I couldn’t move, not even a twitch. I was able to take shallow breaths through my nose but that was about it. The rest of my body was locked in position, almost as if I was encased in ice. This is what I get for being a gentleman...Sigh.

“As I was saying before you fell to my feminine wiles-” she paused to giggle at her own joke “-my name is Lilia, and I will be relieving you of your valuables today.”

Ugh, did she really just say that?

And why is it that I keep running into shady women?

I could do nothing to stop her as she rummaged through my backpack. “As I collect my compensation for your refusal to help me with the wolves, allow me to share a few details with you. One, even if you did help me and survived the battle, I would still become the new owner of your items. However, I would have been more discreet about it.”

Ah. So it was an act to begin with, a con to get me to lower my guard around her. Perhaps after I had ‘rescued’ her from an unpleasant death she would have insisted to travel with me until we reached the city, only to rob me in the middle of the night and disappear without a trace. How wonderful.

“Two, you were right about me taking care of myself. You might have heard the sounds of them dying a little earlier. Thanks to my Poison Jab I was able to place a highly volatile poison in their systems that reacts quite violently with their wind mana. Why am I telling you all this? So that you will understand how stupid and dangerous it would be to come after me for revenge. I have far more surprises than you could begin to imagine.”

Ha, if only you knew Lilia...Thanks for the info. Now I know that your primary fighting style is based on physical contact with your body, you can handle poisons very well, you probably have a resistance to them, monsters can have elemental attributes, and -

Wait. Three explosions, four wolves...don’t tell me…

“And three, even if you want to come after me, I doubt you would have the time or the chance while dealing with the rest of the pack.”

...Dammit.

After her speech, Lilia finished up looting my backpack while humming an annoyingly happy tune. My only concern was how long my paralysis would last. Sure, I wasn’t enthused by the idea of dying to a pack of four-legged chicken, but I was confident that I could handle them. Lilia miscalculated when she targeted me. I could easily break through the paralysis effect, as a result of my self-imposed training over the last month, but I didn’t want to use my newly defined Soul Arts just yet. No need to use my trump cards when my life was in no danger. She also didn’t bank on me having an Inventory Core, which, as far as I could tell, is undetectable by normal means. My backpack was merely a ruse to prevent anyone from thinking I was carrying more than I should be able to. While Inventory Cores were not particularly rare, according to the books the bandits stole, they were also not exactly as common as dirt. Usually only those who could afford the expense and had a practical reason to use it would actually make the effort to buy one. Or steal one, if they were so inclined.

All in all, Lilia was only able to grab the few weapons and food supplies that I kept in the pack in case I came upon thieves like herself. Since even my facial features were locked in place I didn’t have to expend the effort to act offended or betrayed...as offended or betrayed as a stranger could be in this situation.

Noticing no pack of her own, I assumed that she had an Inventory herself, which would allow her to keep up the ruse for as long as she had slots. She would probably then move to a new location or head back to her base of operations, if she has one. I figured she was more of the former, constantly on the move so that it would be harder to exact retribution. Not that I particularly cared one way or the other. Thieves are just a natural part of any world, some more so than others. As long as she didn’t threaten my life directly or take something with sentimental value, as little as I had for anything these days, I couldn’t care less about her choices.

Lilia finally walked around to a position where I could see her. “Well, you have about a minute left before you will be able to move again, but I doubt it would take so long for the Harpy Wolves to find you. I left the fourth one alive, after all, so it should be leading the other half of it’s pack to our location right now.”

She reached into the open air and a bottle appeared in her hand. Yup, Inventory Core. “However, you will be the only one they find. Thanks for the profit,” she said, winking at me. Then she poured the contents of the bottle over her head and replaced it in her Inventory. Stepping over my prone body, Lilia departed the scene, her footsteps rapidly fading away.

And then I heard the Harpy Wolves.

Their growling screeches were faint at first, but grew louder and louder as they approached me. I still couldn’t move, but I felt some feeling slowly returning to my muscles. A sign that the effect was wearing off?

Just as the wolves entered my field of vision, I finally felt the release of my body. I collapsed in a heap, but got to my feet as quickly as I could, taking Rising Sun out of my inventory in the process. I slightly shook each limb just to make sure I had full range of motion, then set my stance.

A fleeting thought struck me as I realized that this will be the first time I used Rising Sun in combat. I got a bit excited, unable to wait to see how much more havoc I could reak.

The Harpy Wolf leading the group looked like the walking remains of whatever Lilia did to its brethren. Most of its feathers were gone, and in several places there were ruptures of meat and skin, as if something exploded against it. I guessed that she adjusted her ability slightly to leave one wolf alive, and that was the result. The other four wolves accounted for the missing members of the eight-pack and looked perfectly healthy. They stayed behind the injured one until they had me in their sights, after which they charged on ahead directly. Without any more need for guidance, their speed drastically increased, along with the fever in their eyes. These wolves were out for revenge.

I took note of their speed from before and after. I should have been slightly worried, for although I had plenty of experience fighting foes that broke the speed of sound in a casual walk, this new body of mine is nowhere near that point. Skill and experience are wonderful weapons, but they can only do so much with such a poor base. The Harpy Wolves were fast enough that they would pose a significant threat to me if I wasn’t careful. However…

I couldn’t remove the mad grin from my face.

I unintentionally leaked out a bit of my Battle Intent, the system’s pitiful attempt to categorize my intentions to absolutely slaughter any enemy before me. The wolves, committed to their charge, faltered and stumbled when they felt it, causing them to almost dogpile on top of each other.

Oops. Can’t let my control slip. There will be a time for that later, but for now...I need to train. I pulled back my Battle Intent under a tight reign while the Harpy Wolves got back to their feet.

Not willing to let the opportunity slip past, I dashed towards the recovering wolves, who were bewildered by what they experienced. In their confusion, I got within range of the largest of the bunch. Shifting the momentum from my dash into the swing of my right arm, I planted my feet in the ground and delivered a powerful horizontal smash into my target’s head. It exploded in a splatter of beak, flesh, and brain matter. The core in its forehead was also dislodged, but I noticed that it didn’t fall too far away, almost as if it hit some sort of resisting barrier. This sparked a memory of the morning I wiped out the slime horde; the cores were always rather close to the place where I killed a slime. I didn’t pay much attention to that detail back then, thinking that it was just how the binding magic between the slimes and their cores functioned, but now I suspect that this applied to all creatures and their cores - the core seems to be bound to the body it came from after death, likely temporary as there was no mention of transporting bodies along with cores that are sold in cities.

All of these thoughts occurred in the span of less than a second. I learned quite early on that thinking too slowly in combat, especially against higher level or stronger enemies, was an almost guaranteed death. I couldn’t afford to die to some simple wolves.

Using the force of the miniscule recoil I felt when sending my first wolf to the afterlife (lucky bastard, it might just cease to exist, sounds like paradise to me), I swung again to make a second attack to the next nearest beastie. This time I couldn’t get a headshot, but I did manage to make it wonder if it was born with a fully intact spine or several pieces of one. The weight of my Rising Sun smashed the wolf heavily into the ground and my eyes barely caught the moment when this one’s core slightly popped out of its skull. A bit of energy released from death causing the core to be removed, perhaps? That would certainly make harvesting them more convenient, especially factoring in the bound-to-body aspect.

Turning my attention away from the two dead wolves at my side, I leveled my gaze at the remaining enemies. The injured wolf was lying on the road, eyes closed, panting heavily. It seems that it was far too injured to contribute more to the fight. Putting him to the side, I took stock of the two healthy wolves. Both of them stared at me with a mix of anger, hatred and fear. It made sense. After all, I did just slaughter half of their number in the space of a few seconds. They looked at one another, sharing a short series of growls and squacks (seriously, they just sounded wrong), then one of them, slightly slimmer than the other, began to slowly circle around me, never letting me out of its line of sight. I met his (or her, knowing my luck with that gender so far) gaze and played along with their obvious ploy, gradually turning my back to the second wolf. The slim one kept up a quiet growl the whole time, in what I deduced was an attempt to muffle the approach of his partner. My senses, though not as developed yet as I would have liked, were still too sharp for that to work.

Keeping my eyes locked with that of the wolf in front of me, I calmly waited for any indication that the trap would spring. After a few moments of glaring at each other, I noticed the wolf baring its jaw slightly wider, as if about to attack. Trusting my instincts, I quickly spun around, bringing my lovely morningstar vertically to chest height in order to meet the lunge of the second wolf. The speed and timing of his jump made him crumple headfirst against my weapon, almost like slamming into a wall and sliding down. However, I couldn’t get one of my favorite comedic effects since it was ruined by just a bit too much forward momentum and my slightly off-balanced stance. And then there were the spikes to consider too...

I was not looking for laughs though. I was looking to survive.

...This time, at least.

The collision between bludgeon and wolf pushed me back towards my earlier opponent, which was exactly what I wanted. I loosened the tension in the hand holding Rising Sun, then changed the direction of the pressure I applied to the weapon, utilizing every motion and force involved. This let me bring down the spiked head of my wonderful shaft right into the back of the neck of the first wolf, who was trying to get at me from the ground as opposed to jumping at me like the other. He, too, died with that blow.

And then it was over.

I mean, there was still the injured one left, but it was hardly a threat in that condition. It looked only slightly better than the four corpses around me.

I might as well just put it out of it’s misery -

Calculating Experience...

Resolving Attributes...

Congratulations! You have achieved Level 6.

- after I check out my new level.