The Divine Wolf... or?

Chapter 151: A New Goal

Whilst Ark was sleeping happily for the first time in a while, Thufrat was in the middle of his journey. With some of is money, he had hired a fast horse and immediately set off for the forest. There was nothing else for him to do either way, so he just set off as fast as he could.

The days of just endlessly riding were quite long, and boring as well, but Thufrat just endured for the sake of arriving faster. He didn't want to let this chance slip by, as there was a chance that Ark could move away from this forest. Why would he stay anyways?

If there was no real reason for him to stay, then Thufrat had to be quick, if Ark left and he wasn't able to find him, then he would be quite annoyed. As he travelled, he passed by plenty of people, but there were no people who even looked at him when they passed. Even if he was used to it by now, it was still a bit of a pain in the ass to always be ignored wherever he went.

No matter what he did, no matter what he accomplished, people wouldn't give him the respect he deserved for it, he was a dwarf after all.

Of course, there was no way Thufrat would ever accept this fate of his, he would always strive to be the best he could, and be acknowledged accordingly. Sure, maybe it would be hard to earn recognition, but he truly wanted to find a way. For his own sake.

…

Multiple days passed in the blink of an eye, and Ark's life these past few days had been very nice. He had gotten plenty of sleep, and the nightmares that had been haunting him were beginning to calm down, at least when he was sleeping with his new family. Even though he wasn't Atar's real father, Ark felt like Atar was his own child, and he saw them both as his own family.

If this wasn't family, then Ark didn't know if he would ever find something which he could call a family.

Of course, these feelings of Ark's were not one-sided. Atar had never had a father figure in his life, and as far as he could tell, Ark was his father, who else would it be? Ephine wasn't as naïve as her son, but she liked Ark, and she had grown used to his presence during this time they had been together. He had not only given them names, but he had also protected their lives multiple times.

His presence was really reassuring, with him close, she felt safe.

Ark had no idea how they felt, but he knew that they didn't hate him at the very least, and he didn't really feel like asking. As Ark was thinking, he was suddenly struck by a sudden thought, was this really ok? He had grown too complacent and comfortable recently, and he needed to desperately get stronger.

The visions of war and death he had seen a while back were still haunting him, and he needed to be as strong as possible if he wanted to protect those he cared about.

With that said, Ark wasn't sure how he wanted to go about it. Right now, he was pretty strong, at least as far as he knew, but if tried to compare himself with the enemies he would need to face in the future, then he was practically nothing right now. Strength was pretty easy to gain, as all he needed to do was fight. The only problem was who he would fight, and where.

He couldn't just walk around and massacre every magical beast he came across, as they also had lives to live.

Killing other magical beasts for the sake of food was one thing, but fighting them with no other motive other than to get stronger was quite cruel. Since that was the case, the most efficient method he could think of was to explore a dungeon. The monsters in a dungeon was exactly that, monsters. They weren't magical beasts.

Sure, some magical beasts could be found in dungeons, but they had all had their minds twisted by the nature of the dungeon.

Since that was the case, then Ark would have no qualms about fighting to level up anymore. He had no problem whatsoever with exterminating monsters whose sole purpose was to murder others. At first, he was considering to go and explore one on his own, but after thinking about it, he felt that it was probably for the better if Atar and Ephine could gain some strength as well.

The strength he was longing for was going to protect them, but if they already had strength themselves, then he wouldn't need to worry as much.

Talking it over with Ephine and Atar was probably not going to take much convincing, as they had nothing better to do either way, and getting stronger was something everyone wished for, as it would always be helpful to be as strong as possible. Nevertheless, right now, they were all out to hunt food, and the talk could wait until later.

These last few days, they had made a habit of hunting by themselves. Even though it made Ark a little anxious in the beginning, they had to learn to fight in their new forms as fast as possible.

Even though they had only done it for a couple of days, their improvement was very fast, and they were already kind of used to fighting in these new shapes. They could still fight a lot better in their original bodies, but the gap was becoming smaller, which was the intent of this training in the first place.

Ark didn't really restrain himself when he hunted for food, and he set his sights on a large rhino-like creature, although it was big, Ark could handle it fairly easily, and it was dead within ten seconds.

This was way too much food for a regular human, but Ark was a magical beast, and he quickly devoured a large portion of the rhino, before he could hear other magical beasts approaching. Since he had eaten his fill already, he just left the corpse there, it would be too troublesome to deal with even more magical beasts, and he had no need for this food either, it was better if it wasn't wasted.

Since looking for Ephine and Atar would ruin the point of this training, Ark had nothing to do. Since that was the case, he just headed back to the cave for now. Inside of the cave, there wasn't really anything left for him to do, so instead of just standing around, Ark opted to just lay down on the ground and rest for a while.

Getting a break from his usual hectic lifestyle was like a blessing, and something that Ark truly cherished every moment of.

Whilst Ark was just lazing around, Ephine and Atar had also finished their hunting for the day. Much like Ark, they had nothing better to do, and since that was the case, they also just headed back to the cave. But unbeknownst to them, someone was quietly tailing them from afar.