The Rise of the Winter Wolf - Book 2 - Chapter 18 - Progress (Patreon)

Aegis Live
Two days later

“Aaaand, that makes all three of the current top competitors on the seventeenth floor!” Aaron shouts before turning to the audience and commenting, “Who would have thought that The Winter Wolf would lose his lead so quickly? And all because of a little spider!”

As if on cue, the main screen changes from Vulcan as he enters the seventeenth floor to show Wolf letting a two-and-a-half-foot long Sapphire bite into the neck of a scythian spider.

Meanwhile, two different descriptions appear above the screen instead of the usual one.

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

Name: Wolf Adler

Title: The Winter Wolf

Species: Harbinger

Level: 188

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

Companion Name: Sapphire

Species: Arctic Eternal Tarachnid

Level: 53

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

“Or, maybe not so little anymore,” Aaron jokes as everyone watches Sapphire injects something from her incisors into the spider that very slowly begins to freeze the spider from the inside.

Many viewers in the audience grimace at the sight while Aaron thinks to himself, ‘And to think that spider is only his companion… It’s already at a higher level than the average level on Aegis!’

Aaron shakes his head to dislodge the thought before he says, “From what I have been able to gather, most of the top Competitors are all shooting for the event boss that spawned on the 22nd floor a while back. Some of them are even planning on working together against it!”

The audience grows in excitement at this news before Aaron continues, “Does anyone have any guesses as to what the event boss might be?”

Dozens of random guesses ranging from canine type monsters to aquatic monsters, and even to parasitic type monsters ring out throughout the theatre.

“We still don’t have much of an idea about how the event bosses work aside from a basic rundown of them, but we do at least know that they follow the theme of the floors, just like any other monster in the dungeon, so we might get a hint at what it is when the Competitors reach the 21stfloor,” Aaron interrupts the shouting before turning to look at Wolf and Sapphire. “Now we just have to wait to see which of the Competitors will find the event boss first, and if they will survive their encounter!”

Wolf

“Good girl,” I tell Sapphire as she approaches me after having finished off the last spider.

She has certainly grown a lot since she first hatched. So much so that she can’t fit on my shoulder anymore, to her obvious chagrin.

Every time she tries to approach me, she ends up trying to climb up my leg, only to pause as she remembers me telling her that she was too big to do that anymore.

It’s a little bit sad to see, but she is getting a lot stronger at least. She has even gained a few skills, such as Frostbite, which inserts a liquid-ice venom into the bloodstream of the target, causing them to slowly begin to freeze from the inside out.

I pat Sapphire’s head before opening the common loot box, grabbing the potion that comes out of it, and starting towards the entrance to the nest with Sapphire following closely behind me.

It might be about time to start looking for the mini boss. My eternal ice should work on anything about 9 levels above me right now, so I should be perfectly fine for fighting it.

That said…

I glance at Sapphire before turning forwards again.

It might be for the best to have Sapphire hide in my shadow for that fight.

Aside from my more… difficult… fights with the nightmare spiders, I have kept Sapphire out of my shadow as I fight. Mostly because it seems to help her contribution a tiny bit. But a mini boss fight is another thing entirely.

I pause as we reach the nest’s exit before I open my dungeon map to find the closest mini boss to my current location.

Over the past few days on this floor, I have managed to find three different mini bosses. Although two of them were the same species.

I have also done some research on them since, mostly during the times that I was waiting for Sapphire to finish off her spiders. One of the mini bosses is an enormous, three-meter-tall spider with blades making up its legs, and a strange metallic horn sticking out above its eyes. Meanwhile, the other mini boss was just a larger version of the nightmare spiders. Just with a complete immunity to magic instead of the partial immunity that the nightmare spiders have.

Which makes it obvious which mini boss I am going to choose.

As I am looking at the map, Sapphire rubs her head against my leg, so I reach down to pet her whilst being careful of the icy spikes that started growing on her back at some point, and the icy hairs covering her body.

I look up from the map towards the south.

It looks like the closest Greater Scythian Arachnid is in that direction.

I send Sapphire one last glance before starting towards the direction of the mini boss’s nest.

It takes several dozen minutes of walking through the jungle whilst occasionally killing a spider or two before I sense a large life force enter my range, followed by a couple dozen other, smaller life forces.

I glance at my map again before nodding and closing the map.

“Get into my shadow, Sapphire,” I order without turning to her before I feel her enter my shadow.

Now that she’s safe, I slowly begin to make my way through the rest of the jungle to find a clearing surrounding a large cliff. The cliff itself, like many of the mini bosses in the jungle, has a cave with the mini boss’s life source inside. The cave itself also has a few scythian arachnids entering and leaving it, along with a couple of them climbing up and down little webs that are scattered throughout the clearing, and on the cliff itself.

This one might be a bit harder to pick them off without the others noticing me, strictly because of how many of them are outside of the cave…

I release my ice element before having it snake around towards the sides of the cliff.

All I can do is try to get my ice element as close to them as possible before they realize its there. At that point, it should be too late for them to do anything about it.

Several seconds pass by as I slowly snake my ice element around the clearing until the spiders finally notice what I am doing and begin making a screeching noise as they rub their metallic limbs together.

“Damn it,” I mutter before shooting my ice element straight at each of the spiders, quickly freezing them in place, starting with the limbs they are rubbing together.

Unfortunately, the damage is already done as I sense several more scythian arachnids beginning to approach the cave’s entrance, along with the mini boss.

“At least it’s not all of them,” I mutter before drawing my sword and activating both of my claws while stepping into the outskirts of the clearing.

Soon enough, several scythian arachnids begin to leave the cave as a three-meter-tall scythian arachnid steps out behind them before freezing as it sees me.

_-| Unnamed – Greater Scythian Arachnid – Level 192 |-_

Nothing moves for a couple of seconds before all of the scythian arachnids begin rubbing their metallic limbs together, making a very annoying screech that I block out by covering my ears with ice.

I take advantage of their actions by controlling the ice element slowly filling up the area to rush towards the scythian arachnids, partially freezing half of them before the other half all stop rubbing their limbs together to sprint out of the way. Meanwhile, the half that was frozen remain locked in place as my ice element continues freezing the moisture in the air around them, turning them into complete statues of ice.

The mini boss doesn’t take kindly to this as it suddenly slices one of its metallic legs through the air in front of it, sending a light shockwave directly at me.

I quickly roll to the side to dodge it before it flies right past me into the trees behind me, cutting them about a meter above the ground and making the trees begin falling to the ground around me.

“Shit!” I swear before getting back to my feet and breaking into a sprint further into the clearing, only for the remaining scythian arachnids to swing their own legs at me as well, sending their own smaller versions of shockwaves.

I raise my hand to create a shield of eternal ice before the small shockwaves crash into the shield, knocking me backwards with a grunt.

The mini boss begins to raise its limb again for another attack as I am getting back to my feet before I expel more ice element into the area, concealing myself in a large cloud of icy mist.

As expected, the mini boss lowers its leg again in confusion as all of its eyes begin to search through the mist for me.

Before it can find me, I create more ice element to expel out of the cloud straight at the remaining scythian arachnids to take them out of the picture.

This pisses off the mini boss even more as it begins rubbing its back legs together before raising two of its limbs this time.

“And that’s check mate,” I mutter as I suddenly create a massive amount of ice element before sending it in several different arcs out of the cloud towards the greater scythian arachnid.

The mini boss seems to notice the arcs as fear appears on its face, but it continues with its attack regardless, sending two large shockwaves towards the cloud of ice.

I quickly roll close to the ground out of the cloud before both of the shockwaves go straight through the cloud into the trees beyond. Meanwhile, my ice element strikes true at the mini boss, freezing it from all directions until it joins its minions in becoming a spider popsicle.

“And that’s one more mini boss statue for the dungeon,” I mutter before turning my attention to the cave and manipulating some of my remaining ice element to spread into the mini boss’s lair to freeze the few scythian arachnids that didn’t leave with the mini boss.

As soon as that is taken care of, I glance behind me at my shadow and say, “You can come out now.”

Eight black eyes glowing a very faint blue appear in my shadow before Sapphire begins to climb out of it to appear next to me.

She then hurries up to me and begins rubbing up against me like a dog.

I smile at her before grabbing a stamina potion out of my inventory and pointing at the spider popsicles, “Time for dinner.”