Chapter 96 — Endless Wave of Dark Wolves (Part 1)

Chapter 96 — Endless Wave of Dark Wolves (Part 1)

I had probably already killed more than a thousand Dark Wolves, yet there were still far too many around me.

This made absolutely no sense. The dungeon core had been destroyed—new monsters shouldn’t be spawning anymore. Then where were all these Dark Wolves coming from? And just how many of them were there?

I pushed off the ground with all my strength and leapt as high as possible to look around. I turned toward the direction the Dark Wolves were coming from—from deep inside the dungeon.

Yes, night had already fallen, and the Dark Wolves almost blended into the darkness. Only their glowing red eyes gave them away.

And what I saw before me… I couldn’t immediately decide what I was supposed to feel.

Fear—at the sight of that endless sea of glowing eyes stretching for more than a kilometer and moving closer toward me.

Or joy—at the thought that this was an incredible opportunity to gain an enormous amount of experience points.

I think the second one.

I should be happy.

Compared to fighting golems, killing dungeon monsters gave far more experience.

Alright.

Time to continue having fun.

Oh, I almost forgot about Sherial.

I teleported into the Training Room—she was already prepared and waiting for me.

"I thought you forgot about me again," she said.

"No, of course not," I replied.

Of course, I couldn’t tell her that I had almost forgotten.

As soon as she was ready, I teleported us onto the battlefield. She released an arrow, and I immediately returned us to the Training Room before instantly teleporting back to the battlefield myself.

I killed another Dark Wolf.

One second… and the explosion should happen.

But when it did, the sound was far louder than I expected. Yes, I had prepared myself—but not for that.

I turned away beforehand so the flash wouldn’t blind me. Even losing my vision for a few seconds right now could be fatal.

The shockwave blasted me into the air.

What the hell?

Why did the explosion happen so close?

I crashed into a stone golem and hit the ground. I immediately jumped back up and landed on the shoulder of the nearest golem.

No… the explosion had happened much farther away than I thought.

It was simply that powerful.

It looked like most of the Dark Wolves approaching from that direction had been wiped out by the blast.

Even I felt a little uneasy now.

Just how much stronger had her skill become…?

Alright, enough distractions.

There were still plenty of Dark Wolves left—enough for me to gain another level.

—

"Well then, if things continue like this, we’ll stick to this plan," Rem said seriously.

We had just discussed our next course of action in the Training Room.

After destroying the Dark Wolves, a strange situation appeared.

I didn’t even know whether to call it a problem… or good luck.

Less than a minute after the battle ended, another group of Dark Wolves arrived. Though there weren’t that many—only a few hundred. We dealt with them quickly, but that wasn’t the issue.

The problem was that new groups kept arriving regularly.

Every one and a half to two minutes, another pack of several hundred Dark Wolves appeared.

At first, I was honestly happy about it.

That was an insane amount of experience points.

This continued for about an hour and a half.

Then a massive pack of Dark Wolves arrived all at once.

I don’t know the exact number, but there were definitely more than ten thousand.

No… probably more than twenty thousand.

Even so, we dealt with them relatively easily.

After that, small groups of several hundred started appearing again, and another hour and a half later, yet another massive wave arrived.

And it kept repeating over and over.

But there was one problem—the number of Dark Wolves in each new group kept gradually increasing.

The smaller packs weren’t much of an issue. Yes, their numbers grew little by little. For example, if there were around three hundred at first, the next time there would be three hundred and two, then three hundred and five, then three hundred and eight, and so on.

But the real problem was the large waves that appeared roughly every hour and a half.

The latest one contained over seventy thousand Dark Wolves.

And we had no idea what would happen next.

Would their numbers continue increasing?

How long would this continue?

And most importantly—where were they even coming from?

The dungeon core had already been destroyed.

None of this was normal.

Though I was the one who suggested it might all be connected to that spear I had seen earlier in the center of the clearing where the Dark Wolves appeared.

Rem and Sherial agreed with the idea.

Most likely, that was exactly the cause.

Rem suggested that someone had intentionally placed that spear inside the dungeon. And most likely, it was done by the same people who destroyed the dungeon core.

According to her theory, the spear was some kind of ancient artifact. After the destruction of the core, it took control over part of the dungeon—the area where the Dark Wolves spawned.

Now the artifact was using the dungeon’s remaining mana to release enormous numbers of Dark Wolves.

Considering this dungeon was at least four hundred years old and had barely changed during all that time, an immense amount of mana must have accumulated inside it.

And until that mana was completely exhausted, the Dark Wolves would continue respawning.

Honestly, her theory sounded pretty convincing.

Before, dungeon monsters respawned roughly every two hours.

But now, with the core destroyed, the artifact had apparently taken control over the remnants of the dungeon and was using all its resources solely to create Dark Wolves.

Rem’s theory also explained the appearance of the smaller groups.

Earlier, I had already seen some kind of wave of energy spreading out from the artifact. It expanded outward until it reached the borders of the clearing where the Dark Wolves spawned, and after that, the clearing itself grew slightly larger.

And now, with the dungeon core gone, the artifact seemed to immediately create Dark Wolves in the newly expanded area.

As for the massive waves, they were likely caused by a full monster respawn occurring across the entire clearing roughly every hour and a half.

Though when I asked Rem why the artifact didn’t simply create huge waves every few minutes instead, she suggested it probably still had some limitations.

After hearing all those theories, I came up with an idea.

Just stay here and keep killing Dark Wolves.

This was an incredible opportunity to gain an absurd amount of experience points.

Honestly, I expected Rem and Sherial to oppose the idea. After all, if the Dark Wolves broke through our blockade, people could die.

But to my surprise, neither of them objected.

In fact, even Rem supported the idea, saying it was an excellent plan.

And so our plan became simple:

Continue killing Dark Wolves.

Of course, not while standing still. Rem created massive numbers of golems behind us, while we slowly advanced deeper into the dungeon so the Dark Wolves wouldn’t have even the slightest chance of escaping outside.

Honestly, I thought my suggestion sounded pretty stupid.

But apparently it wasn’t that idiotic if even Rem and Sherial agreed with it.

—

Yeah, the plan I came up with turned out to be extremely effective.

We gained enormous amounts of experience with almost no risk.

But the safest position belonged to Rem—she didn’t even leave the Training Room. She simply stayed there and summoned golems directly into the dungeon.

And surprisingly, her new tactic worked incredibly well.

Shield-bearing golems in front, spear-throwing golems behind.

Against Dark Wolves, it was unbelievably effective.

Before, her golems mostly won through sheer numbers, and even then, each Dark Wolf still managed to destroy several stone golems before dying.

But now everything had changed.

Yes, the Dark Wolves could leap over the shield-bearers, but that almost always became their end—in midair, several spears would pierce them simultaneously.

I jumped high and looked toward the direction the Dark Wolves were coming from.

There were countless numbers of them.

Then I looked back toward the stone golems.

There were even more.

And unlike the Dark Wolves, they moved in nearly perfect formation. The ones closest to the battle line advanced forward, while the others stayed behind.

That was where new golems constantly appeared.

I had just reached level 190.

Under normal circumstances, gaining levels would have taken an enormous amount of time, but here, surrounded by endless Dark Wolves, my levels rose shockingly fast.

And yet… it didn’t make me as happy as I thought it would.

Because if this continued, I would remain the lowest-level member of our group.

Sherial had already reached level 191.

And Rem, who had recently been the lowest-level member of our team, was now level 198.

She had become the highest-level among us.

And if things continued like this, the gap between us would only grow larger.

Yes, I had invested almost everything into strengthening my body—speed, strength, defense.

Right now, I was nearly invulnerable against Dark Wolves.

I carved through them like a lawnmower through grass.

I killed several hundred per minute, sometimes even more than a thousand.

But how was I supposed to compete with Sherial, who could now destroy more than fifty thousand Dark Wolves with a single explosion?

As for Rem, her golems killed more than ninety percent of all Dark Wolves.

Yes, because her summoned golems were the ones landing the kills, she didn’t receive the full amount of experience points.

But even the portion she did receive was more than enough to make her the fastest among us at leveling.

I rushed forward because there were already very few Dark Wolves left.

Yes, they never completely ran out, but the massive wave had nearly been destroyed.

After that, only the small groups would continue arriving again.

A point of light shot into the sky, and in the next moment, arrows rained down from above, wiping out the last several thousand Dark Wolves.

"Too slow!" I heard Sherial shout from behind me.

I turned around.

Yeah… she did that on purpose after noticing me rushing toward the remaining wolves.

Well, lately Sherial had barely even used her strongest skill anymore.

She simply stayed on the battlefield because the Dark Wolves no longer posed any serious threat to her.

Now even her ordinary skills, like Arrow Rain, could easily wipe them out.

I walked toward Sherial.

"Well… I think that’s enough for today," I said as I approached her.

"Yeah. Rem’s golems can handle the rest," Sherial replied.

I took her hand and teleported us back into the Training Room.

I was no longer as obsessed with killing Dark Wolves, because I was losing this competition against Rem and Sherial anyway.

Yes, of course I still kept fighting, but killing Dark Wolves alone was no longer enough for me to catch up to them.

But recently, I seemed to have forgotten one of the Training Room’s strongest advantages.

I could simply complete quests and gain experience points from them.

The next quest should give me sixty billion experience points.

That was roughly equivalent to killing around one hundred and fifty Dark Wolves.

Yes, compared to time spent, killing Dark Wolves was tens of thousands of times more efficient.

But the rewards from Training Room quests constantly increased with level, especially after entering a new ten-level bracket.

Yeah… I definitely needed to make use of that.

Especially because I had an idea I wanted to test as soon as possible.

After we ate, Rem and Sherial headed toward their tent to rest.

Even though Rem wasn’t fighting directly, she still became exhausted—probably even more than Sherial and me, considering how many golems she controlled simultaneously.

And with the time difference between the Training Room and the outside world, the mental strain on her had to be even worse.

I also wanted to lie down and sleep.

But I couldn’t.

I didn’t want to be weak.

I walked farther away from the girls’ tent.

Though “farther away” was an exaggeration. There wasn’t really anywhere truly far to go, so I simply stepped behind the wooden cabin I had built earlier.

Honestly… I had built it terribly.

I should probably hire professionals later.

Whatever.

Fuuuuh…

I focused, and the moment I mentally confirmed the start of the Training Room quest, an overwhelming gravitational pressure crashed down on me.

Damn… it had been a long time since I’d felt this weak.

I tried jumping.

Even jumping thirty centimeters into the air took enormous effort.

It was an incredibly strange feeling—to feel this weak after becoming so powerful recently.

Alright…

I began mentally praying to the gods that my idea would work.

The gods had to exist, right?

This world had magic, the System, and everything else.

Though… which god was I even supposed to pray to?

Whatever.

I’ll pray to all of them.

Now all that remained was to hope.

I activated Berserk.