Chapter 7: Frost Dire Wolf

The ash from the girl’s body still hung in the air when they left the clearing. No one spoke. It had been their first real kill, and the weight of it sat heavy on all of them. Suzy kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself, shoulders hunched. Alex wiped the spear point on the grass over and over even though the blood was already gone. Lila walked a few steps behind, her eyes never still, flicking between the trees and the back of Rael’s head. Nathan stayed closest to Rael, the wand tucked into his belt again.

Rael looked down at his own hands. This was the first time he had used a skill. He had muttered the name and fire had answered, but he still did not understand how it worked. The Copy class let him borrow the ability. It did not give him the deep knowledge that came with owning a class. Understanding a skill was the real path to mastery. For now he could only use what he had taken. Maybe later, if the class evolved, that would change.

A quiet thought surfaced. If he did not need to understand the skill the way a true Flamecaller did, maybe he did not need a wand either. He waited until they were far enough from the clearing, then raised an empty hand. He focused on the same feeling he had felt when the wand was in his grip and whispered the word.

"Fireball."

A sphere of flame bloomed above his palm. It was smaller than the one that had burned the girl’s body, but it was real and solid and hot. It floated there with no tool to shape it. The system accepted the command without protest. He closed his fist and the fire vanished. A thin, sharp relief moved through him. He would not have to ask for the wand again.

Nathan had seen the brief light. "You can cast without a wand?"

"Yeah," Rael said. "I just thought of it now. Must be the class."

Nathan gave a short, uneasy laugh. "Must be convenient, huh?"

"Yeah. To be honest." Rael managed a small smile.

They pushed deeper into the forest. The trees drew closer together and the light turned thin and green. Rael kept the copied skills ready at the edge of his mind. Every step felt heavier than it should have. He was level three. The number still surprised him when he let himself think about it.

After a while they stopped to rest and catch their breath. Rael realized again how unprepared he was. The others pulled food from their storage rings. Nathan noticed him watching and held out half a sandwich without a word. Rael took it.

"Thank you."

The attack came while they were still eating.

Low growls rolled out of the undergrowth on three sides at once. Five wolves broke from the shadows, lean and gray, eyes catching what little light reached the forest floor. They moved like they already owned the clearing. The largest of them, half a head taller than the rest, led from the front.

Alex shouted and planted his feet, spear forward. Lila’s bow was already drawn. Suzy’s hands lit with soft white light as she stepped back. Nathan raised his wand. Rael simply lifted both hands.

The first wolf lunged at Alex. The spear caught it in the shoulder, but the animal’s weight still drove him backward. Rael did not wait. He shaped a Fireball and sent it forward. He aimed for the head. The sphere hit the chest instead. The explosion of flame and the sharp smell of burned fur filled the air. The wolf screamed and rolled, trying to put the fire out. Rael followed at once with Ignite. Fresh flames burst across its back and the animal went down thrashing.

Lila’s arrows took a third wolf in the flank and neck. Nathan’s fireball struck the fourth but only scorched its side. The creature kept coming until Alex, free of the first wolf, drove the spear through its ribs. Suzy’s healing light washed over a shallow cut on Alex’s arm before the blood could run far.

The lead wolf circled, looking for an opening. Rael met its eyes and felt nothing but cold focus. He had been discarded, laughed at, stripped of his name. These animals were only another obstacle between him and the gate. He raised his hands again.

Two Fireballs left his palms in quick succession. The first forced the lead wolf to leap aside. The second caught it in mid-air and slammed it into a tree trunk with a heavy crack. Ignite followed. The flames clung to its fur. The beast howled and rolled across the ground until Alex finished it with a clean thrust through the throat.

For a moment the forest was quiet except for heavy breathing and the soft crackle of dying fire. Four wolves lay still. The fifth had fled into the trees with an arrow in its haunch. Rael stood with his hands still raised, the last traces of heat fading from his fingers. He had done most of the killing. The copied skills answered him cleanly, stronger than they should have been for a D-rank class. The bloodline was already showing its value.

A soft chime sounded in his mind.

[Level up]

Nathan wiped sweat from his forehead and managed a shaky grin. "That was... you were fast."

Rael only nodded. He opened his status.

[STATUS]

Name: Rael

Race: Human

Class: Copy (F-Rank)

Copied Class: Flamecaller (D-Rank)

Level: 3 → 4 (86%)

Souls: 20 → 40

Bloodline: Abyssal Sovereign (+100% Multiplier) (Dormant)

Strength: 26

Agility: 26

Mana: 26

Vitality: 26

Additional Stats: 6

Skills: Fireball (Apprentice), Ignite (Expert)

Experience and souls had flowed in, doubled by the bloodline. He was already most of the way to the next level.

The party gathered closer, still watching the trees. Lila’s expression stayed careful whenever her eyes passed over Rael. Suzy offered water from a small flask. Alex leaned on his spear and tried to laugh the fear away.

They never saw the larger wolf until it was already moving.

It came from directly behind Nathan, silent and far bigger than the others. Its shoulders stood higher than a man’s chest. Dark fur covered thick, corded muscle that shifted with every breath. Frost clung to its muzzle and the tips of its ears even though the air was not cold. The eyes that locked onto Nathan’s back held a cold, intelligent malice that did not belong in any beginner stage. The pressure that rolled off its body made the air itself feel heavier. Everyone froze. They knew, without speaking, that if they moved a muscle they would die.

Rael’s gaze caught the system tag that flickered above its head for less than a second.

[Frost Dire Wolf]

[Level: 50]

[Rank: Elite]

No one had time to shout a warning.

The wolf closed the last three meters in a single bound. Its jaws opened wide and closed around Nathan’s head with a wet, final crunch. Bone and flesh gave way in the same instant. Nathan’s body dropped straight down. The wand slipped from nerveless fingers. Blood sprayed across the leaves and across Rael’s boots.

For a heartbeat the entire party simply stared.

Suzy’s scream tore the silence first. She stumbled backward, hands pressed to her mouth, healing light flickering uselessly around her fingers. Alex froze with the spear half-raised, face drained of every color. Lila’s bowstring slipped from her fingers; the arrow fell into the grass. Rael felt his mind go blank for a single second, then fill with pure, sharp disbelief.

A level-fifty creature could not exist here. Every guide, every lecture, every survivor account agreed on the same hard limit. The beginner stage held nothing above level ten. The stone at the university, the system itself, the entire structure of the first transfer—all of it said this was impossible.

The massive wolf lifted its head. Blood dripped from its muzzle in slow, heavy drops. Frost spread outward from where its paws touched the ground. It looked at the remaining four humans with calm, almost curious eyes, as if deciding which one to take next. The air around it felt thicker, charged with a pressure that pressed against Rael’s lungs and made every breath feel too shallow. His copied Flamecaller skills still sat ready in his mind, but they suddenly felt small, almost childish, against whatever this thing was.

Alex finally found his voice, raw and breaking. "That... that can’t be here. It can’t."

Lila whispered the same words under her breath, over and over. Suzy had dropped to her knees, staring at the headless body that had been Nathan only seconds before. The blood was still spreading, dark and irreversible, soaking into the forest floor.

Rael forced himself to move. He stepped sideways, putting himself between the wolf and the others. Fireball formed above his right palm, larger and brighter than any he had cast so far. The bloodline pushed everything harder, but even that boost felt thin against the creature watching him.

The Frost Dire Wolf did not attack immediately. It simply stood over Nathan’s body, breathing slowly, eyes never leaving Rael’s face. In that stretched silence every member of the party understood the same terrible truth at once.

Something had broken inside the beginner stage.

And it had just tasted blood.

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