The Dire Wolf Trial
The Dire Wolf. This monster's reputation is practically on par with history's greats. Calling a monster "famous" might sound a little strange, but it's the truth. The Dire Wolf is one of the creatures ordinary people like me — well, like I used to be — encounter most often through the media.
Their defining trait is numbers. In any dungeon that takes the shape of a forest or a mountain, they show up almost without fail, which also makes them the monsters most frequently responsible for breaking out and terrorizing civilian settlements. If you had to map them onto an ordinary animal, they'd be about as ubiquitous as wild boars.
Among Dungeon Hunters, they're treated as zako — fodder, the weakest of the weak. Against an ordinary human, though, they're absurdly overpowered. Every monster possesses a resistance to non-mana attacks. Strike one without using mana, and the wounded flesh knits itself back together in moments.
Attacks that use mana, on the other hand — Ability-based attacks, in plain terms — don't heal nearly so easily. According to the experts, the mana pulse of an Ability erodes the mana inside the monster, crippling its regenerative capacity. I don't really know the exact principle.
The important point is this: an ordinary person who can't wield mana finds it extremely difficult to fight a monster at all. A Dungeon Hunter, by contrast, infuses even a casual punch with mana as naturally as breathing. The quantity of mana in their bodies so thoroughly dwarfs that of an ordinary human that they don't even need to consciously channel it — a thoughtless blow is already enough to erode a monster's mana. Dungeon Hunters can even partially suppress a monster's defense and regeneration just by standing nearby.
That's why Dungeon Hunters can hunt monsters efficiently. The flip side is that even the weakest monster is nearly impossible for a non-Hunter to bring down. Without a well-trained military force, it simply isn't happening. And considering that one of the defining features of an "elite unit" is the inclusion of high-level Dungeon Hunters, it's no exaggeration to say that Dungeon Hunters are humanity's sole answer to monsters.
A loud gulp cut through the silence — Sujin, swallowing hard enough that I heard it from where I stood. I glanced over. Lina was plenty tense herself. That cool, frosty expression from earlier had vanished without a trace. Well, even she couldn't keep a poker face in a situation like this.
No matter how gifted she was, she was still a rookie. She hadn't even received her Dungeon Hunter credentials yet. She'd never faced a monster in her life. Then again, neither had I.
"Let me say this once more: you don't need to worry about your safety. I have complete control over this monster. It's my summon, after all. All you need to do is give this Dire Wolf everything you've got. And I want to emphasize — defeating the monster is not a condition for passing. What this exam is measuring is your aptitude as a Dungeon Hunter. For examinees with no combat experience, bringing one down won't be easy. So don't get hung up on winning. Focus on bringing out the full extent of your ability."
The examiner's voice was calm, almost soothing. Neither Sujin nor Lina looked particularly soothed. No matter how much they tell you it's about the process, every examinee wants to show a result. And looking at a Dire Wolf peeling its lips back from those teeth, even composure built up like a fortress starts to crumble.
Sujin drew a slow breath from her diaphragm, then another, trying to bleed the tension out of her body. I was plenty tense myself. At the same time, a baseless confidence was stirring in my chest.
Once I became a Dungeon Hunter, I was going to run into monsters like this one until I was tripping over them. No — Dire Wolves were zako by Hunter standards. I'd be meeting things several times more vicious on a regular basis. If I flinched at a phantom conjured by an Ability, I could write off any bright future right now.
"We'll proceed one at a time. Those not being tested, please step back. Now then — who would like to go first?"
The examiner turned his head, studying each of our faces in turn. Nobody volunteered. When the others stayed silent, I started to raise my hand — and a voice beat me to it.
"I'll go first."
Cold, composed, and unmistakably unsteady underneath. Lina's voice. She said it and took a single step forward. Sujin and I fell back three paces as if on cue. The examiner flexed his fingers, and the Dire Wolf answered, turning its massive body until it stood face-to-face with her.
A wolf that easily topped six and a half feet locked eyes with her, and Lina's gaze tightened. Taking a stare like that head-on would crush most people flat. Every so often the news ran a story about someone who survived a Dire Wolf that had broken out of a dungeon, and I finally understood what kind of luck that actually was. Surviving a thing like this without even being a Dungeon Hunter? That's lottery-jackpot fortune.
"Lina. Let me know when you're ready. We'll begin immediately."
"I'm… ready."
The examiner nodded at her taut reply, then swept his hand down through the air and called the start of the exam. In the same instant, the Dire Wolf unleashed a savage howl.
The sound shredded the silence of the testing room like a blade. They say a predator can drop its prey with a cry alone, and that wasn't empty talk — even I, Ability and all, felt myself freeze for a beat. Lina's complexion went from pale to worse. Results might not matter, but a process that started like this wasn't going to look good either. Is she going to be okay? Come to think of it, going first didn't seem to have many upsides. Second and third at least got to watch someone else and steel themselves. The first one in had nothing. Did they factor that into the score? Well, this was the Hunter Association. They'd have their own idea of fairness.
A sharp grunt tore from Lina's throat as she thrust her hand toward the Dire Wolf, her already-fair skin gone nearly white. The beast took the gesture as an attack. Its enormous body moved like a thunderbolt, closing the distance in a single surge. From the side, it looked like a compact car barreling straight at her. Any man, no matter how sturdy, would have pissed himself and collapsed on the spot.
Lina was far calmer than I'd given her credit for.
Dimensional rifts tear open, summoning heavy black iron chains.
The space around her outstretched right hand fractured with a sharp crack. From the fissure in the air, jet-black chains — dark as Sujin's hair — erupted and lashed around all four of the Dire Wolf's legs, binding them tight. The beast had been charging with enough force to pulp her where she stood. Instead, the black iron that materialized from empty air seized its entire body, and it lost its balance. Unable to check its own momentum, the Dire Wolf toppled heavily onto its side.
It hit the floor with a thunderous crash. A howl tore out of it as its bulk slammed into the ground — not a threat this time, but something closer to a scream of pain. Lina summoned four more chains and cinched them around the wolf's neck, chest, belly, and tail. Eight chains in total, locking the monster down.
"Oho! Eight chains at once. That's exceptional."
The examiner looked genuinely impressed, and I couldn't blame him. You couldn't write her off as some nobody with a showing like that. For a Material-type Ability user, the number of objects you could summon was a direct measure of power. Even I, with barely any information on Chain Disaster, could tell Lina's ability was high-grade.
Pinned under eight chains, the Dire Wolf whimpered and thrashed. The cold iron clanked and rattled with every twist of its body, and beads of sweat began to well on Lina's forehead. The two of them were locked in a tug-of-war. From the outside it looked like a fully bound monster putting up a feeble struggle, but one glance at Lina's face told a different story. She was pouring everything she had into barely holding its resistance in check.
"Dire Wolves possess considerable physical strength. Among Dungeon Hunters they're regarded as a weak species anyone can hunt, but that raw power is nothing to dismiss. Subduing one with simple restraint alone will be difficult."
So that was it. The weakest of the weak, and still not a monster you could afford to look down on. Not that any of us — still unlicensed — had any business looking down on anything. Lina wasn't underestimating it either. She was simply outmatched on brute force.
"Hah… I guess I have no choice but to use this…"
Lina muttered something I couldn't quite catch across the distance. The words that followed, though, rang through the testing room perfectly clear.
"Chain Drain!"
Absorbs the energy and mana of a bound target.
At her forceful cry, the black chains binding the Dire Wolf began to give off a faint light. The examiner didn't even try to hide his surprise. He let out a sound of genuine admiration. Apparently this was something worth being shocked over.
"Already using that technique? Now this is impressive!"
This examiner wasn't the type to keep his thoughts to himself. Kind of like me, actually — though I'd been working on that habit. In any case, what Lina had just used was clearly a technique of Chain Disaster.
Calling out a technique's name as you used it wasn't unusual. Language made thought precise, and one of the most important elements of technique work was visualization — you had to hold a perfect image of the technique in your mind. The reason I'd failed at Holy Arrow before was that I hadn't had a clear picture of it. Speaking the name was a kind of self-hypnosis, and for a beginner it was one of the best ways to spike your success rate.
That said, intelligent monsters could understand human speech and read the technique from the name, and shouting it introduced a faint delay, so every Dungeon Hunter trained toward silent casting as a goal. Anyway. That wasn't what mattered right now.
As the faint light bled from the black chains, the Dire Wolf's movements began to dull. The clanking of iron faded, bit by bit. I'd been wondering what the ability actually did when our resident explainer of an examiner launched into a lecture.
"Chain Drain absorbs the energy and mana of a bound target. It's one of the reasons Chain Disaster users make such outstanding boss killers. A basic technique, but one that never gets discarded. She's still rough around the edges, but she's using it properly. Lina — I'll be keeping a close eye on you."
Judging by his tone, Lina's passing was already a done deal. She'd also landed herself firmly on his radar — in the good way, of course.
The Dire Wolf, still struggling, let out a small, puppy-like death cry and went limp. The massive body sprawled on the floor scattered like dust a moment later and vanished. Watching it dissolve, I was reminded that this Dire Wolf was an illusion created by an Ability. It had been so real that the fact had slipped my mind for a while.
"Excellent. You subdued the Dire Wolf completely. The official results will come later, of course, but you may consider yourself as having passed."
A staffer with a sense for these things. Lina swept the sweat from her brow once, then turned her gaze toward me. Oh. The ice princess's eyes, pointed in my direction. What an honor. Makes me want to devour her even more.