The Rise of the Winter Wolf - Book 2 - Chapter 24 - The Third Theme (Patreon)

Wolf

“These items are pretty good,” I mutter after I put on amulet before taking the sword currently in my ice sheath and putting it into my inventory to replace with my new sword.

Now then… Where is the door?

I look around my surroundings for the exit but fail to find anything near me.

Sapphire suddenly jumps out of my shadow before looking up down the hole at the boss.

“Don’t worry, it’s dead,” I tell her with a pat on her head before starting in a random direction through the web.

Please let me find the stupid thing before someone else comes to this web.

It ends up taking me almost an hour, but I finally find the exit on the side of one of the trees holding up the web.

I look around the enormous web I’m standing on one last time before walking up to the door and touching it.

A bright flash of green light shines from the door before I find myself standing in another very dark forest. Except this time, it’s not a jungle, and there aren’t any webs to be seen.

The trees in this forest are entirely made up of large oak trees. They stand ranging from around fifteen to twenty meters in height, with their trunks being about two to three meters in thickness. Meanwhile, there are two moons in the sky, with both of them being crescent moons.

Sapphire jumps out of my shadow just as four small, floating life sources enter my range of senses.

Right as I draw my sword, I get a surprising notification from the System.

“Oh?” I mutter in surprise before shaking my head and focusing on the approaching life sources.

Unfortunately, this floor is pretty damn dark, with the only light being that of the faint blue light leaking through the trees overhead from the two moons, so it’s difficult to...

My thoughts trail off as three faintly glowing, tiny, human-like creatures with black, insect-like wings on their backs suddenly fly from around a tree while giggling.

Are these…

_-| Unnamed – Dark Sprite – Level 220 |-_

Dark sprites. Not very high level ones too. Or at least not when compared to the boss on the last floor.

Although the boss on the last floor probably slaughtered a lot of monsters on the floor before any Competitor reached it…

Anyways, I raise my hand to send a wave if ice element straight at them.

For some reason, the sprites don’t even bother dodging it and just giggle before it hits them and dissipates into nothing.

“The hell?” I mutter before taking a step backwards as one of the sprites shoots some sort of bolt of dark energy at my chest, only for it to not do anything.

Are they immune to magic?

I sprint straight at them before slashing my claws straight through one of them, tearing large gashes across its entire body and flinging it straight into a nearby tree while cutting another one of them in half.

My brows furrow in confusion as the third dark sprite begins flying off while giggling.

I sit in the eerie silence of the dark forest for several seconds before I mutter, “What just happened?”

Executive Stream
A few hours later

Wilhelm blankly stares at the screen as it shows Vulcan as he burns down the boss’s nest on the twentieth floor, causing the boss to fall down to the ground four dozen meters below the web and crash into it, sending tremors throughout the area before it slowly gets back to its feet, with two of them being broken.

‘He is using a very similar strategy to the one that harbinger used…’ Wilhelm thinks to himself while rubbing his chin. ‘Knock the boss down from its web and use the fall damage to his advantage.’

His thoughts are interrupted as a bright white light fills the room before a creature with the red, crooked horns of an orc, mixed with a fiery red skin and bright red eyes that occasionally leak sparks of fire appears in front of him.

Wilhelm looks him up and down once before saying, “Torusk.”

The fire harbinger – Torusk – looks at Wilhlem before turning his attention to the screen to see Wolf on the screen next to Vulcan.

As soon as he sees him, the occasional sparks flying from his eyes turn into full-on flames as he shouts, “It’s that damnable ice harbinger!”

Wilhelm watches Torusk’s outbreak as he thinks to himself, ‘As expected. Fire and ice don’t mix. Even regarding harbingers.’

Torusk’s skin begins to blister into flames before Wilhelm says, “Please calm down. I have a proposition to make.”

This quickly diminishes the rage building up in Torusk as he turns to Wilhelm without saying anything.

Wilhelm just glances at the other screen showing Vulcan as he struggles against the wounded nerscillus.

Torusk looks at the screen as well before Wilhelm says, “This man – if you haven’t already heard of him – is one of the few Competitors who murders every other Competitor he sees and has the highest chance of killing The Winter Wolf.”

He then turns to Torusk as he asks, “In other words, if you want the ice harbinger dead, then he is your best bet.”

The room falls quiet with the only sound being that of Vulcan fighting the boss until a large grin emerges on Torusk’s face several seconds later. He then immediately vanishes from the room without saying a word to Wilhelm.

Wilhelm looks at where he was standing for a few seconds before vanishing from the room himself.

Wolf

“Stupid!” I shout while shredding a sprite apart with my claws.

“Fucking!” I continue without pausing as I shift my balance to dodge another sprite before kicking it in its backside.

“Sprites!!” I finish while drawing my sword and cutting another sprite in half as a short shower of purple blood sprays over myself and the grass around me.

What is with this massive number of dark sprites anyways!

I pant in exhaustion while looking around at the dozens of nine-inch-tall dark sprite corpses scattered around me, along with the pool of purple blood beginning to cover the ground.

They aren’t very strong in and of themselves, but they sure as hell are annoying!

I clean my sword via my ice before sheathing it and looking at Sapphire, who is still hiding in my shadow.

Unfortunately, their immunity to magic makes it a lot more difficult to train her on this floor…

Hopefully the other monsters on this floor are more easily used to train her.

As if on cue, I begin to hear a strange sort of cackling noise in the distance.

Is that a witch or something?

I start walking forwards before sensing a life source enter my senses as a strange shack suddenly appears about a dozen meters in front of me. The shack is surrounded by an eerie mist, which is only even creepier when combined with the darkness of the night, and the silence of the forest.

“The hell?” I mutter before entering the mist to approach the shack.

The mist itself doesn’t seem cold nor warm. In fact, I can’t really feel it at all.

Which is odd, but I continue making my way towards the shack before another cackle comes out from it, confirming that this was the origin.

I immediately let my ice element spill out of me, pushing the mist away from me and causing the cackling to instantly come to a stop.

Did the witch, or whatever is making the cackling noise not like me getting rid of the mist?

My answer quickly comes to me as the door to the shack bursts open and a creature rushes out with a staff in hand before the shack itself fades into the remaining mist. The creature itself definitely looks like some sort of witch. It has long pointed ears, greenish-black skin, no hair, and some sort of black robe on.

_-| Unnamed – Dark Witch – Level 227 |-_

“Interesting,” I mutter as I send a wave of ice element straight at the witch, freezing her into a block of ice before calling out to Sapphire, “Come out, girl!”

Sapphire quickly comes out of my shadow before looking at me, then the witch. She then quickly comes to her own conclusion and starts towards the witch.

“Good girl,” I call after her before glancing at the top right corner of my interface.

My Info:

Level: 223

EXP: 1403/22300

System Points: 63.41

Viewing Room Profits: 5959

Sapphire’s Info:

Level: 85

EXP: 6800/8500

That’s not bad, but the gap between me and Sapphire’s levels is just increasing…

I glance back at Sapphire as she kills the dark witch before shaking my head.

It will be best to deal with getting her to my level after we deal with the event boss on the next floor.

“Sapphire!” I call out again before turning to the west.

She quickly joins me before entering my shadow.

Maybe I can find a store nearby. I should be able to afford a Tier 8 skill or item with this amount of SP.