Arcadian Live

A few hours later

The audience watches with anticipation as Wolf orders the most recently turned haunted bat to join the small army of arctic lycanthropes marching along behind him.

“And that’s another one for his little army,” Mikaela says with a chuckle without taking his eyes off of the bizarre scene.

Niklai raises an eyebrow at the screen and says, “At least he isn’t letting them go free to start an apocalypse on the floor like he did a while back.”

A brief round of laughter runs through the audience at that before it begins to trail off as the main screen changes to show a woman in a heavy winter coat, with multiple layers over her legs, and a hat on her head as she trudges through the snow under her feet. She has two swords strapped in sheathes on her back and is trembling from the cold as her warm breath comes out in visible puffs.

Mikaela winces as he sees her before muttering, “It’s at moments like these that you really see the cruelty of the Administrator Dungeon…”

Murmurs flow through the audience as Niklai nods his head in agreement.

‘Killing hundreds of Competitors is one thing,’ Mikaela thinks to himself while watching the main screen, ‘but when it goes and pushes them through stuff like this? That’s just harsh.’

Several seconds of grim silence pass before he thinks, ‘Although at least the dungeon places a puzzle themed floor as the first theme every Run. It weeds out the Competitors who aren’t up to the challenge.’

The silence continues for a few minutes until the screen once again changes to show another Competitor. Except this time, the audience explodes into various expressions of disgust and anger.

On the main screen is a large, two-meter-tall wasp-like creature with two legs, two arms, and a thick exoskeleton making up its ‘skin’ as it walks at a slow pace through the snow with four different balls of magma ranging from two inches to four inches in diameter floating around its body.

Mikaela frowns as he sees the anthrovespid as it walks through the thirty-first floor with obvious discomfort, “If it didn’t have that magma creation and manipulation skill, then I’m not entirely sure if it would even be able to survive this floor or not.”

Shouts of anger ring out from the audience before Niklai nods his head in agreement and says, “It got lucky.”

Anthrovespids – just like normal wasps – don’t do very well in the cold.

Wolf

Five hours later

I stand with my hands on my hips in my hunter form as I inspect the little army of arctic lycanthropes that I have built up. Including this one, there should be about twenty-five of the monsters. About half of them are haunted bats – large, one-meter-tall black bats with bright red eyes – while the other half are the dark sprite spawns that had managed to survive being bitten.

None of them look particularly happy about following me, but as long as they do as they’re told then it won’t matter.

I glance at Sapphire as she stands in her true form in front of all of the arctic lycanthropes with what I can only assume is a look of pride on her face. She seems to be asserting her dominance over the monsters, and I can’t help but chuckle at the sight of it.

Sapphire’s antics aside, I turn my attention towards the direction of the large group of monsters that I can hear about a couple hundred meters away from us.

If what my ears are telling me is correct, then these monsters should be serving under that dark sprite ruler that I read about being the boss of this floor earlier on the forums. Everything I could find about the monster made it seem like some sort of king or leader class person from a video game. It has the ability to strengthen anything serving under it by a decent margin, but the monster itself isn’t very powerful. Which makes this floor’s boss relatively easy to kill in and of itself if you can get past its army of dark sprites.

Which…

I turn towards the group of arctic lycanthropes gathered behind me.

…is what these guys are for.

Whether they want to or not.

I glance at Sapphire before focusing on the monsters again and snarling, “Follow me.”

All of the arctic lycanthropes tense up before following after me as I begin making my way towards the annoying sounds of insect-like wings beating in the distance.

Although the ones behind me aren’t much better. Just with less of them, along with over a dozen bat wings flapping instead.

My interest in the hunt continues rising as we make our way towards the boss until – as we are only halfway there – I glance up at where I think the audience is watching me from before saluting and snarling a very gruff sounding, “Let the hunt begin!”

Arcadian Live

“Let the hunt begin!” Wolf snarls through his canine-like mouth whilst looking upwards before he suddenly breaks off into a sprint, followed soon after by the arctic lycanthropes and Sapphire.

“Holy shit,” Katherine mutters, “that form is still pretty damn terrifying…”

Niklai grunts in acknowledgement of her words. Meanwhile Mikaela just ignores them whilst intently watching the main screen as shouts of anticipation fill the stadium.

The shouts are soon joined by both screams and cheers as Wolf charges straight into an enormous clearing with a large tree in the middle of it, and a strange looking throne made out of tree bark in front of it. Around the tree is a large mass of over a hundred dark sprites of varying types, all floating around at random until Wolf breaks into the clearing.

On the throne is a human-sized dark sprite with a crown making up the top of his head. It has a set of deep, purple eyes, with a mouth full of fangs, and two large, butterfly-like wings behind its back that are spreading out on both sides of it, somehow going straight through the throne.

_-| Unnamed – Dark Sprite Ruler – Level 357 |-_

“And here it is!” Mikaela shouts at the top of his lungs, brimming with excitement, “Another dark sprite ruler! Let’s see how the strongest Competitor of this Administrator Dungeon Run deals with it!”

The ruler quickly gets up from his throne as Wolf sprints into the clearing on all fours before leaping up and slashing straight at the nearest dark sprite and landing on two feet in front of it. Soon after that, the small army of arctic lycanthropes – all with eyes radiating a pale-blue and golden light – rush into the clearing, along with a large two-and-a-half meter long spider.

A strange sound comes from the ruler’s mouth before all of the dark sprites begin rushing forwards to meet the lycanthropes.

“Is this a boss battle,” Niklai mutters with a strange look on his face, “or a war?”

A cheerful laugh comes from Mikaela as he watches Wolf make a beeline straight towards the ruler, cutting down any dark sprite that gets in his way, “I don’t care which! It’s great to watch Wolf back at it again with his unusual antics!”

Katherine glances at him with a raised eyebrow as she thinks, ‘Did he ever stop his unusual antics?’

The audience agrees with Mikaela as the volume within the stadium grows to an ear-shattering height.

Sapphire shreds through the dark sprites with ease, meanwhile the arctic lycanthropes tear apart the dark sprites while turning others that survived being bitten. At the same time, they are all being pelted with orbs of darkness, along with various other attacks centered around the darkness element. These orbs – while they can’t pierce through the eternal ice making up Sapphire’s fur – prove troublesome for the lycanthropes as bloody holes appear around their bodies.

“The ruler is extremely weak personally and would likely be killed in just a couple of strikes by The Winter Wolf if he can reach him,” Mikaela says as he continues watching the bloodshed with interest, “but the dark sprites have the advantage in number, with only a small disadvantage in their physical abilities when compared to the lycanthropes.”

“If it weren’t for Sapphire, and the fact that the lycanthropes are turning the dark sprites during the battle, then they would probably lose,” Niklai continues Mikaela’s statement for him with a mixed look on his face.

“Wait…” Niklai suddenly trails off as Wolf pushes himself into one last sprint and breaks through the dark sprites guarding the ruler, “it looks like the climax is just about upon us!”

Wolf doesn’t waste any time as he ignores the other dark sprites around him that are pelting him with dark orbs and rushes straight at the ruler. The ruler – not one to just take death at face value – raises his own hands and fires his own orbs of darkness, causing several dark, bloody holes to cover Wolf’s body before he can reach him.

“Damn it,” Wolf snarls before a light mist of ice flows out of his body and focuses on the holes, slowly closing them up as he continues his sprint, soon reaching the ruler.

A look of fear covers the boss’s face as it watches the approaching claws before they reach it, tearing five long, purple strips from its waist to its chin, cutting open its neck in the process. The dark purple blood spills out of the creature as it fires one last, enormous orb of darkness at Wolf, who quickly tries to get out of the way, only to have it skim his arm, taking a large chunk out of it in the process.

The instant the ruler slumps over dead, all of the dark sprites suddenly grow sluggish and confused, becoming easy targets for Sapphire and the remaining arctic lycanthropes.

Meanwhile, Wolf focuses on healing his shoulder with a grimace covering his snout.

“And it looks like – as we all expected – The Winter Wolf will be moving on to the fourth theme!” Mikaela shouts with his arms spread out.

The shouts within the stadium – which had died down quite a bit as the audience focused on the action – raise back up to a fevered pitch as Wolf slowly gets back up to his feet and looks down at the ruler’s corpse lying back on his throne.