(Verum's POV)
I hit the ground, and the tree I was just on shattered, it was as if a wrecking ball had hit it.
(A/N: I came in like a wrecking ball...)
I started running, and did not even turn around to see how many wolves were after me, but instead tried to focus on keeping my speed high enough to escape at least some of the wolves pursuit, since there were not many that I saw bigger than normal.
I jumped from tree to tree, with high jump III increasing my jump power till the point that it could be called superhuman, my speed was higher when I was jumping, as compared to my sprinting, but even so, I had to evade many times when the alpha wolf shot wind blades towards me. That, coupled with many other wind blades of the other wolves, made my escape impossible.
So, I turned sixty-degrees, towards the castle I had seen earlier, if I managed to reach the boundary, the castle lord would be forced to help me, because if not, the wolves would target them after killing me. For me, it was a good enough situation, if I was helped, I would maybe gain an ally, if not, I would damage an enemy, win-win situation.
During the chase, I had to distract the wolves many times, and I used most of the supplies I brought with me, at one point, I even had to use my spear to kill a wolf that had gotten too close to me. That caused me to lose some of my health, and put me in a dangerous spot as well, luckily, I managed to escape from there.
Well, it was only partly luck, if I did not have the smoke bomb skill that Trickster gave me, I would have gotten seriously injured in the best case scenario. Even so, I still had to move decisively and take the opportunity to move at the right moment to escape.
I managed to get halfway to my goal when the alpha caught up with me.
My mind was in some disarray, because the alpha was showing too much power, and I did not think that it's level was that high enough for it. So far, I had tried testing it's defense by throwing sharpened stones at it, but al of them just bounced off. That meant that it's defense was quite high, but it's speed did not match up according to it's defense.
It was not as fast as it should have been, which is the main factor which was confusing me at that time, the strange speed. All the wolves that were bigger than normal were also faster, but this 'Elite Alpha', while still quicker, did not exceed the others speed by much, On the contrary it's magic attacks were way stronger, perhaps the decrease in speed was made up by increasing the power of magic.
I could not ponder for long, having a huge wolf snapping at your heels puts your adrenaline and reaction at 200% efficiency, which was the only reason I was able to drag out the chase to about forty-five seconds before I had to engage the alpha in combat.
I thrust my spear at it, and it struck it's side, but it did not pierce deep enough, and as a result, barely did any damage at all to it, just made a small wound. That seemed to anger it, it growled before lunging, which I sidestepped and then shot a fireball towards it before again breaking out into a sprint.
The wolf turned around, then seeing that I was escaping again, howled, and then condensed a wind blade in it's mouth before shooting it towards me. I evaded it by rolling forwards, and it went ahead and struck three different trees, destroying each of them before dispersing.
I was now three fourth's of the way to my goal, with only three hundred meters remaining for me to traverse before I engaged the wolves following me in an all-out battle to the death. However, in order to not give away my identity, I quickly brought out and put on the 'Identity Veil' I had gotten as a reward some time ago.
[Identity Veil]
[Hides your name, affiliation, level, and all other details about you from other players]
The thing was the best thing for conducting missions that required stealth because even if discovered, the opponent will not know your identity unless they are very familiar with you.
By this point, I was only a hundred meters from the clearing that surrounded the castle in front, and the alpha had once again caught up to me. This time I could not allow it to stall me, the wolves were already to close, so I took a gamble.
I turned around and leapt backwards, barely missing the claws that dug into the ground just as I moved. And then, I raised both my hands in front of me, and gathered a whole lot of mana, then suddenly pushed it all out.
'Roaring flames!' This was a move I had made recently, by combining flamethrower with one-directional gale, I managed to increase the range and damage of the spell, making it more powerful, with less mana cost.
I cast the spell, and kept my eyes on the side, this was the gamble, if the wolves surrounded me, i would have difficulty breaking out, but they didn't, so I quickly turned and ran, listening to the yelps and howls of the wolves behind.
And then, I appeared in front of the castle walls.
*****
Author here, mind adding this book to your library? Thanks.