The Rise of the Winter Wolf - Book 2 - Chapter 17 - Training (Patreon)

Wolf

Sapphire purrs louder at my statement, so I guess it’s safe to assume that she likes the name.

My smile widens a little bit before I turn my attention back to the menu to see that the name has changed.

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Name: Sapphire

Species: Arctic Eternal Tarachnid

Level: 1 | Not Synced

EXP: 0/100

Skills List

Revive | Current price: 0 SP | Companion must be dead to use this.

Return

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Wait a second, what’s with that eternal part in her name…? Did my eternal ice affect her?

I turn back to Sapphire as she sits down on my shoulder while raising an eyebrow before focusing my senses on the parts of her body that appear to be made out of ice.

Huh, she actually does have some of my eternal ice making up parts of her body…

That will be helpful.

Does that mean that she will be able to manipulate my eternal ice later on as well? It only said that she will be able to manipulate her element and not create it, but if she can manipulate my eternal ice, then she will definitely come in useful later on when she is strong enough. And when I am able to generate a lot more of my ice element.

I turn my head back to her mini status again before selecting her skills list.

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Skills:

Stealth – Tier 3 – Level 5

Fire Immunity – Tier 7 – Level 1

Increased Recovery – Tier 5 – Level 2

Return

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“Oh?” I mutter before feeling Sapphire shift on my shoulder.

It looks like she has three of the same skills I have.

I wonder if it was just a coincidence that she got those three skills, or if it chose those three because they are really the only ones that would be of much use to her outside of ice flow?

Either way, they make a pretty good set of skills for her.

That said…

I turn my head to look at Sapphire, who immediately looks up at me from her place on my shoulder.

“How am I going to level you up?” I slowly mutter to myself.

Sapphire just tilts her head in confusion.

She seems to have a pretty decent intelligence for a spider, but it obviously isn’t enough to really have much of an interaction.

I wonder if her intelligence will raise as she levels up? Or maybe when her level syncs with mine?

Not to mention her size.

She is a little bit too small right now. If she had poison, then it would be fine. But… she doesn’t seem to have any poison. So, she is a little too helpless right now.

I sigh before looking around the cavern once more and starting towards the exit.

This floor might not be the best floor to train her on, considering the spiders that have a minor immunity to magic, but I might be able to train her against the scythian arachnids.

Sapphire purrs one last time before looking alert as I leave the nest into the jungle beyond.

I reach up to pet her again while muttering, “Let’s get you some levels.”

“Alright, now go kill the spider, okay Sapphire?” I urge her as I stand in front of several frozen scythian spiders within another nest.

I froze them all in ice without killing them so that I could get her some EXP, seeing as she isn’t exactly fit to kill them on her own right now.

Sapphire looks between me and the spiders before bobbing up and down and jumping off of my shoulder on to the spider. She then goes to the hole that I made in the ice for her and begins slowly burrowing into the spider through its spinnerets on her own.

The scythian spider itself suddenly begins straining a lot harder against the ice to no avail as Sapphire literally digs through its insides until it falls completely still, giving me a notification.

“Oh?” I mutter in surprise.

I get a notification when she levels?

Also, that was a lot of levels. It looks like she gets over half of the contribution if she is the one to actually kill it, seeing as all I did was hold it in place with my ice.

That being said, three…

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Name: Sapphire

Species: Arctic Eternal Tarachnid

Level: 4 | Not Synced

EXP: 124/400

Skills List

Revive | Current price: 0 SP | Companion must be dead to use this.

Return

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

…and a fourth levels just from one kill is pretty impressive.

But this is still going to take quite a while to sync her up to my level…

I mutter a brief goodbye to my lead before seeing Sapphire come back out of the spider.

“That one next,” I tell her while pointing at the next spider over.

Sapphire nods her head before quickly moving over to the next spider.

This might take a while.

Arcadian Live

“This is not something that I ever expected to see this early on in the dungeon run,” Mikaela says while shaking his head as everyone in the stadium watches Sapphire slowly kill each spider one by one, shooting up levels in the process.

The stadium is relatively quiet, with the only noises being several whispered conversations around the stadium, along with the noises made by Sapphire as she continues her gruesome work, having already been dyed with the gray color of the scythian spiders’ blood.

Meanwhile, Wolf just stands to the side while messing with his menus.

“I mean,” Katherine begins while tilting her head at the screen, “if you ignore what Sapphire is doing right now, along with all of the blood, then she does look kind of cute.”

Mikaela raises an eyebrow at her as he says, “Yes, as cute as a spider currently burrowing itself inside of other spiders to kill them can be.”

“That being said, I do have to admit that she is a little bit cute,” Mikaela admits before turning back to the screen and adding, “although that won’t last for long, considering that she is a soul-bound companion.”

Katherine frowns while nodding her head, “That’s true. Companions tend to get bigger and smarter as they level up to a certain point.”

This causes some upset amongst the audience as several shouts ring out.

“No! We want Sapphire to remain cute!” “Forever tiny spider!” “Little Sapphire!”

Mikaela and Katherine share an amused glance before shrugging.

“I’m sorry, but that’s just not how it works,” Mikaela says, “although she might get a skill that will allow her to shrink back down to her current size later on.”

This seems to placate the new Sapphire fans as they begin to calm down.

Mikaela raises an eyebrow again at this as he thinks, ‘Who would have thought that The Winter Wolf’s new companion would already have a fanbase after such little time has passed…’

Wolf
A few hours later

“Is it just me, or have you gotten bigger?” I mutter as I feel Sapphire’s weight on my shoulder.

Sapphire just tilts her head in confusion while purring.

Yes, yes, I get it. You aren’t intelligent enough to really understand anything but mundane stuff at this point.

I did manage to find out through the System Forums that a companion’s intelligence will raise as it levels, but now I am starting to wonder if its size increases as well. Although it would make sense if that were the case. Especially when considering just how small Sapphire is.

That said, she is leveling at a decent pace. It is too bad that it’s slowing my own leveling pace down by quite a bit though.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Name: Sapphire

Species: Arctic Eternal Tarachnid

Level: 26 | Not Synced

EXP: 641/2600

Skills List

Revive | Current price: 0 SP | Companion must be dead to use this.

Return

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Each of the scythian spiders seems to give around 700-800 EXP to her, with the rest going to me, so it quickly stopped giving entire levels each kill.

Unfortunately.

That said, this is still just her getting EXP from contribution, so it’s not the full EXP from the monsters.

There is no way that I am going to be able to keep my lead with her sucking away over half of my EXP, so I am going to have to speed up my hunting.

Not to mention those magic resistant spiders… I have to have Sapphire hide in my shadow every time we come across them!

“Why couldn’t I have gotten you ten floors ago,” I mutter before turning away from Sapphire and leaving the current nest.