"Now then. Let the night hunt... Begin!" At that moment, Soren striked a slightly embarassing pose and felt slightly embarassed.
"Ok, let's not do that ever again." Soren said quickly and awkwardly.
"Kyuu~." Lavenza nodded with a blank expression. She also felt that the pose was embarassing.
"Anyways, let's just start the hunt already." At that point, Soren unsheathed his sword and got into position. 'The wolf looks like it is quite on edge, so a suprise attack may not work, but the cover of the darkness should be enough to create a distraction and then ambush it.' Soren thought for his plan of attack. At that moment, Soren made a sign to Lavenza with his hand to show that the hand sign was a signal to launch her attack.
After that, they split up to surround the wolf and used their sixth sense to make sure they don't feel anything else around. With Lavenza on one side and Soren on the other, their attack plan was going to be a pincer attack with Soren being the distaction and Lavenza being the one to land the shot.
After a bit of time, just staring at the wolf who was swimming slowly, Soren then tightened his muscles and charged towards the sea wolf. The wolf itself saw the attacker and the moment it saw the arc of the blade, it bit the blade with all of its force and barely managed to stop it. It realised that this opponent will be quite the challenge, but it felt agitated since it hadn't seen a challenge for days.
Soren was a bit suprised that the wolf managed to grab his sword with its jaws and stop it, but he never intended to go all out. That attack was just to distract him and the moment the wolf locked it jaws on the blade, Soren took one of his hands off the sword and did a gun sign with his free hand. At that moment, Lavenza then conjured quickly a water shot and a water ball spell and shot them at the same time. The wolf noticed the attack that was coming on his back and knew that it wouldn't be able to dodge the first strike, so it decided to take the hit and then free itself quickly from its position to attack the hidden attacker.
The moment the water shot connected, the wolf felt a strong attack, like it was a powerful gut punch, but that didn't break its focus and then it instantly let go of the blade and swiped its tail on Soren's hand to disarm him and forced him to take the water ball.
"You-" Soren could barely process what happened. The moment his sword fell from his hands, he saw the wolf move away and saw the water ball just a few meters ahead of him. At that point, he focused as hard as he could and conjured a mana wall, hoping to block the attack. The mana wall itself got destroyed, the moment it came into contact with the water ball and then Soren used his hand to block the attack. The water ball itself felt like a powerful sledgehammer and his arms were hurting like hell after that hit.
After the attack, the wolf then decided to take this opportunity to bite hard on his left shoulder while he was stunned from the attack. Soren was still in pain after the attack and could barely focus, but the moment he saw the attack coming to him, he conjured a mana wall to block the attack. Thankfully for Soren, the mana wall didn't break after the wolf hit its open jaws and bit onto it.
The wolf was a bit confused for the reason that its jaws didn't break the thin wall in front of it, when the water ball managed to eaily break the wall. The wolf itself would have no way of knowing, but its jaws, compared to Lavenza's full power water ball, it would be like a weak punch from a frail guy and a heavy punch from a profesional wrestler were to be compared side by side. It would be obvious whose punch was more powerful and in this case, the bite itself couldn't compare to Lavenza's water ball in terms of power and damage.
After the wolf's attack failed, Soren quickly picked his sword and got in front of Lavenza who had already come out of hiding. This time, they couldn't afford to drag this out, otherwise they would fall for another attack and Soren wasn't sure if his body would be able to take it.
"Hey you rugged carpet, come here so papa can clean you up." Soren said with a clearly mocking expression while he did a hand motion. The wolf couldn't understand his words, but it understood their meaning, he was clearly mocking him. The wolf fell for it and saw red as it recklessly charged with its claws out.
Soren hoped that this wolf's intelligence would be low, otherwise this battle might have been impossible. Thankfully, lady luck was on his side and the moment he saw the charge, he positioned himself in a guarding stance so he could take the attack. He knew that his body wasn't in the best condition, but as long as he guarded this charge, Soren would consider this fight as over.
"Lavenza, tear him." The moment Soren said that, Lavenza got into position to charge as well. At that moment, both Soren and the wolf clashed their strikes so hard that there were a couple of sparks coming of the weapon before getting extinguished instantly. After that attack failed to connect, Soren then took a risk to grab the wolf by neck and managed to put his hand around its neck, while having enough space to not get bitten by the jaws. Although the claws could still damage his arms, it wasn't enough to free itself from Soren's grip and then Lavenza charged towards the wolf with her jaws fully open.
At that moment, Soren moved his hand a bit towards the upper part of the throat and its jaws forced the wolf to show its throat. In the next moment, Lavenza bit deep into its throat while the wolf could barely move while it left a cry from the pain on its throat and then, a chunk of its flesh from the throat disappeared while red blood started to come out the wound. Lavenza spit the chunk of flesh from her mouth and then bit once more on its throat with all of her power and another chunk got torn off.
After that second bite, Soren let go of the wolf while both of them were bleed from their wounds. Soren himself had quite a few scratches on his arms, while wolf struggled to get up from the ground with its wounds hurting it. After a bit, the wolf finally fell on the ground without an inch of life or power. They managed to beat the wolf with their skin of their teeth.
At that moment, Soren collapsed on the ground from the fatigue of the battle. Although the battle itself didn't last more than two to three minutes at most, this really tired him out mentally. He didn't expect the wolf to be so cunning and thanked his lucky stars that the damned beast still fell for the obvious provocation. His wounds started to hurt a lot, so he took a roll of bandage from the supplies that were in his small bag and covered his arm wounds.
"Tsk. Man, that wolf was not the normal, run of the mill, type of beast. To think it had the brains to pull a counter like that, if it wasn't for mana wall at that moment, we might have died there." Soren said while he was annoyed. He was annoyed with himself thinking that wolves knew basic attacks. That was clearly not the case. They know, not only how to dodge, but also how to counter, set up attacks and take opportunities of openings.
"We may need to change up our strategies againest these wolves. They clearly won't fall for such easy tricks. Although getting the jump on them is still a good idea, we may need to change that a bit so instead of one of us being the bait, we need to perform a sneak attack at the same time. Also, we need to take account for close combat situations and even the possibility of having to deal with magic users." Soren explained with a slightly painful expression.
"Kyuu~! Reny~." Lavenza listened fully while having a hint of excitement on her face.
"Let's rest for a bit before we continue hunting. Now let me check this wolf." At that point, Soren checked the throatless carcass and saw uts information.
[Ravaged Sea Wolf Corpse: The corpse of an evolved sea wolf. Although these beasts may not have changed their movesets much, they are a lot more cunning, despite the fact that their inteligence stat being as low as that of a toddler.]
The moment Soren read that description, he felt a chill down his spine. If an evolution only made it more cunning, he was afraid of what its second evolution might bring.
"Let's just thank our lucky stars that it was just a smarter wolf and not some mutant. If it was a mutant that gave changes on its moves or even magic in its toolset, things would not have ended so easily." Soren said with a relieved expression before he put the ravaged wolf corpse in his bag.
"Kyuu~..." Lavenza also showed an expression of relief as well.