The Rise of the Winter Wolf - Book 2 - Chapter 41 - Strange Desires (Patreon)

Wolf

I stare up at the moons for a few more minutes before finally replacing my limiter, cleaning myself of blood, and shifting back to my neutral form.

That fight wasn’t as difficult as I was expecting. I get the feeling that his reputation was greater than he actually deserved, ability wise.

I glance around the clearing once more as a last look before I move on, only to pause as I notice something… strange.

“The hell…?” I mutter in confusion as I walk a few meters towards Vulcan’s arm that I had torn off earlier before crouching next to it. The arm itself has a strange blueish-black liquid running through its veins before leaking out with his blood at the part where it used to connect to his shoulder.

“Interesting…” I mutter while crouching with my arms leaning on my knees, “it looks like my venom isn’t the same as a werewolf’s venom…”

Now that I think about it, the System never said anything about my venom.

Considering the coloring of my venom, it looks like it will have some sort of ice effect to it, but will it turn someone into a lycanthrope like me? And if that’s true, what does that even mean? Will they have the same physical abilities as me? Or would they also gain ice related powers?

Seeing as my harbinger mutation is from a class, they shouldn’t be able to use my eternal ice, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t gain some sort of ice manipulation or creation power from it.

After all, the more powerful undead species tend to gain the ability to create miasma, meanwhile the vampires gain the ability to manipulate blood, so it could be possible.

That said, I don’t think I have read anything on the forums about a virus giving someone the ability to manipulate or create a primary element, like ice.

I shake my head before climbing back to my feet. It might be best to test this out on some of the monsters within the dungeon.

Unfortunately, I get the feeling that the dark sprite brutes would just die if I tried to bite them, and I would rather not bite wood, so the ents are out as well.

“Which means,” I mutter as I turn around to face the direction I can hear the odd sounding giggling coming from, “it’s time to take on another mini boss.”

I quickly down a stamina potion before starting in the direction of the noise.

It only takes me a few minutes of running before I begin to smell something that is oddly similar to the smell of strawberry jelly.

As I continue to run, the smell continues to get stronger and stronger until I get within a couple dozen meters of the source of the giggling and a symbol marking a mini boss appears on my dungeon map.

Wait, is that smell the mini boss itself? It actually smells kind of good…

That said, it’s probably not safe to eat a mini boss.

Especially if it’s a tiny, at least partially humanoid, sprite.

I pause for a second as the thought that my new lycanthrope nature might be influencing my thoughts regarding the appetizing smell of the creature before I shake my head to clear it.

Now isn’t a good time to be thinking about that.

I slowly make my way towards a very bright, and colorful tree; taking complete advantage of my stealth skill before I notice a fat looking sprite at the tree’s base.

_-| Unnamed – Dark Sprite Glutton – Level 245 |-_

Huh? It’s not actually that strong. Level-wise at least.

I down another stamina potion just to top me up before looking around the rest of the clearing at the dozens of dark sprites.

That said, those other fellas don’t look very nice, or appetizing.

The instant I realize what I had just thought I hit myself in the forehead to clear my head of that thought before deciding to enter with a bang.

They may be immune to magic, but I should still be able to use my magic as a distraction, and a brief smokescreen.

I quietly create more ice element, seeing as I had used up most of my stored element in my battle with Vulcan, before having it slowly spread into the clearing. The dark sprites look at it with a brief curiosity before one or two of them fly over towards it.

The ice element near it immediately dispels as it gets too close, signaling me to turn it all into a sudden blizzard before I rush into the clearing and begin tearing the sprites apart with my gauntleted claws.

Unfortunately, the brief confusion of the sprites doesn’t last long as portions of my blizzard constantly vanish as soon as it gets within a foot of the dark sprites.

That said, it still gives me plenty of time to shred through the dark sprites, decreasing their numbers amongst the frozen snow and showers of blood to half of what they were before I arrived.

As soon as the blizzard begins to clear, the dark sprites realize what was happening and begin making a noise I had never heard from them before.

Shrieks.

Shrieks so loud, and so numerous that I have to turn up the soundproofing on my headphones with a wince as I stumble forwards slightly. A few of the dark sprites takes advantage of this and shoots several dark orbs into my back, almost causing me to lose my footing and fall face first into the ground.

Fortunately for me, I catch myself before quickly grabbing two daggers from my inventory and tossing them at two of the nuisances. After that, I lock my eyes on the mini boss that has just been sitting next to the tree doing nothing this entire time before rushing straight towards it.

Suddenly, in the middle of my run, I bounce off of some sort of invisible barrier before landing with a grunt on the ground. The stupid dark sprites all take advantage of my fall to pound me with dozens of balls of darkness.

It takes me three seconds of this before I lose it and shift into my hunter form again with a loud roar of anger.

This startles the dark sprites, causing them to pause in their onslaught before I raise my limiter slightly to get up to my feet before reaching out and crushing the closest dark sprite within my claws. I then slam my other fist into another sprite, knocking it several meters away as I snap my jaws forwards in anger, closing them around half of the body of a sprite and cutting it in half as a foul tasting liquid fills my mouth.

The liquid snaps me out of my anger before I spit out the body with a grunt of disgust.

Okay, that slight fog seems to make it more difficult to hold back any emotions. It doesn’t necessarily force me to act in any particular manner, but it blocks some of my reasoning. Which could be a problem in the future.

That said, I continue to shred the dark sprites apart without using my teeth this time because that’s just disgusting.

It takes me about a minute to realize that a lot of the bruising on my body from the dark sprite’s attacks is actually healing slowly by itself as some of my ice element moves directly from my bone marrow where it’s produced to heal me.

That’s helpful.

I guess the System was right. There are multiple things that it missed. Not only the thing about my venom, but also this.

I continue shredding through the dark sprites until the only one remaining is the mini boss, still surprisingly just lounging around next to the tree.

“The fuck…?” I mutter in confusion before walking up to where I hit the invisible barrier earlier. As I reach forwards to touch it, I feel something slowly bend outwards before a clear barrier suddenly becomes visible and shatters.

I tilt my head in confusion.

Why did it break at that light touch? Did something happen since the time I rammed into it and now?

Surprisingly, the mini boss finally bolts up from its place next to the tree before it actually tries to run away from me.

I pull a knife out of my inventory before tossing it at the bugger, clearly cutting straight through one of its wings and making it crash into the ground several meters away from me.

With a strange look on my face, I begin to approach the mini boss before picking it up.

“You are the mini boss… right?” I mutter in confusion as I hold it by its one remaining wing as the other bleeds out a green liquid.

Wait a second…

I ignore the frantic movements of the mini boss in my hand to turn to the dark sprites around me.

After taking a look through them all, I turn to the fella held between my thumb and index finger as a smile stretches across my face.

“Your barrier was dependent on the number of dark sprites around you,” I say to the thing despite it not being able to answer me, “wasn’t it?”