Bowler and Flame had already experienced Jack's ability to sense their surroundings, so they didn't doubt his words. They pulled out their weapons and faced the direction that Jack was staring at.
In his radar, Jack saw six red dots coming at high speed; much faster than any monsters he had faced during the Tutorial Period. This meant that the monsters approaching were ones he had not encountered before.
As the six red dots got closer, all three of them could see six silver figures approaching quickly, running on four legs.
Finally, Jack's team could identify the monsters. They had shapes that were similar to a beast in the real world; they were wolves! Their fur shined silver and they had two amazing sideburns that extended from the sides of their eyes to the tips of their tails. They were slightly larger than the wolves of the real world. Their running speed was extremely fast; they were just specks of silver dust when first spotted, but in mere moments they had come dangerously close.
Jack scanned them when they came into range.
*
Silver Wolf (Basic monster, Beast)
Level: 10
HP: 950
*
Level 10, wasn't too strong, Jack thought.
"Usual strategy! I will engage them. Bowler, send them range attacks. Flame, protect Bowler!" Jack yelled out as he ran forward to attack the wolves.
Bowler started the fight by casting Energy Bolts. Four bolts sped out towards the wolves. They tried to evade by spreading out and moving away from the bolts' trajectory, but the bolts followed their movement. Each bolt hit one of the wolves, delivering 28 to 30 damage.
This shouldn't be too difficult, Jack thought as he reached one of the wolves. He slashed downward to cleave the beast's head. Contrary to his expectation, his sword only hit empty air. The wolf had nimbly jumped to the side. While Jack was stunned by the wolf agile dodge, his radar beeped as a red dot came at him from behind.
Jack immediately sidestepped, narrowly escaping a wolf that clawed at his back. But before he knew it, he felt pain in his thigh. He looked down and saw the wolf that had evaded his slash was now biting at his leg. He lifted his sword to strike it, but it hurriedly let go and moved away.
'Damn! They are quick and cunning!' Jack cursed inwardly.
The other four wolves went for Flame and Bowler, ignoring Jack. Two of them jumped at Flame, while the other two separated and came towards Bowler from his front and back. They were forcing the three people to fight independently while pressuring them with their speed and numbers.
Bowler cast Magic Bullet, but since it didn't have tracking ability, the wolf easily dodged it. Bowler followed up with a couple of standard range attacks, but the wolf just jumped left and right; none of the attacks hit. While he was dealing with the wolf in front, the wolf behind him clawed at his back and then bit his neck. The neck bite was a critical. He suffered 10 and 28 damages from the two attacks.
Flame was coping much better. She rolled away from the wolves' jump attacks, then dashed back to make a counter-attack. But the wolves separated and attacked simultaneously from two sides. Flame stepped towards the wolf to her right, using her speed to cope with the wolf's fast movement, and attacked with a Swift Stab into the wolf's abdomen for 36 damage. But she soon found herself getting jumped by the second wolf. She couldn't dodge the attack so she reflexively lifted her left arm to defend. The wolf bit into the arm, causing 15 damage.
The wolves' damages were low, but their speed was fast, making them very hard to hit. Especially for Bowler who had slow speed and no melee capability; he couldn't do anything but be the wolves' biting bag.
Jack analyzed the situation and sent Bowler a message, "Forget about attacking! Use Magic Shield and focus on defending. We will come to your aid once we deal with the ones on our side!"
Jack decided to forgo technique and just engage them with brute force. This situation was similar to the time when he fought with Red Death. Since he had difficulty matching their nimble moves, he would just trade blows with them. He slashed at them each time they clawed or bit at him. The beasts' attacks only caused him 8 to 14 damage, while his normal attack took out a chunk of over 60 damage from their HP bar. When he used Power Strike or Swing, the wolves lost even more health.
With this method, by the time Jack had lost around a quarter of his HP, he had managed to kill the first wolf and reduce the second one to critical health.
Jack checked on Bowler. Even though he was just defending with Magic Shield, the guy had still lost half of his HP.
Jack picked up the pace and charged at the second wolf. It seemed to know that it was in danger and ran away. Jack was not going to waste time chasing the wolf. Its running speed was faster than his; he wouldn't be able to catch it. So he turned around and ran towards Bowler.
The wolves that were harassing Bowler didn't seem to be aware of Jack's approach. Jack took advantage of this and launched a Power Strike to one of the beast's back. It scored a critical, dealing a huge 256 damage and sending the wolf flying. Jack then took a position at Bowler's side.
"Send your Energy Bolts to the wolf over there; it's close to death!" Jack pointed to the wolf with critical health that had run from him. Bowler canceled his Magic Shield and followed Jack's order. The wolf with critical HP tried running around to dodge the Energy Bolts, but the four bolts all tracked without fail. In the end, it died in the blasts from Bowler's Energy Bolts.
With Jack there to protect him from the wolves that had been harassing him, Bowler could finally go on the offensive again. He moved some distance away as Jack attacked the two wolves, and started sending range attacks whenever he got the chance.
With the battle rhythm back in their control, it didn't take long before the remaining four wolves were defeated.
When the fight ended, Flame only had a third of her HP remaining. She had taken out one wolf by herself and killed the other one with Bowler's assistance.
Jack's HP was still over half. When Flame and Bowler noticed his HP bar, they couldn't help but ask, "Exactly how high is your max HP? We saw you get bitten quite a lot, so why is your bar still so full?"
Jack laughed it off, "I ate some restorative potions during the fight. What, you didn't see it?"
They were pretty sure he hadn't done any such thing, but, then again, they were focusing on the fight, so they might have missed it. With no proof, they dropped the issue. They took out their own restorative items and started consuming them to regain the health they had lost.
Jack took a peek at the Container of Souls and found out that the collected souls now numbered 10. The increase matched the number of wolves the whole party had killed, assuming that each wolf gave one soul. He asked Peniel, 'The container can collect souls even if I didn't deal the killing blow?'
'Yes. The souls will be automatically collected within a set distance, no matter how death occurs,' Peniel answered.
'That's good news,' Jack thought. At first, he thought he would need to personally do the killing in order to be able to collect souls. That would be troublesome when he was fighting in a team. Trying to land all the killing blows in a team fight might end up ruining the team's coordination.
The group noticed that each of the wolves had dropped something. They picked them up.
*
Wolf's fur (Junk trophy)
Can be sold or exchanged for some coins.
*
It was junk? That meant this thing had no use other than to be sold or thrown away. But there was also a trophy in the indication. Jack asked Peniel what that meant, but she said she would explain when they were back in the city.
'Again with the withholding of information!' but Jack didn't try to force her to answer.
They divided the six furs equally, so each person got two Wolf's fur.
Afterward, they continued towards the hill.
The battle had taken some time. The sun was pretty low on the horizon already.