"The habits of monsters in the game apparently carried over to this place," Alphonse said 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 in total.
In the center of the pack stood a larger wolf with dull silver fur running down its spine. The Alpha leader.
Seeing their comrade die so gruesomely, the leader howled in fury. The twelve wolves immediately spread out, forming a circular formation to surround Alphonse.
Alphonse showed no fear. Instead, the golden glint in his eyes grew brighter. "Perfect timing. I need to test how the magic mechanism works in this world."
He focused his mind. He did not need to search for a skill menu or press shortcut keys.
Instinctively, he felt the flow of mana stored within his body move toward the palms of his hands. The movement was as natural as twitching his fingers.
A magic circle formed instantly before his hand.
[Tier C – Fire Ball]
A massive sphere of fire materialized, radiating a heat so real it made the surrounding air distort. With a single flick of his finger, the fireball shot rapidly into the center of the wolf pack.
BOOM!
A tremendous explosion occurred. Earth scattered alongside tongues of flame licking out in every direction.
The four wolves at the epicenter of the blast were blown to pieces, while the rest were thrown back with their bodies heavily ablaze. The Alpha leader was launched several meters away, whimpering as the fire scorched a portion of its hide.
Yet, the remaining eight wolves did not die. Their burning bodies triggered a blind, feral instinct. They rose. Howling ferociously. Lunging at Alphonse simultaneously from all sides.
Alphonse did not panic. He did not retreat.
His left hand raised.
[Tier C - Shadow Bind]
The shadows of the trees elongated, coiling around the legs of the four vanguard wolves. Their charge was halted forcefully. Their jaws snapped shut on 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.
An upward thrust. The second wolf's heart was pierced.
His movements were precise. Efficient. Without any excess motion. In a matter of seconds, the eight remaining wolves collapsed, bathed in blood upon the muddy ground.
Alphonse looked at his own hands in awe. "The execution of this magic is far smoother than I imagined. It feels like... a part of my own bodily functions."
The heavily injured Alpha leader witnessed the slaughter. Realizing that their prey this time was a far more terrifying predator, it turned around and tried to flee into the depths of the forest on a limping leg.
"Hey, it is impolite to leave without saying goodbye," Alphonse said with a cold tone.
He attempted to call upon another spell. This time, he visualized a sharp gust of wind.
[Tier C - Aero Bullet]
However, the sensation was different this time. The movement of mana within his body felt stiff and stuttered.
Alphonse was forced to pause for a moment to manually visualize the magic circle, arranging the runes one by one in his mind so the spell could form.
The wolf leader had already run quite a distance by the time the final rune locked into place.
WHOOSH!
A transparent bullet of wind shot out at high speed, cleaving the air before finally piercing the back of the Dire Wolf leader's head. The monster plummeted to the dirt, dying instantly.
Alphonse closed his eyes, absorbing the difference in sensation between the two attacks.
"I see," he murmured. "Magic that has reached Level 10 can be executed instantly like an innate instinct."
"Meanwhile, magic that sits only at Level 5... must be constructed manually through rune visualization. The process is not as smooth as max-level magic," he pondered.
He let out a short sigh. "Well, let it be. I rarely used Aero Bullet in the game anyway. I only invested 5 skill points as a prerequisite to unlock higher-tier magic."
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 lying stiff, their blood seeping slowly into the earth, and no pixel particles flew away blown by the wind.
One second passed, then ten. No pouches of gold magically appeared in the air. There were no loot notifications informing him of successfully acquired fangs or wolf pelts.
"Even the looting system has vanished," Alphonse muttered softly.
He rubbed his chin. "This world has truly discarded all of its artificial game elements."
Alphonse walked toward the epicenter of his first fireball 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 scorched to ash. When Alphonse sifted through the carbon remnants, he found only reddish crystal shards that were cracked and pulverized due to exposure to excessive heat.
"Damn it," he complained. He stood up and inspected his own hands. "Magic can indeed be a double-edged sword. Inside the game, the loot remains intact regardless of how high the destructive scale of my attacks is. But in the real world... AOE magic destroys the loot itself."
As a guild master, his brain immediately formulated new calculations.
If the Inventory system was dead and AOE magic destroyed resources, then Pioneer's forces would have to completely overhaul their combat doctrine. Hunting monsters would no longer be about trading magical explosions, but about precision.
Alphonse shifted to the wolf corpses he had killed with slashes and the Aero Bullet. He dissected their chests using the Phantom Blade.
This time, he successfully extracted nine intact, marble-sized Monster Cores, as well as one larger core with a deep red hue from the Alpha.
"Without an Inventory, skinning them will only weigh down my steps," he murmured, looking at the pile of valuable meat and fur with a heavy heart.
He slipped 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 spatter and the metallic stench.
Alphonse intended to inspect the surrounding area, but suddenly his ears caught something. His sharp hearing detected a sound from the west—not the growl of a monster, but the thud of iron boots brushing against tall grass.
The rhythm was uniform. Tactical. It was a human marching formation.
Did other players land near here? Or are these the natives of this world? Alphonse thought.
Considering he had not yet grasped this new world, confronting an unidentified armed group head-on was not a wise move.
Alphonse immediately pulled the collar of his robes. Leaving footprints on the dirt was not a smart option. He focused his mind, channeling his mana to cast a modification of his illusion magic.
[Tier C - Mirage]
Mana flowed, shrouding and refracting the light across his entire body. Alphonse's silhouette, his black robes, down to the Stella Obscura hovering at his side slowly faded. His form shifted into a semi-transparent projection that blended perfectly with the colors of the leaves and the shadows of the forest.
Another mental flick followed immediately.
[Tier B - Fly]
The binds of Earth's gravity severed instantly from his body. Without the sound of stepping feet, flapping wings, or suspicious vortexes of wind, Alphonse's body lifted lightly from the ground. He shot up smoothly and vertically, piercing through the gaps in the towering tree canopy, then flew away, vanishing across the skies of the Eastern Forest like an invisible ghost, leaving the slaughter ground as a puzzle for whoever would find it.
Fifteen minutes after Alphonse's departure, the foliage of the bushes on the western side was forcefully parted.
The tips of spears and steel swords pierced the forest shadows, followed by the appearance of a dozen leather-armored soldiers moving in a tactical formation. They were the finest tracking squad Wealden City possessed.
Their steps halted instantly upon reaching the clearing. Their weapons remained drawn, but the soldiers' eyes widened at the sight before them.
The smell of charred meat, scorched earth, and fresh blood assaulted their olfactory senses heavily. Over a dozen Dire Wolf carcasses lay scattered across the muddy ground.
A young soldier lowered his dagger slightly, exhaling a clearly audible sigh of relief.
"Turns out it's just a pack of Dire Wolves. It seems a Silver Rank adventurer party was hunting and happened to pass through this area."
However, his comrade beside him—a veteran tracker—immediately snorted roughly.
"Use your eyes properly, fool," he rebuked sharply, pointing toward the wolf corpses with cleanly severed heads. "Look at this pile of meat and fur."
The veteran continued, "What adventurer would willingly leave their loot discarded on the forest floor? They didn't even bother to skin them. They merely dissected these monsters' chests to extract their cores."
"Perhaps they were in a rush?"
"No sane adventurer discards valuable loot, no matter how much of a rush they are in."
Amidst that minor debate, Captain Cedric did not utter a single word.
The man with claw scars on his neck stepped forward in silence. His gaze ignored the intact wolf corpses, landing straight upon a shallow crater in the center of the battlefield.
Cedric furrowed his brow deeply. Within that crater, the earth was blackened and cracked. The four Dire Wolf carcasses there were not merely dead; they had been reduced to horrifying piles of ash.
The captain crouched down. He felt the waves of heat still faintly radiating from the scorched earth.
"Spread out," Cedric commanded suddenly. His voice was heavy and binding, instantly halting his subordinates' chatter.
"Comb the area within a five-hundred-meter radius. Look for footprints, remnants of a camp, or broken twigs. I want to know who or what passed through here."
"Yes, Captain!"
All members of the squad immediately scattered and disappeared back into the dense forest, leaving Cedric alone in the middle of the blast crater.
After ensuring his subordinates were out of earshot, Cedric removed his leather glove.
He extended his rough finger, touching the remains of a wolf's ribcage that had turned to charcoal. The moment his finger touched the bone, its structure instantly crumbled into fine dust.
The heat from the magic that struck this place was incredibly pure and lethal.
Cedric pinched a bit of the Dire Wolf carcass ash and rubbed it between his thumb and index finger. His gaze grew complicated and full of vigilance.
"Fire magic with a destructive scale this high... would surely destroy the monster cores inside their bodies," Cedric murmured softly to himself. "What kind of adventurer intentionally destroys their own hunting targets?"
This discovery made no sense to him. If this was the work of adventurers, they would have used precision magic to maintain the integrity of their loot.
Such reckless destruction, completely disregarding the spoils, was the combat style of an assassin, or worse... an entity that cared nothing for treasure and coin. And the clean slashes on the other wolves proved that the perpetrator was also an exceptionally skilled close-quarters combatant.
A single person possessing both lethal magic and high-tier swordsmanship? Or an unknown elite squad? A terrible premonition crept up the nape of the captain's neck.
About ten minutes later, the sound of his subordinates' footsteps returned. One by one, the members of the elite scout squad emerged from behind the trees with frustrated faces.
"Reporting, Captain. Nil," the veteran tracker said, bowing his head. "There are no boot prints, no broken twigs, no lingering scents. Whoever did this, they vanished like ghosts."
Cedric's brow furrowed even sharper. He stared into the dark shadows of the trees, as if trying to pierce the secrets of the Eastern Forest.
"We cannot linger here. The smell of this blood will soon attract other predators," Cedric finally decided.
He stood up and put his glove back on. "Gather the remaining Dire Wolf carcasses that are still intact. We bring their meat and pelts back to Wealden City as evidence. The Mayor must see the traces of this 'Falling Star' with his own eyes."
Swiftly and efficiently, the elite scout squad shouldered 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.