The Divine Wolf... or?

Chapter 129: Determination!

The sad reality hit him hard, and Ark fell back onto his behind. He had nothing to say about the situation, he just sat there, with a blank face, and stared. Their eyes were still open, horrific expressions still on their faces. Seeing the deep fear rooted within their eyes, Ark's heart started to ache even more than before. Not only did it hurt, but he felt inexplicably empty at the moment.

Everything that he had managed to create in this world was suddenly gone. The mother and her cub, Thufrat, they were all gone, bathed in their own blood.

Seeing all of this despair around him, it was like something resonated within Ark. It was weird, but seeing such suffering was not something he ever wanted to see. Not now, not ever.

Grief was trying to take him over, but before that could happen, another feeling exploded out of nowhere, one that was much more overwhelming than grief, rage! Calling him mad would be a massive understatement, and Ark was borderline rabid right now. As immense bloodlust was about to take him over, Ark could suddenly feel a presence of into the distance.

His immense rage and bloodlust was redirected, and Ark looked over to see who had done such a thing, or if there was a survivor that could tell him what happened. The presence that felt as strong as a mosquito suddenly revealed itself on the horizon. A woman clad in shiny silver armour appeared. Her long blonde hair fluttered in the air, shining brighter than even the sun behind it.

Behind her back, a pair of majestic white wings extended and flapped slowly.

The wings looked like they moved in slow-motion, yet they still generated such fierce winds, to the point of being able to mistake them for attacks just by themselves. The impression that Ark got from the woman was that of a deity, but before he could calm down, he spotted something else.

The wings on her back weren't perfect by any means, they even looked a little tattered, with multiple holes here and there. That wasn't what captured Ark's attention though, if anything, it was only something that he briefly noticed, before something much more striking captured his attention.

Blood. On top of the long golden sword that she held in her hand, there was an unimaginable amount of blood. Normally it would only drip a little, but from some reason, the blood seemed to flow as if it was a river. It would require a special type of genius to not connect the dots together, and Ark was fuming.

The twisted face of a beautiful woman sneered at him with disdain, as if she had done all of this to spite him.

Ark was preparing an attack, when all of a sudden, the woman raised her sword high above her head. It looked ordinary, and Ark wasn't able to sense any amount of force in her swing. Before he could underestimate the swing, he remembered that she had managed to kill all these people, as well as Thufrat, there was no way in hell she could be weak.

It wasn't like what he thought would matter in the end though, as the woman swung her sword in the next second.

All that Ark could feel was a certain aura, a crushing aura, an aura of something higher than him, something stronger than him. Ark wasn't able to move at all, much less put up a decent fight, all he could do was watch as she swung her sword. A blinding white light was all that Ark saw, with some droplets of red mixed in. Unimaginable pain was all around him, corrupting his mind entirely.

The murderous instincts he continually supressed resurfaced again, but it was all too late, as his vision went blurry, and he fell unconscious.

…

With another start, Ark abruptly stood up again. This time, he fell back down when he tried to pivot on his legs. To his surprise, he was back in his wolf form, which explained why he fell over when he tried to stand up. Before he thought any more about it, he quickly scanned his surroundings to look for the woman who had just attacked him.

As he scanned his surroundings, Ark was beginning to get a headache. Right now, from the looks of things, he was standing outside of the ruins again. Before anything else, Ark inspected his body, and found that nothing seemed to be wrong, he was feeling just like he felt before he entered the ruins.

He heaved a sigh of relief, but he didn't really calm down, there was no way that he could calm down after seeing something like that. There was no way that what he had seen had no meaning. The more he thought about it, the more Ark's fear started to grow. Even if he tried to supress it, it just came back stronger than before.

The biggest contributing factor as to why he felt that what he had seen was significant, was the pain that had yet to fade completely. Even if his body was the same as before, he could still feel the residual pain of the woman's attack. This told Ark that what he saw was more than some dream. But then, what did he see? And how did he manage to see what he did?

Ark had no idea, but he really wanted to find out.

Even if the idea of re-entering the ruins seemed off to him at first, for the sake of the people he cared about, he decided to enter the ruins again. After entering the familiar ruins, another surprise came his way, one that scared him even more. After he scanned the ruins, he couldn't seem to find the staircase even more, the one that he had used to descend deep underground.

Since he couldn't find it, Ark tried his hardest to calm down.

All of these events seemed so surreal to him, and he couldn't quite put his finger on any of them. What had truly happened? What was going on? There were too many weird things that had happened lately, and Ark was having a hard time processing what was going on. All he could think of was random theories, but there was no way for him to feel sure of any of them.

Maybe he had fallen asleep outside the ruins, and had a nightmare? That seemed a little unlikely though.

Maybe that weird creature had shown him some kind of illusion? He didn't really like the thought, since it seemed odd somehow. Maybe he had been shown a vision of the future? Even if it seemed even more unlikely, Ark couldn't help but be scared.

If that really was the case, then every single thing he cared about in this world would be taken from him, and from the looks of things, it wouldn't be too far away from now, as Thufrat didn't seem a lot older than he was the last time Ark saw him.

Even though Ark had no idea what had actually happened just now, he was very scared of the possibility that what he had seen was the future, and his stomach kept turning, as if it was trying to tell him something.

Whatever it was that Ark had actually seen, he never wanted to feel that helpless, and if he had truly seen the future, then that meant that war was coming, and it wasn't going to be pretty.

His determination that was once a little unsteady, quickly solidified at this moment. He wasn't sure what the future had in store for him, but if it was going to be even remotely close to what he had seen, then he would need to have the strength to subvert this fate, and allow his close ones to survive such a disaster.

And although Ark was no hero, he didn't want to see that many people suffer ever again, and if anything truly happened, then he wanted to be able to help, and put an end to such suffering.

With newfound determination, Ark left the desolate ruins, and started walking back toward the mother and her cub. As he walked, he realised another important piece of information, how long had he been gone for?

Just judging from how it looked outside, it didn't seem like he had been gone for a long time at all, but at the same time, it could have been day, weeks or even months, but just at the same time of the day. Though that was unlikely, Ark didn't dismiss the idea, and decided to sprint his way back instead of just walking.

As Ark was quickly leaving, a pair of eyes watched him from the shadows. If he was to look closely, maybe Ark would recognise this as the small creature that had led him to the ruins in the first place. This small creature was actually a pixie, a very rare creature that not many people had ever gotten to witness in their lifetime.

The pixie smiled as it watched Ark running off into the distance, before it slowly disappeared.