Lidya's eyes narrowed in suspicion as all of her opponents had seemingly lowered their weapons and had fixed their gazes on something else entirely - but what could it have been? She felt an enormous intimidating aura behind her, however, she didn't want to look back and allow her enemies to exploit the fact that she was distracted.

One man with radiant white skin lowered his spear even further and placed it onto the ground next to him before kneeling down altogether. She watched his every move intently yet still remained indifferent about the terrifying aura behind her thinking that it was some kind of ploy to take advantage of her. With every second that had pa.s.sed, there was still no movement and other than him kneeling it genuinely felt as though time had stopped completely.

Despite her efforts to not look away, soon Lidya was faced with the reality that she had to turn around... whenever she edged closer with her spear towards her opponents, they didn't even have the courtesy to spare her even a cautionary glance. The lack of aggression had surprisingly made her annoyed yet she appreciated every second that enabled her wounds to heal even for a moment.

The terrifying aura had become much greater and she felt the air become thicker, almost suffocating her. After taking a deep breath of whatever was left to breathe in, Lidya slowly drifted her head to the side - still staying cautious - until she finally fixed her eyes on the monstrosity that the group was staring at.

At first, she couldn't make sense of it, the beast was terrifyingly ma.s.sive and she was wondering what could the beast possible be. She studied his large fearsome claws and striking beautiful yet dangerous white eyes... eyes that she remembered from a past memory that she didn't have the time to recall. It was a wolf - nothing which she had ever seen before, it's fur was black and white as any other but it's aura which had materialized as a purple-black smog.

"Lidya?"

The wolf had actually spoken, it's voice was crystal clear and as intimidating as one would expect it to be, however, what was much more interesting was that it was her own name - which only a few had the privilege of knowing. Picking up the pieces of the puzzle together, Lidya remembered only one wolf she spoke her name to and she couldn't believe her eyes that the same beast she once spoke to was right in front of her!

"Wolf... we meet again, how are your youngsters doing?" She asked, her heart had stopped beating as fast and she felt a bit more at peace, now that she had an ally at her side.

"I killed them all, they proved to be a nuisance to me, what is going on here?" Zaro inspected each of the other men that had their spears stained with blue blood - the same color as the blood dripping from Lidya's wounds. Lidya was momentarily baffled at the calmness of his voice, after hearing that he killed members of his own species!

"I was summoned here along with them... you see they are enemies of mine..." Zaro nodded at her response and then unleashed some of his killing intent towards them. However, this new aura that he unleashed just a 'bit' of was much more terrifying to everything else around him. The man that was kneeling down had smacked his head off the ground and grit his teeth while the rest fell back onto the ground in fear. Although none of the killing intent was targeted at Lidya, she could still feel the pure greatness of his power.

"Spare me Guardian of the G.o.dly Forests! Father of all wolves! Please! This measly life of mine will not trouble you or the witch ever again!" He cried, tears falling down his cheeks and his forehead was now another shade of red from smacking it so hard. Zaro sighed to himself, it felt different, he no longer felt empathy to anything anymore, except Lidya... perhaps she reminded him of the time where he was a bit more humane but right now he didn't care whether this odd race of Aelfs lived or not. His core hadn't even awakened yet and he was already such a powerful being, it was only a matter of time before he became a real threatening foe. Just as he was about to take action against these helpless Aelfs, another aura had appeared in the distance - similar to his own. The other's didn't look like they discovered it yet but that might've been his own aura which quenched anything else.

All the ent.i.ties in front of him were currently nothing more than just a few plants for him to snack on and so without much thinking, he decided to ignore them. Zaro recalled his killing intent, then looked over at Lidya, "Climb onto my back, we are leaving." The sudden command had taken her off-guard, however, the wise thing to do was to follow his instruction and so with the help of his fur she scaled the beast as the Aelf watched, their white faces now much paler.

With a casual leap, Zaro had left the Aelfs behind and started running straight for the strange aura that he had detected. The closer he got the more uncomfortable Lidya had become, the once powerful Elatus warrior was now nothing more than a mere bug which he had become friends with. She held on tightly to his fur and looked off into the distance where she could feel an aura much like Zaro's radiating like a star.

"What is that, wolf?" She asked hesitantly.

"A boar... but it's different from anything I have ever seen, I need to get closer for you to understand... do not let go of me, I will be increasing my speed." Lidya naturally strengthened her grip as much as she possibly could but didn't antic.i.p.ate that he would suddenly explode with speed to the point where she felt as though she pa.s.sed through different dimensions. After a few minutes of having her eyes closed and her hair billowing about crazily, they had finally reached their destination where Zaro stared off a boar almost the same size as him.

The first thing Zaro had noticed was the large ruby beast-core inside its chest and then proceeded to study the weird symbols covering its whole body. The boar seemed to be unfazed, however, Zaro could feel that it was genuinely terrified of his sudden appearance, while Lidya seemed to be puzzled over how intimidating this boar actually was.

To Zaro it seemed like an over exaggeration of a pig and a minotaur but to Lidya it was a gigantic boar with tusks that made her tremble in fear. Although they were no longer moving, Lidya felt her hand grip even tighter onto Zaro's fur, hoping that the boar would disappear soon.

"W-wolf... you mustn't come near me! My defenses have been mutated to the point where they cannot be broken!"

"In a perfect world that would be true, but nothing is ever perfect... I advise you to submit to me or else you will find yourself in a helpless situation, what will it be?" Quite simply Zaro didn't feel the need to fight against the boar because he would suffer too many wounds that would, either way, lead to his inevitable victory. Hence, it would be less of a ha.s.sle if the boar simply surrendered its core to him.

"This core had taken me decades to acquire... perhaps a wise wolf as you would have the mercy to spare my life... of course, I will surrender it to you..." The boar luckily understood the situation it was in but Zaro didn't feel like giving too much mercy today, especially after sparing some weak Aelfs, however, he knew better than anyone that it was a battle of the strongest inside this wilderness and that the boar's death was its own inevitable fate.

"I cannot grant you any mercy, just die."

Suddenly, Lidya felt her heart stop beating as a terrifying aura emanated from both beasts as an unimaginably powerful killing intent exploded from this one area. Lidya had immediately pa.s.sed out because her soul could not bear the power which these two produced. Zaro sighed over her losing consciousness and took some time to drop her off inside a forest not too far away before eventually das.h.i.+ng back into battle. The boar roared loudly as a metallic gleam appeared on it's back before it dropped down on all fours - preparing for the impact of Zaro's claws penetrating through it.

Zaro inspected the metallic armor that the boar had created and simply chuckled at the poor attempt of protecting itself. With his hind legs becoming empowered, Zaro pounced onto the back of the boar and instantly sunk all of his claws into the creature's back rendering it paralyzed. After realizing that its defenses had been penetrated, the boar spun around with the little power it had and launched Zaro off from its wounded back. Zaro would have simply preferred to have the boar bleed out to death but he preferred to have his core fresh. The creature screeched loudly and its back started rapidly recovering while the two sharp tusks started to glow brightly and becoming much sharper and longer. Now that it understood Zaro's strength it was time to fight for its own survival... perhaps it was foolish for a boar to take on a wolf but in the battle for life, everything had to be possible.

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h.e.l.lo all,

Here's the story, so, initially I was using this novel simply for practice and used Web novel as a means to improve my writing and never intended on actually making this a proper series. After a bit of a rollercoaster of a year, I fell into a slump and found it difficult to keep writing.

However, after reading the heartwarming reviews and rediscovering a pa.s.sion for writing, I decided to re-read the whole thing to hopefully try and revive this story. So, as you can see I have begun Book 2 of the Heavenly Forest Wolf and am committed to continuing the plot.

Since I literally had no proper storyline prepared or any other preparation for that matter - I will post at least one chapter a week but investing more time into releasing better quality chapters and working on designing the novel to the best of my ability. Note that I will still consider this as a means of practice which will involve me pus.h.i.+ng my creativity to my limits and releasing some I guess 'filler' chapters but they will still be relevant to the plot.