was suddenly right in my face, his arm cocked back. 

I jerked my head back, letting his clawed hand fly past my face by mere inches.

Did he just use a skill?

If I had been a bit slower - ok, maybe not a bit.

If I had been a fair bit slower - ok, maybe not fair bit.

If I had been significantly slower - ok, also not significantly.

If I had been A LOT slower, then it would've actually worked.

Unfortunately for Ragno, he couldn't even compare to me in regards to speed, even with his skill. My arm lashed upwards, and my hand wrapped around his neck.

"ARGH!"

I pushed my arm forward, hoisting Ragno up in the air as he let out a pained gurgle. I held him by his throat casually, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Where'd you learn to do that? Can you all do that?" I asked, starting to interrogate the man.

I had never seen a monster use an actual skill so far - not even the generals had used one.

However, instead of getting an answer, I instead had to tilt my head to the side as he spat a glob of spit at me.

"A-As if I'd tell you, bastard…" He grunted, his face twisted in pain as I applied more pressure to his neck. He reached, up, his claws digging into my hand as he tried to pry it off of his neck.

"Whatever," I hummed.

I'm sure I'll see more monsters who use skills in the future. I can just ask them.

"Are you fine if I kill him?" I asked casually, my other hand shifting into a blade as I angled it at my head and looked back at Raya. He was still her brother - I should at least ask.

Before Raya could even answer, I had to jerk my head back to look at the prince. It wasn't him who moved, but instead someone else.

A black blur shot down from higher up on the mountain ahead of us, grabbing the prince and ripping him from my grip. Before I could even react, the blur was gone, standing a couple of dozen feet in front of me.

I barely even kept track of him as he moved - this might be more of a problem than I thought it would be.

"You finally showed up," The blur stated, and I took in his form as he stood arrogantly in front of me.

As opposed to his human-looking children, this figure was instead more wolf than man. That wasn't to say he was completely wolf, as he still stood on two legs.

He was huge - as in, really huge. He stood at roughly 15 feet tall, towering over double my height. He had muscles upon muscles bulging from his body, the outline of them being visible even through his thick layer of fur. He had a long snout with sharp teeth and was covered head-to-toe in thick blue fur.

His pitch-black eyes stared down at me, looking down on me as if I was an ant.

[Ragnar] [Dire Wolf King] - Level 100

"You shouldn't have," Ragnar spat out arrogantly, his teeth shining as he stared down at me, "If you couldn't react to that, then you have no chance of… huh?"

He slowly looked down, staring as a splotch of blood flowed down his chest.

I said I had barely been able to keep track of his movements - barely is the keyword here. It wasn't easy, but I had still done it.

In the split second, before he had gotten away with the prince, I had lashed out my bladed hand, slashing through his thick fur and drawing a bit of blood.

"Don't look down on me, alright?" I chuckled, my eyes lighting up as I stared down the king at last, "I'll try my best to do the same, but it's hard."

The King's expression shifted, turning from arrogant to slightly impressed. He tensed his body, a new appreciation in his eyes as he stared me down.

"I'll enjoy killing you." He said simply, a grin forming on his face.

"I wish I could say the same," I hummed, my body tensing as I grinned.

"Try not to die too fast, alright?"

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AN: Thank you for reading! The next chapter will be out next Wednesday (5 Days from now) or you can read ahead right now at Patreon.com/Koyon !