Jonathan felt nervous. From what he knew, wolves were pack hunters. He heard two or three howls but he wasn’t sure if that guaranteed only two or three wolves would attack. On second thought, he didn’t know why they would howl at all. Wolves are predators and predators are almost always smart, they had to be to keep their place on their food chain. So why-

Hlaza growled in the direction of a nearby bush. There was no more time; it looked like they were already here. Jonathan tightened his grip on his short sword. The wolves appeared. There were three of them. All three of them walked on all four legs unlike the one they killed and two of them had silver fur while the last had red fur. Jonathan identified the red one as their leader; the red one was bigger too, almost as big as Jonathan was.

Jonathan was dumfounded, on one hand he was relieved because the numbers meant he and Hlaza had a better chance for survival but on the other hand he wondered why only three showed up. It was better not to look a gift horse in the mouth but only three? Jonathan had a bad feeling about the whole thing. Maybe there were more waiting in the bushes but the time he spent on Arda had shown him that there was a reason when things happened and they were always bad for him.

While Jonathan was busy losing himself in thought, the big wolf let out a short growl, signalling the start of the battle. The two silver wolves moved forward, it looked like Jonathan and Hlaza were going to fight each silver wolf one on one while the red one stayed back. Jonathan felt relieved, he felt confident in fighting one on one but he was sure that the red one would attack either him or Hlaza whenever either got the upper hand in the fight. Jonathan didn’t have a lot of time to think about it before the silver wolves suddenly switched their focus to Hlaza.

“Shit.”

Jonathan stabbed at the wolf that was closest to him, leaving it with a wide gash it ultimately didn’t react to while Hlaza panicked and shot his last [Paralyze] spell at the silver wolf that was targeting him initially. The spell caused it to collapse mid-charge, giving Jonathan some time to take another stab at the second silver wolf. Jonathan jumped at the wolf, aiming at its neck. He was able to cut deeply into its neck before the big red wolf hit him. He didn’t notice it move. Something as big as the he was and he didn’t see it move. He barely felt the claw mark on his chest before he saw the blood flowing from the claw mark on his chest. He felt his consciousness start to dip before he realized something: there was no way he could defeat it. Even with the boost in stats he had from levelling up and the stat points he had yet to allocate, it was too damn dominant. No boost in any physical attribute he had would make up for the obvious difference in stats between him and the red wolf.

Increasing strength was not an option; neither was increasing agility or defence. An increase in one stat needed to be balanced by an increase in another. Being strong would be useless if he wasn’t fast enough to hit the red wolf and an increase in agility wouldn’t matter if he was too weak to overcome its defences. Another claw mark materialized on his right shoulder, it wasn’t as deep as the first on his chest but the impact knocked him onto his back, about 5 metres from the wolf. His death was getting close; it didn’t take a genius to see that.

He realized that had to gamble if he wanted to live. Jonathan didn’t like gambles much, not when his life was on the line anyway, which since coming to Arda seemed to always be on the line. Jonathan put all his 18 skill points into his luck bringing it up to 31. Immediately he felt…nothing. It was all very underwhelming really. He didn’t exactly expect a jingle to play when he allocated all his points into luck, especially since nothing happened when he allocated his points before but since he was so close to death he had expected some sort of spectacle. Things like that seemed to happen to him all too often to him these days. He scoffed. That line of thinking felt dumb, especially when the red wolf was about to launch itself at him.

Jonathan closed his eyes, strangely composed. He couldn’t tell why he was so relaxed with death so close, He just was. Maybe it was all these life and death scenarios he kept getting caught up in (although something told him that that would build a better case for him being a nervous wreck). He heard it howl and he instinctively opened his eyes. When he did-

He got the spectacle he wanted. The wolf tripped on a large stone it had stepped on haphazardly while trying to kill him. Jonathan couldn’t contain himself and laughed out loud. It was at most a meter from his head but he couldn’t help himself. The red wolf might as well have slipped on a large floppy banana peel. He couldn’t see Hlaza but was sure that he was laughing too from the coarse cackle he could hear from his left. It looked like he was able to finish off the other two wolves.

Jonathan and the red wolf stood back up. Jonathan stood up slowly while readying his short sword in his hand, the red wolf stood up…slower. It seemed the momentum from its mini charge injured it. Jonathan doubted that it had broken anything but one could always hope. Jonathan’s raucous laugh and Hlaza’s cackle seemed to have enraged it; its eyes had turned bloodshot from rage. It attempted to put some weight onto its forelegs before wincing in pain. Its ankle was twisted but it didn’t seem to care. It sprang for Jonathan’s neck; instead it got his left shoulder again, allowing Jonathan to stab it just under its right forelimb. The stab was deep, deep enough that he couldn’t get the short sword out. The pain from the stab caused it to bite deeper into Jonathan’s shoulder.

“Arghhh!” he shouted out.

The red wolf suddenly released its bite from his shoulder and turned around. Jonathan could see Hlaza standing in front of the red wolf holding a broken, bloodied horn stump. It had broken off in the wolf’s hind leg. The red wolf was limping now and breathing heavily. Hlaza had saved Jonathan’s life and now his was in danger and Jonathan was losing blood and energy fast but so was the wolf. Jonathan kicked at the bit of horn left in its leg, driving it off its legs and onto the forest floor. It let off a terrible howl which made Jonathan anxious. He saw Hlaza scramble toward him. He had two across his chest, dyeing his stomach in red and was sweating, hard. They had to end this fight before anything else happened or any more enemies appeared.

The wolf, on the other hand, laid on the forest floor near a large tree with a purple trunk, still and alert. It had stopped reacting to its injuries after the howl and simply watched Jonathan and Hlaza, adding endlessly to their anxiety. It obviously had some sort of plan. Sure enough, blood stopped flowing from the wolf’s wounds. It was healing, fast. Running would be dumb, they wouldn’t make it in their shape and the wolf would catch up to them even if they were still in top shape. If they were going to kill the red wolf, they had to do it now, the problem was how.

In movies and anime, the hero would usually take care of a constantly healing enemy by simply attacking it until its healing couldn’t keep up but Jonathan and Hlaza didn’t have the stamina to keep up any sort of constant attack. The horn was still stuck in the wolf’s hind leg, so was the short sword. This made sense; the wolf couldn’t remove the two items stuck in its skin so the wounds were starting to heal around them. Jonathan decided against trying to pull the short sword out of where it was to use it again, he wasn’t sure that the wolf would allow him to get close enough to do so. Getting close would be suicide-or was it?

Jonathan asked himself why the wolf had stayed still. At the rate it was healing, it could attack and kill him and Hlaza without consequence. In fact, it should have as soon the blood stopped flowing from its wounds but it didn’t. The only reason that Jonathan could think of was that it was simply unable to. It started to heal immediately after staying still and it didn’t move even when its wounds should have healed enough for it to move. Jonathan smiled, it looked like there was a cost to healing itself; paralysis and there was nothing that the wolf could do about it.

Jonathan looked around and found a large purple branch, thin on one end and heavy on the other where it would have connected to the tree. The left side of his body started to tighten up, his muscles humming to him, an omen of the screaming pain that would soon visit his body. He had to end it now. He ran at the wolf and brought the branch over the wolf’s head like a makeshift club. The tried to move but couldn’t. Jonathan saw the terror in its eyes before the branch made contact with its head. The wolf was still alive; its body making movements it no longer had control over. Jonathan brought the makeshift down on its head again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

Finally, his muscles screamed at him to stop. When he did, he saw Hlaza behind him; his chest was no longer bleeding. Instead there was a gooey green plant-like mass on his chest. Hlaza had taken some leaves and used them to make a wound dressing for himself.

Silently, Jonathan swore to himself that he would never fight a direct fight again.

“Uh, any of those leaves left?”

Just as Hlaza nodded, a series of notifications entered his sight.

[Congratulations! You have defeated the patriarch of the Viridi Forest silver wolves, The Crimson Wolf.]

[You have earned a reward.]

“Nice.”

[You are not the main character. As such, reward will not be allocated to you.]

“Shit.”

[Quest: [Usurper] has activated. You have taken the authority of The Crimson Wolf.]

[You have taken over the territory of The Crimson Wolf [The Valley of the Wolves].]

“Nice, I guess?” Jonathan honestly had no idea if this was good or bad.

[The inhabitants of [The Valley of the Wolves] do not consider you as their ruler.]

“Shit, I guess?” This was obviously not good, this meant whoever lived there was probably hostile towards him. A smooth female voice accompanied the next notifications to reach him.

[You continue to surprise. You have defeated a creature that would have met [The Chosen]. You have been marked as [Antagonistic]. Watch the road you tread on.]

“I would say ’What the hell does that mean?’ but at this point I know that those kind of questions get answered in roundabout bullshit ways, so I won’t bother to ask.”

It probably means that in their bullshit story, they see me as a bad guy and that they have their eyes on me. It doesn’t really matter anyway; they already said as much this morning.

[Correct.]

“I have to say that all of that reading your mind shit gets annoying very quickly.”

[An overview of your territory will now be visible to you whenever you wish to view it.]

A different voice in Jonathan’s head read out the second notification. Jonathan liked this voice. He didn’t think about it much but the second voice always sounded monotone or matter of fact. It was much better than the haughty or malice heavy voices he heard in his head these days.

Jonathan sat down, deep in thought while Hlaza chewed up some plant leaves to dress Jonathan’s wounds.

So how do I bring up this overview, do I just think the name or-

Immediately a table appeared in his vision;

[Valley of the Wolves]

Size: 25 square kilometres

Number of Inhabitants: 136

Number of Inhabitants whose level exceeds the territory owner: 1

Number of Beings that pose a danger to the territory owner: 6

Number of Inhabitants loyal to the territory owner: -none-

Disappointed by this small table of info he wondered whether there was more to it. Suddenly a barrage of information appeared in his head. He now knew how far away the Valley of the Wolves was relative to his position at all times. He could now see inhabitants in a bird’s eye view. He could see where they were, what they were doing and even their levels and skills. He figured that it was because they all were lower levelled than him.

He focused on the two with the highest levels in the territory. Its level was too high for Jonathan to see their information. It was an ogre on the outskirts of the Valley of the Wolves territory. The ogre looked wary and from what he could tell from its general demeanour it was scared of something. It was constantly looking over its shoulders and moved slowly. Jonathan decided to ignore it; he had no confidence in dealing with an Ogre, especially after such a big fight and decided instead to look for interesting places. He figured that if he really was in a story like the old woman said, there would be something there. In stories, places like these always had something of worth.

Jonathan saw a temple in the middle of the territory, surrounded by 5 rock formations with words written on them. Jonathan couldn’t tell what was written on the rock formations and even if he did, he couldn’t read Octavian anyway. While that was interesting, with Jonathans current skill set, it didn’t matter if he went to the temple. Plus the 5 rock formations made Jonathan nervous. The overview said 6 beings posed a danger to him and discounting the Ogre, that left 5 beings that could pose a danger to him. The five rock formations thus felt too suspicious so he ignored the temple. For now at least.

What caught his attention was something else entirely. About 2 kilometres west from the temple was a small clearing, where a bunch of stones were piled up. Near the stones there was a makeshift hut surrounded by tattered tents. A makeshift hut be too attention grabbing in a place as big as the Valley of the Wolves if it wasn’t for the words that popped up in front of his eyes whenever he took a look at the hut;

[Abandoned Military Encampment]

Jonathan swore silently, this looked like a trap. A trap that may hold supplies he needed to survive and get stronger. In other words, it was a gamble.

Jonathan sat in silence while Hlaza applied the wound dressing on to him; it made every part where it was applied itch. Badly. After Hlaza was done, Jonathan spoke:

“After we heal, let’s go on an adventure. What do you say?”