The Divine Wolf... or?

Ephine and Atar could no longer sit still, and they both rushed forward when they saw a large silhouette fly out of the cave's entrance. The silhouette crashed heavily into the wall of the campsite, creating a large dent with spiderweb-like cracks extending outward. After the dust settled, everyone was able to see Ark's towering body covered in smaller injuries.

His originally soft and fluffy fur was slightly burnt and ashy, and on his chest was a large wound from the impact of the explosion.

When Ephine saw the wretched state that Ark was in, she was filled with worry and rushed over. After making sure that he was alive, she heaved a sigh of relief and cast a scary gaze over to the dungeon. After waiting for a while and noticing that there was no movement, she refocused her attention back on Ark and started using light magic to try and heal him back to health.

To her surprise, the light magic was practically useless in healing his injuries, as it was devoured by some strange force in his body whenever it entered.

Unresigned with the fact that she couldn't help him, Ephine kept pouring out her mana to try and heal him, but to no avail. Eventually, she started feeling lightheaded, and Atar had to convince her to stop. Could she really not help him? Ephine felt terrible, and with the help of some of the humans, she prepared a place for Ark to rest.

Since she couldn't help him with magic, she could only try her best to make sure he could recover on his own. He was a sovereign, so his ability to heal and survive was naturally strong.

Ephine prepared a comfortable place for him to rest, and moved his body over carefully. Since they had plenty of healing medicine, Ephine tried her best to bandage his wound with some medicinal herbs. After making sure that everything was in order, Ephine sat down to recover her mana as fast as possible. After it had been fully recovered, she used as much as she could to heal him repeatedly.

Even though it didn't have much of an immediate effect, Ephine believed that it would help him recover. No matter how little help it was, it was worth it as long as it helped him at all. Like this, Ephine spent her time repeatedly exhausting herself to nurse Ark back to help, with little effect. Atar felt very pained watching everything happening, but he couldn't do much to help.

He could only make sure that his mom didn't overdo it.

No matter what, Ephine still needed to eat and rest, or she would quickly exhaust herself to death. Repeatedly expanding your own mana wasn't very good after all. Everyone else didn't know how to help, and they could only watch on in silence. Some of the women tried their best to console Atar and Ephine, making them feel a little bit better. Even if they were just empty words, so what?

The power of words could be unimaginable at times.

As night fell, Ephine eventually collapsed. After making sure that everything was alright, Atar was sitting on his own, staring at the moon. He felt weak and useless. Both Ark and Ephine were suffering, yet he couldn't do anything to help them at all. To others, he was merely a child, and he shouldn't need to be strong at all, but Atar didn't think so.

He knew that something terrible was coming and that Ark was desperately trying to get stronger to face it. It was time he did so too.

With steady and determined steps, Atar walked over to the fifth cave of the Moonlit Caves. This level of the dungeon was called the Dark Jungle. As Atar approached the large door, he infused some mana into the mana circle, but nothing happened. It seemed like it deemed that Atar wasn't strong enough to enter.

Feeling unresigned, Atar poured more and more mana into the circle to the point where he even stimulated his bloodline a little.

The magic circle finally showed some reaction, and the door to the dungeon opened slowly. Atar felt slightly exhausted, but he still entered the dungeon with determination. As Atar stepped into the dungeon, he was met with an endless amount of dark brown trees. Along the trees, Atar could see thick vines growing everywhere, and strange plants flourished in the shade beneath the trees.

Although he was eager to fight and improve himself, Atar knew that this dungeon would be very dangerous. He was barely allowed entry, which meant that he would have a very hard time with the beasts and monsters within the dungeon.

Before he did anything reckless, Atar sat down on the ground and started recovering his mana. Mana was the basis of his strength. Even if he used it to reinforce his physical body, he was still using magic. After his mana was practically full, Atar stood back up, and cautiously entered the jungle in front of him. He kept his vigilance high and his steps were soft and barely audible.

He had learned from Ark to be cautious. Although Ark had also emphasised that he should never needlessly risk his life, Atar felt like this was different.

He needed to get stronger too, he couldn't always be protected. As Atar stepped foot into the jungle, he felt a strange sensation. For some reason, it felt like he was being watched by something. He stopped in his tracks to look around but found nothing. All he could see was the endless trees, plants and vines. There was no creature in sight.

Atar felt a little uneasy, it seemed like this dungeon level was a bit harder than he had thought.

After standing around and doing nothing for a while, Atar finally started moving again. Just when he did, his senses were screaming at him to dodge! With no time to activate his physical strengthening, Atar relied on his own body's strength to dodge to the side as fast as he could. From the corner of his eye, Atar could see a dark shadow approach him at an impossible speed.

Raising an arm and barely reinforcing it with magic, Atar felt a massive force strike him and he was sent flying into a nearby tree.

The tree snapped in two from the force, and Atar quickly stood up from the rubble. Although it hurt like hell, he wasn't injured severely. Thanks to his quick reactions the brunt of the attack struck his reinforced arm. Atar instantly activated his physical reinforcement to the max and covered his entire body, as he looked towards where he had been attacked from.

What he saw was something he had never expected.

From the crown of a tree, a strange monster made up completely of thick dark green vines climbed down in front of him. Its entire body was a huge tangle of vines, and it used some vines as appendages to move around. It was one of these vines that had attacked Atar out of the blue just now. He finally understood why he felt like he was being watched as soon as he entered the jungle.

It was this strange vine monster that had been keeping tabs on him.