"T-this...is-isn't, huff, water...." Ivan mumbled with an indescribable look on his face,
"Grrr....grrr." Suddenly, light growling was heard behind him. He glanced back, thinking that the wolf was still alive, and he hadn't forgotten about leaving his pocketknife on the wolf's nape, but his entire body stiffened by the "figures" that awaited him.
"Fuck...." Ivan cursed under his breath and realised only now that his body was trembling in exhaustion. Previously, his body had just moved due to the adrenaline rush, but now that it had settled down, he began to tremble.
And what's worse was the fact that now, there were two wolves in front of him, a lot bigger and stronger than wolf from before, glaring at Ivan, drooling.
"!" Suddenly, he remembered his "job," and without waiting, he punched in the direction of the dead wolf, opened his palm, and,
"Summon!" He yelled aloud. Due to his abrupt actions, the wolves in front of him jumped back as they felt an ominous energy from the dead wolf; the flesh on the dead wolf's body came loose; and because of the cut on its neck,
SLOP
With a weird sound, the flesh fell off from the dead wolf's body, along with the pocketknife, and the skeleton rose back with its eye sockets set ablaze with a strange blood red glow.
"Hunt!" Ivan commanded, and the skeleton wolf zoomed at the wolves in its top speed.
'The new wolves that appeared out of nowhere are stronger than my summon, and I have heard that a "necromancy" class is pretty shit when I'm playing games, but I can't believe I got this shit in real life.' Ivan grumbled inwardly while estimating and analysing his opponents, the wolves.
And no matter how he looked at it, his Skelton wolf wasn't a match for the wolves. Not only were they bigger, but they also seemed agile and strong. If this goes on, it's only a matter of time until he dies.
While he was pondering how to deal with the wolves, his summon was looking for a chance to attack its master's enemies. The summon seemed to be semi-sentient as it "understood" and moved according to its master's will, which was too confusing for it to understand because of the many thoughts that ran in its master's mind, as of now.
It jumped to the sides to dodge the claw swings and strong chomps on the pile of bones, but even though the enemy wolves were strong, it was, somehow, still dodging the attacks, because its master was subconsciously willing it, making it move and attack every gap that formed because of the summon. As it moved more like a human rather than a wolf.
CRACK!
Unfortunately, it didn't last long, because the wolf finally got a hit on the skeleton wolf, cracking a few of its bones and making it unable to move as freely as before, but before it went down, it gave its master a chance to catch its breath.
'Fall back and kick the pocketknife at me!' The skeleton wolf felt a strange shiver when it heard its master's command; that felt confident, and without further ado, it jumped back towards some kind of strange, pile of flesh and kicked the pink pocketknife towards its master with a prideful "emotion" rising from the bottom of its existence. Unbeknownst to the summoner and the master, there was a certain change that took place in their aura that made the wolves wry of them.
The pink-coloured pocketknife made its way towards Ivan, drifting across the blood-red land, swinging. Ivan grabbed it as soon as it seemed closer to him and rushed towards the wolves while a small, red sand trail was left behind him due to the strength he was using to lunge himself. Though he had yet to realise it, he was a lot faster than when he rushed to fight against the wolf that was now his summon.
"Come!!!" Ivan roared with maddened eyes; his roar caused the wolves to shudder, but it was only for a split second before they, too, lunged themselves towards Ivan with drool-covered lips that twitched and controlled up into an ominous grin.
But, unfortunate for the wolves, what he called was his summon, which zoomed at them from their blind spot before pouncing and holding them down. Of course, it is impossible for a single summon to hold them down, as they shook it off and lunged at Ivan, who was glaring at them with maddened eyes, dazed.
When they were at most 5 feet away from each other, Ivan shoved the pink pocketknife at his right, where his summon's flesh had piled up, and swung it at the wolves, which were unable to see what was in front of them as they tried to get rid of the flesh and blood that covered their sights.
'Hunt!' Ivan commanded again, and the skeleton wolf pounced on a wolf, trying to bite its head off, while Ivan pounced on the other, trying to cut off its head.
*
THUD-THUD
"Huff....huff...huff...." Ivan huffed in severe exhaustion, but his gaze, which was filled with madness, didn't cease. Hoping for the worst,
"Summon." He mumbled, huffing. Again, the same process took place, and two more skeleton wolves stood next to him, making the skeleton count, now, at three.
And then the worst that he expected happened, and three more live wolves spawned in front of him out of nowhere, but this time he, too, had three wolves, though they were much weaker. Still, counting himself, they outnumbered the enemies.
"Kill them all." Ivan mumbled under his breath; his gaze fixated on the newly appearing wolves.
*
After a while.
Due to the enemy number continuously increasing by 1, his mini army got a massive boost, he gazed at the nine wolves having a hard time against 36 of his skeleton wolves because they were persistent as they had no fear of death or sense of pain.
WHIMPER
"2 down, 7 more to go." Ivan mumbled while sitting "10 steps" away from the newly spawned wolves' battle range. He had tested it quite a few times and noticed that the wolves were too focused on those that were 10 step range, and thought that he would be able to take them by surprise if he stayed away as soon as a fight ended, but that wasn't the case, they still attacked him even without him doing anything, so he came to a conclusion that the main focus stayed on its 10 step range and he was proved right when he left a few summons in the 10 step range while he himself standing out of it.
'Breathe in, breathe out.' Ivan mumbled in his mind, trying to stay sane, awake, and testing to see if the methods he learned from the novels would be useful, he was trying to "absorb" mana from the surroundings, so his last lifeline which was his mana won't run out, fortunate for him, it seemed to be working, but there was a truly unfortunate thing that he found out later after his fight against five wolves, that the flesh that had slumped on the ground had rotten by the time he noticed it, and the exact time it took to completely rot was 10 seconds, TEN GODDAMN SECONDS, nothing more, nothing less.
He didn't dare to eat some kind of unknown food before, thinking that he would die in an instant, while hoping that there would be some kind of food if he won in these maddening fights against these ever-growing, both in numbers and strength, spawned wolves.
Among all the things he had observed from the fourth fight, there was something about the newly spawned wolves' strength that his small group of summons weren't even able to handle, even if their numbers were greater than the enemy wolves. So Ivan understood that he couldn't fight them with brute strength; instead, he needed brains, that he had, so he thanked his father for.
THUD
And, as the last wolf's massive body fell to the ground in a thud, the wolves that were spawning now were at least 15 feet tall and 7-8 feet wide. Though they were massive, they still behaved exactly like the first one, depending only on their instincts.
"S...on." Ivan mumbled without wasting any time, and 9 more skeleton wolves stood back up and gazed at Ivan, before joining the remaining 26 skeleton wolves as many summons were destroyed in the fight, while all the skeleton wolves grouped around Ivan, he looked like he was about to fall unconscious any moment now.
'I....want to.... sleep.' Ivan muttered in his mind, because his eyelids grew heavier and heavier as the time passed; his eyes were bloodshot; his skin had sunk in, tightly sticking to his muscles that had somehow grown denser than when he first set foot here in the Unknown World.
"Grrr...." And, of course, the wolves spawned again, ten this time. Without even opening his mouth, Ivan pointed at the newly spawned wolves with trembling hands, and following his will, his summons rushed at them.
CRACK!
SPLURT!!
THUD
...
...
With a long series of continuous thuds, the skeletons and the newly spawned wolves' bodies were, literally, shredded, causing Ivan's eyes to snap wide open in shock, only to find a lone wolf that was gazing around at the dead bodies with an ominous grin on its face, making Ivan tremble in fear.
But before he could even understand what was happening, the wolf had appeared in front of him with its mouth wide open.
"!!"
CHOMP!
Ivan's body jerked back instinctively, barely dodging the wolf's big bite, but,
SPLURT