Chapter 884 – The Wolf Clan

POV Nathaniel

As I step away from the evil something beacon thingy, I pick up Biscuit once again and gently kick the black wolfy with the tip of my shoe.

He gives me an angry glare, but changes his form again, reverting to a wolf pup with fluffy fur and a round belly. I pick up Biscuit’s disciple as well and hold both of them. Then I wait.

Sandra the Cockroach appears a few seconds later, making it seem like the lazy guys over at Xyphos didn’t even try to stop her. Like escaping the tutorial was easy for her.

And now she stands here, bringing nothing with her, just her body, mind, and some clothes that have seen better times. Even the black dagger is gone, but I don’t think she needs it anymore. The presence I feel from her is easily comparable to the version of her from the second floor.

Lissandra scans the area, and under her gaze, the two big wolves whimper. She glances at Biscuit and his disciple in my arms before looking at me.

“Have you betrayed me, little pup? Was it you who told them how I’d planned my escape?” she asks as she takes a step closer.

I return her gaze and give a shrug. “Dili is a good ant,” I say simply.

Her eyes narrow. “Is he now?”

“Come on, stop complaining and being lazy. You clearly escaped anyway, without having to kill a Ruler just so you could abuse the system’s recursive frequency rebound loop or whatever theoretical instability something you were blathering about.”

“You truly are annoying, little pup,” Lissandra says and then looks somewhere else. I look there as well, but unlike her, I don’t really see anything, so I give up trying to pierce through.

“Your heart?” I ask.

“It came from an avatar, and because of my nature, it wasn’t as compatible as I’d like, so it’s going to take a while to make adjustments. Nevertheless, I am fully capable of addressing this.”

“Obviously,” I nod seriously. “Now I’ll be asking you to slowly get ready to leave so they don’t hunt you here and hurt this cute wolf clan that’s raised my bond’s disciple. But not to that place, it’s mine now.”

A smile marks her face. “Only if you can take it, but nevertheless, I shall proceed as per our deal.”

“As per our deal,” I confirm.

“Very well, I will keep an eye on you until you return to the tutorial. Show no shame, little pup, because these flea-ridden mutts are already testing my patience,” she says, releasing a burst of her own mana that shoots through the planet, racing off towards the many signatures watching us in the distance.

Then, without even leaving a blur, she launches herself into the sky, immediately shrinking into a tiny dot. Soon after, her presence disappears entirely, leaving the wyvern as the only notable presence, waiting to bring me back to Xyphos.

The length of my stay was never clearly specified. I was simply promised a reasonable amount of time, according to Dili. But with all the trouble they’re currently having on Xyphos, I guess I can get a bit more out of it. But I am a reasonable person, so I’ll try not to cause him too much trouble.

As I begin to walk in the direction the little wolfy pointed out to me with his front paw, I think about how long I spent in the mental space training. Ruby said it was 599 days, though maybe she just gave me the wrong number out loud. Who knows, but at this point, everyone has to agree it was at least 650 days. A weird amount of knowledge and experience from training keeps awakening in my mind out of nowhere, but that's only to be expected after 660 days of such rigorous training.

I’m pretty sure people forget things like that all the time, so it has to be normal, especially after 670 days of training.

It’s still a bit of an annoying feeling, but a normal one nonetheless.

After all, I am normal.

I lift Biscuit a bit higher and give him a gentle kiss on top of his head and hold him closer to my chest.

“Wolfy, your clan sucks,” I say to the pup.

“It was Big Fang that got upset over what master did and made the decision to put him inside that barrier! He wouldn’t even let me speak to my grandfather and hid us away! I tried to challenge him to a fight, but I lost. So I asked them to at least imprison me with master!”

“I thought as much,” I say and squeeze him too. “It was brave of you.”

“Do not compliment me, human. I did it for my master!”

“Sure, sure. So they didn’t like him using so much of his primordial energy?”

“We have rules against it, otherwise, the system will adapt, and we’ll be weakened.”

“So you are saving it for something? Some sort of prophecy perhaps?”

“Are you stupid, human? There is no such thing. It’s just common sense to wait until your enemy puts their guard down, then you can sneak up behind them, and bite where it hurts the most.”

“Oh.”

“Stupid human.”

I shake the wolf pup until he angrily howls towards the sky.

“Biscuit hasn’t awakened since then?” I ask.

He stops biting into my fingers and looks at me. “I worry the master’s use of our primordial energy may have devoured his memories as well,” he says in a more serious tone. “In that case, it’ll be nearly impossible for him to regain them, and he’ll never-”

“Sure, sure,” I shake him again, causing him to cut off.

“Brute human, you’re not taking this seriously. Do you realize-”

“And you, stinky little wolf pup, you do not know Biscuit as well as you seem to think,” I sigh.

That causes him to stare at me with those golden eyes for a while in silence, and I even stop walking, looking back at him with my own.

“Master is going to be okay?” he asks quietly.

I squeeze him higher into a hug, pressing him against my chest, and I hold Biscuit in my other arm. “Yes. There are things even Biscuit wouldn’t devour and things even I would not sacrifice. We are similar in that way.”

It might be a play of the light, but his golden eyes might seem a bit wetter.

“... I see… stupid human.”

“Yup,” I rock him a little and begin to walk again.

“I do not stink,” he adds in a quiet voice.

“Stinky, stinky, stinky boy.”

“You! Stupid, stupid, stupid human!”

I feel the one winged wyvern’s presence trailing us the whole time as I walk through this ancient forest. That’s probably the reason no one attacks me. Well, that and the nuclear warhead times a gazillion cockroaches hanging around somewhere as well.

There are a few truly scary monsters and even a few wolves I notice along the way, but we are left alone, making our way through as the wolfy points the way.

When I feel Biscuit’s body move in my arm, I stop, and finding a nice spot under a beautiful tree, I sit there, placing him onto a patch of grass and letting go of a wolfy who jumps around excitedly. He talks about how it’s way too soon for him to awaken, that their elders said it would take longer, yet that doesn’t mean much, does it? I’ve noticed that the most powerful beings I meet are wrong all the time. After all, they’re just like the rest of us, they just had a little more time to live and gather experience.

It almost starts to look like Biscuit will stop moving and go back to sleep when I reach out and boop his nose.

All the movement then halts, and the squirming starts again. He twitches his legs, he whimpers, growls as if trying to bite something, and then in one snappy movement, opens his eyes wide, staring right at me.

Inside his eyes, I see my reflection. For some reason, my expression looks different, to the point that it’s difficult to recognize. But I can see one thing clear as day: recognition.

He weakly moves his paw to reach towards me, but notices that a part of it is missing and almost pulls it back, but I quickly lean closer and press my nose against the stump.

Biscuit tries to reach towards me to communicate, but our bond is gone. He switches to try the telepathy he usually uses with the others, but fails to activate that as well, and his expression twists in pain.

“Take it easy, okay?” I say and put my hand on his head, giving it a gentle stroke.

When I let go, the wolfy is there, sniffing at Biscuit, pressing against him, licking him, and constantly asking him if he remembers him too. He grows to the size of a dog, coiling himself around the corgi pup, and then makes himself even bigger to lick him with a tongue that covers the entire corgi. When he is finally done, Biscuit stares shell shocked, his fur wet, making him look even smaller.

The best corgi of this weird ass giant wolf ridden planet somewhere in a forgotten galaxy on an ancient battlefield barks and shakes himself, he pushes onto his feet and stares at the spot on my waist and then looks up at me.

I, of course, know what he wants, and reaching into the pouch there, I grab a few pieces of deer jerky I’ve been saving, though some of them have crumbled into dust, but Biscuit devours it all from the palm of my hand while clumsily and excitedly jumping around on his three remaining legs.

There’s no need for words as I pick him up again and he nestles his nose into my neck where I can feel his warm breath, as he keeps dozing off even as he tries to keep himself awake. The wolfy meanwhile follows by my side, now the size of a horse.

I feel a tug somewhere at the back of my neck as the wyvern gets my attention, reminding me that we’ll have to leave. It comes just as the wolves begin to close in. All of them are colossal, matching the trees around us. At first, I only see the glint of their eyes in the darkness before they step out to watch us.

Then Wolfy grows in size too, and though he’s still young, he matches most of them. He’s also the only one with pitch black fur and golden eyes.

Soon, we’re joined by the biggest wolf I’ve seen so far. The brown one with blue eyes and fangs that make his expression seem like it’s been permanently twisted into a growl. And the very same primordial energy Biscuit once possessed flickers around his paws, moving like smoke with each step he takes.

"That should be far enough, system slave," he tells me as I stop and turn to the wolfy, "And you, HOW dare you-"

His words stop as he notices me pointing a finger at him as I twist my hand into a finger gun. Though he doesn’t recognize the gesture, he must subconsciously understand it as something of a threat or challenge.

And he doesn't like it.

The pantophagic energy around his paws rises up to his knees, and his shadow grows in size, rising from the ground.

"I don’t think I can get along with an asshole like you," I say, and then mimic shooting.

In a flash, like an attack from some orbital sci-fi satellite weapon, a beam of mana crashes down, drawing a clean, brilliant line, just big enough to cover the entire wolf.

His own power and his primordial energy rise to defend against it. Here on this planet, without the presence of the system, he doesn’t need to worry about it adapting, so he devours it, attacks against it, and howls towards the sky.

But the color of the beam continues to change, in quick succession it shifts hundreds of times, along with its frequency, as it adapts and modifies itself to pierce through that devouring shadow. It becomes dozens of times wider than the wolf, then it shrinks until it’s as narrow as a pencil.

And more than anything, it feels like someone testing their output after a long time when they had to survive on tiny bits of mana. All to the point of even getting rid of that scary efficiency just to be playful.

But then, enough is enough, and the beam rings like a hard struck drum. It becomes almost physical and breaks through the ground, pressing Big Fang deep into the soil, while creating a deep hole around him.

As it stops and disappears, tiny particles of mana remain floating in the air like dust caught by sunlight as they flicker over the hole and the now unconscious Big Fang.

I almost let it pass and continue on my way, but then I remember the image of Biscuit trapped in the barrier. I know that not even for a moment would he think of the wolves as his enemy, he would for sure try as hard as he could to help them as the friends of his disciple… yet.

I gaze over the group and single out a few of the wolves that seemed the most aggressive towards us and, in quick succession, point the finger gun at a half dozen more of them.

Liss beam strikes again, imprinting each of them into the ground and leaving them there unconscious and smoking like they’ve been thoroughly steamed out.

It’s difficult for me, but if I try hard enough, I too can be shameless.

Then I begin to walk again, and the wolfy quickly, obediently walks by my side after pointing the way for us. And once in a while, he cowers as he glances towards the sky.