"It seems monster habits from the game carried over here after all," Alphonse stated calmly. "When a Dire Wolf feels cornered or is dying, it will let out a howl to summon its pack."
From the darkness of the bushes, the silhouettes of giant wolves emerged one by one. The number was not small—twelve of them.
Standing in the center of the formation was a larger wolf with dull silver fur lining its back. The Alpha leader.
Seeing their comrade killed so gruesomely, the leader howled in anger. The 12 wolves immediately fanned out, forming a circular formation to encircle Alphonse.
Alphonse displayed no fear. Instead, the golden glint in his eyes grew brighter. "Perfect timing. I need to test how the magical mechanics operate in this world."
He focused his mind. He didn't need to search for a skill menu or press any hotkeys. Instinctually, he felt the flow of Mana stored within his body moving toward the palm of his hand. The movement felt as natural as wiggling his fingers.
A magic circle materialized instantly in front of his hand.
[Tier C – Fire Blast]
A massive sphere of fire manifested, radiating a very real heat that caused the surrounding air to shimmer. With a single flick of his wrist, the fireball shot rapidly toward the center of the wolf pack.
BOOM!
A massive explosion erupted. Earth was blasted into the air along with tongues of fire that licked in every direction.
The four wolves caught at the epicenter of the blast were blown to pieces, while the rest were sent flying, their bodies severely scorched. The Alpha leader was thrown several meters back, whimpering as the flames singed portions of its pelt.
However, the eight remaining wolves did not die. Their burning bodies triggered a blind, feral instinct. They scrambled up. Howled viciously. And lunged at Alphonse simultaneously from all sides.
Alphonse did not panic. He did not retreat.
His left hand shot up.
[Tier C - Shadow Bind]
The shadows of the trees elongated, wrapping tightly around the legs of the four leading wolves. Their momentum was forcefully halted. Their jaws snapped at empty air.
Alphonse stepped forward. A transparent dagger materialized in his right hand.
[Tier C – Phantom Blade]
A horizontal slash. The first wolf's head was severed clean.
An upward thrust. The second wolf's heart was pierced.
His movements were precise. Efficient. Devoid of any wasted motion. Within seconds, the eight remaining wolves lay dead, soaked in their own blood upon the muddy ground.
Alphonse looked at his own hands in sheer amazement. "The execution of this magic is vastly smoother than I imagined. It feels like... an integrated function of my own body."
The severely wounded Alpha leader witnessed the absolute slaughter. Realizing that their prey this time was an infinitely more terrifying predator, it turned around and attempted to flee deep into the forest on limping legs.
"Hey, it's rude to leave without saying goodbye," Alphonse called out in a cold, amicable tone.
He attempted to invoke another spell. This time, he visualized a sharp gust of wind.
[Tier C - Aero Bullet]
However, the sensation this time was different. The movement of Mana within his body felt stiff and sluggish.
Alphonse was forced to pause for a fraction of a second to manually visualize the magic circle, assembling the runes one by one in his mind so the spell could form.
The wolf leader had already run quite a distance when the final rune finally locked into place.
Whoosh!
A transparent bullet of wind shot forth at high velocity, slicing through the air before finally penetrating the back of the Dire Wolf leader's skull. The monster collapsed, dead instantly.
Alphonse closed his eyes, analyzing the difference in sensation between the two attacks.
"I see," he muttered. "Spells that have reached Level 10 can be executed instantly, akin to innate instinct."
"Meanwhile, spells that are only at Level 5... must be constructed manually through rune visualization. The process is not nearly as seamless as max-leveled spells," he mused.
He let out a short sigh. "Well, whatever. I rarely used Aero Bullet in the game anyway. I only invested 5 skill points into it as a prerequisite to unlock the higher magical tiers."
Alphonse waited for a few moments, his eyes fixed on the monster corpses surrounding him.
However, the phenomenon he expected never occurred. The wolves' bodies remained stiff on the ground, their blood seeping slowly into the dirt, and no pixelated particles flew off into the wind.
One second passed, then ten. No bags of gold magically popped into the air. No loot notifications popped up to inform him of the fangs or wolf pelts he had successfully acquired.
"Even the looting system is gone," Alphonse murmured softly.
He stroked his chin. "This world truly has discarded every single artificial gaming element."
Alphonse walked toward the epicenter of his first Fire Blast explosion. He crouched down, intending to retrieve the Monster Cores—the valuable energy stones located near the monsters' hearts.
However, his brow instantly furrowed deeply.
The bodies of the four wolves there had been incinerated to ash. When Alphonse sifted through the carbon remains, he only found shattered, pulverized fragments of reddish crystals, ruined by the extreme heat exposure.
"Damn it," he complained. He stood up and inspected his own hands.
"Raw power is apparently a double-edged sword. In the game, loot remained intact regardless of the destructive yield of my attacks. But in the real world... weapons of mass destruction end up destroying the very economic commodities themselves."
As a Guild Master, his brain immediately began calculating a new strategy.
If the Inventory system was dead and large-scale magic destroyed resources, then the vanguard of Pioneer had to entirely overhaul their combat doctrine. Hunting monsters was no longer about a contest of massive magical explosions; it was about surgical precision.
Alphonse moved over to the wolf corpses he had killed with physical slashes and the Aero Bullet. He sliced open their chests using the Phantom Blade.
This time, he successfully extracted nine intact, marble-sized Monster Cores, as well as one larger, deep-red core from the Alpha.
"Without an Inventory, skinning them will only burden my mobility," he muttered, staring at the pile of valuable meat and pelts with a heavy heart.
He stored the ten Monster Cores into the small pouch at his waist.
[Tier F - Cleanse]
A wave of white light swept over his body, eradicating the blood splatter and the metallic stench.
Alphonse intended to inspect the surrounding area, but suddenly his ears caught something. His sharp auditory senses detected a sound coming from the west—not the growls of monsters, but the march of iron boots brushing against tall grass.
The rhythm was highly disciplined. Tactical. It was a human marching formation.
Are there other Players who landed nearby? Or are these natives of this world? Alphonse thought to himself.
Considering he had not yet grasped the rules of this new world, directly confronting an unidentified armed group was not a wise move.
Alphonse immediately pulled up the collar of his cloak. Leaving footprints on the ground was not a smart choice either. He focused his mind, channeling his Mana to cast a modification of his illusion magic.
[Tier C - Mirage]
A flow of Mana enveloped and refracted the light around his entire body. Alphonse's silhouette, his black robes, and even Stella Obscura hovering at his side slowly faded away. His form shifted into a semi-transparent projection that blended flawlessly with the colors of the leaves and the shadows of the forest.
Another mental flick immediately followed.
[Tier B - Fly]
The bonds of Earth's gravity were severed instantly from his body. Without the sound of footsteps, the flapping of wings, or any suspicious gusts of wind, Alphonse's body lifted lightly from the surface of the ground. He glided smoothly vertically, piercing through the gaps in the towering tree canopy, and then flew away, vanishing into the sky of the Eastern Forest like an invisible ghost, leaving the massacre site as a puzzle for whoever was about to find it.
Fifteen minutes after Alphonse's departure, the foliage of the bushes on the western side was forcefully pushed aside.
The tips of spears and steel swords pierced through the shadows of the trees, followed by the emergence of a dozen leather-armored soldiers moving in a strict tactical formation. They were the finest scouting squad Wealden City had to offer.
Their steps halted instantly upon reaching the clearing. Their weapons remained drawn, but the soldiers' eyes bulged as they took in the scene before them.
The stench of charred meat, scorched earth, and fresh blood fiercely assaulted their olfactory senses. Over a dozen Dire Wolf carcasses lay scattered across the muddy ground.
A young soldier lowered his dagger slightly, letting out a highly audible sigh of relief.
"It turns out it was just a pack of Dire Wolves. Looks like a silver-ranked adventurer party was out hunting and happened to pass through this area."
However, his comrade beside him—a veteran tracker—immediately let out a harsh snort.
"Use your eyes properly, idiot," he rebuked sharply, pointing toward the wolf corpses whose heads had been cleanly severed. "Look at this pile of completely intact meat and pelts."
The veteran continued, "What kind of adventurer would willingly leave hundreds of silver coins just lying on the forest floor? They didn't even bother to skin them. They only sliced open the monsters' chests to extract their cores."
"Maybe they were in a rush?"
"No sane adventurer Abandons valuable loot, no matter how much of a rush they are in."
Amidst the minor debate, Captain Cedric did not utter a single word.
The rugged man, sporting a claw-mark scar on his neck, stepped forward in silence. His gaze bypassed the intact wolf corpses and locked directly onto a shallow crater in the center of the battlefield.
Cedric's brow furrowed deeply. Inside that crater, the earth was blackened and cracked. The four Dire Wolf carcasses there were not merely dead; they had been reduced to horrific piles of carbon and ash.
The Captain crouched down. He could feel the waves of heat still radiating faintly from the scorched earth.
"Fan out," Cedric ordered abruptly. His heavy, commanding voice instantly cut off his subordinates' chatter.
"Sweep the area within a five-hundred-meter radius. Look for footprints, remnants of a campsite, or broken branches. I want to know who or what passed through here."
"Yes, Captain!"
The entire squad immediately dispersed, vanishing back into the dense forest, leaving Cedric alone in the center of the blast crater.
After ensuring his subordinates were out of earshot, Cedric removed his leather glove.
He extended a calloused finger, touching the remnants of a wolf's ribcage that had been turned into charcoal. The moment his finger grazed the bone, its structure instantly crumbled into fine dust.
The heat from the magic that had struck this place was incredibly pure and undeniably lethal.
Cedric pinched a pinch of the Dire Wolf ash and rubbed it between his thumb and index finger. His gaze turned incredibly complex and heavily vigilant.
Fire magic with a destructive yield this massive... would definitely destroy the monster cores within their bodies, Cedric muttered softly to himself. What kind of adventurer would intentionally obliterate their own hunting targets?
This discovery made absolutely no sense to him. If this was the work of adventurers, they would have utilized precision magic to preserve the integrity of their loot.
This kind of indiscriminate destruction, devoid of any care for the spoils, was the combat style of an assassin, or worse... an entity that did not care about wealth and money. And the impossibly clean slashes on the other wolves proved that the perpetrator was also an extraordinarily skilled close-quarters combatant.
One man possessing lethal magical capabilities and high-tier swordsmanship? Or an unknown elite squad? A dark premonition crept up the back of the captain's neck.
About ten minutes later, the sound of his subordinates' footsteps returned. One by one, the members of the elite scouting squad emerged from behind the trees with frustrated expressions.
"Reporting, Captain. Nothing," the veteran tracker stated, bowing his head. "No boot prints, no snapped branches, no residual scent of potions. Whoever did this, they vanished like ghosts."
Cedric's brow furrowed even tighter. He stared into the dark shadows of the trees, as if attempting to pierce through the secrets of the Eastern Forest.
"We cannot linger here. The stench of this blood will attract high-tier predators shortly," Cedric finally decided.
He stood up and put his glove back on. "Gather the remaining intact Dire Wolf carcasses. We are taking their meat and pelts back to Wealden City as evidence. The Mayor needs to see the trail left by this 'Falling Star' for himself."
With swift efficiency, the elite scouting squad hauled away the remnants of Alphonse's battle, leaving the scorched crater behind as a silent witness to the birth of a new power in their world.