Eo's plan was to take advantage of the wolves' intelligence. This strategy would be suicidal against dumb opponents, but he hoped it would work against these wolves.
He had already given his groupmates some commands, just in case something happened.
Eo charged straight in like a maniac.
The wolves first looked at Eo with curiosity, but then started to advance aggressively.
Eo was running quickly, but he wasn't going at full speed. This was intentional.
When Eo got halfway there, the wolves started to put their paws forward in aggression. Eo waited at the moment they were about to leap, and then yelled as loud as he could.
Eo's yell wasn't anything particularly intimidating or threatening. It was just confusing.
That's what Eo was aiming for. The moment the wolves faltered, Eo jumped across the remaining stretch in about two seconds. That moment of hesitation was his window of opportunity.
The whole time Eo had been circulating essence in his body, and in the last couple of seconds he had been circulating it solely around his leg muscles.
Given from the fact that essence naturally regenerated and enhanced body cells, he figured that he could compress the time period with enough concentration and willpower.
Luckily for him, he had figured correctly. The essence-enhanced jump gave him insane acceleration, which was how he had managed to cover the large gap in mere seconds.
Eo gripped the sword in his hand. He barely managed to raise it in time when he collided with the monster.
Eo tumbled on the floor, soaked in yellow blood. He looked up and realized that he had cleanly decapitated one of the guard wolves.
Eo tried to get up, but suddenly an enormous fatigue hit him. His legs felt like they were sprained, and there was no energy left in his leg muscles. Even his nerves down there started to dull.
(So this is why I don't see any mentors using this technique, huh…)
Eo literally could not stand up. The diamond-headed wolf snarled at him and its fur stood straight up. Essence started to flow out from underneath its raised fur. It swirled all around the wolf: sharpening its teeth, condensing its bone, and growing its muscles.
"No fair," Eo complained. "That wolf has natural steroids!"
Eo knew he couldn't kill the thing with hand-to-hand combat, so he had to finish it off with a ranged attack.
"Jimean! Earth wall!"
This wall wasn't to separate the wolf and Eo. No, it was to separate Eo and the wolf from everyone else. It acted as a barrier that blocked anyone from looking into the fight.
Eo was glad he had prepared these commands beforehand.
As the wolf charged, he summoned his all-too-familiar dagger-chains, and plunged them in 4 different angles. As they accelerated towards the wolf, the wolf ducked and dodged. Unfortunately for it, that just wasn't enough. The chains curved back around, striking the air closer and closer to the wolf. Eo was slowly tightening the pattern of dagger-chains around the wolf.
The wolf emitted more essence, and became stronger, faster, and more agile in turn. Seeing that his attacks continued being avoided, Eo became frustrated.
(Fine, I guess I'll have to play dirty then…)
The amount of metal inside the daggers was way too much because Eo had kept himself from making more than 4 at once. Basically, each dagger was really dense and heavy, especially in comparison to the daggers he had made for the first time. He had done this for two reasons: 1) Each individual dagger would become more powerful with each swing. 2) Constantly swinging things around with heavier and heavier mass was useful practice for Eo, who was essentially a crazy training fanatic at this point.
Eo's idea of "playing dirty" was actually quite simple. Instead of adding to the mass of the dagger, he would actually hollow it out to create more.
This unexpectedly made the daggers easier to swing around, because they were now lighter. After reabsorbing the metal, Eo had also tripled the amount of daggers.
The wolf was terrified. Suddenly there were 12 daggers, and each of them were at least 3 times faster than before. What in the world had happened?!
The wolf was unable to keep up and after a fatal misstep, got injured. This injury slowed it down, making it prone to more injuries. The cycle continued until the wolf was shredded into a pile of bones.
Jimean couldn't continue keeping up the wall, and hoped everyone else was too distracted to notice what was going on with Eo.
The wall collapsed, and Jimean saw Eo on the floor, staring at a wolf corpse a couple meters away. The corpse looked like a piece of meat that had gone into a wood cutter. Jimean was surprised that the boss was finished off so quickly.
Meanwhile, Kyros, who was in the middle of fighting two other wolves, noticed the wall fall. He had his doubts about why a wall was erected there in the first place, but then none of that mattered when it fell. He saw Eo, completely covered in blood, staring at a dead Phase II. Eo had defeated a Phase II by himself?!
Eo, who was still staring at the corpse, was really annoyed. He was sitting down because he couldn't move his legs.
He was about to fall into a cycle of constant regret when he noticed something that piqued his interest.
Although the wolf body was completely destroyed, the wolf bones weren't scathed at all.
Not even by a single scratch mark.