Chapter 6: Sprite

Alone, the Dark Froozbear stood enraged after having its rascals one-sidedly slaughtered in an instant.

"All three of you will pay for this!"

Vengeful, the Dark Froozbear began cleaving onto the snow as it ran towards the Lim and Maverick. Its elongated fangs protrude from its sharp set of teeth.

"I'm giving your dagger back," Lim handed over the weapon, calmly.

"Oh, right." Maverick took his dagger and let go of Lim's longsword. When he did a spin and a kick to the wolf's dome, his body felt light once it moved on its own. "Are we doing this?"

"Hell yeah!"

Lim gritted his teeth to a smile— his left eyebrow twitching from excitement. On the other hand, Maverick clenched his dagger tightly as he recalled all the inflicted pain, which made him suffer physically and mentally. How it almost broke him into pieces as he was being torn to pieces.

"I'm almost out of arrows!" Shouted Moruel. He jumped down from a tree branch and fell ankle-deep into the snow.

"Hoo? You're joining us?" Lim was surprised to see Moruel pulling up to the fight when he usually supported him from the sidelines with his bow and arrows. "Don't pull our legs now."

"Shut up. I'm taking that bastard's head."

"Heh, I guess it's a challenge, you guys!"

All three of them were fired up—exhilarated to go against the Dark Froozbear, expecting to annihilate the monster with their combined strength and tactics.

Standing before the approaching Dark Froozbear were Lim, Maverick, and Moruel who instantly dispersed in three directions when the monster was about five meters away.

Maverick stays in the middle, for the bear's eyes are set on him.

"Lim and I will assist you, Maverick! We will prevent it from focusing solely on you or each of us!"

"Once it targets any of us, keep your distance but not too far! Always be ready to support!"

"Got it!"

A pincer attack but with three of them. A triad is connected via an invisible string, which pulls them together when one of them moves away so that the triad stays the same—with three corners.

"I'm gonna slaughter you first like I did yesterday!"

No matter how many times the Dark Froozbear kills the Entrants they will keep respawning. However, based on the behavior Maverick exhibited yesterday, the Dark Froozbear gained new knowledge as to how to deal with them.

"I'll keep slaughtering all of you until you're nothing but an empty shell!"

A week ago in Frooz City...

White chivalrous knights in their healthy horses had pushed the Dark Witch to the edge—cornered with nowhere to go in the Frooz Woods. They had been investigating the series of disappearances of children and women in the city when a rumor of a Dark Witch sacrificing them for dark magic circulated.

A witness saw the Dark Witch abduct three children. The Dark Witch then proceeded to go back to its hiding spot, unbeknownst to her the trailing the witness did. She was followed to the forest and was seen taking the lives of the children to offer them to her deity.

Shocked by the discovery, the witness ran all the way from the forest to the authorities to tell them about what happened.

"Are you sure about what you saw?"

"I'm a hundred percent sure!" Traumatized by the event, the witness remained in the knights' care until she had calmed down. "S-She... The children..."

"Sir, I have mobilized our troops and they are ready to go!"

"Good! Follow me, soldiers!"

The White Knights set out in the middle of the night. Soon after, they arrived at the Dark Witch's house and she abhorred them for surrounding her house upon waking her up.

As soon as she stepped out of the front door, the White Knights came crashing onto her with magic and physical attacks. They leave her no time to escape, but the Dark Witch manages to activate a spell that allows her to transfer herself not far away from the house.

"Sir, she's not here!"

Although she was nowhere to be found, her burnt blood remained as the fire from the Dark Witch's house continued to spread across.

"Extinguish the fire before it spreads out to the trees! The witch is injured. I bet she hasn't gotten far! Ardon's and Marty's squadron will come with me!"

"Yes, sir!"

And that brought us to when they came across the Dark Witch with a wound on her left side as she was dragging herself away.

"The damage drained her mana, rendering her unable to instantaneously transfer herself to another location."

"Great job, Ardon!"

"Thank you, sir!"

The leader of the White Knights unmounted his horse. With each step he took, his polished armor clanks to the sound of his footsteps. Girded on his side was his sword, which he flawlessly unsheathed, thus bearing his blade against the Dark Witch.

"Several abductions of women and children, which were rumored to have been sacrificed for your selfish deeds! Do you know what your actions amount to?! Nothing! But the consequence of sin is death."

"Oh, why have you forsaken me, my god?! I have done everything you've told me and yet you delivered me to the hands of these impudent frauds! I won't let this slide!"

The Dark Witch began to chant in an unknown language even to the White Knights. And the leader, unaware of what she was trying to do, trusted his guts and impaled the Dark Witch directly to her heart halfway to her strange spell. His sword pinned her on the ground and she lost her life as her blood soaked her own clothes red.

"Insolent witch. She thought she could escape."

Unbeknownst to every White Knight, the Dark Witch was successful in transferring, not her body, but her soul to a Froozbear that happened to be near the scene. When she took over the body, the rough white fur gradually turned dark and it spoke its first words.

"I'll have my revenge!"

The Dark Froozbear swore on its life, however it does not have the power and strength to do so, that's why the monster went around gathering its rascals to turn into killing machines it can use against the numbers of the White Knights and then plunge the city into chaos.

Going back to the present timeline...

Maverick found himself taking a huge step back once he evaded a harrowing attack from the Dark Froozbear while Lim and Moruel both jumped in, inflicting shallow wounds, for the monster managed to avoid fatal injuries.

It lets out a wild growl—exclaiming its frustration towards the persistence of the best friends whenever it tries to keep Maverick in check.

"You cowards forced me to do this!"

[Thunder's Reach]

Its claws began to sizzle and sparkle when it lashed out its frustration towards Maverick, who wittingly avoided certain annihilation; its other free paw seized the best friends' movements by creating a fence of thunderstrike without looking back at them; and as it had expected, Maverick fell to its trap by having him leaped back. It raised its claw in the air and motioned, like casting down the judge's order.

[Zeus's Gavel]

"Above you, Maverick!"

Lim and Moruel wished to avert their gaze away from Maverick's direction but that would be taking their eyes off their enemy, so they forced themselves to witness their teammate go splatter on the snow as the fizzling electricity toasted what remained of Maverick.

[Party member, Maverick, has died.]

The Dark Froozbear's accurate prediction of how things would work out on its end instantly deleted Maverick off the face of the earth.

Deep heaving for air and an immense fleeting pain all over his body ached when Maverick came back to his senses. Yet again he had died and was completely defenseless about it.

[You have died.]

"Three minutes..." he mumbled. "Not only was the monster powerful, it was also smart and uncanny. I didn't expect it to just pull out electricity."

This time Maverick was not sad or any sort of feeling that would drag him down. He understood that there was nothing he could have done about it. He was in the middle of his retreat—the peak of his jump where evasion was hard to pull off.

"Now that I've disposed of one of you, time to eradicate the remaining two!"

The Dark Witch's affinity to dark magic and the Froozbear's affinity to ice and thunder allowed the Dark Froozbear to cultivate its thunderous magic, which it used against Maverick. Her and the monster's soul and core fused together, creating a magic new.

[Dark Thunder: Zeus's Hands]

With just the weave of both of the monster's hands, dark electricity emerges from its fingertips that tasered and toasted anything it touches.

"Damn!" Moruel cursed under his breath. "I didn't know it wielded such magic!"

"I'm not letting myself get hit by that monster's magic if I were you!"

"You don't have to always say the obvious!"

The reason why the Dark Froozbear did not use its magic was because it only had little capacity for mana and controlling the wolves did not allow it to replenish the drained energy. Its mana throughout the fight was stagnant with little to no regeneration after the wolves were disposed of.

"I'd like to see both of you escape this!"

[Zeus's Anger: Thunder Sprite]

Aside from the falling cold snowflakes, the magic spell created a sea of dark clouds that caused a rain of thunder, which melted the snow and struck down the trees it dawned on.

~