No matter how many times he looked at the scenario, Jack could not see a way he could kill the wolf. So he went with his usual plan. Run away.

With the wolf on the ground, he was going to have to jump from tree to tree. Hopefully, once he was far enough away from its territory, the wolf would leave him alone.

He didn’t know what he would do once he was far enough away though. Jack realized something was wrong with his compass. The dungeon seemed to be interfering with it since instead of north it was pointing right at the dungeon. He even moved it from side to side and it kept fixated on the dungeon.

He should be able to figure out north based on the sun, but he wasn’t confident unless it was near sunset or sunrise. Plus, he had no idea how far off course he was.

His legs were finally healed and he was almost ready to go. He put his staff into his inventory and let out a sigh. He almost felt naked, well more naked than he already was, without it on him, but he needed his hands free to grab the branches. He replaced his staff with the Scimitar of Rage and the Pistol of Protection.

The scimitar was on his left hip inside a sheath that was slightly too small for it. The sword would stay put, but it would be a little harder to pull out. The pistol was in its own holster on his right hip.

Scimitar of Rage The frenzied warrior has finally found a worthy weapon.

+10% Strength, Endurance, and Vitality while in Battle Frenzy.

-10% Intelligence, Wisdom while in Battle Frenzy. Pistol of Protection A shield against those that would hurt you and your allies.

Create a Barrier that lasts for 5 minutes. (500 mana)

Charge 1000/1000

Recharge: 1 mana per minute.

While traveling with Kai he hadn’t bothered carrying them, since they were heavy and would impede their travel speed. Sadly, this dangerous habit carried over to after Kai left. Even the encounter with the angler bulb didn’t make him realize he needs these tools on him and not sitting in his inventory.

That line of thinking stops now. He needs to be ready for anything.

He ran a hand through his hair… Well across his now bald head and took a few deep breaths to calm his nerves.

Lucy was holding onto his bare shoulder. He had to toss his shirt; it had way too many holes and was threatening to fall apart at any moment. Since Jack was going to be jumping long distances, he couldn’t have his shirt ripping and cause Lucy to plummet to the ground.

He laughed at what he must look like to someone else. A man wearing only jeans, cut just above the knees, making them shorts, and a pair of black tennis shoes. A sword and gun attached to his hips and a spider on his shoulder. Not to mention he had absolutely no hair on him, not even eyebrows.

He was still annoyed about his hair.

The sound of the wolf moving below was his cue to get ready. The wolf let out its deafening howl lasting about a minute. As soon as it stopped, he leaped towards the first tree on his escape route.

With how consistent that twenty-minute break between howls was, Jack hoped that was some kind of cooldown for the skill. Even if it didn’t have a cooldown, he had waited to jump until it was out of breath, which he naturally thought would be when the howl stopped.

As he was mid-air, his heart sunk when he heard the wolf’s Sonic Howl begin again. It only lasted a few seconds instead of the full minute, but that was enough to knock Jack off course. He was pushed a few feet to the left making him completely miss the branch he was aiming for and instead slammed into the trunk of the tree, momentarily stunning him and causing him to fall towards the ground.

He had no way to catch himself or stop the fall in any way. Just before he hit the ground Lucy leap off of him and attached herself to the tree. Fear and worry for him consumed her.

**Skill Up** Impact Resistance Level 5

He was able to land on his feet, luckily all his Hydraulic Leap training had taught him how to land semi-safely from a substantial height. Trying to recover from having his breath knocked out of him, he turned his head to catch how the wolf was reacting to him falling.

The wolf was already rushing over towards them. Jack quickly rounded the tree, using it to block the wolf’s path. As he moved, he pulled out the pistol.

Surprisingly, the wolf did not pursue him. Instead, as it got close to the tree, it jumped into the air. He couldn’t see her, but he could sense her position and felt her panic as she rushed up the side of the tree to safety. With Lucy distracting the Spell Seeker and her being in a relatively safe position out of its reach, Jack ran and hid behind another tree.

He tried charging his jump again. He knew he would most likely blow out his veins, but he’d rather be injured and safe than mauled to death by a wolf.

He tried and failed three times to charge his jump.

As thankful as he was for it, he was confused as to why the wolf wasn’t coming after him. It clearly saw him walk away, but it didn’t pursue. It was just fixated on Lucy.

The fourth time he started a charge felt like the one, the pressure started to build. He held it in his chest for three seconds until it was too much to bear and he released it. He felt blood shoot to his legs along with a sort of pop.

Pain flooded throughout his entire body, and his legs gave out causing him to fall over. Failing to hold back a groan, he looked down and saw the familiar pattern of bruising spreading over his legs.

The sound of him falling and the groan of pain seemed to have reminded the wolf he was there. It backed down from the tree with an angry snarl and dashed towards him.

Jack was still on the ground and did the only thing he could do to slow it down. He shot his gun a few feet in front of him and a golden barrier appeared ten feet tall and wide. He didn’t think the magical force field would do much, maybe buy him a few seconds to get up and attempt to run away.

The wolf though reacted in a completely unexpected way. Its eyes went wide in excitement, like a dog given a treat. It stopped in its tracks and inhaled. What looked like golden smoke came off of the barrier and flow towards the wolf’s mouth. The shining force field began dimming as if it was sucking out the very energy holding it together.

In much pain and with great effort, Jack scrambled to his feet. He didn’t know why the wolf was doing whatever it was, but it was giving him a chance to get away. He looked towards the dungeon. With his legs injured, there was no way he was running away or making back into the trees. The dungeon was his only option.

He tried running to the entrance, but his legs felt like lead weights. In more of a hastened shuffle, he rushed to the dungeon. Lucy ran down the side of the tree to meet him, he was worried the wolf might go after her again but it seemed utterly engrossed in what it was doing. He was barely three-quarters of the way when she met up with him running alongside instead of climbing on him.

Hearing what sounded like shattering glass, Jack glanced behind him. He barely caught the sight of the barrier disappearing and the wolf turning towards them. In an attempt to buy more time, he fired the second shot at the wolf. Once again when the barrier popped up in front of it, the wolf stopped coming after them and started inhaling the golden smoke.

Jack reached the dungeon. A few feet in front of him was an impenetrable darkness.

The Bloodied Woodlands Next break: 345 hours. Would you like to form a party to enter this dungeon? Yes No

He clicked yes and he saw the party log appear in the top left of his vision.

Party size 2/10 Jack Lucifer

The black suddenly disappeared revealing a tunnel with walls made of bushes leading forward. Not hesitating, they moved forward where they were met with another message.

**Alert** You have entered The Bloodied Woodlands.

Behind them, Jack heard the wolf approach the entrance of the dungeon. He turned to see the wolf snarling at the entrance. It let out a howl aimed directly down the tunnel but instead of Jack feeling the gust of wind and the slicing damage it would deal, he saw the near-visible sound waves bounce off the area where the black veil had been and reflect back at the wolf. It let out a yelp and stopped its attack, but continued its snarling.

A sense of relief washed over Jack as he let himself collapse. His legs were burning, but they were safe, for the time being at least.

Jack had another four hours until his legs healed.

The first hour passed by slowly as Jack rested. His stamina had almost emptied with his repeated uses of Hydraulic Leap. The wolf eventually calmed down and laid in front of the tunnel, pretty much ending any hope Jack had of sneaking out around it.

So he had to either wait and hope Kai would somehow find and save him or he had to figure out how to kill the Spell Seeker. What further complicated things was that the dungeon told him how long until it’s next break. Based on his math, it was a little over two weeks. Kai said that breaks meant that a dungeon would release a large wave of monsters. He didn’t know if things could also get in during a break, but either way was terrible for him and Lucy.

He quickly wondered why The Spiders Den didn’t break. When they first went, it should have said something. Even if it didn’t say anything because it was just a baby dungeon at the time why didn’t he see anything when he left? What causes a dungeon to break or not? More questions he would ask Kai, provided he ever sees the birdman again.

No, he will see Kai again. He will get out of here. Kai won’t even have to rescue them. Because they are going to get powerful enough to defeat that wolf.

He would have stood up triumphantly and started marching into the dungeon to level up, but alas his legs were nowhere close to being healed yet.

He looked down at Lucy and she was trying to mimic his feeling of strength, confidence, and hope. He began to absentmindedly pet her as he planned how best to level them both up. He would have to see if this place had level zero bugs, at least to get them both to level nine. Then he suddenly remembered the notification about his Impact Resistance.

Sure enough, when he looked at his skill list he had one flashing red until he clicked it going through the motions until he got to his evolutions.

He had put very little thought into what evolutions this skill might have.

**Alert** New Skill Evolution Available Choose one Rejection Pressure Resistance Stand Your Ground

Rejection? Maybe something to do with reversing an impact? That would be an amazing thing for a tank, making an opponent's attack bounce back at them. The issue would be how it would work for him. Most of his impacts come from hitting the ground. How could he send that back? He had an image of a bouncy ball in the shape of himself go through his mind and let out a chuckle.

Pressure resistance sounded straight forward. This would probably help to go deep into the sea or to avoid being slowly crushed. Now the real question is, could this help with pressure inside of himself as well? If it did, it could be a way to get around needing the Pressurized Fluid evolution for Hydraulic Leap.

He was pretty sure he would get some kind of knockback resistance if he took stand your ground. When he was little his older brother used to like to play ‘sumo wrestler.’ Basically, it was just an excuse for him to be able to tackle and throw his little brother around under the guise of a game. But Jack remembered the feeling of powerlessness when he would try to do the same thing, and his brother wouldn’t budge an inch.

He was briefly lost in feelings of nostalgia, wondering whatever happened to him. They stopped talking years before he was petrified, mostly because his older brother was a deadbeat who stole a lot of money from him. If he was really honest with himself, he didn’t really care that guy was no longer his family. A slight flare of annoyance went through him, which caused Lucy to return feelings of concern.

“I’m fine Lucy, I was just remembering my dickbag of a brother. The older one. I actually liked my little brother. He was pretty much the only family I liked.”

She curled up next to him as he told her about his brother Logan and kept listening as he told her about all the people he missed. Keith, Sarah, Sam, Jay, and finally Emily.

It was bittersweet talking about them. It just reinforced how everyone was just gone. Telling stories about them though made it hurt a little less. It also helped that Lucy seemed fascinated by the stories. He knew she didn’t understand his words, but she reacted to his emotions while he shared. She felt joy when he told a funny story, concern and sadness when he told her about what happened to Emily, and she seemed excited when he would tell an adventure story from some campaigns he played with his friends.

He probably talked for an hour straight. When he finally stopped, he felt the weight of everything that had happened get just a little lighter.

The evolution for Impact Resistance was still waiting to be chosen, but he didn’t really want to think about it at the moment. Instead, he asked Lucy to stay on alert and dived into Focused Senses. He narrowed back down to his skill and where his hairs used to be. He activated Hair Manipulation and started feeling around with the skill. He was positive he was close to something before he shot out all his hair.

An hour or so of messing around on and off yielded something. The best way he could describe it would be a series of minuscule tubes all over his body. Places that he would grow hair had open tubes. The top of his head had the most tubes clustered together, and they were the longest. There were shorter tubes on his arms and legs and they were scattered all around, not really close to each other. The more he looked at it he realized that it wasn’t that there were more on his head, every inch of his body had these tubes just most were actually closed. His head just had the most open.

He was pretty sure these tubes were what controlled where his hair would grow. Now the last time he messed around with something, he lost all his hair so he was very cautious. If he wanted to, he could still feel his hair growing back at its meager rate.

So to test his theory, he closed some of the tubes that were open in a small cluster on his chest. He couldn’t grow much chest hair anyway, so it seemed a safe place to start. Afterwards, he checked and all the tiny growth had stopped in that area.

Now that he had felt what a tube is like when it is closed and open, he noticed something else connected to the tube, something near the bottom. Unfortunately, that would have to be it for his experimenting. He overdid it a little, and now his head was pounding.

The last stretch of leg-heal time was spent trying to figure out what the wolf did to his barrier. He remembered Identify said that it would seek out an absorb mana, same with a mage's spells. Maybe that extended to effects of magic items or even a creature of magic. That might explain why it was so determined to get Lucy, she had the racial trait Born of Mana that had to mean something.

If it was some sort of skill, Jack was determined to get that one for himself.

With his staff at its regular six feet and his sword and gun on his hips, Jack was ready to go deeper into the dungeon. Before he set off, he wondered how this tunnel was actually possible. It seemed to go straight for another hundred feet before it turned. It never sloped down, so there was no way this tunnel fit into the dome that was the outside of the dungeon.

He dismissed it knowing the answer was probably just magic. He called Lucy up to his shoulder and was about to move before he turned to her. “Oh yeah, I almost forgot I need to evolve that skill.”