Since Alz had confirmed his decision, the librarians then began to work out some of the more specific details with Alz. Ultimately, they had decided to report Alz's result as having solved 6 questions, so he wouldn't draw too much attention from the village.

Alz naturally agreed to it when Tia told him of the arrangement and the four of them were now standing at the library entrance to see Alz off.

“Take care, Alz.” Tia said while waving her hands as Alz rushed off into the distance.

Alz was rushing back to the dorm so he could get his two childhood friend’s stories to match the story. He trusted that they would not carelessly spread his results, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Alz didn't want an issue to crop up right after he settled it on this end.

Soon after, he found his two friends back at the dorm and quickly told his two friends to keep silent about his results. He did not reveal much details, but he said that it was very important to him so readily agreed without any questions despite their confusion.

Two years went by in the blink of an eye as the young hatchlings slowly got used to their new lives and became better at their roles.

In the outskirts of the fourth village.

A wolf was charging towards an elven boy from about 20m away. The boy was holding onto a shoddy looking wooden bow that was strung with a green vine-like material.

The boy gazed back at the wolf who was charging towards him with no signs of panic, calmly grabbing an arrow from the quiver by his waist and nocking it onto his bow.

The wolf suddenly howled as it was charging towards the boy, increasing its speed along with the howl. The boy remained unfazed as he held his bow up, pointing his bow straight at the wolf.

15m…10m… the wolf steadily got closer to the boy. Suddenly, the boy’s ears twitched as a soft rustling sound entered his ear. Another wolf had appeared from the side and was rapidly dashing towards the boy.

The wolf was not alone. It had been trying to distract Alz from the front while his companion went in from the side and even howled loudly to mask the sound made by its companion. However, the boy still maintained his composure as his lips curled up to form a smile.

When the wolf at the front was about 5m away from him, the boy suddenly kicked at a thin vine that was hanging in front of him, slicing it apart with his stone tipped shoes. Next, he jumped in the opposite direction of the second wolf approaching wolf while taking aim at it.

*Whoosh* he released the arrow and it landed right on the wolf’s eye, piercing through its skull and killing it instantly. At the same time, a wooden cage suddenly dropped from above and caught the first wolf, halting its approach as it struggled to break out of the cage.

“Now!” the elf shouted into the forest as he released the arrow.

Following the shout, a figure appeared from behind a tree that was right beside the first elf. The figure held onto a wooden spear with a roughly cut stone tip as he charged towards the caged wolf with a loud roar, causing the attention of the wolf to be directed towards him.

In the brief moment it was distracted, an arrow sliced through the air and embedded itself into the side of the wolf's skull.

The figure who was approaching the cage began to slow down after seeing this as he cautiously approached the cage while observing the wolf. Soon, he gave a thumbs-up to the first elf who finally released the tension in his body and revealed a smile.

The first elf was Alz and the second was Polon and they were currently out on a scouting assignment around the outskirts of the fourth village.

In Alz's early days of hunting, he once shot a wolf in what he thought was a vital area and carelessly approached the wolf, only to be greeted with a sharp claw to his chest. Fortunately, he had reacted quickly and drove his dagger into the weakened wolf’s neck, finishing it off and surviving the ordeal.

He received an earful from Lein after he went back that day, as Lein had always taught them to never let their guard down in the forest, particularly when they were hunting.

Since then, he always remained vigilant when dealing with wolves before confirming their deaths, even if it looked like they were absolutely dead.

Polon put his spear away and removed the cage from the wolf. Following this, he drew a fang-tipped dagger and started to cut apart the corpse, collecting the valuable parts in a leather bag he carried around.

Meanwhile, Alz cautiously approached the second wolf and confirmed its death before drawing a dagger of his own and doing the same. After he was done, Alz walked over to the cage and mended the areas that were damaged by the wolf earlier with some materials from his bag before setting it up again.

Polon silently watched by the side while Alz set up the trap. After a short while, Alz was done and walked over to Polon. The two then begun walking towards the direction of the village entrance.

Over the two years, Alz’s looks had grown to increasingly resemble Tia. His exquisite facial features emitted a soft feminine glow, capable of charming elves of both sexes. In contrast to this, his body had grown slightly more muscular and had small scars littered throughout his body.

There were also four deep claw marks which cut across his chest, a souvenir from a life-death experience he had while hunting. A quick glance at his body would immediately show that he was not someone to mess with despite his feminine looks.

On the other hand, Polon had grown much more muscular over this time. His figure seemed to contain endless strength and vitality in it, something that one usually did not expect from an elf, a race known for being inherently deficient in physical strength.

“Man, I didn’t do anything again. Nowadays, I feel like I’m just standing around.” Polon sighed and said.

“I can only fight like that because I know you have my back.” Alz smiled as he replied.

Alz and Polon continued to joke around and make some small talk along the way, soon arriving at a tree near the village entrance where there were already two elves waiting.

In the past two years, the six hatchlings all grew tremendously under Lein's tutelage. In the first few weeks of their training, they were first instructed to choose a primary weapon.

Most of the elves in the village used bows as elves inherently lacked physical strength and were placed at a disadvantage in head-on physical confrontations, so it was generally unwise to fight at close distances.

Their strong senses also allowed for them to detect and locate enemies from a distance, making ranged weapons ideal for them.

However, Polon was one of the exceptions as he boasted of incredible strength not commonly seen amongst their race.

His strength, coupled with the swiftness and agility of the elven race made him extremely suitable for close quarters combat, making him the only elf from the batch who chose a melee weapon, the spear, while the other five went with bows.

They were also issued with a small dagger that was had a tip made of a wolf fang. This was a tool that came in extremely handy in many situations and also served a secondary purpose of doubling as a close combat weapon in times of emergencies.

The elves except Polon were issued with a wooden bow and quiver alongside several stone-tipped arrows. They usually trained at the archery practice area where there were multiple trees that had target markers carved of them as well as seniors to guide them on their form.

Meanwhile, Polon was taught directly by the village chief, Blain. Blain was one of the elves in the tribe who used a spear and was well known for his ability in using it. Part of the reason why Polon was recommended to choose the spear was also because of Blain's presence in the village.

When he heard from Lein that Polon choose the spear, he was gratified and immediately volunteered to make time out of his busy schedule to personally instruct Polon on the ways of the spear.

Subsequently, they were also given many lectures by Lein on the characteristics of wolves, their habits, their vital areas and the such as well as the things they had to pay attention to while in the forest.

Lein was very strict during these lectures and constantly repeated his points to make sure they remembered. He also gave out surprise quizzes frequently and punished those who could not answer his questions harshly, earning him many names from the hatchlings initially, such as ‘Devil’ or ‘Demon Instructor’.

The hatchlings were split into three different pairs and assigned to squads headed by senior hatchlings or senior warriors to conduct patrols and guard duties.

It was during this time that the hatchlings’ resentment towards Lein slowly transformed into feelings of gratitude as they begun to realise the importance of Lein’s teachings as they started delving more into the forests and face off against wolves.

Alz in particular learnt this the hard way and always paid his fullest attention to whatever Lein taught them after his near-death incident. Even Polon who usually couldn't sit still tried to pay attention to these lectures.

However, he was extremely unsuccessful and usually relied on Alz’s patient explanations after each lecture to drill the content into his head, something Link always joked about when they gathered.

About a year ago, Alz was reading in the library when he came across scrolls which documented attempts to use traps for hunting wolves in the past, which had been discontinued after several trials due to its lack of feasibility.

The main problems of the traps were the lack of durability and the ineffectiveness of static traps. The claws and fangs of wolves would easily rip apart any trap made by vine and twigs, hence these traps would only be able to stall them.

This would still have been extremely useful in dealing with wolves, as stopping their movements even momentarily would bring great benefit to the combat situation. However, the next problem was a fatal flaw which made traps unusable.

Wolves had great agility and strong senses. They were found to be able to realise when they triggered a trap and avoid them, rendering most traps ineffective.

The research found out that wolves would only be caught off guard when the traps were not triggered by them, such as with pitfall traps, and some of them were made for the village’s defence today. However, the elves had no effective tools to make these traps and they only covered a small area, hence the research was discontinued in the end.

However, when Alz saw this, his eyes shined as he thought of ways he could use this information, while thinking back to the characteristics of wolves. They had poorer eyesight than elves but had extremely strong senses of hearing and smell which more than made up for that.

Furthermore, they usually hunted in the darker hours of the day which reduced the advantage of eyesight the elves had over them. They were also very agile and possessed sharp claws and fangs, making them extremely tough to deal if they got up close.

Alz spent a few weeks and successfully devised several traps that seemed workable. These traps were designed to be triggered by the elves during live combat as opposed to being triggered by the wolves.

Working with these ideas, he started to delve into the practical considerations and eventually managed to produce blueprints of some of these traps. He had been extremely excited then and requested permission and support from Blain for live testing of the traps.

Blain initially did not think well of his idea, but he had seen how hard Alz worked on these and couldn't bear to deny the efforts that Alz had made. Therefore, he gave Alz permission to test out the traps in a small area while providing him with the materials and assigning him some elves to help in the setup.

To Blain’s surprise, Alz had managed to use these traps in real combat situations to great effect over the next few months. His interest in Alz's project immediately perked and he started to assign more elves to construct and set up traps according to Alz's blueprints in various parts of the forest.

Following this, he requested for Alz to teach some of the warriors and his fellow hatchlings on the ways to use these traps in combat, something Alz had excitedly agreed to as he learnt that his innovation would be used to better the village.