2-5. 「Ruckus inside the forest 3」

Diving into the fray, I slashed at the nearest wolf, injuring its flank. Immediately, the whole pack of wolves turned their attention to me.

First, I need to get Serene back into that big hut so she doesn’t get in the way of me fighting the wolves. In order for her to be safe in there with her people, I need to attract the attention of all the wolves as much as possible. That’s why I have Yui with me.

Quickly forming a bunch of fireballs, Yui shot them to the wolves closest to the hut. She fired so fast it didn’t feel like she chanted at all. Naturally, those wolves got pissed off and turned their heads back to us. This is by no means an easy situation. That wolf I fought to save Serene was taken care of quickly because we were one-on-one with me having the advantage of surprised attack.

Right now, it’s an open battle where the two of us versus around 20 of those wolves, each of them isn’t any weaker than the earlier wolf. If I let my guards down, I’ll be consumed by their rapid attacks right away.

But right now I can’t go all out yet, not with Serene still on my back. So we needed to open a path to the central hut. Without needing to give out any words of instructions, I kept dash forward while Yui stayed behind and chanted a big spell.

「Rain, Seeds of Levara!」

As Yui’s voice was heard, bright red spheres of flame fell from the sky. They didn’t look like they carried any weight, but they fell with incredible speed. No, far from just falling, they’re flying down from above together with gravity. Each of them locked onto a targeted wolf, and the moment one touches a wolf, red flames burst out and created an explosion directly on their bodies.

「Gruuuuuuhhh!!!」

「Greeeekkk!!!」

Creating strange groaning sounds, the pack of wolves staggered and fell on the ground temporarily because of the impact of those explosions. But that isn’t a really good sign, since those spheres were one of Yui’s strongest AoE attacks, yet they just got a little dizzy but not dead.

However, if it’s solely for the purpose of holding them down while I move, then it’s already more than enough room created.

Not missing that chance Yui gave me, I sprinted and arrived at the central hut in just a few seconds. I put Serene down and made sure that she went into the hut to hide.

「P-Please wait! I-I can use some magic, m-maybe I should help after all…」

「Nah, you saw my little sister, she could use that kind of magic, so just go hide」

「B-But!!」

「Geez just get in there, woman!!」

I pushed her inside the hut and closed the door. That moment, I sensed blood thirst coming for my booty in the immediate tick of time.

「Uwhoa!!」

Turning back, a huge black wolf was pouncing at me with full strength. I used my sword to block its fangs from digging right into my neck. It’s in life and death situations like this that I want to thank God for giving me Rapid Leveling. Without the physical strength as I’m having right now, there was zero chance I would’ve survived that pounce just now.

This is the first time in a while I felt cold sweat running down my spine. This kind of monster must be around level 190~210, if not higher, for it to have so much physical prowess.

At the same time with when I was struggling with this wolf, two other ones rushed towards Yui and leaped at her. However, unfortunately for them, Yui’s heat barrier is near absolute when she invokes and maintains it for only 2 seconds of collision.

That said, the moment the wolves arrived at her range, a red half-sphere appeared, covering Yui like a dome. Hitting their heads into that barrier grilled those two wolves into outdoor BBQ immediately. The two wolves fell down to the ground with their corpses all burnt thoroughly as the red half-sphere disappeared from Yui’s vicinity.

This is where the flaw of this barrier comes in.

「Onii-chan!!」

「Got…it…guuh…HAAAAH!!!」

Mustering up all the strength I had, I kicked the wolf in its balls hanging indecently in the middle of its crotch. The poor creature immediately jumped and lied on the ground, twitching around.

Taking that chance, I immediately ran towards Yui, now completely defenseless.

Yui’s heat barrier is still low level. It consumes a lot of magical power and it weighs on the user, rendering them immobile on the spot for a brief minute. The barrier was made as a skill that can be maintained indefinitely on the battle field, a nearly game-breaking magical barrier of the Nature-Magic system.

However, the barrier itself is a very high-leveled technique. That’s why Yui, who only got her hands on the hidden skill Scorching Princess Levara, around half a year ago, can’t really use it perfectly yet. She can only call it up for 2 seconds to briefly protect herself and then got frozen. But thank god there’s me, I can cover for her during the recoil time.

「That said, this time it’ll be tough, though……」

Standing in front of Yui, I face the remaining 17 wolves and murmured to myself with a wry smile. A single wolf of these can overwhelm me by a small margin in terms of raw brute force. Yet there are 17 left glaring at us, and I need to 1 v 17 for a whole straight minute.

Sweats began to stream down my forehead, I could also feel my body becoming hot and sweaty under the heat of the Sun. I wonder if only these leather armor can hold out against this pack of monstrous creatures. I’m the agility type, so I prioritize high speed, high damage instead of buffing up my defense. And since I have Rapid Leveling, I could finish monsters off before they could touch me.

But this time it’s quite different, no, it’s a lot different, not even close to be somewhat similar. A whole group of monsters way stronger than me is ganging up on just the two of us. I don’t even want to speculate any kind of outcome. Just have to fight my way through, then.

After a few moments of silence, a wolf finally ran out of patience and pounced at me, baring its fangs, sharper than the teeth of a Great white shark.

Normally, I would’ve been the one who jumped at them to take advantage of my aggressive fighting style. But right now I need to defend Yui while she’s still in recoil, so it’s a whole different story. That said, I had no intention of trying to proactively pick a battle with any of them. I just waited for them to make a move and parried it.

I swung my sword, activating a defensive sword technique from the skill Sword Master, and barely blew the black wolf away while leaving a cut on its shoulder. That seemed to have pissed the monster even more as it let out some strange barking and came back at me with 2 other wolves.

「Spiral Blade Storm!!」

Against this kind of gangbang, I had to use one of my pre-named skills. Only those skills on a secret technique level is pre-named by default when I received the skill Sword Master.

Twisting my body, I spun around, drawing a perfect circle with the tip of my sword. The first spin, I blew a wolf away with the shockwave the technique sent out. The second spin, another wolf got caught up into the blade and it was bisected in half horizontally. The last spin, one remaining wolf of the trio received a deep slash into its belly, throwing its internal organs out of its body.

「Haah…haah…14 left…」

Shit…here comes the recoil. High level techniques always come with recoils, except for when you have high enough level or fully master the skill.

My body felt 3 times heavier, but it’s actually already a bliss. Because of my level raising to 181 after killing those 3 wolves, the recoil didn’t affect me as much as before. I can still hold for another 30 seconds until Yui’s back.

Seeing their companions fall, the remaining wolves jumped at me one after another, aiming for either my blind spots or Yui standing behind me. With Sword Master and the boosted perceptive vision it gives me, I managed to barely dodged the deadly attack of that bunch of wolves and killed one or two wolves.

(Fuck! I can only use around 2 more skills!)

Just as that thought crossed my mind, a whip, no, a huge tail made by red flame swept by the battle field in front of me, sending the wolves flying and burning them to a certain degree.

「Okay…onii-chan, sorry for the wait…」

Though her face is calm, Yui’s tone was apologetic.

「Fufufu don’t look down on your brother, I can still finish all of them off if we do 「that」」

「*Sigh*…you’re abnormally reckless as ever…but fine, I’ll do it」

I retreated back to stand behind Yui and tried to calm my breathing down. Once I recollected myself, we’ll pull the final attack, the finisher move on these rude wolves.