Wind Wolf

2/5 stars rarity

Threat: Class 3 individually, up to Class 5 in packs

Tactically minded and cunning monsters, found in packs of up to 50 individuals, these wolves manipulate wind to move and change direction rapidly. Expert and Master level wind wolves can throw wind blades, as well as use a sonically enhanced howl as a AOE attack. Expert level wolves are larger than Regular, and Master larger still.

Health: 200-300

Knockback taken: medium

Attack: 40-60

Defence: 15-20

Estimated corpse worth: 10 silver

Essence Material Drops:

-Intimidating Teeth ???

-Windblade Claws ???

-Wind Wolf Pelt ???

Found: Mid-Outer layers of the Beast Forest

Spawn Criteria: High mana density forest

“Lyte, what the FUCK was that?!”

Lupia’s words broke the spell that had fallen over the clearing; Liz started laughing giddily, Thora rushed over to the bloody-chested Dranner, Janet pulled her hood back up, and Vyra flopped, chuckling, to the ground. A moment later, Stone dropped to one knee with a crash, leaning his armoured head against his tower shield, eyes closed.

“What? It’s my yoyo.”

“That’s not what I meant!” She took a stabilising breath. “That’s not what I meant. I knew you were strong, but this is overwhelming. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Should I have? This is a test for these guys isn’t it? Speaking of which, how’s this -me killing all the enemies- going to work with the whole escort mission protect us thing?”

“It’s- it’s-”

“Ah, but first, could you guys restrain your auras again?” Tear was still being affected by aura shock and there was no reason to keep that as being the case.

There were various acknowledgements and the 5 auras disappeared. I turned back to Lupia and gave her a smile. “Sorry for cutting you off there, you were saying?”

The grey-haired wolfkin sighed defeatedly. “Ok, fine. It’s not an issue to the promotion as a Wind Wolf pack is a difficult threat for a top tier A-rank party let alone a party hastily assembled from B-rank adventurers looking to advance into A.”

“That’s a relief. I didn’t have enough time to clarify properly earlier so I was a bit worried I’d caused a problem.”

“‘Caused a problem’…” Dranner muttered to himself, but I still heard it. “How can a commoner be so strong? Was I- no, Uncle wrong? How do I tell which commoners are dangerous?”

At that point I tuned out, having no interest in hearing more, and started collecting the strewn around corpses of the Wind wolves I’d killed.

I hadn’t been able to tell how many wolves there were while they were flowing out between the trees just as fast as the adventurers could push them back, but now they were all dead, and most in my inventory, I could. There were 27 of the classic ones, 13 expert ones, and 1 master one, 41 total.

The adventurers had killed 11 regular and 2 expert wolves, the blood vines had gotten another 2 regulars, and I’d killed the rest.

I went around picking up only the corpses of the wolves I killed, leaving the ones the adventurers killed and the ones crushed and drained by the blood vines, which were now on the ground, rogue energy blasts from the Terrarian yoyo having homed in and torn apart the monstrous plants.

After pulling the huge wolf, which I now knew from the Bestiary entry was a Master-mode variant, into my inventory, I suddenly stopped and focused on it.

“Huh, this one produced an essence material. Let’s see...” I checked the description recorded by my inventory “‘Wind Wolf Pelt, crafting material; the wind-attributed coat of a Wind Wolf’,” I read out the description my inventory was giving me. “Hmm... I wonder what I can do with this...”

“I didn’t know you had an appraisal skill,” Lupia noted, “but at this point I think I’ve run out of surprise available for me today.”

“You get used to it,” muttered Tear.

“Haha!” I laughed, lifting the fallen tree off the body of the last wolf with one hand, retrieving the corpse underneath and storing it in my inventory.

The adventurers stared at me holding the tree above my head. “What?”

Thora shook his head slowly, his beard braids swaying as he did so. “Nothin’ laddie, nothin’ at all. I now realise how ye can live all the way out here.”

I revelled briefly in the sense of strength lifting a ton or two of wood over my head one-handedly with no problem at all gave me. While boosting my strength with lifeforce was unavailable due to my counterflow, the strength afforded me due to being a Terrarian, and the permanent passive strengthening having 500 health merited meant that I was about half as strong as the Hulk. It was almost like wearing a motion-mimicry mech suit, but felt more natural!

Then I shrugged and stored the tree away as well, smoothing over the hole in the ground and planting an acorn.

While I was doing that, Lupia had been pondering something.

“Lyte,” she said slowly then paused for a long moment, “I recall you said you saw a griffin around this area. Where is it now?” she asked, tone turning to one of suspicion.

“...”

“You killed it didn’t you?” the wolfgirl sighed, shaking her head. “You could have warned me! I’ve been thinking a Class 6 threat could drop out of the sky at any moment for the past week!”

“I didn’t know how you would react! Would you treat a guy who could kill a ‘Class 6 threat’ easily as an even bigger threat? Would you try and eliminate me? Would you ostracise me? Report me to the government who might do all of those things? I didn’t know, so I didn’t tell you.”

“...‘Easily’?”

Whoops.