Full Moon Wolf 2
Grace stopped mid-stride, crystal orb in hand, and began scanning their surroundings with a puzzled frown. Following behind her, the rest of them closed the distance and gathered at her side.
"What's wrong?"
"This thing… it's glowing."
Apparently they had reached the quest objective zone — the Full Moon Wolf byproduct sealed inside the crystal orb had begun to flash. The silver fur, already luminous, now shone as though it were the filament of a lightbulb. While everyone else's eyes were drawn to that beautiful silver radiance, only Han Sea turned her gaze elsewhere.
Grace and Irene caught on and looked her way as well. She was the party's only mage, after all — they wanted her take on the situation.
"The Full Moon Wolf's traces must be really strong here. Should we call the expedition members over? Or…"
"Keep searching. If a crowd shows up, the thing might bolt. Better to track it first and report after."
"Right?"
Her face lit up at his suggestion to keep going — so that had been the right call. Hanna nodded firmly, took the crystal orb in both hands, and adjusted their course slightly as she pressed forward. With every step, the Full Moon Wolf byproduct shone brighter and brighter.
As they advanced little by little, something felt off. A wrongness that his superhuman body registered through the skin. Air that did not belong to the plains he had crossed hundreds of times. The sensation sharpened with each step, and a moment later Grace spoke, her voice lowered to a near-whisper.
"The air's different. The night plains must be close."
At that, he glanced sideways at Han Sea. At first she just stared back at him, baffled — then she flinched, as though some fantasy-savvy viewer had dropped a tip in chat, and opened her mouth.
"From here on, Roland should take point. Roland handles the Full Moon Wolf up front, and Grace unnie scouts the rear for any Horned Wolves coming up behind us. Irene, if a Horned Wolf or the Full Moon Wolf shows up, prioritize barriers and protect the back line."
"Got it."
"Yes, understood."
Roland at the front with the crystal orb, Han Sea and Irene in the middle, Grace bringing up the rear. Grace was more than capable of detecting and dealing with a Horned Wolf ambush, so the back was covered. With her skill, she could pin down a Horned Wolf and fall back to Irene's side without trouble.
This was a monster that average parties of 3-star adventurers would come hunting. With a 5-star and a 6-star in their party, there was nothing to worry about on that front. What concerned him was something else entirely.
Should I just kill it in one hit?
He had gotten a rough feel for it the last time he met a Full Moon Wolf. Bare-handed would be tough, but with a mace and a brutally stupid amount of mana reinforcement poured into the swing — a warrior's instinct told him he could drop it in a single blow. That left him torn between two paths.
The first: crush the Full Moon Wolf in one strike himself.
Clear the quest at blistering speed and let Han Sea and her viewers taste the full power of Roland, the 6-star Paladin who kept them at world rank one. A free sample from the tasting counter — something to keep Han Sea, as both streamer and gamer, from giving up on climbing the Tower.
The second: play to his passives and pin the Full Moon Wolf down.
If he thought of himself as a shield, their party composition was heavily skewed toward defense — a tank and a protective priest. Grace was an excellent scout, but calling her a proper damage dealer was a stretch.
He turned it over for a while, then a thought struck him.
I'm no good at overthinking. Just ask.
"Hanna, question."
"What is it?"
"The Full Moon Wolf — mind if I one-shot it? Or do you need me to stall so you can observe it as a mage?"
Her eyes went round at the unexpected question. Not just Han Sea — Grace and Irene both whipped around to stare at him in shock. A Novice Adventurer and a priestess raised in the Temple, of course they had no real sense of what an Advanced Adventurer was capable of.
Unless something could parry his mace the way the swordmasters he casually called Sword Masters could, Roland the adventurer could cave in just about anyone's skull. Even thick-hided ogres that knights preferred to avoid — he could shatter their shins, snap their legs, and crack their heads open.
As if a tenth-floor boss could possibly compare to the highest-threat monsters outside the Tower.
"Just kill it. It's a monster. The byproduct alone is plenty for research material."
She answered without a second's hesitation. Those pitch-black eyes fixed on him so clearly that she clearly hadn't bothered consulting her viewers. Same as when she picked her skills — once she decided something, she pushed through with stubborn resolve.
Of course, she couldn't ignore them completely. She opened her mouth again almost immediately — not to him, but to her audience.
"We've got a 6-star in the party, not even a 5-star — of course you max out the usage, right? If you guys lucked into a 5-star at the start, you'd build the whole party around them too. 'He's a tank type so the damage will fall off eventually'? If you're so busy looking at the future that you do something stupid right now, that's just wasting time. You gonna chase efficiency so hard you lose the number-one progress title?"
In short: rather than fretting over efficiency and the distant future, she would keep running full tilt for first place. That was Han Sea's declaration.
"Like I said before, I'm going ice and lightning for CC shuttle duty, so no backseat driving on this one. Honestly, looking at a character who one-shots tenth-floor Horned Wolves with just a reflect-damage passive and complaining about 'not enough DPS' is pretty shameless."
From the way she talked, she must have planned out her build route with her viewers during a stream while she was offline from the game. And given his combat style, a mage who locked enemies down was far more comfortable to work with than a pure firepower type.
In all the climbing he had done up to the thirty-seventh floor, nothing had ever survived a solid hit from his mace. This was a weapon that cracked ogre skulls famous for their toughness. As long as the hit landed clean, damage would never be the problem. Worrying about seventieth- or eightieth-floor bosses — floors that might not even exist yet — while hunting a tenth-floor boss was just ridiculous.
While Han Sea chattered away, Irene and Grace swallowed hard, tension thick in their throats. Listening to those completely opposite sounds at his back, he pressed forward — and then, all at once, a thick animal stench slammed into his nose.
"Get ready. Something's here."
"…Yes."
Only Irene, voice tight with nerves, managed a small reply. The other two wordlessly took positions on either side of her. Not a flicker of hesitation in the movement — absolute confidence that nothing was behind them, and absolute trust in the man leading from the front.
The Full Moon Wolf byproduct was glowing so fiercely the crystal orb flashed like a lightbulb when—
"Huh?"
"Ah — it got dark."
The orb flared once, bright as a flashbang. He was still squinting against the excess light when the world around them changed. Darkness after a blinding flash — they had staged the entrance properly, at least.
He shielded his eyes with mana just in case, but the three women in the rear lacked that kind of experience and skill, so they had their eyes squeezed shut. Opening them to find the world flipped from day to night was more than enough reason to be startled.
Awooo—ooooooo——
"…That's it."
The nameless grasses that had once reached only to their ankles now grew as high as their knees. A full moon hung bright in place of the sun, looking down over the night plains. The silver Full Moon Wolf he had met in that back alley last time twisted its massive body this way and that as it closed the distance, one step at a time.
Beautiful silver fur gleaming in the moonlight. A towering frame. A horn as thick and sharp as a knight's lance.
The pressure was so overwhelming it was hard to believe this was just a monster — from behind him came a sharp intake of breath. A wolf's howl that rattled the eardrums, and Irene's piercing voice as she screamed out a holy spell.
"Hey, wait — a mission at this timing, wha—"
"O Goddess, grant us your protection!"
Instead of exhaling the breath he had drawn deep, he poured every scrap of mana into motion. Heightened senses flooded him with too much information.
One step. His party members' voices faded into the distance, replaced by the sound of wind splitting past his ears. And through that wind — the Full Moon Wolf's growling breath, and the held-back breathing of Horned Wolves crouched low in the grass.
Two steps. Beyond those quiet animal breaths came the sound of gravel kicked up from torn earth. Clods of dirt and stones cutting the air in threat, the rustle of grass. Startled Horned Wolves thrashing upright through the knee-high weeds.
Three steps. Right in front of him, the Full Moon Wolf's jaws — packed full of mana — yawned wide open. As if this horned wolf pup thought it could fire something like a breath attack. Mana gathering before those razor fangs.
But it was a meaningless struggle.
It could wield mana. It led subordinates. And still, there was one thing even a boss monster's intelligence could never grasp: just how powerful a 6-star gacha character who had cleared the thirty-seventh floor of the Tower truly was. A horned wolf's brain would never understand it.
"Hrrraaah—!"
No battle cry meant to cow the enemy. No grand technique name like some swordsman's flourish.
Just one repeated motion that had kept him alive for ten years, executed in front of the Full Moon Wolf.
A mace smash with mana slammed into it so brutally that efficiency and physical overload never even entered the equation. He hoisted his arm high overhead and brought it down like a whip. His elbow screamed as centrifugal force nearly tore it from the joint; bone cracked audibly in the wrist as it swung through.
"—said, Full Moon Wolf in one… hit…… You, this mission is non-refundable."
Even after shattering the horn and blowing the skull apart, the mace still had force left — it slammed into the ground, and the sound of dirt clods flying in every direction peppering Irene's barrier reached his ears. The corpse vanishing meant no one got covered in blood. The Tower really was a convenient place.
"Uh, anyway… tenth-floor boss, Full Moon Wolf, clear… yeah."
What had been the Full Moon Wolf was gone. The plains where it had stood were now an empty clearing.
Aside from Han Sea, not a single member of the party opened their mouth.