Bowler and Flame had already experienced Jack's ability to sense their surroundings, so they didn't doubt his words. They pulled out their weapons and faced the direction that Jack was staring at.
In his radar, Jack saw six red dots coming at high speed. The speed was much faster than any other monsters he had faced during the Tutorial Period. Meaning the ones that came were new monster which he had not encountered before.
As the six red dots approached, the three of them could see six silver figures in the distance. They were running with fast speed on four legs. As they got nearer, they could identify the monsters. They had shapes that were similar to a beast in their real world, they were wolves. Their fur shined with silver color, there were two sideburns extending from the side of their eyes to the tip of their tails. Their sizes were slightly larger than the wolves of their real world. Their running speed was extremely fast, they were just a speck of silver dust before, but in a short moment, they had come dangerously close.
Jack scanned them when they came into view.
Silver Wolf (Basic monster, Beast)
Level: 10
HP: 950
Level 10, wasn't too strong, Jack thought.
"Same strategy! I will engage them, Bowler sent them range attacks, Flame protect Bowler!" Jack yelled out the tactic as he ran forward to engage the wolves.
Bowler started the fight by casting Energy Bolts. Four bolts sped out towards the wolves. They tried to evade by spreading and moving away from the bolts' trajectory, but the bolts followed their movement. Each bolt hit one of the wolves, delivering 28 to 30 damages.
This shouldn't be too difficult, Jack thought as he reached one of the wolves. He slashed downward to cleave the beast's head. Contrary to his expectation, his sword only hit empty air. The wolf had nimbly jumped to the side. While he was stunned by the wolf agile dodge, his radar beeped as he saw a red dot coming at him from behind.
He immediately sidestepped, narrowly escaping a wolf who clawed at his back. But before he knew it, he felt pain in his thigh. He looked down and saw the wolf that had evaded his slash was now biting at his leg. He lifted his sword to strike it, but it hurriedly let go and moved away.
Damn! They were quick and cunning! Jack cursed in his mind.
The other four wolves went towards Flame and Bowler, ignoring Jack. Two of them jumped at Flame, while the other two separated and came towards Bowler from his front and back. They were forcing the three people to fight independently while pressuring them with their speed and numbers.
Bowler cast Magic Bullet, but since it didn't have tracking ability, the wolf easily dodged it. Bowler followed up with a couple of standard range attacks, but the wolf just jumped left and right, none of the attacks hit. While he was dealing with the wolf in front, the wolf behind him clawed at his back and then bite his neck. The neck bite had caused a critical, he received 10 and 28 damages.
Flame was doing much better, she rolled away from the wolves' jump attacks. Then dashed back to make a counter-attack, but the wolves separated and attacked simultaneously from two sides. Flame stepped towards the wolf at his right, using her speed to cope with the wolf's fast movement, and sent a Swift Stab into the wolf's abdomen which scored a 36 damage. But she soon found herself getting jumped at by the second wolf. She couldn't dodge the attack so she reflexively lifted his left arm to defend. The wolf bit into the arm, causing 15 damage.
The wolves' damages were low, but their speed was fast, making them very hard to be hit. Especially for Bowler who had slow speed and no melee capability, he couldn't do anything but be the wolves' biting bag.
As Jack analyzed the situation, he sent Bowler a message, "Forget about attacking! Use Magic Shield and focus on defending. We will come to your aid once we deal with the ones on our sides!"
He himself decided to forgo technique and just engaged them with brute force. This situation was similar to the time when he fought with Red Death. If he had difficulty matching their nimble moves, he would just trade blows with them. He slashed at them each time they clawed or bit at him. The beasts' attack only caused him 8 to 14 damages, while his normal attack took out a chunk of over 60 damage from their HP bar. When he used Power Strike and Swing, the wolves lost even more damage.
With this method, when Jack lost around a quarter of his HP, he had managed to kill the first wolf, with the second one at critical health. Jack glanced at Bowler, even when he just defended with Magic Shield, the guy still lost half of his HP. Jack picked up the pace and charged at the second wolf. The wolf seemed to know itself was in danger, it ran away. Jack was not going to waste time chasing the wolf around. Its running speed was faster than him, he won't be able to chase it. So he turned around and ran towards Bowler.
The wolves that were harassing Bowler didn't seem to be aware of Jack's approach. Jack took advantage of this and sent Power Strike to one of the beast's back. It scored a critical and caused a huge 256 damages. The wolf was also sent flying. He then came to Bowler's side and helped him deal with the other wolf.
"Sent your Energy Bolts to that wolf who is closed to death!" Jack said to Bowler as he pointed at the wolf with critical health who had avoided him. Bowler canceled his Magic Shield and followed Jack's order. The wolf with critical HP tried to run around to dodge the Energy Bolts, but the four bolts all tracked his movement. In the end, it was blasted to death by Bowler's Energy Bolts.
With him freed from the Wolves' harassment, Bowler could finally go on the offensive again. He put some distance away as Jack kept the two wolves which originally were fighting with him, and then started sending range attacks whenever he got the chance.
With the battle rhythm back in their control, it didn't take long before the remaining four wolves were defeated.
When the fight ended, Flame only had a third of his HP remaining. She took out one wolf by herself and killed the other one with Bowler's assistance. Jack's HP was still more than half. When Flame and Bowler noticed his HP bar, they couldn't help but ask, "exactly how much is your HP? We saw you get bitten quite a lot, but why is your bar is still so full?"
Jack laughed it off, "I ate some restoration potions during the fight. What, you didn't see it?"
They were pretty sure he didn't do such a thing, but then again, they were focusing on the fight, so they might have missed it. They didn't pursue the issue further. They took out their own restorative items and started consuming them to restore the health they had lost.
Jack took a peek at the Container of Souls and found out that the collected souls now numbered 10. The addition was the same number as the wolves they killed, assuming that one wolf gave out 1 soul. He asked Peniel, "the container can collect soul even if it is not me that deal the killing blow?"
"Yes. The souls will be automatically collected as long as it was within a set distance, no matter how it dies," Peniel answered.
That was good news, Jack thought. At first, he thought he would need to personally do the killing in order to be able to collect souls. That would be troublesome when he was fighting in a team. Trying to land all the killing blow in a team fight might end up ruining the team's coordination.
The group noticed that each of the wolves had dropped something. They picked it up.
Wolf's fur (Junk trophy)
Can be sold or exchanged for some coins.
It was junk? That meant this thing had no usage but to be sold or threw away. But there was also a trophy in the indication, what does it mean? Jack asked Peniel but she said she would explain when they were back in the city. Again with the withholding of information, but Jack didn't force her to answer. He divided the six furs between the three of them, so each person got two Wolf's fur.
Afterward, they continued on their journey. The battle had made them waste some time. The sun was pretty low on the horizon already.