The Rise of the Winter Wolf - Book 2 - Chapter 26 - Preparations (Patreon)

Wolf

“Well, this doesn’t look conspicuous at all,” I mutter as I stand in front of the large wall of mist containing multiple life sources inside of it.

I briefly glance at the mini boss symbol on my mini map before pushing my hand towards the wall of mist and expelling a thin wave of ice element to push it back.

The instant I do so, several cackling sounds come from within the mist as the life sources begin to approach me.

“These witches are creepy,” I mutter before expelling a large amount of ice element and piercing straight through the mist with it, causing the wall to split for a large area, revealing three of the witches as they point their staffs at me to launch little black balls of dark element.

I ignore the balls as they smack into my ice armor, only causing me to grunt a little at the impact as I call some of the ice element back from piercing through the mist to freeze the three witches in their places.

These witches feel a little pointless to me. At least the sprites gave me an enormous amount of EXP. These witches aren’t able to do anything to me with my ice armor, nor are they giving me very much EXP due to their low numbers.

Although they are a lot easier to kill at least, which makes it the perfect choice for which mini boss to fight.

And speaking of the mini boss, a loud, higher pitch cackling suddenly raises from the center of the mist before all of the mist suddenly begins swirling around, knocking my ice element out of the area and back towards me. Meanwhile, all of the other witches join in on the mini boss’s cackling as dozens of little black balls of dark element come shooting out of the mist towards me.

“Okay, so maybe these witches are more of a pain than I first thought,” I grunt as several of the orbs strike me in various places, only to leave faint bruising in their wake.

It’s unfortunate that the eternal ice isn’t the greatest at absorbing blunt damage… It’s not exactly the thickest form of armor that I could be using.

At least the orbs hitting me on the actual armaments themselves just fade without doing much.

I spread my hands to the ground and begin expelling all of my current ice element to join what is already out of me before creating various spears of ice and sending them flying towards each of the life sources I sense within the mist. This is immediately followed by the cackling going to a sudden halt as several reactions ranging from grunts of pain all the way to screams as witch after witch is impaled by my spears within the mist.

Unsurprisingly, I sense one of the witches – the one I have been assuming is the mini boss – move out of the way of my spear right as the swirling mist begins to calm down.

After going over the entire mist-covered area with my senses and failing to find any other signs of life outside of the one, I gather up the remaining ice element around me before pushing it all straight into the now-calm mist, splitting it apart as it goes straight towards the mini boss’s location.

This time, due to the large area covered by my ice element, the mini boss doesn’t have enough time to escape, and I soon see my ice pushing through the mist and freezing a larger witch wearing an entirely black outfit consisting of robes, pointed shoes, and a hat. It also appeared to be leaking mist out of its robe before it was frozen, but now all I see is a witch popsicle.

Surprisingly, despite being frozen, the witch still somehow manipulates the mist to form little spears that all move to strike me as other parts of the mist try to cover up the witch.

I raise an eyebrow at its actions before manipulating the ice covering its neck to pierce straight through into its throat before going up, through its mouth, and straight into its brain from the roof of its mouth.

The mist dissipates the instant the mini boss dies, revealing a door hidden near the witch at the center of the once-misty clearing surrounded by trees.

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Arcadian Live

“And that makes The Winter Wolf the first Competitor to reach the twenty-second floor!” Mikaela shouts only to pause before the audience can even get riled up about the announcement and say, “Wait, it looks like Deadshot is also about to defeat a mini boss!”

The screen shifts from showing Wolf as he approaches the mini boss chest that appeared next to the door to show Crystal as she fires one last arrow into the Haunted Greater Boar mini boss, finishing it off as it skids to a stop mid-charge in front of her.

“Well then! Who would have thought that these two would be moving on to the floor with the event boss at the same time!” Katherine exclaims with a look of pleasant surprise across her face. “But that works perfectly for-”

She is interrupted as gasps run through the audience as the screen changes to show Vulcan as he manages to dodge a different haunted greater boar’s charge to touch the door at the far end of the clearing.

“Holy shit! Vulcan just skipped the mini boss fight entirely to enter the twenty-second floor!” Mikaela shouts in surprise as shock radiates from his face.

Katherine stares at the screen before Mikaela breaks out of his shock and begins messing with his menus.

A few seconds later, two more screens – both about the same size as the main screen – appear next to the main screen, with one of them showing Wolf and the other showing Crystal.

No one says anything for a few minutes as Wolf and Crystal both claim their items from the mini boss chests before moving on to the door, meanwhile Vulcan looks around his location on the twenty-second floor before messing with his menus.

Mikaela finally breaks the silence as he slowly says, “It looks like the race for the event boss has just reached its main event.”

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Wolf

The instant the bright light fades from my teleportation, I open up my dungeon map to look for the event boss.

I grunt in annoyance when I see how far away the event boss is from me before I begin walking in its direction.

It looks like it should be several dozen kilometers to the east of my current location.

Based off my normal travel time on the past floors, I should probably get to a safe distance from it about a day from now. Which is honestly pretty fast when compared with how long it took me to travel a similar distance back on earth whenever we went hunting in the mountains.

Before I can get very far, I begin to hear giggling from the direction of a nearby tiny life source.

“Well, shit,” I mutter as I see two slightly larger versions of the dark sprites that were on the last floor flying in my direction while zipping around in circles.

_-| Unnamed – Dark Sprite Brute – Level 231 |-_

This floor theme isn’t going to be very good for magic users.

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Eighteen hours later

I look at the corner of my interface as I sit down to eat in the Expanded System Store.

My Info:

Level: 241

EXP: 3403/24100

System Points: 8133.41

Viewing Room Profits: 0

Sapphire’s Info:

Level: 88

EXP: 100/8800

“That should be plenty,” I mutter before leaning back in the chair at the table and opening the Player Auction sub-menu.

Time to buy something good before we deal with that event boss.

Soon enough, a frown emerges on my face as I look through the listings on the auctions.

Where is all of the Tier 8 stuff?

As if on cue, I tap the next page button and find a Tier 8 skill at the top of the next page.

Oh, I guess there just aren’t that many in the auction right now.

I completely ignore the Tier 8 skill due to my inability to use poison magic as I continue searching through the Player Auction for more Tier 8 items or skills.

“If only the buy sub-menu had better things in it,” I mutter as I move on again to the next page.

After half an hour of searching, I finally end up deciding on another pair of gauntlets that actually are pretty similar to the last one I failed to buy. Although these are focused on the gauntlets having claws, not them adapting to my hands to gain claws. And they give another effect instead of resistance.

Primal Claws of Bloodshed | Tier 8 | 6000 SP Starting Price

These gauntlets increase the wearer’s physical strength by 50% while also allowing the wearer to infuse an elemental energy into the gauntlets to grant bonus effects to your attacks.

They also deal a minor bleeding effect on anyone cut by these claws.

This bleeding effect will cause the wounds inflicted by these claws to bleed at a much faster pace for three seconds after the cut was made.

That bleeding effect will likely come in handy during battle, while also letting me focus on my razor claws skill a lot more than I have been.

I select the item before finding myself in another auction box as a monotonous, female voice echoes through the box, “Box 8 has just raised the bid to 6100 SP! Do we have any more bids?”

Without any hesitation, I raise the bid to 6300 SP.

Please don’t let the price go above what I can afford…

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The auction only lasts a few minutes before I manage to barely win it, bringing my total SP all the way down to a measly 333.41 SP.

A few seconds pass in silence as the window showing the host turns black before a pair of black and red gauntlets with sharp claws at the ends of each of the fingers appears in front of me before floating to my hand.

As soon as the claws are in my hands, I get kicked out of the auction box by the System to find myself back in the Store.

Surprisingly, I sense a life source standing outside of the door without moving.

“Huh?” I mutter in confusion before quickly turning my attention to the gauntlets to put them on before finding that the ends of the fingers are made out of some sort of stretchy material that molds to the shape of your fingers to fit someone with or without natural claws.

That’s convenient. So, they work both when I have my claws activated and when I don’t!

I identify the item to see if it has any sort of bonus effect for having claws, and surprisingly, it actually does!

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Tier 8 Primal Claws of Bloodshed:

These gauntlets increase the wearer’s physical strength by 50% while also allowing the wearer to infuse an elemental energy into the gauntlets to grant bonus effects to your attacks.

They also deal a minor bleeding effect on anyone cut by these claws.

This bleeding effect will cause the wounds inflicted by these claws to bleed at a much faster pace for three seconds after the cut was made.

Note: If the user naturally has claws – whether through a skill or their biology – then the bleeding effect will be extended to four seconds for each wound inflicted by these gauntlets.

Close

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Why didn’t it have that note when it was shown on the auction? Does the Player Auction just not show the notes in a description?

Either way, I bring the gauntlets up to my face to examine them.

The gauntlets themselves are black and red and reach halfway up my forearm, with sharp claws at the ends of each of the fingers. They have a red crescent moon on the backs of them, along with a strange sort of material under each of the fingers to make room for any rings that I put on under the gauntlets.

I can’t help but smile at the gauntlets.

These things are great!

My thoughts are interrupted as a knock comes from the door to the store before I hear Crystal’s voice say, “I am assuming that’s you on the other side of this door, Wolf? Unless someone else has the ability to freeze a door shut.”

Wait, Crystal is here?