Wolf

I focus on my life sense skill before quickly sensing something enter the skill’s range. Something enormous.

As if announcing its presence, another loud trumpeting sound echoes throughout the area, causing the ground beneath my feet to shake even more violently than before. What’s more is that the blizzard actually appears to be clearing up in the area around us, slowly revealing a massive creature with two large tusks, long brown and white hair, a long trunk, and two glowing red eyes. The creature is nearly five meters tall and has the shape of an elephant.

“Well, fuck…” I mutter as soon as I identify the creature.

_-| Unnamed – Mammoth Berserker – Level 441 |-_

Another damn berserker?

I thought they were supposed to only appear in the later floors! Why have there already been two of them before floor fifty?!

The monster ignores my surprise as it begins charging directly at me with a dark look in its eyes. Every time its feet hit the snowy ground beneath us, a tremor radiates outwards from it, threatening my balance each time.

I quickly expel all of my current ice element, covering the area with mist before freezing the mammoth’s feet to the ground, causing it to falter slightly in its steps before falling down on all four knees.

A smile begins to brighten on my face, only to vanish as the mammoth trumpets again in anger before putting an extreme amount of force into its legs, eventually ripping them straight upwards with the ice, snow, and the ground the ice was frozen to along with it.

“What the hell?!” I shout before jumping out of the way as the mammoth continues charging at me, slowly chipping away at the chunks of ground connected to its legs until all that’s left is the ice and snow, along with a very thin layer of ground stuck to its feet.

The mammoth continues charging straight past my previous location before coming to a stop several meters away and awkwardly turning around to face me again. It then bellows another trumpeting sound and charges straight at me again whilst ducking its head in what’s most likely an attempt to impale me with its enormous tusks.

I frown at it before mentally grabbing hold of all of the ice element around us and driving it all straight towards the mammoth with the intent to freeze the creature into a mammoth statue.

However, right as the ice element is about to collide with the mammoth, it suddenly raises its trunk, breathes in deeply, and bellows another trumpeting noise. Except, this one is followed by gusts of snowy wind that quickly knocks back large portions of my ice element, only allowing about a third of it to pass through and freeze large chunks of the mammoth’s body.

It’s at this point that I finally notice a strange glint to its fur; one that makes it look as if the fur is sparkling like a crystal. What’s more is that there appears to be some sort of energy, partially made out of ice element, connecting its fur to the surrounding air.

Is that how the mammoth cleared up the blizzard?

Before I can think much on it, the mammoth does something that makes me question its sanity.

The large patches of ice on its body suddenly begin to strain and creak before popping off of its body with a large ripping sound.

“What the…” I quietly whisper to myself as I stare at the now partially-skinned mammoth as it trumpets loudly in pain from having ripped its own skin off somehow to get rid of my ice.

It can do that?

The mammoth’s eyes then begin to shine with even more red light before it trumpets one last time and begins charging straight towards me again, completely ignoring the pain that it must be experiencing right now.

I watch it for a few seconds with my mouth wide open before shutting it with a light shake of my head.

Berserker is an accurate term for this thing.

I then raise my head and gather all of the eternal ice element nearby to have it rush at the mammoth from all sides.

If it’s just going to rip off its own flesh to get rid of my ice, then I’m just gonna have to freeze its entire body instead of just the surface layers!

The anger in the mammoth’s eyes flares once more as it begins to breathe in air through its trunk, likely to blow more snowy wind at my ice element, before I control some of the ice that is still coating its feet to zip straight up towards its snout to plug it. The mammoth then stumbles in its charge as I feel the temperature of its trunk begin to plummet before it stops its charge and begins to shake its trunk back and forth.

I grin at the sight of my ice element finally reaching the mammoth and covering its entire body before seeping inside to freeze everything. The mammoth berserker can’t even trumpet again due to the seal on its trunk as it glares at me with a burning hatred in its eyes right before the last remnants of life leaves it.

Seconds later, a familiar notification appears on my interface.

System Notification

Congratulations!

You are now level 440!

I stand as Sapphire climbs out of my shadow and onto my shoulder without taking my eyes off of the mammoth’s corpse.

There is definitely something strange about this dungeon run…

A few more seconds pass by before I shake my head and turn towards the direction I was going to head before the rude mammoth interrupted me whilst also opening my dungeon map.

I should be a high enough level to deal with the wendigo by now, but it would be best to wait a little bit longer just in case.

My thoughts are interrupted as a bleep sound suddenly comes from my map.

“Oh?” I mutter with a smile.

Along with the noise comes a light flash of light from my map before a small blue orb symbol appears several dozen kilometers away from my current location.

Time to go get another EXP Orb!

Arcadian Live

“And the top winning odds of the current bet are the ones that said that he would defeat the berserker without a scratch!” Mikaela shouts with a stunning smile across his sharp looking face. “Also, from what I remember, there was also a bet about there being more berserkers in the dungeon before the one hundredth floor!”

The already-present cheers and screams within the stadium increase in volume as some shouts of anger follow the result of the bets.

Mikaela just continues grinning as he thinks to himself, ‘It’s a pity that I didn’t bet on the second one, but the first one has netted me quite a bit of SP!’

The noise within the stadium continues to run rampant for several minutes until a chime echoes throughout every last screen within the stadium, causing everyone to slowly simmer down to nothing but quiet whispers. At the same time, Mikaela turns his attention towards Wolf’s screen and quickly floats up towards it with a curious look on his face as he watches several different emotions cross The Winter Wolf’s face.

“Well, this has got to be interesting…” Mikaela mutters with his brows furrowed in thought. ‘I wonder just what happened that gave everyone a notification at the same time?’

A few minutes pass by as the whispers die down even further, only for the new-found quiet to be shattered in an instant by a shout from a distant corner of the stadium.

“Another event boss has spawned!”