The smell of grilled meat was pervading the surroundings. Many animals had noticed it, but they were all afraid of the people who had caused it. In fact, the grilled meat came from their fellow creatures, and this was these people who had killed them.
This did not mean that all the animals in the forest were afraid of them. A few rare predators did not hesitate to approach such visitors. This was especially true for a certain pack of wolves that covered the surroundings. Every day the animals lived in fear of them. If one met them, it was rare for it to come out alive. They did not hunt just for food. They were hunting for pleasure. The pleasure of killing.
The leader of the pack in particular was a bloodthirsty monster. He used to run his prey to exhaustion before killing it. The number of wolves in this pack varied constantly as the weakest would regularly die, killed by their prey trying to defend themselves or even by their own pack mates.
The scent that spread through the atmosphere reached the muzzles of these wolves. Furious that new predators had entered their playground, they quickly moved towards the sources of these smells. When they arrived on the scene, one of the uninhabited caves in the area was occupied. The occupants had sealed the entrance with the roots of the surrounding trees. Unfortunately, this seal was not perfect and as the night progressed, the odour had spread to the surrounding area.
The wolves agreed to wait for the occupants to leave. Each one had moved a few metres away from the others, so that the seven wolves present were surrounding the exit of the cave perfectly. This meant that no one could escape alive from the trap.
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The first person to come out of the cave was Sora. In fact, she was the only person able to remove the seal that prevented the animals from entering the cave. She was followed by Lei, then Loki and finally Lily. Lily was barely out when the howls were heard. In just a few seconds, seven wolves quickly charged at them. Loki and Lei were too slow to react and therefore could not protect themselves. Sora had time to regain control of the surrounding roots, but unfortunately they were too slow to protect themselves from the canids ambush. Fortunately, Lily, who had perfected the speed at which she was able to invoke her barrier, had time to protect everyone.
Very quickly, her water barrier rose and surrounded the four members of the group like a protective bubble.
Still surprised by this sudden onslaught, they took a few seconds to come to their senses. As captain, Lei was the one who gave the orders:
"Loki, you take the ones on the left, I'll take the ones on the right". Sora, you assist if necessary. Lily, stay on the lookout!"
In this way, each member of the group shares the tasks. After their attack, the wolves retreated, noticing that they were not able to pierce the water bubble, but that their prey could not replicate either if this wall remained erected. Three of them acted as the vanguard, while three others remained slightly behind. The last one, the leader of the pack, watched the situation from a distance.
After each glance had crossed each other for a few seconds, Lei ordered Lily to lower the barrier. She then charged the four wolves on the right side, while Loki rushed to the left flank.
No sooner had she got close to a wolf than she employed an iaido technique, attacking the wolf at its throat. Unfortunately, the wolf was used to fighting and her reading of the movements was impressive. He was able to easily dodge the attack.
Just after the dodging of this attack, a second wolf attacked Lei from her left flank. She was slightly destabilised by this attack and could not parry, repel or dodge it. She had to take it head-on.
The wolf attacked with its right paw at Lei's shoulder, to bring her down. He also intended to use his fangs to immobilise his target. The claws were only a metre away from her. But when they were about to reach her body and damage her flesh, a watery protuberance appeared just between the two fighters.
Lei recognised this mass of water as Lily's shield, which had formed a water barrier just in time to protect her. In her mind, Lei wanted to thank her friend, unfortunately, being in the middle of a fight, she could not. Especially as the wolves offered her no respite, as the one who had dodge her previous attack were already about to attack again.
Fortunately for her, she had already refocused her point of gravity and it was easy for her to repel that attack.
Lei, noticing that she could not continue like this, decided to unleash the power of her singularity. With a movement of the hand, the two wolves of the vanguard attacking Sora were suspended in the air. Over an area of five square metres, gravity had become very weak, making them unable to move properly.
For Lei, it would have been more practical to increase this gravity, but unfortunately this would have required much more Enkainias than to reduce it, since she would have had to merge gravitons Enkainias, which would have required far too much energy for her at the moment, and her invocation time would have been far too long.
Reducing the surrounding gravity only required her to reduce the graviton density in a certain area, so it was much easier for her.
The wolves, now immobile, had become easy targets for Lei. She therefore easily cut off their heads. The wolves of the rear guard did not dare to intervene, frightened by the sharpness of Lei's weapon and by her strange power.
Although they were both frightened, this was not the case with the leader of the pack. It began to charge towards Lei, without being afraid of her. Among all the others, it was much much more experienced in combat and much more powerful.
It wasn't a simple human who was going to stop him. In a way, he was right, Lei was not ready to receive this charge. Using her singularity was very energy consuming, and it was still too early for her to recover yet. Moreover, it wasn't the kind of power she could invoke every ten seconds, as it required perfect concentration.
Still, she stayed on guard, preparing for the worst. With her katana in front of her, she cast a dark look at the leader of the pack. Ready for the impact, she raised her katana to the sky and struck a vertical blow.
On the other hand, her sword never met the wolf's flesh, just as the wolf's claws and fangs never met Lei's flesh. Indeed, the wolf, a fraction of a second before impact, was propelled away by what appeared to be a root.
Without him realising it, Sora had taken control of a root that was just in front of Lei and made it rise. The wolf was thrown into the distance, bumping its head against a tree, and was stunned for a few seconds. Sora took the opportunity to root it, and thus the leader of the pack was put out of action.
The two other wolves in the rear guard fled without hesitation, afraid for their lives. Lei then easily moved towards the leader of the pack, and killed him by sticking her katana in his throat.
The fight was not quite over yet. Loki, for his part, was doing quite well, but was not fast enough to hit the wolves, so he could only push them away. Even though they were tired and each attack was synonym of wounds, the same was true for Loki.
Although he hated to use his singularity, this time he was truly forced to do so. He closed his eyes for a few moments and concentrated. When he opened them again, something disturbing happened: Loki was sinking into his own shadow. Soon his legs disappeared and, although the wolves tried to catch him, they were not able to do so as Loki disappeared completely.
So the wolves looked to the right then to the left, looking for where their opponent might be. Unfortunately, they didn't find him. And it was only seconds later that a disturbing cry of pain echoed through the valley.
Just right under one of the wolves, a gigantic sword appeared from the ground, or more precisely from its shadow. It could not event find the time to understand what was happening to him that it collapsed, lifeless. The claymore then slowly withdrew from the body and disappeared into the shadows. As the second wolf couldn't understand what was happening aswell, it started to panic. As it began to look frantically around him, it realised that he was the only wolf still present and alive, and that even his pack leader died in battle.
So it made a quick and radical decision: it ran away. Unfortunately, the shadows had already reached him, and a gigantic sword pierced its heart. The wolf quickly collapsed, and Loki came out of that same shadow. Exhausted, he soon collapsed too.