Most of the walls I'd built on the fly were destroyed by the rats. I flew down to the outskirts of town where the most rats were left, and dropped on them. Death from above. I smashed a rat with each of my limbs. Even driving the claws on the front bend of my wings deep into rats.
Notification beeps kept going off in my head. The two wounded wolves below my belly were terrified when my head snapped underneath me to drag out the rats that were scrambling to kill them. I somehow managed to hook two of them with a single bite, and tossed them into the air frying them with a half breath of fire. They screamed, and writhed as they burned to death. My intent slammed on the remaining beasts like a sledgehammer.
Now that their numbers had dwindled the rats weren't nearly so confident. I blew fire up the asses as they tried to flee. My mana going wild as my rage boiled over once again. There were at least half a dozen dead wolves fueling my rage so I wasn't going to calm down quickly. I whipped my tail through a few stupid enough to try, and attack me from behind.
My tail moved so quickly that it sliced through them as if they weren't even there. I lowered my head down close to the ground as I crawled on top of what was left of the walls. Chaos left in my wake from the way my mana lashed out, but somehow I none of that chaos so much as touched the surviving werewolves. It minced the bodies of the rats around them, but not a single scratch was left on the wolves. Ethan showed off how much control he'd gained over his mark.
The black dragon tattoo that ran up the side of his neck glowed blue around the edges. Ethan's own eyes glowed as he uprooted the burned trees that surrounded the town. Using them as giant spears to impale any surviving beasts outside the range of my destruction. Every breath released elemental energy that destroyed, scorched or froze the ground directly in front of my nose. Nothing came close to me, and anything that so much as inched its way closer to the werewolves or their town suddenly found my teeth ripping through their flesh.
The speed at which I moved made it feel as if I teleported from one place to another to the slower beasts. The wolves that had survived the onslaught were slowly beginning to recover as Savannah, and Jax provided safe pathways, and cover fire for the wounded wolves to use to fall back. As the sun slowly rose over the carnage of the night my mana slowly pulled in. An eerie silence fell over the island as I gazed over the burnt forest that reeked of blood, and burnt hair.
The glow faded from my horns slowly as I started picking the dead wolves from the rubble, and out from under the piles of bodies. In the end I picked out thirty-six bodies from the blood bath at the edge of town, and laid them out for their families to claim them. We still had half a day of this left before we were in the clear, but for now there was a lull in the air. Tension ran high among the survivors. I hated all of this.
How could this happen? I growled again at nothing in particular as my anger resurfaced. The alpha looked about as pissed as I did at the moment. The wolves that had died were torn up in gruesome ways that was hard for even me to look at, and I'd caused carnage similar to this before. I needed to calm down.
I wouldn't last the rest of the day if I kept riling myself up. I started looking through my notifications. There were a lot of you kill one eyed rat notifications so I dismissed them all, and asked the system to only inform me of these types of notifications when I was within ten thousand XP of a level up. After that there were a couple notifications about my wrath activating, and deactivating. Then I saw the oldest notification.
It was a new quest.
Remind the wolves of their oldest ally
Earth is trying to balance, and stabilize her mana now that she has more mana to survive on. During this time many stable, and unstable rifts are opening around the world. The wolves island has a tower that attracts rifts to their home. Protect the wolves, and remind them of their oldest ally on this planet.
267/303 wolves remaining.
Reward- Varies based on how many wolves you manage to save.
System reward- 5 points in all physical stats.
Two separate rewards? That's a first. I was planning on saving them anyways. I minimized the quest out of my line of sight. Inhaling, and exhaling calmly.
Protect the wolves huh? I flattened out the earth around the town, and started creating new ones. Jax helped me make them more secure. Creating walls, and hidey holes just in case attacks came down from above. There were still four stable rifts I needed to close, and the beasts that had come through them were far more intelligent than the rats I'd had to deal with so far.
"More will come," I snorted lightning as I stood on one of the walls overlooking the forest, "The rats were weak, and stupid. The ones that come next will be less in number, but far stronger."
I scanned through the trees with my infrared vision as I tracked the beasts that were coming, and going from the stable rifts. They were watching us too, but it seemed as if they hadn't decided whether to go after each other or go after us just yet.
"I think we should take the fight to them," the alpha growled as hair spread across his bare chest, and arms.