'Time for round two!'
Aurora wasted no time and charged straight ahead, ready to face off against the three wolves.
Just like her, the black wolf also didn't wait around at all and lunged forward, intent on ripping Aurora apart. The wolf's patience ran out a long time ago.
Now, fueled by his fury, he would do anything just to tear the little white fox into pieces.
Seeing that the wolf was planning to face her head on, Aurora quickly halted her steps and jumped back. Though she was fired up and was starting to get a bit reckless, she wasn't foolish enough to think that she would be able to beat the wolf in physical combat.
What she didn't really realize was that she had severely underestimated the wolf's agility. It took no more than three seconds for the wolf to close in the distance between the two, slashing forward with his claw.
'What!?' Caught by a surprise, Aurora barely managed to somehow dodge the wolf's strike. Though his claw still scrapped her leg, it failed to leave any kind of wound.
'Thank God for my ring.' Immediately shifting gears and returning her complete focus to the battle. She could not afford to take this halfheartedly.
'The true fight has just begun; don't forget that, Aurora.' She reminded herself and stopped thinking about anything else.
She didn't care if her aura did what it wanted, nor did she try to observe the black wolf. No, she solely focused every neuron in her brain onto her, the wolf, and their dance.
The wolf furiously attacked her in a flurry of attacks. The force behind the attacks was immense, further proving just how powerful the wolf was.
Furthermore, his agility was nothing to scoff at either, clearly higher than Aurora's despite him being slower due to the effects of Snowstorm. Were it not for the spell's existence, Aurora would have most probably been already dead.
Despite all that, she managed to dodge most of the wolf's attacks without receiving any injuries. And when she could not dodge, she would charge right in, disregarding defense, and would attack the wolf in return.
*Swish.* *Swish.*
A blow for a blow. The two were evenly matched. The wolf's strength was much higher, but the same could be said for Aurora's defense.
On the other hand, the wolf's defense was nothing compared to her own, meaning that even Aurora's considerably lower strength could wound the wolf significantly.
As the two exchanged blows and wounds on their bodies, their movement and agility also obviously had to pay the price.
While the wolf began to wince in pain with every other attack it received, Aurora remained unfazed, as if she didn't feel any pain at all.
This was, of course, not true. She did feel pain, a lot of it. She just ignored it and continued to fight. After all, as someone who already died once and knew how it feels to die, this much pain wasn't enough to force her to pay attention to it.
*Swish.* *Swish.*
...
...
...
The fight raged on for longer and longer. It has already been five minutes since the two began to fight, and since then, neither of them stopped for even a second.
Though the two appeared to be mostly evenly matched, with the wolf having a slight advantage in speed, it was in fact Aurora who had the upper hand.
This was only thanks to Snowstorm. Ever since she began to fight against the wolves, she never stopped using it. Though the damage it dealt over time wasn't that huge, as the fight went on, it started to add up.
It was clear to both of them that if things continued on as they were, Aurora would be the one to remain standing. Even more so now that the five-minute mark has finally passed.
[You have inflicted a status effect: Minor Freeze on the target.]
Aurora received three of such messages, meaning that all three of the wolves had their agility now lowered by 5%.
Hm, what do you mean? What were the other two Gray Shadow Wolves doing this entire time?
Oh, well, nothing. I mean, they weren't doing exactly nothing, but they weren't joining in the fight either.
There were multiple reasons for this. First, the pair of Aurora and their leader were a bit too fast for them to just casually join in. And the second reason was that their leader never told them to join in, meaning that he wanted to fight alone.
This proved to not be a wise choice, as their little, white-furred opponent proved to be much stronger than they originally thought. Despite that, the black wolf still wanted to fight alone.
But now that his agility dropped even lower by another 5%, he was actually starting to have second thoughts. Seeing that he might lose if things were to go on like this, he quickly dodged Aurora's claw and jumped back.
"Auuu!"
The black wolf howled vigorously, to which the two other wolves reacted right away. They both growled and charged towards Aurora.
'Finally joining in, huh?' In reality, this sudden turn of events wasn't surprising to the said fox at all.
She expected that at some point, the black wolf would back up; it was just a question of how stubborn he was. As it turned out, quite a lot, actually.
To be honest, Aurora expected the black wolf to back away quite a bit sooner. Still, it wasn't a problem at all either way, so it was all well and good.
And since she was so unfazed, she had no trouble quickly switching into a different fighting mode. A mode more focused on fighting multiple, weaker targets rather than a singular, strong one.
Even more now that the two wolves were much weaker than they were in the beginning of the battle.
After all this entire time, they stayed inside the effective range of Snowstorm, meaning that not only were they slow but also lost a lot of HP already.
Well, you can't really blame them for staying inside the range. After all, the poor wolves have no idea what magic even is, much less such a weird and mysterious spell as Snowstorm. To them, it just seemed as if they were growing weaker for no reason.
And so, the two wolves did their best to fight against Aurora, but even combined, they were much weaker than the black one alone.
'Rather than these two, why is that guy not attacking at all?' Actually, Aurora wasn't even really focusing on the two wolves right now.
She was busy observing the black wolf from the moment he backed up. After giving orders to his little lackeys, she expected the wolf to go straight back to fighting, the difference being their support.
However, contrary to her expectation, the black wolf didn't charge back into battle, nor did he try to attack Aurora in any way. He was just standing away from the three, focusing intently on the ongoing fight.
But just as Aurora was wondering what he was doing, the mana in the air suddenly shifted without her interference, meaning that someone else moved the mana around them.
'He's casting!' But when the realization hit her, it was far too late. From the shadow of a nearby tree behind her, a black tentacle-like spell shot out towards her.
By the time Aurora could even try to dodge, the tentacle hit her back. And just as she expected to lose a lot of HP and braced herself to feel incredible pain, nothing seemed to have happened.
'What just happened?' Aurora was completely struck dumb. Theoretically, just now, when the attack has hit her right on the back, she should have lost at least half of her total HP. After all, the black wolf's stats were undoubtedly high.
That's why it was such a surprise that not only did she not get seriously hurt, she didn't get hurt at all.
And apparently, she wasn't the only one who was surprised; the black wolf was too. Anytime he used his magic in the past, his enemy has immediately succumbed to its might.
This was the first time an enemy of his has ever survived his spell, but not only did the white creature survive a clean hit, it didn't appear to be hurt at all!
Normally, this would have made the wolf furious, but he had no energy left to be angry.
That spell he just used drained basically all of his mana since his intelligence and mana were low. Furthermore, he had a bigger problem than getting angry right now.
The two Gray Shadow Wolves didn't seem to realize that their enemy was no wounded at all, so they charged right in, intent to finish Aurora off.
But just as the black wolf was about to warn them not to charge and rather retreat, it was already too late.
The two wolves felt an intense, sharp pain in their abdomen as a large chunk of ice pierced right through it, leaving a deep hole that went all the way through their spines.
The two wolves had barely time to realize that their hearts were gone when they fell to the ground, their eyes turning lifeless.
[You have defeated the Gra-]
Aurora didn't even glance at the two messages that she received and immediately dismissed them. Right now, she wasn't even focusing on the fact that she just killed the two wolves. Actually, it was an automatic action, something she did unconsciously.
Her mind was currently still thinking about how it was possible for her to basically completely negate the spell she just got hit by.
'When I think about it, it kind of makes sense. The black wolf's main stat is strength, and his intelligence stat is probably quite low.'
'Furthermore, my broken title increases both my affinties with light and darkness, so my resistance against dark-type spells, at least the weak ones, should be pretty decent.' But even when someone came to a logical conclusion, they just sometimes couldn't accept the logic.
'Still, no damage at all? Hmmmm...' For some reason, at the moment, Aurora was really stumped at the current situation. So much so that she completely disregarded the black wolf that was still alive.
Well, just because he was alive doesn't mean he could continue to fight. He was heavily wounded, out of MP and almost out of SP as well.
During his confrontation with Aurora, he used his physical skills left and right without caring about his stamina consumption at all. Because of this, unlike Aurora, he was utterly exhausted.
Only once the wolf's tired breathing got loud enough did Aurora finally seem to realize that she wasn't alone yet.
'Oh, right. You exist, huh?' Amazing reaction, Aurora, truly. What's with that bored attitude? This wolf is super strong, remember!?
'I expected you to be strong, and well, you were, but it turns out you weren't that big of a deal.' In the end, Aurora just sighed and walked over to the wolf with calm steps.
The last two Gray Shadow Wolves that she killed were actually level 15 and 16, so after she killed them, she even managed to level up.
Thanks to this, all her previous wounds got healed up, and both her MP and SP were back to their max.
Seeing that the black wolf was basically unable to pose any kind of threat to her anymore, Aurora proceeded to deactivate Snowstorm.
By this point, even the black wolf seemed to have given up. He stopped growling and just fell to the ground, waiting for Aurora to finish him off.
'Now, whatever shall I do with you?'