A proud female Earth Wolf stood with its head held high. Her brows tilted downwards and her lip curled up with a growl as she saw her pups dead with a puddle of blood on the ground. The wolf stood tall with pride knowing it was quite the size at 2.5 meters, in her mind the four small humans in front of her seemed like prey. However she tilted her head in confusion as one of them smiled while holding a sword, the wolf stared at the sword intensely and jumped back. She, herself, was surprised as her instincts took over as the sword the human carried radiated danger in her eyes. Some animalistic instinct in the back of her mind told her to not fight the sword, however her anger rekindled and she chose to move on with her attack.
However, Leon was the first to act and ran towards the wolf.
The wolf didn't take this standing and roared so loudly the air trembled.
"YOU QDDHD QFKG HBGRR FQAN DSXT SWORD? E RCED AVENGE XI PUPS FRG EAT XMR."
Leon stopped a bit and asked his sword an important question.
'I have been meaning to ask you this Ensis, but what is this skill: Monster Language? I understand what it is, but not the extent of the skill.'
「It is a skill all the holders of the blessing receive, all my previous wielders have had the skill. Through progression with the skill, all monster languages will be understandable to you, and eventually, you will be able to communicate subconsciously. However, I would suggest you focus on the task at hand.」
As Ensis said this, Leon looked up to see the wolf mid lunge at him. However a gauntlet came out of nowhere and embedded itself in the side of the wolf's head, Tecia had covered for her dreaming teammate. The punch itself did not launch the wolf but did manage to create enough power to force the wolf's attack to miss Leon by a few feet.
Tecia yelled.
"Stop dreaming and get your head into the game Leon."
Leon stopped thinking about his skill and started his assault with his party. Arwin launched his normal leaf boosted arrows at the wolf, but they barely penetrated the earth shell the wolf put up and only caused a paper cut to the wolf. Seeing this, Arwin's eyebrows went up in surprise at the fact that his attack barely got through.
Tomoe did not bat an eyelash that her party mate's attack failed. Instead, she focused on her own spell and used a wisp of thunder again. The thunder gathered at the tip of her spear again and the wolf diverted its attention to the blind woman who was charging up a substantial amount of energy. It started to pounce towards Tomoe, but Tomoe managed to release the spell and the thunder shot out like a laser. The wolf made a patch of earthen armor again and the armor crumbled, but the thunder dissipated as it broke through before it could hit the wolf.
Tomoe stumbled back as she sensed the wolf mid-pounce, however, two presences had appeared next to the wolf. Tecia delivered a regular punch, but with the full force of her normal strength combined with Leon who slashed with his sword. The impact managed to alter the wolf's course yet again.
Leon gathered near Tomoe with Tecia.
"I don't think we can kill the wolf by ourselves, we need to coordinate to take it down. I think I might be able to deal a major injury if we isolate its movements and break the armor."
Although Leon did not say anything specific, seeing each other's attacks made all of them have a general sense of what they had to do and nodded. The wolf picked itself off the ground only to be met with a storm of projectiles. Arwin fired a barrage of arrows and right behind them a wind of yellow thunder followed closely behind. The wolf instinctively condensed all the armor it had around itself near the points of impact at its head. Condensing the armor proved vital for the wolf, as the attacks only broke the armor, but did not injure the wolf. Before it could be satisfied and maneuver out of the corner of the room, a bright metal gauntlet appeared below the wolf and swung up with an uppercut. Tecia's iron blow managed to hit the wolf's head and launch it slightly into the wall of the corner, which surprised the wolf. Fearing another blow, it moved its condensed armor to its chin to prevent another uppercut.
Seeing the excellent cover put up by his teammates, Leon did not waste it and summoned his wind with his skill, which slivered to the tip of the blade.
-12 Mana for Skill Lvl. 1 Wind Slash
As Tecia landed the uppercut, Leon closed the time that the slash would have to travel by stepping in closer to close the distance between the eventual slash and the wolf. By the time the wolf had moved its armor, Leon silently gave a supple whip with his blade-like an artist giving a fluid stroke with their paintbrush. The wolf never expected or sensed the crescent slash of wind until it was too late. It tried to move its armor to its neck where the original arrows and thunder aimed, but the slash-cut deep past the brown fur and tough muscles on its neck.
Blood spurted out like a water gun from the wound on the earth wolf's neck. It tried to attack again, but the blood loss made it stumble to the ground as it tried to jump to the four humans that stood staring at it. Collapsed onto the ground, all it did was take its last look in life, which happened to be Leon holding Ensis, where a stream of blood dripped.
+241 Exp.
The four-party members relaxed and Leon jumped with joy.
"What a battle! Did you see our teamwork? You guys did great! Did you even see your own attacks? Oh my god, this is the first time I got to battle such a strong creature on an Adventure and win! It was even probably around the lowest D Tier monster!"
Leon didn't notice it, but Tecia and Arwin rolled their eyes in friendly annoyance while Tomoe facepalmed a little bit.
The party continued the routine of slowly clearing the top floors of the dungeons, which consisted of varying size packs of earth wolves. They were relatively easy and there was only one earth wolf that matched the first mother wolf they encountered in size and power. Besides that, the party swept through many floors of the dungeon-like a hot knife cutting through butter.
+101 Exp.
+201 Exp.
+76 Exp.
+154 Exp.
+84 Exp.
+168 Exp.
+Level Up
They eventually reached the connecting middle floor, which separated the upper floors to the lowest floor and boss room. Most Adventurer parties usually stopped at the connecting floor, which is why the dungeon hasn't been cleared yet. As they walked down the many stairs leading down, the whole party could hear the loud hissing that echoed from the bottom of the stairs.