The Divine Wolf... or?

Ark was delighted to see them run away when he told them to. Otherwise, this fight would\'ve been a lot harder. Ark didn\'t plan to defeat this gigantic monster at all, even if he might be able to if he tried his hardest, Ark didn\'t think that it was worth it to risk his life right now, especially when he had actually found something that he wanted to do.

Whether that was just a thing for now, or if it was something that lasted longer, Ark wasn\'t concerned, for now, he was feeling happy nonetheless.

He knew he couldn\'t just immediately run away though, as that would run the risk of the monster going after the other wolves, so Ark decided to stall it for some time and attract its attention before doing anything else. As the grotesque monster drew nearer, Ark was almost on the verge of passing out from the foul smell.

But just as he was about to dry-heave, the monster suddenly swung its enormous club!

Dodging narrowly to the side, Ark was still sent flying by the following shockwave from the club hitting the ground next to him. He wasn\'t hurt in any way though and he managed to land safely on the ground, skidding across it for a meter or two before stopping.

His eardrums ached a little from the soundwaves, but he tried his hardest to not let it get to him, he was pretty good at keeping his composure.

The monster was sure that it was going to hit Ark just then but was dumbfounded when it didn\'t see the meaty paste that was usually left behind when he swung his club. He scratched his head a little in confusion. Did he not hit hard enough? Ark was a little surprised when he saw how confused the cave giant was, but he could only laugh to himself, and prepare a counterattack.

If the cave giant was truly this stupid, then Ark would make sure to make short work of it.

If it wasn\'t too hard to kill, then why would Ark not want to kill it? It presented a future threat to the other two wolves if Ark wasn\'t around, and in Ark\'s eyes, this cave giant might as well be a giant sack of experience points. The giant was about to take a step back when Ark noticed his opportunity to strike!

Instead of the soft soil that it was expecting to set foot on, the giant\'s foot connected with nothing but pure air. With one foot in a hole, all the giant\'s momentum backwards without any support caused him to easily fall backwards.

"Crack!"

"ROAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!"

The sound of a loud crack broke the silence, followed by the cave giant\'s pitiful roar. When it fell backwards, the cave giant landed awkwardly with his leg stuck in a pit, causing it to cleanly fracture. The pain it was feeling was genuine, but instead of focusing on what was actually going on, the giant only howled madly in pain.

Ark almost felt a little bad after seeing his trick succeed, and he was still a little taken aback, was it truly this easy to take care of an enemy that was level 96?

It all felt a little surreal to him, but Ark didn\'t want to let the cave giant suffer more than necessary, and he sneaked up behind it as it was still screaming frantically. To his surprise, the giant flailed a lot with his bone club as he roared.

Even though it looked silly, the dangerous wind pressure he stirred up could be considered attacks by themselves, which was a testament to the giant\'s immense strength. Well, there was no need for strength if he couldn\'t hit anything with it.

Dodging these "attacks" was nothing hard to Ark though and he just quickly made his way next to the large giant again. As he stood a couple of meters away from the giants head, Ark\'s body tensed up, before he leapt with all his strength toward the giant\'s neck. With a slash of his claws, Ark used his full strength to try and kill the giant in one fell swoop.

"Clang!"

To his dismay, Ark\'s claws only left behind a small, thin white line on the large giant\'s neck, before they rebounded, and Ark just continued flying through the air, until he landed on the ground not too far away. What the claw attack did do, however, was enrage the giant. It stopped its frantic screaming for a second and glared at Ark with glowing red eyes.

Ark had accidentally forced the cave giant to use an inherent skill of his, [Berzerk]. This skill caused the cave giant to rampage out of control, without the need to feel pain, it was a very destructive ability.

The cave giant watched Ark with rabid eyes as it relentlessly pulled its leg out of the pit it had been stuck in, only to reveal it back to normal already. Ark was initially surprised, but he suppressed it before he let it affect his mental state since that could have serious consequences.

This cave giant was a variant from the norm, and it had a very strong innate skill, namely [Hyper regeneration]. Ark didn\'t know of this, but he suspected that it had a very strong regenerative ability, since it was way too dumb to know any healing magic.

Though Ark wanted to kill the cave giant to level up, things weren\'t looking too good for him, and he was pretty sure that he wouldn\'t be able to fight it at this point. He could barely hurt it after all, and it had impressive healing capabilities, if Ark wanted to kill it, it would probably take around a century.

The cave giant was furious and seeing Ark just standing there, the giant started running toward him.

As it charged, Ark could only smile bitterly before he turned around, and left. There was no way for this giant to catch up with him once he made use of all of his agility paired with wind magic. In almost no time, Ark was already nowhere to be seen.

The cave giant was a bit simple-minded and kept running in a straight line for over an hour before it realised it had been duped, and when it did, it was furious!

"ROAAAAAAAAAAR!"

A deafening roar reverberated throughout the entire forest, scaring its many residents into complete hiding, scared for their very lives. Ark had already retreated back to his cave since a while back, but he still felt chills run down his spine when he heard the cave giant\'s guttural roar. It seemed like the dimwit had finally realised that something was completely off.

Not that it mattered now anyway, Ark was already completely safe in his little hideout.

Ark only had a slight problem now, how was he supposed to find the cub and his mother in this large forest? There was no real way for Ark to track them, and all he could think of when he later went to sleep, was what would happen if he didn\'t find them. Would today be their final meeting? Would they ever meet again?

Ark couldn\'t help but be a little down, he really didn\'t want to be separated from them, at least not right now, he just felt like he needed to be with them deep down, even for only a second.

The next day arrived painfully slow, as Ark did nothing but worry the entire night, which only netted him about three hours of sleep, even though he should\'ve slept for way longer. It had already become instinct at this point for Ark to wake up at the crack of dawn, and today was no different.

When Ark had mulled over how he was going to find the mother and the cub the day before, he at least managed to come up with his first course of action.

After a short walk, Ark saw the familiar sights of claw marks strewn about on the trees around him, as he arrived where he had encountered the cave giant the day before. The cave giant\'s entrance was painfully obvious as Ark noticed the familiar trees lying broken in half on the ground, all of their vitality slowly draining away completely.

Ark could smell the familiar scents which he had come to know and love as he sat down on the ground for a while.

As the scents burrowed their way into his nostrils, Ark just sat quietly and waited. His plan was just to wait and see if they showed up here today. Since the mother should be fairly intelligent, Ark hoped that she would head here with the cub sooner or later, that was if she felt any gratitude and wanted to find him of course, which Ark couldn\'t be entirely sure of.

Even though he looked patient and calm on the outside, that was far from the truth. Ark was feeling very anxious at the moment, he didn\'t want to be away from them for too long, the longer they were separated from each other, the bigger risk of the mother and cub running into danger.

With Ark there, at least he could protect them from any potential harm, or as he did the day before, stall for them to get away safely. Though he wanted to be able to protect them proudly, that wasn\'t always possible, and Ark wasn\'t a fool that would risk others\' wellbeing just to look a little cool or to defend his own pride or some other bullshit like that.

Ark had actually found pride to be pretty laughable in most scenarios. In many stories he had heard and read of, characters pride was often a limiting factor to their growth, and just utterly stupid.

Why not lower your head to survive if you had to? There was nothing cowardly or wrong with that, it\'s only normal. Anyone who would rather defend their pride than live is either suicidal or just stupid, or at least that\'s what Ark thought. He knew that other\'s had different opinions, but still, stuff like that was kind of stupid in his opinion.