As night approached I was presented with the stark reality that there is not much I can do to prepare for the pack's onslaught. As I don't know in which direction the attack turns to set up a defensive and useless perimeter since it's impractical to encircle the entire village, we don't have enough material for traps and as our Earth element mage is attracting the wolves changing terrain is impossible.
The only thing we managed to do right was to set up a makeshift bunker to protect the villagers. Just the fact of not having to defend them already improves our fighting ability a lot, I thought about setting up some mines and attracting the wolves to them, but it's difficult to do that the wolves are very fast and not a good place to set up mines.
While I was trying to think of a solution I realized something the village will be abandoned so it's okay to destroy the houses if we use the rubble to make a barrier, but I discarded the idea a minute after realizing that a rubble barrier is not a obstacle to the pack they can simply climb it or go around it and set up a corridor with traps that will end up being triggered by Ingredi and Hilda.
I really don't have a clue how to improve our chances, not that it's a good point to do that with our strength it should be okay to exterminate the wolves. As long as their number doesn't undergo a big change.
I decided to check on the rest of the group. I went straight past Vania's group members I don't know them and this is not a good time to make new friends the atmosphere is a bit heavy. I approach Raziel and Torris who are talking.
"Hey. Excited to get on this shit mission?"
"Don't be exaggerated Ulric the mission isn't that bad."
"I disagree, Torris, this mission might not be very dangerous for a large group like this, but it's complicated in a bad way. Apart from the points you will earn in the guild, the village cannot pay the reward and I very much doubt that the guild will cover the reward for the quest."
"I admit you're right about the reward because even if they offered us some money I would refuse, but as the main objective in this mission was to accumulate enough points to raise our rank. This shows that even the profit here for us, for my cousin's team, will win nothing at all."
"That explains their negative mood, not Ulric and I don't particularly care about the money we'll make and well, even if we don't win it doesn't change anything for me. But even to a downside on this mission if Hilda and Ingredi attract the wolves today and the pack has grown a lot in size, we'll be screwed."
"Raziel is right this may be the biggest problem, but I'm not excited about wasting several days escorting the villagers, we'll spend like three or four days taking them and then we have to go back. We will end up missing a whole week of classes at the institute and when we are traveling it is not convenient to train."
"I still think the mission has more positive points, even though we can't train and it's important to go through difficulties to stimulate our growth, just direct training doesn't help so much to elevate our cultivation. We have to put it at risk to improve our growing speed."
"You might be right about putting yourself at risk, more wrong at the point where we're doing this now if it doesn't happen a shit we'll easily kill the wolves and then at most we'll face some magical animals on the way if we're lucky we can get attacked by bad guys that you have to be really idiots to attack a big group like ours or they're such a big group we're going to be screwed."
"It would be more profitable to spend your time risking yourself in a dungeon if you want danger. You will find out how difficult it is to explore the first floors by yourself and please try not to die I will be very upset if you die and difficult to find useful people to make a group."
"Thank you for having such confidence in our ability."
"Spoken like a good leader now Ulric!"
"It's the naked truth. I don't want to lose a single member to the idiotic tradition of entering the dungeon alone."
"I never fully understood this tradition, it seems more like it serves to feed the dungeon than a test for adventurers. There are many adventurers who end up dead just because they don't get along with the first dungeon setting, not everyone is good at tracking down little monsters that love to ambush adventurers in the dark."
"Is it too difficult Ulric?"
"Not for me. But that and because I'm good at tracking monsters as you know I don't worry too much about you getting past the elite monster in the dungeon I worry about the Holt brothers they don't even have an edge and their defense isn't that solid."
"Sten is pretty strong Ulric I think you're underestimating him a lot."
"What about Erick?"
"No comments."
While talking to Torris and Raziel the sky darkened, we built a large fire to clearly signal our presence and closed the entrance to the bunker so the villagers were safe.
I put meat on to roast and we spent the hour waiting for the wolves to look like I got weird looks for wasting my time at the fire making meat. Not one of them thought what would happen if the wolves didn't show up, I'm just starting to cook dinner.
I saw on the horizon two colored spots coming from this great distance I can't see their shape but their mana and well concentrated I believe it must be the weasels. The closer they got, the easier it was to identify our mates and behind them I could see a pack of wolves running high. Well they must have spent part of their endurance chasing them both.
Led by Vania we set up our defensive formation with her in front of her sides were Torris and David the three of them formed our defensive wall behind them are archers Benjamin, Chales and Erick and on the archers side are brothers James and Jason guarding the sides and behind everyone is me, Raziel, Rafaela and Sten who is carrying a sword and shield.
Our formation may be circular, but it's open enough for a weasel carrying Ingredi to stay in the center with the archers as Hilda must turn around after she passes us and makes her charge mounted on Blue and breaks the formation that will. look like when Vania blocks the wolves.
As they approach I can already see Isis behind Ingredi shooting arrows at the wolves I hope she has killed several as she lures them into the village. The two white weasels pass by the sides of the group and only one of them goes around and enters the hole between Rafaela and me. With Ingredi and Isis' road the team is complete as I doubt Hilda will want to stay in formation she must be very excited to attack the wolves with Blue.
I could see the wolf pack approaching Vania's shield and she covered it with her Earth element. Torris imitates her, but David can only depend on her aura. Even though I can't see his face I can feel his resentment in the air during the day here in the village I can clearly see that he doesn't like Torris and is jealous of him. A lot of warriors couldn't deal with the lack of an elemental seed I can't talk too much about it as I have an elemental seed, but I can say that I don't like that kind of person.
When the wolves are a few meters away from Vania I see her concentrating her elemental energy and aura. When the wolves are within a meter of her she advances her shield unleashing a wave of earth made of small stones and dust they are strengthened by her aura despite not being made of large stones and more than enough to affect the wolves. Nobody likes to eat dirt.
The pack hampered by Vania's movement crashes into the shields, in this opening the lancer brothers have already started hunting the wolves, their spears piercing the first pair of wolves that tries to pass by the sides of the formation.
It didn't take long for us to be surrounded by the wolves I haven't even seen a level two wolf yet just a few dozen level one wolves. Keeping in formation we kept the wolves away from us whoever approached was hit by Raziel's whip or hurled by Rafaela's axes. Meanwhile the archers in the center began to kill the wolves.
Ingredi was mounted on her weasel that I haven't learned the name yet, she is waiting for the moment when the level two wolves will appear. Spend your mana on level one wolves and waste mana.
The combat is very unfavorable for the wolves as they can't penetrate our defensive formation the archers are killing them at a good speed in a few rounds of arrow the number of wolves has already decreased a lot there should only be about twenty level one wolves left.
The tranquility was broken when I saw Hilda on top of Blue they were running towards us, but it wasn't her presence that surprised the group, but the amount of wolves that were following her. There were several level two wolves behind her and followed by a few dozen more level one wolves.
But although this was a surprise we were already expecting since we haven't seen the level two wolves yet, but the point that confused me was the direction they came from. We were in the village road wolves who were following Hilda and Ingredi were around us, but now a new onslaught of wolves coming from the opposite direction.
This is very confusing.