Arnold and his group had spent almost an hour searching for the two people that guy claimed to have seen. After reaching that pathway, they couldn’t find a trace of Roman or Rena, and that drove Arnold to push further into the valley, so desperate that he was ready to go as far as necessary.

"How are we sure they went this way?"

"Don’t you think they headed back to the outpost?"

"We are going too far, and that’s too risky."

"Arnold, we have to stop. I don’t want to die on my second night in the Badlands. Arnold!"

It didn’t take long before his friends started freaking out, and Arnold was not having any of it. Instead of considering their fears or acknowledging that they could be right, he got pissed.

He turned to one of them, grabbed him by the collar, and almost lifted him with one hand, his eyes burning with rage.

"Any more complaints from you, and I’m going to feed you to the Blood Mice!" Arnold shouted.

He swept his gaze across all of them, eyes gleaming with an aura that projected instant fear into their hearts.

"We go further. We look for them. We find them. If we come across any threat on the way, we destroy it!"

"Am I clear?!" Arnold shouted.

They all glanced at each other before nodding hesitantly, but it still appeared like Arnold wasn’t satisfied with their response.

He turned to the guy standing right next to him, walked over, and grabbed him painfully by a sensitive spot.

"ARGH...!" He tried to scream, but Arnold covered his mouth and pressed a firm thumb into his forehead.

"Shut it!"

"Mmmmh... Mmmm..."

"Now I’m going to ask you all one more time. Am I clear?!"

"Yes, Arnold!"

They all responded immediately, loud and without hesitation, none of them willing to find out what came next. It was not the first time he had done things that terrified them, and they had long since learned to fear him.

As a First Class graduate, he was a figure that many rookies in the outpost wanted to associate with.

Arnold had immediately taken advantage of that status, and it was precisely why he had chosen a struggling outpost over a well-developed community where people of his calibre typically went.

The truth was simple. Arnold was here for one reason.

To be the one that everyone answered to.

To be above everyone. He took pleasure in that rather than in competition. That was why he had chosen to go with Master Norman on the Day of the Red Zenith, and Blood Trail Outpost had welcomed him with open arms.

As the son of one of the wealthiest Entrants in the Reach, he had grown up always being above people, and he had no intention of leaving that lifestyle behind.

...

After getting what he wanted from them, he smiled and continued walking, and they all followed immediately.

They had gone quite deep into the valley and had reached the woods, where wolf-like monsters and several other dominant creatures ruled the territory.

Even though Arnold was arrogant and desperate, he knew he had to be careful. It was the first time any of them had been in the valley after dark, since they only hunted during the day, but he was still up for it.

*Since that son of a bitch can hunt at night, why can’t I?*

*After all, I’m sure he’s been hiding behind Rena while she does all the work. That loser.*

The more he thought about it, the more his rage grew, and the impatience of wanting to find Roman was starting to eat at him.

They soon reached a certain post-battle site after many minutes of walking.

[Location: Wild of Howls. (Fallen).]

[Inhabitants: Black Dire Wolves.]

[Chances of Survival: 100%.]

It was a territory that had already been completely destroyed by a hunting group, and even the Territory Boss was gone.

"It might have been them, Arnold. If they really moved further from that pathway, they could have reached here. They might have fought the Dire Wolves," one of them, Dregs, said.

"No, it can’t be them. They couldn’t have taken down an entire Black Dire Wolf territory. The Boss would have devoured them. It was definitely one of the senior groups."

Arnold refused to entertain the thought, and he didn’t dwell on it either.

He quickly ordered them to keep moving, and they left the Wild of Howls behind, still hoping to find some trace of the man they had been hunting.

And the more Arnold’s patience was tested, the darker his thoughts became.

******

The aftermath of a fierce battle had left the corpse of a giant wolf and several others scattered across the grounds of their own territory.

Roman stood at one end with his bloodied sword in hand, gasping in complete exhaustion.

The fight with the Dire Wolf Alpha had not only pushed him to a fifty-fifty conversation between life and death, but had also given him a very close look at what the worst version of that death would have felt like.

He glanced at his bleeding shoulder, marked by the tip of the Alpha’s claw, and grimaced.

"Damn it."

Rena was already rushing toward him, her once neatly packed hair now jagged and scattered, but her only concern was his injury and the unbelievable thing she had just witnessed.

"You did it!" She said loudly, and Roman could only nod.

"You did a great job too. Those Betas are insane," Roman said.

When things had escalated, they had both agreed to split the workload.

Roman took the Dire Wolf Alpha along with the Omegas and Gammas that tried to join the fight, while Rena handled the Dire Wolf Betas and a handful of Omegas that came against her.

It had been an almost equal effort on both sides, but no one could deny that Roman deserved the greater share of credit for putting down a Territory Boss that had decided not to wait for its turn.

It had saved them time though, giving them the chance to deal with everything in a single engagement rather than stretching it out.

Roman and Rena settled by the cave entrance while she tended to his wound. He could have switched to the Healer Profession and dealt with it himself, but not with Rena right there. So he stayed still and accepted the discomfort.

"You are so amazing. I was trying to finish with the Betas as fast as I could to come and help you, but you were already done before I got there."

Roman pressed his lips together. "I knew I had to end it before it ended me. I couldn’t afford to slow down."

Rena nodded. She leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips.

"That’s for killing the Dire Wolf Alpha," she said.

She kissed him again.

"That’s for not dying."

She was leaning in once more when Roman suddenly wrapped his hand around her waist and pulled her close, and she looked up at him for a brief moment before he brought his lips down to meet hers, this time with considerably more intention behind it.

"Mmmm..."

Rena hadn’t even realised when the sound escaped her.