The Rise of the Winter Wolf - Book 2 - Chapter 42 - Progress

Lucky Days

“And our resident dhampir has reached the twenty-fifth floor!” Toby shouts in excitement as the audience applauds with enthusiasm.

Sam watches Norbert look around the twenty-fifth floor for several seconds before he mutters too quietly for the audience to hear, “I preferred it when The Winter Wolf was the forerunner.”

Toby glances at him with an eyebrow raised before shaking his head.

The main screen suddenly changes to show Crystal as she shoots an explosive arrow at the back of a large owl monster on the twenty-fourth floor.

_-| Unnamed – Ancient Nocte – Level 258 |-_

The applause already filling the stadium grows in volume as the arrow collides with the monster, causing a large explosion that sends it flying into a nearby tree. Crystal then pulls out another arrow, draws her bow, and sends it flying straight through the large owl’s neck.

“Ya gotta appreciate the explosions, right Sam?” Toby says with a joking tone as Crystal walks up to the owl and pulls her arrow back out of its neck and starts wiping it off.

Sam – having had his attention taken away from Wolf’s loss of forerunner status – nods in agreement and says, “Ya got that right! Every livestream needs some good explosions!”

Cheers echo through the audience at this before a look of realization spreads across Toby’s face.

“Did we ever see what Deadshot got from the event boss?” he asks after turning an inquisitive look towards Sam.

A brief look of surprise covers Sam’s face before he says, “Actually, I don’t think we did!”

He then turns to the audience and asks, “Did anyone see it on another livestream?”

Chatter runs through the audience, but no one says anything.

Toby takes that as his cue to go onto the System Forums to find it.

In the meantime, Crystal nocks another arrow to her bow as she begins to make her way through the dark, moonlit forest once again. However, before she can make it very far, she pauses in surprise and begins to mess with a menu in front of her.

As she is doing this, Toby looks up from his own menu and says, “It looks like the item she got from the event boss was an immunity skill. One towards the darkness element.”

“A darkness immunity?” Sam mutters in surprise as he turns to look at Crystal with a look of intrigue. “I guess that would make sense, since werewolves tend to favor the darkness element.”

“Not to mention that their current floor’s theme seems to be focused on dark element related monsters,” Toby adds as he continues reading something on his menu.

Meanwhile, Crystal looks back up from her menus and continues her way through the forest once again.

“From what it says here, the immunity is just level 1 at Tier 7, so it should only be a 10% immunity,” Toby continues his explanation before looking up at Crystal, “which should still be pretty helpful for this floor theme.”

Sam just nods his head in agreement as Crystal runs into another large owl.

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Wolf
A few hours later, on the twenty-third floor

I wipe my bloody gauntlets onto the corpse of the large bear-like monster before looking up in the direction of the annoying sound.

“I really wish those things would stop making that noise,” I mutter as I start making my way towards the source of it.

With my headphones on, the sound isn’t that much of an issue, but that doesn’t change the fact that the high pitch squeaking sound is very annoying. After about a minute or so of walking, I find myself entering a clearing with a large, black tree in the center. On the top of the tree is some sort of nest, with several large chicks in it.

The chicks themselves are the sources of the annoying noise as they chirp for literally no reason.

“It’s not like you have any parents on the floor, unless I have just managed to miss them every time I’ve come across you things,” I mutter to myself as I spread my ice element towards them, freezing them all solid without much trouble.

They are also quite helpless when it comes to my magic. The only problems I have been given by them so far were their irritating chirping, and their strangely durable feathers that are able to practically ignore a scratch from my claws.

All in all, they are practically the complete opposites of the third monster species on this floor, which of course is another variant of dark sprite with their annoying magic immunity.

I glance at the chicks one last time before focusing on the orb in my pocket as I have my ice pierce through their brains.

Over the course of the past several hours, I have managed to adjust a little bit to the new strength. Enough so that the old man told me to change the physical limiter again to 85% instead of 88%.

I do admit that the rapid increases in my strength due to undoing the limiter is nice, but it’s extremely annoying to have to constantly be off balance due to my strength.

Speaking of adjusting, I think I should be a high enough level to test out my venom on a monster without having to worry about them harming me.

I glance at the chicks again before lowering my soundproofing to find the closest monster.

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“You’ll do,” I mutter while staring at the frozen solid bear-like monster in front of me.

_-| Unnamed – Darkheart Bear – Level 248 |-_

The bear roars at me in anger at its inability to move anything below its neck before it suddenly whimpers in fear as I shift into my hunter form.

“Oh?” I mutter in a gravely voice, “you’re afraid of me in this form?”

That’s nice to know.

I ignore the creature’s fear and walk up to it, causing its whimpering to increase in volume as its struggles to escape escalate.

Unfortunately for the bear, my ice won’t budge.

The bear’s scent fills my nose as I get closer, smelling of a mixture of smoke and dirt for some reason, before I grab onto its arm and sink my teeth into it, manipulating my ice to flow out of the way just as my teeth touch it.

A loud roar echoes through the forest from the bear as it struggles in vain to break free of my ice. Meanwhile, my bluish-black venom begins to spread throughout its body.

Interesting… my venom seems to be spreading at a much faster pace than a werewolf’s venom would.

It took twenty-two to twenty-three hours for the venom to infect all of my blood, meanwhile my venom has already completely infected this bear’s entire arm within seconds!

I create an ice chair next to me before sitting down on it to watch my venom do its job – whatever that may be.

Meanwhile, the bear itself just continues roaring in pain and agony while staring at the bluish-black spreading infection with horror on its bear face.

“That’s one fast infection,” I casually mutter, completely ignoring the roars of agony filling the clearing.

The infection continues spreading over the course of the next few minutes until it finally covers every inch of the bear’s large body. Soon after that, the roars stop and the bear begins to convulse, which looks rather odd with it still being frozen in ice.

It’s interesting how just a single bite from me could cause so much pain…

Suddenly, the bear stops convulsing.

I expand my ice covering it to make it a large, hollow orb to accommodate any physical changes that might occur. Immediately after I finish doing that, a crack sounds from within the orb.

“It looks like the show is starting,” I mutter as I lean forwards in my ice throne.

The bear’s limbs suddenly begin cracking all over the place before it returns to normal without any real change.

I tilt my head in confusion at this, only for a loud roar to echo from the bear’s throat as the fur all over its body begins to fall out, only to be replaced by a snow-white fur, similar to my own. Except without the eternal ice aspect to it. Instead, it’s just normal ice making up its fur.

The bear suddenly opens its eyes wide open to reveal pale blue eyes instead of its once-black orbs as it roars in what must be absolute agony.

“Interesting,” I mutter while rubbing my chin, making sure that I don’t accidentally cut myself in the process.

My focus is turned away from the bear as a notification suddenly appears in my vision.

“Oh?” I mutter in surprise.