Over the course of the next couple hours people came and went to get food. However, as massive as the wolf was, it wasn't enough to feed five hundred people, even if they rationed it. Only about eighty to ninety people were able to get something to eat.
'I'll need to go hunt more. I really need a hunting party! Hah... I should have gotten Effie to join me before starting this fiasco. Yeah I messed up slighly.'
Caster sighed.
'I guess I'm hunting alone for now.'
Caster left the place and went out to hunt.
While there weren't a lot of nightmare creatures in the area between the outer settlements and the dark city, there wasn't a complete absence of them.
Caster had planned to take at least three more kills to the settlement today.
Soon, he spotted a nightmare creature. It looked like a griffin. He approached it silently but the creature sensed Caster's intent or gaze perhaps, and lept towards him at terrifying speeds.
"Shit!"
Caster turned ninety degrees on his heels and jumped backwards, getting out of the griffin-like creatures trajectory and dodging it.
The griffin-like creature was much stronger than him physically and it seemed to have decent intelligence.
'Might be a demon...'
Just as Caster thought that the griffin-like creature roared loudly, and as it did, a billow of sound waves engulfed with it as its epicenter.
The wave damaged Casters ears, bursting the ear drums. He started bleeding from his eyes and nose too. The pressure from the sound was enormous. It even sent him back half a dozen meters with just force.
Caster had gotten really disoriented. So much so, that he felt he was blind even though he was not. The sound waves had messed with his brain and he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. His balance also got completely disturbed and was having a hard time just standing still.
But he had no choice but to overcome this.
The Griffin-like creature flew towards him at terrifying speeds. Its wings flapping intensely, displacing the soil from the sheer force of it.
The situation was really bad.
Caster activated the charm and then activated his aspect and ran in a random direction that didn't fall in the initial trajectory of the Griffin. He had to maintain a specific distance from it to execute a surprise attack.
He still couldn't see but he rapidly changed his direction of motion from away from the Griffin to towards it, and used his aspect at maximum power giving him speeds that was even faster than the awakened demon in front of him.
The Griffin got caught off guard. It wasn't expecting for the human to rush towards it.
Caster stabbed his sword into one of the Griffin's wings and rolled under its massive body to get behind him.
His vision had recovered slightly due to which he then aimed for the other wing and swung down his sword efficiently and skillfully, severing the wing off the Griffin-like nightmare creature.
The griffin was roaring in pain.
Dashing away, Caster positioned himself in a "ready" stance. He didn't rush in to attack because he needed to recover at least his vision. So he let the Griffin struggling in pain.
When the Griffin seemed to be recovering, Caster summoned the Book of Books and caster "Lightning Strike."
There were two ways he could do that, at least thats how many he has discovered for now. One was use a core stored in the book and launch the lightning from his hands. And the other was to use two cores and strike lightning from the sky.
He would have chosen the first option in most cases but, the creature in front of him, while damaged, was not near any fatal damage.
So he chose the second method.
As soon as the Griffin recovered from the pain he charged towards Caster at high speeds. It seemed that it was trying to use its roar ability. But it got hurt in doing so and crouched down, but it did not give up.
Just as it opened its mouth to roar Caster casually swung his hands down and said:
"Divine Judgement."
Instantly it was as if the storm was incoming. The storm cracked open the sky, and from its wound came a javelin of light. It fell upon the beast crouched among the shattered stones, half leonine bulk, half ragged-winged abomination, a griffin reshaped by something crueler than nature. The feathers on its shoulders flared like molten shards, their barbs catching the brilliance as though they were forged of glass and fire.
Despite the intensity of the lightning, the beast had still not died. However, it caught fire was was screaming in pain, but unable to move.
It had lost all mobility.
Caster moved with the composure of one who had already decided the outcome long before the fire was lit. His sabatons pressed ash into the earth with an unhurried cadence, each step a measured answer to the chaos around him. The griffin, once a terror of claw and wing, lay still, wings splayed like broken standards, its body engulfed in a furious crown of flame. The fire consumed feathers, fur, and scale alike, but no convulsion of life stirred beneath its ruin.
[You have killed an awakened devil...]
It was dead.
"Good fight."
He looked at the burning corpse of the griffin with a complicated expression. But soon he shrugged it off and tried to extinguish the fire but he had nothing to do the job so he waited.
"It seems the lightning strike ability that is saved is at least a master level ability, its potency decreased a lot because a soul core was inefficiently powering it. Still, a really strong ability. It instantly incapacitated an awakened devil. That's crazy."
Caster Gasps lightly.
"Wait, doesn't this mean i have the highest attack potency among the sleepers here? That's good."
Soon the corpse extinguished itself. All the feathers were burned away and the upper layer of the skin was gone too, probably because of the lightning.
"Whatever's the case, I'll have to kill a couple more beasts at least before going back, to feed a decent chunk of the outer settlements."
Sighs.
"This will be kind of tedious."
Caster went up to it, took out the shards and absorbed all of them by crushing them and taking them near his chest.
[Soul Fragments: 78/1000]
Afterwards he cut up the parts from the griffin that nobody would eat to lighten his weight to take to the settlements.
"I took too much damage because of this... god damn. My eyes hurt so much."
Then after wards, a group of eight nightmare creatures got near him.
"You've gotta be kidding me."
They ranged from massive snakes to deadly bears and a lot in between.
"Why are these creatures even working together! I need to leave. The griffin meat is not worth fighting these guys over."
Just as he turned around to leave, he saw that another 4 were approaching from the other direction.
Caster was surrounded.
"You've gotta be kidding me."
Fighting twelve awakened creatures, each looked to at least be a monster.
Caster scanned everything through [Character list] (his innate ability).
"5 Monsters, 6 Demons, 1 Devil. You've gotta be kidding me. I only have 17 Cores saved in the book of books!"
Caster takes a stance with his sword in one hand, and book of books in the other.
"I have no choice. And if I have none, I shall create one."