The Rise of the Winter Wolf - Book 2 - Chapter 48 - Nearly There (Patreon)

Wolf
Ten days later, on the twenty-fifth floor

“So close,” I mutter with a glance at the corner of my interface.

My Info:

Level: 269

EXP: 11463/26900

System Points: 2493.20

Viewing Room Profits: 1085

Sapphire’s Info:

Level: 265

EXP: 3190/26500

Just a little bit more to go and we will finally be synced.

I turn my attention back to Sapphire’s fight with the nightbat swarm.

_-| Unnamed – Nightbat – Level 268 |-_

They may be a higher level than her on average, but Sapphire is still quite a bit physically stronger than they are. Especially with the eternal ice making up her fur, and some of the spikes poking out of her body.

I continue to let my ice element flow out of me, filling the area of trees around us and covering everything with a light frost before Sapphire uses it to freeze several of the nightbats solid.

Her manipulation of my ice isn’t anywhere near as good as mine is, but it isn’t something to scoff at either.

Although, at some point over the past couple of weeks, I got curious about whether or not I could turn her into an Arctic Lycanthrope. Mostly for the benefit of the naturally generated ice element.

So I researched it.

As it turns out, nothing can change the species of a soul-bound companion except for natural evolutions. Which means that even if I wanted to turn her, I couldn’t

That said, apparently most soul-bound companions tend to evolve when they sync up with their master. So there is still hope that she might gain the ability to generate some ice element on her own.

I am interrupted from my thoughts as another level-up notification appears on the edge of my interface for Sapphire before she approaches me from the pile of frozen nightbat corpses and purrs.

These nightbat swarms are doing wonders for her leveling. They aren’t all that powerful and are pretty easy to kill with my ice. It’s too bad that they aren’t very common on this floor.

Probably due to the large number of bats in each swarm.

I glance at the newest ring on my fingers before muttering, “I’m going to have way too many rings by the end of this dungeon, aren’t I?”

My future collection of rings aside, it was nice to find this ring on the Auction. It’s just like the other one from before that made an impenetrable barrier, except that this one would block one attack from creatures level 1000 and below once a month.

A very nice item to have to get me out of a jam.

Even if it was expensive as hell, especially for its Tier.

Like, seriously? A Tier 6 item selling for as much as a Tier 8? What’s up with that?

I get that it is an item that would normally only be found within the Administrator Dungeon, but still.

Sapphire rubs her head up against me, pushing me back a little bit from the force. At this point, she is about two and a half meters long, with a height of about a meter. She has several large spikes of eternal ice sticking out of her back, and even out of her legs in the joint areas, with little furs made out of eternal ice running throughout her body.

Unfortunately, she is a little bit too big to sneak around with me anymore – at least until she gets her size manipulation skill when our levels sync – so she has been needing to hide in my shadow more and more as we move.

And she isn’t very happy about it.

I rub her head for a few seconds before saying, “Alright, let’s go.”

She makes a sad sound before going back into my shadow as I lower the soundproofing on my headphones to listen for the next monster to hunt.

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Arcadian Live

“And we have our first Competitor to have reached the thirtieth floor!!!” Mikaela shouts with excitement as cheers run rampant throughout the audience.

Amidst the cheers are shouts of anticipation from those most interested in what the boss will be as they watch Norbert look around the eerie forest around him. The forest is shrouded in a fog, with nothing but the occasional ray of moonlight breaking through the far stretching branches of the large oak trees scattered throughout the floor.

“What do you think the boss will be this time?” Katherine asks with obvious curiosity.

Norbert begins carefully moving through the forest before raising his hand and manipulating some of his blood to leave through his palm. He then has the blood form into an arc and fly straight through the fog, cutting it apart like butter and clearing the way before the arc comes straight back through the fog and reenters his body through his palm.

“My guess would be either a dark sprite champion, a dark sprite lord, or a dark sprite ruler,” Niklai says from the side to which Mikaela nods his head in agreement.

“Yeah,” Mikaela begins, “although my bet would be on the dark sprite ruler.”

A grin stretches across Niklai’s face as he turns to Mikaela and says, “Oh? Do you want to open a bet for it?”

A matching grin appears on Mikaela’s face as he says, “Of course!”

“Alright then,” Niklai says as he begins messing with his menus, “then I will go ahead and bet on it being a dark sprite lord.”

Katherine looks between the two with a raised eyebrow before shrugging and saying, “If that’s the case, then I will go ahead and bet on it being a dark sprite champion.”

Both of the male commentators look at her in surprise.

She just shrugs again and says, “What? Both of you are doing it, so I might as well join in.”

Laughter runs through the audience at this before thousands of people amongst the audience begin opening their own menus to join in on the fun.

Meanwhile, on the main screen, Norbert runs into a dark sprite glutton surrounded by over a dozen dark sprites.

Waves of cheering erupt from the viewers not participating in the betting before the commentators all look up again to see the main screen.

“Another glutton, eh?” Mikaela mutters before his eyes widen and he turns to Niklai and says, “Let’s see how many followers the Competitors have now!”

He then waves his hand as Niklai nods in agreement before a screen, slightly different from the last time he did this, appears next to the main screen.

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

Total Competitors: 128

Wolf Adler | The Winter Wolf | 16,683,750 Followers | 0 Current Sponsors | Harbinger Lycanthrope

Crystal Leblanc | Deadshot |15,492,805 Followers | 0 Current Sponsors | Human

Ariana Silverheart | Silver Siren |13,515,074 Followers | 0 Current Sponsors | Siren

Norbert Heinrich | Nosferatu | 13,254,365 Followers | 0 Current Sponsors | Dhampir

Christopher Sinclair | Unbreakable | 10,958,870 Follower | 0 Current Sponsors | Human

Lily Veldon | Crimson Rose | 10,757,550 Followers | 0 Current Sponsors | Human

Ruth Maci | Thorn | 8,195,624 Followers | 0 Current Sponsors | Forsaken

Adriana Heath | Adriana | 7,005,761 Followers | 0 Current Sponsors | Elf

Ahxul Kinich | Lucky Lizard | 5,608,643 Followers | 0 Current Sponsors | Lizardman

Dewey Hobbs | Dark Shadow | 5,234,594 Followers | 0 Current Sponsors | Shadow Panterra

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

Mikaela winces slightly at the sight of the number of Competitors remaining before he says, “Ouch, it looks like we are almost down to the last 100 Competitors.”

The audience dies down in excitement at this before Niklai grimly says, “Yes, but this is still more Competitors left alive than there were in the past Administrator Dungeon Runs at this point.”

“That’s true,” Mikaela nods at this with a grim look on his face, “although I am surprised that The Winter Wolf still has the lead, considering that he is now actually closer to the back of the Competitor pack than the front.”

“It’s probably because everyone knows that he won’t take long to catch up once he finishes training Sapphire,” Katherine adds from the side with a light smile on her face at the thought of the once-tiny spider.

Mikaela turns to her with a nod of agreement.

Several seconds pass as everyone watches Norbert as he finishes off all of the dark sprites and goes straight towards the dark sprite glutton.

“Nosferatu is also gaining quite the number of followers lately,” Niklai suddenly points out to the others.

Mikaela glances at him before looking at the main screen again and saying, “It makes sense. He is the current forerunner after all, and a lot of viewers really enjoy seeing the newest monsters and floors of the dungeon the most.”