The four remaining werewolves all began howling, in response, their bodies began changing. Their arms, chests and legs began expanding, their finger and toenails began growing into claws, their mouths began forming into long snouts and their teeth turned into long and sharp fangs. The colour of their eyes changed into a powerful yellow with orange accents and their pupils became smaller as the hair on their bodies spread out and covered everything and eventually grew into a tail. Their muscles had become larger as well, making them seem far larger than they were before. Walking towards them on two powerful legs were humanoid wolves with dark grey fur, long and sharp ears, eyes that pierced them and fangs and claws capable of ripping through even steel armours.

But at the same moment, the four were transforming Zane had shot two more bullets into the general direction of two of the werewolves, hitting them in the heads mid-transformation. The largest of them began howling loudly, a war cry meant to scare them.

"Z-Zane," Mira said slowly, with fear in her voice.

"Don't worry, I'll try to be quick about it," Zane said as he began smiling.

Been a while since I had my fun with some werebeasts, and wolves on top of that! Almost like the gods want to reward me. Let's just hope I don't get both of us killed.

The two werewolves Zane had shot mid-transformation suddenly stood back up, steam rising up from where the holes in their heads had been.

"Think you can kill us that easily," said one of them with a deep, rough and echoey voice.

Of course not.

Zane put the guns back in their holsters and quickly opened his satchel to take out a small vial filled with fine-looking, blue dust that shone in the light coming from the moon above them. The ears of the werewolves tilted backwards in anticipation.

Apparently didn't expect me to have some were-powder with me.

Zane drew his katana, still holding the closed vial in one hand and charged at the largest of the werewolves. The beast let out a loud roar and swung his massive and muscular arm with long claws at him. Zane bent his body slightly backwards, the claws grazed his armour leaving behind scratch marks that nearly went all the way through to his chest. At the same time, Zane swung his katana at the werewolf and cut open his chest, the momentum of the swing made him spin around once which he used to get in another cut after which he jumped back and out of reach of the werewolf.

Blood was gushing out of the wound for a short moment until steam began rising from it and the wound began healing quickly.

Zane also had no time to prepare to attack again since two other hairy beasts ran in his direction. He quickly crouched down, making both wolves jump over him and crash into each other right above him. For a few seconds, Zane was buried beneath the two wolves, second, he used to quickly open the vial with the blue dust in it and throw some of it in the air. The noise of sizzling flesh could be heard before both wolves howled loudly in pain. Zane returned to a standing position, lifting up both werewolves on his shoulders and throwing them on the ground before him where they writhed in pain like fish out of water.

Zane chuckled at the sight but not for long as a loud scream came to his ears from behind. One of the werewolves had approached Mira who was struggling to put on her chain with just one hand. As if by instinct Zane jumped backwards, turned mid-jump and began running at the werewolf. With a quick swing, he cut off the beast's head. Its body fell to the ground and the head landed not too far away. Zane grabbed the fur of the body and lifted it up, opened the vial again and scattered some dust into the wound. It began to sizzle immediately, like meat on a hot rock. He then turned around, still holding on to the body and threw it at an approaching werewolf, hitting him in the gut and making him fly backwards a few meters.

Three down, three to go.

"Don't think you can get away with this!" the one he hit with the body yelled, his voice echoing through the dark night.

Zane didn't take his eyes off of the werewolf charging at him, preparing to throw some of the dust on him. But to Zane's surprise, the werewolf jumped over him with a big leap and landed close behind him. Another scream coming from Mira filled the cool night air as the werewolf was trying to bite down on her.

Zane turned around and ran up the wolves back, trampling on his head once he reached it. The werewolf threw him off and turned to him to get revenge. He had barely any time to react to the werewolf's attack and instinctively just rammed his left hand down his enemies mouth. Thanks to his gauntlet the werewolf couldn't bite down, his teeth, as sharp as they may be, were stopped by the black gauntlet.

What is this thing made of? Aurium? Although that would make a lot of sense. But this gives me an idea.

Zane channelled Aura into the gauntlet. The inside of the werewolf's mouth began lighting up with a withe light as the Rune on the gauntlet was activated. For a short moment, the skin between the werewolf's upper and lower jaw expanded until it got ripped apart by the blurry air that had hardened due to the Rune. The werewolf's lower jaw dropped down and a rustling escaped the wolfs throat. Shortly after steam began emitting from the fresh wound as it tried to heal but was stopped by the air shield.

Zane used the moment to ram his katana into the werewolf's heart, leave it there and drop down the vial he still held in the hand that had been stuck in the wolfs mouth. The vial fell down, past the hanging lower jaw of the werebeast and into Zane's hand. He then removed the katana from the werewolf's wound and threw some dust into the wound before it could heal back up. The wolf quickly fell to the ground, dead. Zane picked up his katana and turned to the two remaining werewolves.

Four down, two to go.

"H-How dare you!" one of the two yelled loudly, making his voice sound deeper and more threatening.

The two charged at him at the same time, becoming so fast that Zane could barely even see them as two grey masses running at him. He took a deep breath and spun around, using the momentum to swing his katana at the two wolves. With a quick and clean-cut, he slashed open the throat of one of them and made a cut across both eyes of the other. Then he rammed his katana through the neck of the wolf whom's throat he had sliced end let some of the dust fall onto the wound, making it sizzle.

Five down, one to go.

The last werewolf now looked around at the corpses of his fallen comrades.

"Y-You know we can . . . we can talk this trough right?" the wolf asked, his voice slowly changing back into that of a human.

His body began shrinking, the fur retracted and returned to being just hair on his body, the colour of his eyes changed along with the shape of his face and ears changed. He turned back into a human.

"Listen this whole thing wasn't my idea, really. Just let me go and I swe-"

Without listening to the rest of the mans pleading Zane cut off his head with a fast strike of his katana. Mira sat on the ground behind him, breathing heavily as she tried to calm down.

"You know . . . y-you're really amazing sometimes," Mira said.

"Amazing," Zane said with a smile on his face. "Yeah right, if these guys actually had developed their powers I would have been dead after a minute without my power. I doubt I'd be able to kill any of the werewolves I faced before, no scratch that, any werebeasts I faced before without it." Zane took a deep breath as he sheathed his katana and put the vial back into his satchel. "That fuck also took massive amounts of Aura from me when he took my power away," he said.

"Doesn't that just impact your ability to use Aura?" Mira asked.

"Aura begins flowing through your body when you have enough of it, and that also means your muscles. Trough that the strength of your muscles can be greatly increased depending on the amount of Aura," Zane explained.

"How come you managed to defeat the soldiers from Avalon so easily then?" Mira asked.

Zane began laughing loudly. "Because they're just far too pathetic! If you think that Ion's army was shit because of how unorganized it is on the greater scale then you'll just laugh at whatever Avalon calls an army! Just a bunch of idiots that learned how to fight in two weeks and then got send to another country so they can sacrifice their lives for nothing," Zane said angrily.

He took a deep breath and calmed down. "You know, I like to act like I'm strong even now but deep down I know that I wouldn't have gotten anywhere without that power," Zane said as he stomped on the ground. "

I-It's alright," Mira said as she stood up and walked over to him.

The two looked around at the corpses of the werewolves.

"Let's go into the forest and set up camp, the fur of these weaklings isn't going to be worth anything if my blade was able to cut through it with such ease."

Mira nodded and followed Zane to the forest.

Can't believe I struggled against them . . . all that strength I had, was it really just because of that Aura I got from Erebus?

Zane clenched his fist as they walked.

I should try to build up more Aura again, even if I can only use it to activate the Rune.

"So where will we go now? Where's the next bridge?" Mira asked.

Zane thought for a moment. "On the other end of Alva," he said.

"H-How long would that take us?" Mira asked hesitantly.

"Probably a month, maybe longer," Zane answered.

"W-Well then we should get up early."

"We'll take the cave," Zane said at almost the same time.

"W-What?"

"We'll take the cave," Zane repeated, as he went through his hair with both hands.

"A-Are . . . are you sure?" Mira asked with concern in her voice.

Zane nodded. "It's about two days away from here," he said.

"A-Alright then," Mira said.

After the two reached the forest and entered they set up their two tents and Zane made a campfire. Both of them sat down around it and stared into the flame.

"Do you really want to go back to that cave? I mean I heard the story from Gilma and I would really understand if you didn't want to go," Mira said.

"Don't worry too much about me," Zane said. "You should also go to sleep now, we have a long way ahead of us tomorrow."

Mira nodded and went into her tent without much retaliation.

Do I really want to go back there? What are the chanced of her actually still living there? Ah who cares . . . if she tries anything I can just kill her . . . or can I? I don't know. This situation is difficult, if only I hadn't made that mistake in the tower, if only I hadn't let myself be overrun by those fucking goblins this wouldn't have happened.

Or maybe I should have just died back then like the others instead of clung to life. I should have never accepted this power in the first place.

Zane pressed against his head with both hands.

Can I even get her to Kalwa like this? I might get us both killed? I'm just not used to being so weak again . . . it really is funny how just after I had decided that I would live to protect my friend I would lose my strength at the moment it turns out my friend is a member of some noble family. There is no way any of the Vermillions would just let it sit if I took a member of their family around with me into dangerous situations. This is better for both of us, after this whole thing is over we're never going to meet again and I'll just become strong again. It might just be the same as starting all over again but that is all I should have ever done, become stronger.

If I had been stronger I would have never lost the power that set me down this path, if I had been stronger her identity would have never been revealed and we wouldn't be in this situation. This all happened because I'm weak, because I'm pathetic. I haven't changed at all since then. Eight years, all for nothing.

Zane stood up and went into the forest, keeping the camp in the corner of his eye. After he walked for a short while he stopped in front of a tree. Tears began running down his face as he started to punch the tree with all his strength. It was almost like he had entered a trance. He continued for what felt like hours, it had even started to rain by then. All he had managed was to punch away some of the tree bark and make a small dent.

See, before I would have been able to get that tree to fall over by now, but now all I can manage is maybe kick some guy into a table or kill a few pathetic excuses for werebeasts.

Zane reeled back his fist as far as he could and let it snip against the tree which shook violently. Blood dripped down from his fist. A sudden feeling of warmth against his back pulled him out of the trance he was in.

"Don't do that, you'll only hurt yourself," Mira said as she pressed herself against him.

Zane wiped away the tears and removed Mira's arms from his stomach. "Go to sleep, it's late," he said coldly as he dragged her back to the tents.

"W-What's going on why are y-"

"Nothing! Just go to sleep now alright," Zane said with a bit of anger in his voice.

"F-Fine," Mira answered.

Zane waited for her to crawl into her tent and then went into his own. He sat down in the darkness and crossed his legs.

That's right, her losing her hand is also my fault. It's all because I'm so weak.

Zane began to let the Aura he still had course trough his body.

If I want to become stronger I'll need to increase my Aura again, no matter how long it will take, no matter how many nights of sleep I'll lose. I need to get stronger.