"This guy is one tough monster to deal with." Soren said with a serious but slightly joking expression. With one ravaged wolf and two sea wolves to deal with, things were looking slightly better, compared to the previous situation where it was 2 vs 8, now they were on a 2 vs 3, but the wolf was an equal match on Soren, in terms of speed and that monster also doesn't fall for feints or traps and that was something that Soren learned the hard way.
'Hmmm... I wonder if I can make a fake feint and if so, will it fall for it?' Soren thought to himself while formulating a plan and staring back at the wolves. After a moment, the 3 wolves charged towards the duo to do a combined assault to take them down. At that point, the time for thinking was already over and Soren decided to test out the fake feint strategy.
"Lavenza, back me up with some Water Shots." Soren said after getting himself ready to strike.
"Kyuu~... Ha!" Lavenza charged 2 shots and threw them at the sea wolves, so Soren could fight the ravaged wolf on a 1v1. With its allies lagging behind it, the leader of the pack decided to start fighting Soren alone. Soren himself also charged towards the ravaged wolf while getting ready to brandish his sword and throw a punch at the same time. The wolf saw that Soren was setting up two attacks and instantly realised that his prey tried to feint him with a punch, so it set it's sights on blocking the sword attack with a claw swipe and then disarm him with a bite.
The moment he saw the wolf setting its eyes on the sword instead of the punch, he realised that it was under the impression that the lethal strike was definity the sword slash that was going to come and the feint was the fist that was going to be used as bait. Soren couldn't feel any happier, but he hid his happy expression and acted like he hadn't noticed anything. The moment the were close enough to do a quick exchange, the ravaged wolf used it's claws to knock Soren's sword off his hands, but Soren also threw his punch at the moment his sword and its claws made contact. The wolf itself didn't notice the punch coming to it and had its full focus on knocking out his sword, so by the time it saw the much just a few centimeters away from it, it realised too late that it had falled for a trap within a trap. The moment the punch connected, the wolf felt a surge of pain coursing throught its head and even felt a couple of its teeth move from that punch, but before it could even retaliate, Soren quickly reversed the grip on his sword and then threw a horizontal slash on the vulnerable wolf and cut through its bowels.
After a couple of moments, the ravaged wolf fell on the ground for the enormous amount of pain, while feeling its heat leave its body. While that happened, the sea wolves were charging relentlessly towards Soren, since they saw the moment that their leader got mortally wounded and saw completely red at that moment.
Soren didn't feel threatened anymore, now that their leader was on the ground, so he focused his guard on the wolves while giving a signal to Lavenza for another attack. After that, Soren blocked the two wolves that charged at him, Lavenza threw a Water Ball that took out one of the two, the ravaged wolf left it last twitch before it died and then Soren delivered the final attack of the fight on the last wolf by beheading it.
"Holy crap. That battle was a bit of a close one." Soren said with relief before he felt a weird tingle on his back for a moment. Soren was slightly suprised by the tingle, but he didn't pay it any mind and started picking up the corpses to stack them together.
"There they are. Seven sea wolf corpses and one ravaged wolf corpse. And this was just one pack of wolves. If we are going to keep fighting these things on an hourly basis, you might as well count me out of the mission." Soren said with an annoyed expression while he was holding his head with one hand.
"Kyuu~ kyuu~!" Lavenza looked pretty excited.
"Wait... Don't tell me you just did...?" Just as Soren was making that thought, he decided to check on Lavenza's status.
Name: Lavenza
Race: Leviathan
LV: 8
HP: 126 (+48)
MP: 132 (+42)
STR: 22 (+8)
VIT: 21 (+8)
AGL: 42 (+15)
INT: 68 (+23)
WIS: 54 (+18)
RFL: 41 (+15)
LCK: 48 (+18)
Skills (A): Magic Ball, Water Ball, Water Shot, Bite LV.4(!), 6th sense(!)
Skills (P):Mana Manipulation LV.1, Water Magic LV.2, Water Booster, Soft-Scaled (Changing), Partnership, Multi-Cast (!)
Titles: Life-Bound Companions (Soren), Daughter of the Arch-Priestess Laventhign, Magician (Apprentice)(!)
"Wait, 4 levels? When was the last time I checked on you?" Soren was suprised by the amount of levels she had gained.
"Kyuu~." Lavenza just posed with a smug expression on her face.
"Can't say exactly that I'm the best at keeping track of everything." Soren scratched his head embarassingly.
"Anyways, let's see the new stuff." Soren said while looking excited.
[Soft-Scaled (Changing): Only infant sea creatures that have scales on their body, have this ability as a sign that they are new-born babies that should be protected at all costs. After some time passes, the scales will start to harden slowly and then start shedding and growing actual scales to protect its body. +17,5% Damage taken from all sources]
[Multi-Cast: The ability to cast multiple spells at the same time. Amount of casts = INT/20, decimals are not taken into account.]
[Magician (Apprentice): A title given to those who strive for the path of thr arcane and thr mastery of mana itself. Conditions to obtain: INT>50, Magic Spells>3. Abilities obtained: Multi-Cast.]
"Those are definitely some very sweet skills for your battle style Lavenza. You are also starting to become an Apprentice Magician, I can't wait to see you become an Arch-Wizard or a Sage or whatever the highest magician job is." Soren said proudly while patting Lavenza's head, while Lavenza was enjoying herself.
"Hmmm... I wonder... Could that feeling from before be...?" Soren in thought, once he remembered the tingle from before and decided to check his status.
Name: Soren
Race: Merman (Leviathan)
LV: 9 (EFLU)
HP: 210
MP: 76
STR: 33
VIT: 35
AGL: 41
INT: 38
WIS: 34
RFL: 27
LCK: 28
Skills (A): Merman transforantions (Human, Merfork, Beast), Sword Aura (Incomplete), Third Eye, Water Ball, Mana Wall, Silent Dome W
Skills (P): Swimming (+1 AGL), Universal Translation, Blessing of the Seas (Major), Guardian, Water Magic LV.1, Mana Manipulation LV.1, Water Booster
Titles: Life-Bound Companions(Lavenza), Undead Hunter Apprentice, %&6$@(;?
"EFLU? What in the living sea is that? System, explain EFLU." Soren said while being completely confused from this new piece of information.
[Eligible For Level Up. This state allows you to level up into the second tier of levels.]
"Huh...?" Soren's brain drew a blank for a couple of minutes, once he read that message.
"Eligible for level up? What? Weren't levels supposed to be, gather enough experience points from killing monsters to level up?" Soren asked pretty angrily.
[That is indeed true. But for tier advancements, you need to pass certain conditions for you to be able to level up.]
"Conditions? Tier advancement? Can you please explain in a bit nore detail?"
[Alright. Levels and tiers. Levels are all the intermediate states between major power changes, while tiers are the major power changes. For a major power change, you need to advance through the 10 different states, startin from X0-X9 with X being a number from 0-9. Also, level 0 is an infant only stage, only for the humanoid races. Now, after you go through the stages and reach the 10th stage of any tier, you are essentially locked into a "Tier Lock". To break through a tier lock, you need to pass any of the two conditions that I'm going to list right now. You potential is high enough or kill a being, which is strictilly one tier higher than you.] The system explained with a monotonous voice.
"Potential? What do you mean by that?" Soren asked curiously with a serious expression.
[Potential is an inner level that you can consider it as a "maximum level", which technically shows that you can only level up that many times. In reality, everyone can reach the system's maximum level, which is 100, but if you try to breakthrough a tier lock which is higher than your potential level, you will simply have to redo that entire level. So to breakthrough, you need to kill a being which is one tier higher than you.] The system explained again.
Soren felt like he was getting a headache from this information dump, but he decided to ask the question, which he was afraid of:
"So, what's my potential level?"
[One.]
"...I think my brain short-circuited itself, but can you repeat that again?" Soren asked after making sure he confirmed what he heard.
[One. Your potential level is one. And there is no changing that.] The system replied.
"... ... ... SON OF A B*TCH" Soren then punched a nearby coral tree furiously as hard as he could.