The Rise of the Winter Wolf - Book 2 - Chapter 33 - Adjustment Problems (Patreon)

Wolf

The first thing I notice about my reflection aside from my eyes are the sharpened canines in my mouth and the color of my hair.

Why the hell did my hair turn as white as snow?

Ignoring that for now, I reach up to my face to pull my lips back with my hand, only to pause as I look at my gauntlets.

Wait a second… my fingers feel like they do after I activate my razor claws skill…

I take one of my gauntlets off to find that each of my fingers has claws instead of fingernails.

“Seriously?” I mutter as Crystal looks at my claws with intrigue on her face.

Ariana on the other hand doesn’t even seem to bat an eye at them.

I guess she is probably more used to this stuff, seeing as she wasn’t from Earth before the Initialization.

“I hope I can retract these,” I mutter before looking at the mirror again to see if there are any other differences.

At a glance, there doesn’t seem to be any other changes, but for some reason, my back feels really strange.

I partially take off the armament covering my torso before lifting my shirt and looking at my back in the mirror, only to find the majority of it covered in ice.

Before I can think about this new discovery, I wince as a pop sound comes from my ears before all of the noise near me suddenly amplifies drastically in volume.

“The hell?” I mutter while dropping my shirt and armaments back down and covering my ears with a grunt.

But it doesn’t end there.

Soon after the pop, a large flood of new smells suddenly begins entering my nose, followed by a sharp pain in my eyes as everything begins to become clearer.

I wrinkle my nose at the smells, but manage to tolerate them while still covering my ears as Crystal asks very loudly, “What’s wrong?”

Her words echo in my head despite me covering my ears before I grunt, “Please keep your voice down.”

I squint my eyes before looking up to see confusion written all over Crystal and Ariana’s faces before Crystal says, “But I’m not even talking very loud.”

Her voice once again echoes through my head giving me a splitting headache as I grunt once more in pain.

A look of realization crosses her face as she covers her mouth and says in a much quieter voice, “Is this better?”

I nod my head before slowly uncovering my ears to hear several more sounds that I normally wouldn’t be able to hear from here.

Shit, is this what the System meant by ‘extremely sensitive to sounds?’

Because being able to hear what sounds like the wind running through the trees outside of this building is going to take some getting used to! Not to mention that annoying stomping sound.

What is that even coming from anyways?

Some monster walking around outside?

Ariana and Crystal share a concerned glance before I say, “It sounds-”

I stop in the middle of my own words as I wince in pain at the sound of my voice before covering my ears again and continuing in a quieter tone, “My sense of hearing has sharply risen to a massive height. Even higher than my other senses.”

I grimace at the thought of my own voice hurting my ears. Please tell me I can adjust my hearing or something. Or maybe I will just get used to it over time?

Otherwise, I might need to have sound canceling headphones or something.

The other senses aren’t anywhere near as bad as my hearing is now. Sure, my sense of smell is a little bit uncomfortable, considering that I can smell some pretty nasty stuff coming from Sapphire, who is sitting on the other side of the room, but I can at least tune that out. This sense of hearing though…

It’s painful as hell, not to mention annoying to have to whisper and cover my ears just to not hurt myself by speaking…

“This is going to take some getting used to…” I whisper before slowly removing my hands from my ears and placing them on the sides of the bed to push myself up, only to instead push holes into the mattress.

I stare down at my hands that are still inside of the mattress for a few seconds before ripping them out and finding some bits of the mattress stuffing stuck to my claws.

My hearing isn’t the only thing that might take some getting used to…

I hear giggling that sounds like a full blown laughter before I look up to see Crystal covering her mouth while attempting to giggle as quietly as possible.

This is getting annoying.

“I will leave you to get used to your new changes,” I hear Ariana say from the other side of me before I turn to find her whispering into her hand. “You will be able to find me in the main room of the System store for the next hour or so.”

I nod my head in appreciation before she leaves with a still-giggling Crystal while softly shutting the door behind her.

Soon enough, I begin to hear their voices from the main room even clearer than I would have been able to hear them right in front of me before getting bitten.

“Those changes are very different from what the forums listed,” Ariana says with an intrigued tone of voice.

“Yeah, I guess it just goes to show how special of a species the harbingers are,” Crystal responds with… is that a hint of jealousy?

I chuckle at that before wincing as I reach up to cover my ears again.

Yeah, I am going to have to buy some noise canceling headphones or something like that at this point…

The two girls continue talking as I try to get up with only my legs, only to end up flinging myself off of the bed in into the wall behind me instead, making a very loud crash that makes me wince more at the sound than the crash itself.

I exhale a short break out of irritation before trying to get up again.

This could take a while…

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Arcadian Live

Laughter runs through the stadium as the once tense atmosphere now has nothing but relief and enjoyment as the near million viewers watch Wolf fail at simply standing up over and over again, with each attempt being more amusing than the last.

“And there he goes again!” Mikaela says in between laughs as Wolf ends up launching himself across the room from his attempt at getting up from the floor.

Katherine stands next to him while covering her mouth and giggling at the sight, meanwhile Niklai just stands to the side with a smile.

“I knew The Winter Wolf would pull through this. It’s just not in his nature to die,” Niklai says before his smile grows slightly at the sight of Wolf changing his approach to working his way up.

He first tries to crawl, only to fail at it and fling himself a few meters away into the bed. Then he tries to just grab onto the bed while pushing and pulling it to adjust his strength before somehow managing to send the bed straight into him, knocking him onto his back in the process as more waves of laughter fill the stadium.

“It’s a good thing that he is on a floor that is relatively safe for him,” Mikaela says with a smile stretched fully across his face, “otherwise he wouldn’t be able to experiment and adjust to his new body very well.”

Katherine’s smile begins to fade as she asks a question, “That’s true, but what exactly do you think he turned into?”

Mikaela’s smile fades before a perplexed look takes its place as he reads Wolf’s new species name in the description above the main screen.

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

Name: Wolf Adler

Title: The Winter Wolf

Species: Harbinger Lycanthrope

Level: 241

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

“I’m not really sure, if I am being honest,” Mikaela says with a shrug before adding, “it’s possible that a lycanthrope is just a different name for a werewolf, or it could just be a rare species of werewolf.”

“Someone would probably have to ask the Werewolf Empress or one of her subordinates for that information, seeing as they are the only faction that has werewolves in the System,” Niklai says before adding for the audience’s benefit, “they even tend to get hired from time to time by other factions to eliminate primal werewolf infestations.”

Right after he finishes speaking, the screen changes from showing Wolf to showing Ludric as he barely manages to kill an ent and a dark sprite brute with harsh wounds covering his body. He then downs a healing potion, followed quickly by a stamina potion before he continues making his way through the dark forest with a grim look on his face.

Mikaela chuckles at the sight and says, “Well, that’s what you get when you pull cowardly moves.”

Katherine and Niklai nod in agreement as a group of viewers that had been watching suddenly vanish from the viewing room.