Over the course of the next two hours, Wolfie helped the two find numerous other horu-beetles and small grazing beasts. Emmet convinced Yorick to hold back his strength and only give some light practice blows, so all the animals were chased away with only light injuries.

Soon enough, Yorick began to feel bored, and felt the urge to tackle bigger prey. Although this kind of thing was exciting just a few months ago, these small fry were now too easy to bully. Thus, two boys and one wolf set off into the thick woods outside the fields.

Inside the forest area, it was wet and cold. All over the barren trees there was leftover snow that hadn’t melted yet, giving it a brisk atmosphere. The ground was also moist and muddy, giving the two boys, and even Wolfie, a hard time traversing through it.

They had heard rumors of bigger beasts within the forest, with bigger diversity than just horu-beetles and grazing beasts, but had never tested it for themselves. Apparently, according to the other boys in the tribe, there were all kinds of fearsome creatures! The deeper you went, the bigger and stronger the beasts would be!

All this excited Yorick. After the confrontation with the wolf pack, he had once again grown conceited, and wanted a challenge! A supreme warrior couldn’t just battle with mere grazing beasts.

Once again, Emmet was wary. However, it wasn’t as if the two had never entered the woods before. Furthermore, Yorick had greatly increased his power, and currently, Emmet didn’t feel too helpless either.

After traveling for about half an hour, only meeting a few small game animals and deer, they began to relax. Maybe the rumors were wrong? Maybe this was just an ordinary patch of woods!

However, they didn’t give up. Even ordinary woods had fearsome creatures. Maybe they could beat up some striped panthers that were known to populate the area and call it a day.

Ruff! Ruff! Ruff!

At that moment, Wolfie suddenly became agitated. He paused and lowered his head, letting out loud barks.

“What is it, boy?” Yorick bent down to stroke the agitated wolf’s held. “Is there something there?”

Pausing their progress, they heard some faint rustles, and immediately turned alert. Something was there!

At that moment, some distant yelling noises rang out. “AH!!!! Help!!”

“Someone’s there!” Emmet exclaimed. “Let’s go!”

The three rushed forward toward the source of the voice, arriving at a little clearing. There, there was a boy their age, dressed in a black cloak, fleeing in their direction.

“Run!!! RUN!!! It’s a saber-toothed bear!!!” The boy screamed as he spotted the two boys. “It’s coming!!!”

“Huh?!” Yorick and Emmet were shocked. A saber-toothed bear?! It was coming this direction?

The mysterious boy didn’t pay a second more attention to their direction and quickly ran past them.

Just as Yorick and Emmet were about to turn and question the boy further, they heard a rumble through the forest, and the next second, an enormous brown-furred bear appeared at the edge of the clearing. It unsheathed its enormous six inch slaws and gave a deep roar, exposing its nearly four inch long saber teeth. Standing fully, it was nearly eight feet tall!

Wolfie let out a panicked shriek and immediately dashed backwards until he was behind Yorick’s legs.

“Holy shit!!!” Yorick exclaimed out, immediately unsheathing his shovel. It they wanted to run, they had missed their moment. The bear was only a few meters from them now!

“Readying reinforcement beams!” Emmet shouted out while taking a few steps back, equally as stunned. However, his actions were practiced and quick, immediately taking out multiple contraptions and charging them up. They all began to light up quickly.

Over the past three months, Emmet had realized that a big weakness of the contraptions was that they needed to charge for some time before becoming usable - this fact had almost led to disaster three months ago. Thus, he worked to reduce this charge time by efficiently attaching more sunstones evenly along the surfaces of the contraptions, so now, the devices charged up nearly two and a half times quicker. This increased the circuitry required and complexity of the devices, but using some tricks taken from some of the puzzles in the book, Emmet managed to keep the sizes of the devices the same.

Further, he realized that it was tough to carry around five or more devices at once, so he combined many of the similar individual contraptions, creating a dual sun and healing beam contraption and a dual earth and quickness beam. Not to mention, he had been continuously working to improve all of the beams’ strength - they had all grown nearly 50% more powerful since last time!

ROAARRR!!!

The bear charged forward, its powerful four legs thudding in rhythm across the clearing and its saber teeth bared, directly toward Yorick. It was like a giant behemoth from hell. Gulping as he saw it approach, and feeling the vibrations through his feet, Emmet felt that this was a scene from a nightmare.

Unlike before when they had fought the wolves, there would be no second chances! If the bear managed to approach and get a clean strike on Yorick, it would be over. His body might even directly be torn in half.

“Dammit!” Yorick screamed out, assuming his usual crouched swordsman-like position. He waited a moment for the bear to arrive and then jumped out of its path to the side, just barely dodging the bear’s lethal claw swipe. Regaining his bearings, he swung his shovel with all his might toward the bear’s hulking body, his waist and arms lighting up with a bluish hue!

Thunk…

The shovel made an unimpressive dull sound, hitting the bear’s body like it was a mound of soil. The bear barely even reacted, dully noting the impact on its side and quickly adjusting its body to strike out again.

At that moment, the contraptions finally lit up fully! Fuoosh - four multi colored beams of light soared out toward Yorick and bathed him in light.

“GOGOGO!!!” Yorick dodged backward, narrowing dodging another paw swipe, and then fearlessly charged forward again. He planted his feet and swung his shovel with all his might!

THUNK!

Again, Yorick’s shovel hit the bear in the side. However, this time, the impact was much greater, and the bear actually momentarily lost its balance.

ROARRRR!!!!

The bear planted its hind legs and stood up to give a deafening roar, intimidatingly extending its enormous eight foot long body. It hovered ominously in this position for a split second before pushing off its powerful hind legs and crashing forward toward Yorick with its claws extended. This time, the bear had felt the strike! Although the injury was not lethal, the bear could feel the area of impact of the shovel ringing with pain. It was enraged!

“Shit!” Yorick panickedly leapt backwards, his speed aided by the quick beam.

Fuoosh...

Yorick felt the edge of one of the bear’s claws just barely graze his cheek before crashing down into the ground. A fresh flow of blood started to spill from the cut.

If he didn’t have the assistance of Emmet’s beam, and was just a beat slower, maybe his face would have been completely torn apart!

“Yorick!” Emmet exclaimed. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah!” Yorick confirmed, quickly backing up out of the bear’s range of attack. He had brazenly used an opening between the bear’s winding strikes to get in range, managing to send out a powerful attack, but had almost paid the ultimate price.

However, the bear wasn’t done. Quickly recovering, it once more wound up strike out toward Yorick.

“Fucking shit! This guy is relentless!” Yorick groaned, once again just barely dodging sideways out of the path of the bear’s claws. “I don’t even do damage! What the hell are we gonna do?”

“Hold on!” Emmet screamed, shuffling through his cloth bag, causing him to have to awkwardly balance his contraptions on his arms. “I’ll bring out that thing - let’s give it all we got!”

“Alright!!!” Yorick screamed out, his energy rejuvenated. “Unbeatable brothers… let’s do it!”

Emmet produced another small contraption out of his bag and held it out in the sunlight. At first glance, it looked similar to the others, but upon closer inspection, had quite a different layout of circuity. Instead of multiple distinct layers of threaded quartz, this contraption instead threaded the quartz around in a circular fashion, creating one big intricate ball of quartz. Inside the ball, one could distinctly see a piece of shiny black obsidian, and all throughout the circuit were embedded small pieces of organic materia, various igneous rocks, and a plethora of lock/switches. On the outside, like usual, there were tens of embedded sunstones, which upon exposure to the sunlight, began to light up.