Raid: The Blacksmith-Chapter 72: Wolf Spirit Amaruq: Part Three

"That was close. Way too close." I steal a glance towards my canine adversary.

"Wolf Spirit Amaruq. You’re a scary one, for sure. Of course... I shouldn’t expect any less... from a named monster. But I have you pegged now. As long as I have Soul-Piercing Eyes, you won’t be able to mess with my perception, and if I heat up my body from the inside out using Ifrit, then you won’t be able to paralyze me with that cold effect Skill of yours either. You have no choice but to fight me head on now, that is..." I immediately take a battle stance. "... if you can." My right leg moves back, bending at a little over a ninety degree angle, while my left leg extends forward, followed by my left arm, as my right arm also takes an angle form.

The wind starts to blow a little more vigorously, courtesy of my opponent’s abilities, I take it. My black and white stylish coat dances at the wind’s whims, along with my white tie, ultimately making my black shirt and trousers more visible. I activate Cultivator, Fury of Dantian, and Ifrit. Mana circulates around my body. Pure white in color, to the point that it looks almost translucent. Calm, warmth develops from my very core as steam emits around my whole body.

I take a deep breath, then make a gesture with my left hand, signalling Wolf Spirit Amaruq to come at me.

And without a second to spare, she does exactly just that. Instantly disappearing only to reappear mid-air infront of me, about a metre away.

It’s not teleportation. She’s just that fast.

"This is my first time fighting an A-Rank monster. These things don’t mess around. She’s much stronger than Sonoran. I can tell that from a single glance."

My brain and senses are basically on steroids at this point. Same for Amaruq.

To us, a single second would feel like over twenty hours. She jumps at me to attack, her claws spread out for the world to see. Her smooth, silky blue-ish silver fur flutters gracefully. Her canine bare. Sharper and pontier than any of the claws and teeth of the of monsters I’ve encountered before. She’s as tall as a Warden but no where near as thin. Indicating that she is without a doubt faster and stronger to boot. Her mane, pure white as well, stretches in a line from her tail to around her neck and down her chest.

To protect myself from her impending attack, I activate the Spatial Guard Skill, as a thin layer of what seems like a glassy translucent substance appears between me and her. And much like glass, the barrier shatters instantly. To my understandable surprise. However, I can’t react in time. I thought for sure the barrier would counter her attack perfectly but I guess I was wrong.

Her attack lands. She tackles me with her claws as they dig in to my shoulders, plunging freely through my skin, tissue and muscles to even reach my bones with next to no resistance. "Urrkk!!!" I wail.

In a fit of pure adrenaline driven by my desire to survive no matter what, I grab onto her front legs, and spin at great speeds only to let go, ultimately catapulting her away from me as her back collides heavily against one of the surrounding trees, then the next after splitting the first in half, and the next after splitting that one too, then the next after that, and the next after that, all the way up to a dozen trees. The trees fall down like large pillars in a domino pattern.

Beyond them stands tall Amaruq, already back up on her feet like she didn’t even feel those impacts with the trees at all. She shakes some snow picked up by her fur off of her body and begins eyeing me like prey.

"What a pain, this isn’t gonna be easy, is it?" I affirm.

Then I notice something frightening.

"What the hell, I... I can’t regenerate." I observe my wounds. They’re frozen. Not coated in thick ice. Just frozen. My skin taking on a blue-ish pale white color. "That’s not good-urrgh." I grunt internally as I trail my left hand over my right shoulder. It hurts. Like hell. A cold, dark, freezing hell.

"Not good at all."

I activate Ifrit. Circulating Mana to my shoulders in order to warm them up and defrost them.

It doesn’t work. "What the?" I’m baffled. "This is... a Spiritual attack." I say noticing the state of my shoulder using Soul-Piercing Eyes. "I’m not actually physically frozen in the literal sense. What I’m seeing is only the physical manifestation of what she really attacked. My Spiritual Body."

Then, before I can even finish examining my state, she attacks once more. Dashing at me in a zig-zag pattern. She then jumps, howling proudly as she hovers through the air and immediately comes down straight at me at full speed to launch another attack.

I brace myself. Judging it unsafe to let my thoughts wonder in the middle of such a serious fight.

"No time to try and figure shit out. I gotta act fast, because she’s obviously not gonna give me any room to breath." I flip multiple times backwards, ultimately dodging her assault, but she doesn’t let up, and dashes at me immediately after landing back down with a loud bang.

"Ifrit is out for the count, but at least I can still move. That’s due to Fury of Dantian and Cultivator. Spatial Guard is useless in its current Rank. I can only fight her with Skills that are either A-Rank or above. Since I doubt she has any B-Rank Skills or below."

I instill my resolve and get to it.

Amaruq dashes at me to launch a spear, I immediately flip sideways to the front, ultimately jumping over her as I grab her tail in the process, gripping the soft bundle of fur with all my might. With a heave and a ho, I lift her over my head and launch her straight upwards only to jump up instantly to follow her and spin sideways after reaching altitude to deliver a spinning side kick that sends her crashing straight down. She doesn’t.

Instead a growing small hurricane forms where she would land, breaking her fall. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Much less break, rather, it literally halts it, allowing her to hover over the surface for a brief moment and land softly on the snow.

My eyebrow flicks in utter annoyance as a cracked smile forms on my face. "You’ve got to be kidding me." I exclaim.

Taking advantage of my prolonged free fall, caused by my coat being made to act like some sort of parachute due to the wind, I activate my flight Spell. "I oughta name this Spell too as soon as I can. No time like the present. I’ll go with Gale Blaze."

[Report! Spell nami-

"Piss off! Can’t you see I’m busy!?"

Igniting flames below my feet, I jet off, catapulting straight down towards Wolf Spirit Amaruq. She sees me and then starts running the opposite way. Obviously, not because she’s scared or anything, I can quite clearly tell that she’s planning something. I follow after her, igniting flames below my souls once more as my flight speed increases. The flames and winds that circulate around my body, start spinning around at greater speeds. I use them to conjure a flame ball on my right hand and an air ball on my left. Sparing no second, I send them straight at my opponent.

Amaruq, without even looking backwards, dodges them both without much issue, flipping against the trees like it’s second nature to her. The elemental attacks fly off, making a mess of a few trees in their way. Amaruq starts running even faster. I still can’t make heads or tails of what her plan is, but I remian vigilant, diligent and just downright cautious. The spaces between the trees start to become more narrow. I expertly flying through them regardless, dodging the trees around with ease as I continue my chase on my opponent. After a long enough game of cat and mouse, she finally jumps, landing over the top of one considerably tall tree, and turns to face me. I ignite my flames once more, jolting myself at an even greater speed to launch a would be diving punch.

And before it even lands, Amaruq is skipping off my back and free falling down towards the snow. In a daze, I simply stand there in mid-air and notice something coming from the corner of my eye. Time slows down, my perception of it at least. And I instinctively dodge by flying backwards to the side as a spike, nearly the size of my whole arm, made entirely of ice flies passed my face. Sharp and pointy enough to pierce through a human’s torso without any resistance whatsoever, moving at an intoxicating speed. I look to the side and...

"... Hah... This isn’t even funny." A great number of spikes of pure ice are coming at at me at an alarming speed. Each one right on target.

"Shit! When the hell did she even make them!?"

I hurriedly dodge and evade as much of the nearly countless number of icicles sent my way as I can, dashing and flipping about in mid-air with the use of my flight Spell’s ignition function. Along with my newly attained Skill, Unrestrained Maneuverer. I dodge and evade the cold projectiles as they continue to come at me faster than the eye can see. Then finally, I succeed in dodging them all. Believing myself victorious, a breath of relief escapes my lips.

A lapse in judgement.

I only realize that after looking down. Amd as I do, I see a hurricane build up, made entirely of snow. The cold in the air intensifies exponentially as the concentrated snow storm builds up beyond my own altitude, enveloping me completely, trapping me before I can even react. Thing is... I’m not the only one inside it. Amaruq is here with me, floating along the thin spinning layers of snow freely, running around them as if running on land. Some of the snow merges from all around, combining to form a countless number of more ice spikes. They come hurling straight at me while I float in the eye of the storm. I gather Mana to my hands, then, using Ifrit, I conjure out flames of great magnitude. They envelope my upper and lower body entirely, save for my feet, hands and head.

I then spin my whole body sideways, clockwise, causing the flames to spread out. And spread out. And spread out. Basically creating my very own flame storm within the Wolf Spirit Amaruq’s snow storm. The flames instantly melt the ice spikes. No, more than just that. They straight up evaporate them.

Noticing Brawler is still active, I gather back the flames as they spiral back in the opposite direction from before, anti-clockwise. They gather completely, concentrated and finetuned to my right fist. I raise my right hand upwards as the flames burst in response, and then, I punch downwards, sending an explosion to spread out completely enveloping the snow storm, myself and even my foe. Landing down with a big bang. I take out about half of the forest, creating a large crater I’m too lazy to even think about scaling.

I’m now almost certainly sure that I’ve dealt with my opponent. I’m sure I’ve taken out even a good fraction of some other Snow Dire Wolves that may have been around the area.

After doing well to assure myself that I’ve won, reality sees fit to put me in my place.

It was already night before, but in an instant, the sky turns pitch black, leaving the only thing to combat its darkness to be the pure white snow that garments the surface, and of course, the small particles of light that paint the sky. The moon immediately takes on a black color, as if completely forgetting its previous blue hue, shining down a dark light on the entire surface. Mana forms on the ground, all over the crater I created with my attack. The Mana looks like countless little bits of blue-ish white particles. The particles then turn to snow, garmenting the entire surface once more. It almost looks like snow just grew out of the ground.

"No way... impossible." I exclaim, noticing a dog shaped silhouette appear from the dust caused by my previous attack. A strong wind blows and instantly clears up the dust. The shadowy figure becomes more clear as a result. It’s none other than the Boss of this Dungeon. The Queen of all Snow Dire Wolves... The Wolf Spirit, Amaruq.

Her form coated in ice all around as it begins breaking down while she slowly approaches. She must’ve used it to protect herself from my previous attack earlier.

I don’t even blink and yet she disappears, right before my eyes. Then, I’m immediately bombarded by a barrage of slashes all across my body, mostly over my legs, moving at a speed I helplessly can’t follow what with how tired I’ve gotten. "Urk!" I involuntarily kneel down as a potent wave of pain washes over my body. The cuts aren’t that deep but they hurt like hell. It must be that same Spiritual attack of hers, I figure. Then, before I can even react, I’m made to view my own right arm, in its entirety, fly over across my face to land a few metres infront of me with a slight thump.

"!?" I notice it. My eyes widen involuntarily as I look at my arm detach completely from my body, without any resistance from me at all. Unfortunately, my foe doesn’t let even that take time to register in my head as I feel a pain like no other invade my chest. It’s another attack. One Amaruq hadn’t launched until now. A beam of pure coldness in the form of a howl, straight from her mouth. It penetrates my chest and plunges through completely, coming out of my back. Thus, creating a hole about the size of a human’s head through the centre of my torso.

"KARGHK!!!"

I cough out more blood than I ever have in my entire life. It freezes before it can even splatter over the snow.

The beam sends me flying, hurled over across a great distance as my body constantly grinds and rolls against the surface. I’m sent way passed the radius of the crater I’ve created. I crash into tree after tree after tree, finally losing momentum as I roll across the surface a final time, stopping to lean conveniently against another tree, unable to move and forced to simply sit there completely boneless.

~Cough!~

I cough agonizingly. "That... that really hurt... What the fuck was that? Where in the hell did that even come from? Damnit... this monster, did she manipulate the moon to go dark like that? Ah... I get it now. Why she came to me instead of me having to find her. Other Bosses have what is known as a Boss domain. But for the Wolf Spirit Amaruq... this entire Dungeon is her domain. She has control over it all, the frosty wilderness, icy mountains, all the way to the moon. That’s terrifying. This is the danger one single B-Rank Dungeon possesses? That’s even more terrifying."

I sit there, utterly helpless, contemplating if whether or not this is how I truly die. Amaruq wastes no time, and dashes straight at me from a distance. I can’t see her, but I can sense the impending danger. I’m really about to die.

"Damnit. Why didn’t I at least have a cream puff before coming here. Alright... it’s settled. If there really is such a thing as reincarnation, this I vow, I’ll have as many cream puffs as I possibly can in my next life."

Having already accepted my fate, seeing no possible escape from death. I feel that Amaruq has drawn close enough to maul me to pieces. But that fate doesn’t come.

Instead, a loud-

~Ting!~

-Echoes through the ruined forest. As if the sound of metal clashing hard against metal.

What follows afterwards, is a voice. A calm and beautiful gentle voice. The soft voice... of a woman.

"Please open your eyes, Master."