The Divine Wolf... or?

And why would he? He had nothing better to do with his life right now anyway. Sure, he wanted to get stronger to be able to one day get revenge, but Ark had patience. Whether it took him one year or three years wouldn\'t really matter when it came to his revenge. And what good would taking revenge be if he didn\'t even get to enjoy his life?

Ark\'s current goals were as such: get stronger for the sake of revenge, find and reunite with Thufrat, and just enjoy his life in general. With the third and last goal currently being his priority.

When he thought about it, Ark always came to the conclusion that living was essentially meaningless. Whenever he heard the question "What is the meaning of life?" all he could think of was nothing. There was no meaning. Therefore Ark had made it his goal to just enjoy his life in general.

Though, to enjoy it to the fullest, he needed strength, not only to protect himself and those he enjoyed spending his time with, but also to be able to take control of his own fate, to get what he wanted out of life.

If he needed money in the future? Then all he needed to rely on was his strength. If he wanted to protect someone? He had to rely on strength. If he wanted to attack someone? He also needed strength.

A lot of things stemmed from strength, which was why it was so important in Ark\'s eyes. With that being said, his first priority right now was still to heal this wolf. After about a week of healing, the scar on the wolf\'s back was completely gone, and Ark had basically gotten rid of any internal injuries now as well, all that remained was for the wolf to wake up.

[Papa, danger!]

Hearing the urgent calling of the cub, Ark could feel that something was wrong. Even though he had already faced off against plenty of magical beasts these last couple of days, the cub had never reacted like this before, which meant that something terribly strong was coming.

Even though Ark didn\'t feel any urgent danger, his instincts were not as sharp as an animal that had lived in the wild all of its life. Sure, Ark could feel mana fluctuations and determine danger that way, and he still had fairly sharp instincts of his own, but that wasn\'t really the same thing.

Ark trusted the cub though, and he decided to stand up and stretch a little. [Don\'t worry, while I\'m still here, neither you nor your mother will be hurt ok?] The cub instantly felt reassured after Ark\'s lofty words, and he nodded his head slightly.

The wolf\'s way of communicating with him was still very primitive, but he suspected that it would evolve and surpass that of even a normal human being as he grew up. These were elemental wolves, after all, a race that was only a step below his own.

As he was just about to stand up, a dreadful and suppressive aura suddenly hit him like a train out of nowhere. Since he wasn\'t ready, Ark was pressed back down on the ground for a second before he struggled to stand up again. He wasn\'t ready for this at all! What the hell was this? It seemed like he had underestimated his enemy even though he tried to be careful.

Just from the pressure alone, Ark was pretty sure that this wasn\'t an enemy he could fight against. Normally he would opt to run away, but with the cub\'s mother lying behind him, could he really just ditch them and run away?

Of course not! He had already gotten to know this little cub too well to just abandon it, especially when it depended on him for survival at the moment. Ark wasn\'t heartless, and even if he was, he wouldn\'t leave them behind, they had something that he wanted, after all, that special feeling.

Though it might sound laughable to some, Ark considered that feeling a real treasure, something which he couldn\'t replace, and he wouldn\'t even dare try to abandon them for that very reason.

Instead of the bushes rustling, which was the most common occurrence when a monster or magical beast approached them for the last few days, this time, the trees surrounding them were starting to shake! Ark could only smile sourly when he saw this, this would certainly be a dangerous fight!

As a bulky figure appeared within the trees in front of them, two rather large and robust trees standing right in front of them gave way and fell over on the ground.

In front of them, a large creature appeared. Ark could only gulp at the sight of the overbearing, large and grotesque monster that appeared in front of them. At first, Ark had no idea what kind of creature it was, but after looking a little closer, he could draw some similarities between the large green creature and a pesky little creature that he had run into long ago, a goblin.

Although he knew for a fact that this wasn\'t an actual goblin, Ark was pretty sure that it was at the very least related to goblins in some way.

The large monster was over 5 meters tall, and though Ark thought it looked a little like a goblin, it was more reminiscent of a troll if anything. The troll had greasy and thick green skin covering its entire body, with nothing but an oversized loincloth covering up its family jewels. The troll was completely bald and had a primitive-looking bone club in one of his rather gigantic hands.

The scariest part about this troll, if you disregarded the horrible stench that almost made Ark want to puke, was the troll\'s eyes.

Even if the stench was frightening by itself when you considered Ark\'s exceptional nose, the eyes of the troll were daunting. Complete darkness. That was all there was to them. With no irises or white in its eyes, the troll\'s eyes looked like two pitch-black pupils. Just from exteriors, Ark was able to guess just how stupid this troll was, only based on the troll\'s frankly disgusting bearing.

He didn\'t dare underestimate the troll though since he had experienced its stifling pressure beforehand, and underestimating your enemy went hand in hand with death.

"Inspect"

[Cave Giant]

Name: Boneflayer

Lv: 96

The dumbest variant of a giant, which should speak for itself. This one is a little special.

Status: ???

Seeing these things pop up in front of him, Ark felt like chuckling. Was this system making fun of this cave giant in front of him? Even though he was humoured, Ark didn\'t dare underestimate the giant in front of him. Just looking at its level alone was enough to put Ark on edge, this cave giant was almost level 100! Not only that, the thing even had a name!

Though he wasn\'t too sure, Ark was certain that it was something special for a magical or monster to have a name. Not only that but the sentence "This one is a little special" was highly alarming to Ark. What was considered a little special in the eyes of a system? He didn\'t know, but he didn\'t want to gamble with his life.

Fortunately for Ark, this type of enemy was probably his speciality. A dumb, large and slow target. This was the perfect target for his magic! If the enemy had no possibility of dodging, he would just unleash his strongest attacks! While Ark was focused on the enemy in front of him, the wolf that had been in a comatose state for a long time now started to twitch a little.

As the wolf slowly opened her heavy eyelids, the sight which she woke up to was far from charming.

Confusion and unease suffused her face as she frantically snapped her head around, on the lookout for something. As she spotted her little cub\'s cute little figure standing behind another wolf in front of her, she managed to calm down a little. As she took a closer look at the wolf that was standing in front of her son, she was a little surprised, it seemed to be the same species as them.

This was the first time the mother had ever seen another wolf of their species, as the father of the cub was far gone, and he wasn\'t the same species in the first place.

At this point in her life, the mother had already developed her intelligence to that of the average adult human, maybe even a little beyond that. Seeing that the wound that had almost claimed her life was presumably gone, the mother could only guess that it was the doing of the wolf standing in front of her, she couldn\'t come up with a better explanation than that after all.

Gratitude filled her heart, but even though she wanted to repay the gesture, it seemed like now was a bad time.

When her dull mind recovered a little, she managed to notice what the wolf was actually facing off against, and her body went stiff, it seemed like they wouldn\'t be able to survive this either way.

The mother wasn\'t the only one who had almost completely given up already, the little cub wasn\'t faring too well against the pressure this cave giant emitted just by existing. As it turned around to glance at its mother the cub was ecstatic! [Mama!] with a leap, the small cub instantly nuzzled up against its mother, not leaving her side.

The mother was happy to see her cub again too, but for her, the time had barely passed, as she was in a coma after all.

The little cub\'s call for its mother didn\'t go unnoticed by Ark, and he quickly turned around. As he did, he managed to stare straight into the mother\'s bright green eyes. Though he was captivated by her eyes, and he felt like he could stare into them forever, Ark calmed himself down a little, this was a good chance! [Quickly, run! Leave this place! I\'ll cover you!]