Chapter 124: A decisive battle.
The wall of earth crumbled just as Ark turned around, and behind it, two humans glared at him. One male and one female, the humans had both drawn the swords that were once sheathed at their waists and were staring at Ark. From Ark\'s understanding, the woman was the one who had just tried to attack him, and Ark wasn\'t too happy about it.
Since he didn\'t want to end up an enemy of all the humans present and get drawn into the battle, Ark just chose to ignore them.
The humans were not going to just ignore him though. As Ark glanced at them with a little disdain, he started walking past them. When he was by their side, the woman swung her sword once again, this time she was aiming for his ribcage. Since this woman was so intent on killing him even though he had done nothing to provoke her, Ark didn\'t show any more mercy.
The woman wasn\'t particularly strong by any means, and when Ark turned to stare at her, he released all of his pent-up killing intent.
The woman\'s expression blanked, and she fell over on her behind. Her sword landed right beneath Ark\'s stomach, but he couldn\'t care less. From the woman\'s point of view, Ark looked like death incarnate, as her eyesight started to quickly blur. Though Ark didn\'t do anything too significant, the woman still had no way of fighting back.
Ark was a little surprised by her lack of strength, but this only saved him some trouble. Even though he kind of wanted to kill her, he didn\'t want to get the cub and mother to get drawn into trouble because of his petty reasons.
Well, if the male still wanted to kill him, then Ark would just kill them both and get it over with. That being the case, the man just quickly threw his sword on the ground and put his hands where Ark could see them. Seeing the man\'s resolve, Ark just walked straight past them and was going to join up with the cub and the mother.
When he was beginning to get close, Ark had a bad feeling and picked up his pace a little.
As he arrived where he had left them, Ark could see the mother facing off against three humans. The little cub was hiding behind a tree close by and was shivering from the atmosphere around the place. The humans consisted of three men dressed squires.
With their swords drawn, they had cornered the mother against a tree, and unless she used some strong magic, the getting out of their encirclement would certainly be hard.
Ark didn\'t like what he was seeing at all, and he instantly made his move. When the three squires were just about to push on, one of them suddenly stopped and slumped over. As his two companions checked on him, they could see an entire paw sticking out from his chest, before it was pulled out, only to reveal a giant hole. The man didn\'t even let out a single squeak before he was completely dead.
"HELP!"
One of the men didn\'t waste a single second and instantly called for help, this wasn\'t the time to try and be a hero when he saw the size of the wolf that had soundlessly killed his friend, the man even peed his own pants. The shout didn\'t stop Ark for even a second, as he instantly butchered the other two men right away.
Insulting or threatening Ark was one thing, but threatening or endangering those he cared about? That was equivalent to suicide if you weren\'t strong enough, and these people simply weren\'t.
The humans that were in the middle of battling the demons were alerted by the shout, and as the leader of them saw their men getting slaughtered, he couldn\'t just sit still. Even though he was already in his fifties, he was still vigorous enough to fight on the frontlines.
"Team Roland, take care of that wolf, we can take care of these filthy demons ourselves!"
The old man barked an order almost immediately, sending a team of five to take care of the wolf. This small team was led by a knight by the name of Roland. Even though he was just in his twenties, Roland was already level 80, and he was considered one of the strongest in his entire age group in the country. The four men under him were quite impressive as well, reaching an average of about level 60.
Though that was the case, to take on Ark, they were still a few years too young. When they arrived at the scene, they could only see their comrades mutilated corpses strewn about, as well as a very large wolf glaring at them intimidatingly.
When they saw the wolf standing in front of another female wolf, as well as a small wolf that was hiding behind a tree nearby, the 5 could roughly guess what had happened here. Even though they could almost state for a fact that this wolf had done nothing wrong, the five still had to take care of it, orders were orders.
They were currently at war, and disobeying military orders could even go as far as execution during war times, as the country had to be stricter with rules when they were at war.
Ark could see their determination, and he could clearly feel their strength as well. After using inspect, he could find out that the leader called Roland was level 81, and his friends were around level 60. Even though he was a little cautious of the leader, Ark was very confident in his victory.
If he could put up a bit of a fight against a variant cave giant that was level 96, then he was sure that he could take care of this knight and his goons.
Since they didn\'t want to make the first move, Ark took the matter in his own hands. Instead of rushing in, he was planning on using his magic to take care of all these people as fast as possible, and he didn\'t want to get too far away from the mother just in case more enemies arrived. Ark\'s eyes turned completely white, and he decided to unleash his white flames.
As his entire figure erupted in white flames, the temperature stayed the same for some reason.
Roland and his goons were taken aback by the fire, but they calmed down quickly. Roland was a bit more cautious since he couldn\'t feel any heat from the flames, which was odd for sure. The flames around Ark danced beautifully in the wind, but they weren\'t there just to look pretty.
With a sudden outburst, 10 white lances materialised out of the flames that covered Ark\'s body and headed straight fro the five humans in front of him. 12 of the lances flew towards Roland and the other 8 split into groups of two and headed for Roland\'s goons.
In these situations, dodging was usually the right call, at least for the goons, since the lances were too fast for Roland to be able to dodge all 12 effectively. When the goons were about to retreat and dodge, a wall made out of white flames suddenly ignited behind them, stopping them from retreating any further.
Roland was already in a defensive stance and was just about to use one of his skills when the lances arrived, but it was different for his goons. Since they were so intent on running away from the start, now that they had no place to run to, they couldn\'t deflect Ark\'s attack effectively.
Most of them only had the time to put up some rudimentary defences, which was just about enough to keep them alive. Unfortunately for them, the lances exploded upon impact, and they were sent flying backwards. Even though jumping quickly through a wall of fire sounds fairly harmless for people of their level, this wall of fire was a little different from ordinary flames.
The second they touched the white fire, their entire figures erupted with white flames, engulfing them all.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
"SAAAAVE MEEEEEEEEEE!"
"GET IT OFF MEEEE!"
Tragic screams quickly reached the other humans\' ears, and they managed to look over just in time to see their comrades being turned into ashes. Roland was far stronger than his goons, but he still had a rough time defending against these lances. Since he felt like he needed to meet them head-on to have a chance at survival, Roland used his signature skill [Meteor Strike] to try and fend them off.
Though his swordsmanship was splendid and his skill combined mana of both fire and earth into a strong attack, Roland still only managed to barely defend himself from the attack.
With his constant levelling, Ark\'s magic had grown considerably strong, and the better his affinities with fire and water grew, the stronger these white flames would become. Though they were only decent in the beginning, these white flames of his had already become one of his most powerful weapons.
When it came to attacking, these white flames were only weaker than his light and ice magic, depending on the circumstances of course. But his light magic wasn\'t actually that strong when it came to attacking compared to his white flames, at least not if he didn\'t use his envoy of holiness skill.
Light magic wasn\'t supposed to be used as offensive magic in the first place unless you were against the darkness element or undead for that matter. Light magic was better suited for support, healing and defence. That being said, in Ark\'s hands, light magic became a weapon of destruction as well, but in normal cases, it wouldn\'t be that effective.
With enough imagination, any element could definitely be destructive.
Though Roland was suppressed by Ark\'s splendid magic, he wasn\'t going down without a fight, especially not after Ark had just killed some of his comrades. Roland didn\'t care if they brought it upon themselves, he would get revenge for his comrades, it was as simple as that.