“Haha! We’re going to make a fortune this time!”
Gray’s unrestrained laughter rang out. He was covered in wolf blood, looking utterly wild.
The bounty on a single wild wolf was three silver coins. At least six or seven wolves had died under Gray’s sword this time, which was already comparable to their gains from the past five days combined.
A cold arc of light flashed, and Gray chopped off the front left leg of a wild wolf that had been trying to ambush his neck.
The unlucky beast let out a whimper and collapsed to the ground, blood spraying from the wound on its foreleg as its aura rapidly weakened.
Seeing this, Zeliel’s eyes lit up.
This wolf wasn’t dead yet!
If he dealt the final blow himself… would he gain experience points?
He was just worrying about having nowhere to level up.
No sooner said than done!
Zeliel stirred his mana and precisely outlined the spell structure for Fireball in his mind.
To ensure a fatal blow, Zeliel poured in as much mana as he could.
The entire casting process took about five seconds.
A scorching flame ignited in Zeliel’s palm. Then he aimed at the wild wolf… and fired!
The temperature of the air rose slightly. A brilliant streak flashed past, striking the wolf directly in the thickest fur around its neck.
The mana impact contained within the Fireball blasted apart a portion of flesh and skin, then ignited the wolf’s fur, causing it to burn fiercely!
The wolf, already on its last breath, suffered this calamity on top of everything else. The intense pain of losing its foreleg and being burned by flames overlapped, making it twist and flop on the ground like a grass carp, letting out miserable howls. Very soon, it fell silent.
First blood!
Zeliel beamed with delight.
Just as he had guessed, after killing the wild wolf, the experience points on his attribute panel increased.
Lv.1—Lv.2. Level up!
An indescribable force surged into his body, then spread through his limbs and bones.
A layer of illusory blue light that only he could see appeared before Zeliel’s eyes.
Four attribute points were waiting to be allocated, and the originally gray innate skills had also been unlocked.
“Spell Surge” and “Heavenly Spellform Derivation.”
Zeliel hesitated for a moment, but in the end, he chose “Heavenly Spellform Derivation”!
【Innate skill “Heavenly Spellform Derivation” has been unlocked.】
Suddenly, beneath Heavenly Spellform Derivation, a progress bar emerged.
Great Creation Art, analysis progress—0%.
Zeliel was slightly stunned.
Great Creation Art…?
What the hell was that? It sounded pretty amazing.
But had anyone released that magic in front of him just now?
There was no time to think too much about it. With a thought, Zeliel allocated all four attribute points into Spirit.
His Spirit attribute rose from 67 to 71.
There was no helping it. Although Heavenly Spellform Derivation depended heavily on Intelligence, as a mage, the Spirit attribute was absolutely the top priority.
Otherwise, even if he learned more magic, what use would it be if the spells had no power when cast?
Even the strongest mechanics needed stats to support them.
With the increase of four Spirit points, Zeliel clearly felt the Source Seed circulating a little faster, and his spell power rose correspondingly.
He revealed a satisfied smile.
In any case, he had finally and officially stepped over the threshold of becoming a mage. With an innate skill like Heavenly Spellform Derivation, the path to growing stronger would save him a great deal of trouble.
Gray, who had originally been about to go over and finish off the wild wolf, froze for a moment, then turned to glance at Zeliel.
Zeliel smiled apologetically.
Sorry, stole the kill.
In the following battle, Zeliel had no further chance to intervene.
Marcus and Gray basically killed with one strike, and Valles’s arrows left no survivors either.
This nighttime raid ended very quickly. The wolf pack abandoned a dozen or so corpses and fled the scene in panic, darting into the dense forest.
There were quite a lot of them. No wonder the nearby villagers had issued a commission to the Adventurers’ Association. If they gathered together to attack a village, casualties would be inevitable.
“Pretty sharp, kid.”
Gray wiped away the mixture of blood and sweat on his forehead. “You’ve already learned how to pick up leftovers.”
“Sorry, I just cast it on reflex…” Zeliel said.
“It’s fine. No need to be polite with me. This wolf counts as yours. For your first mission in life, a little extra gain is always a good thing.”
Gray grinned. “Do you feel it now? This is the charm of adventuring. Three silver coins—that’s a laborer’s pay for a whole day, and you handled it with just one Fireball.”
The party began cleaning up the battlefield. Marcus selected wolf corpses whose pelts were still relatively intact, while Valles pulled arrows out of the bodies.
Some arrowheads had not been worn down much. If the blood was wiped clean, they could still be used again, saving another bit of money.
Gray hung a wolf corpse upside down from a tree branch and used a small knife to cut a ring-shaped incision around the ankle of its hind leg.
The skinning knife followed the ring-shaped cut downward, slicing precisely to the position of the anus, then turning toward the other thigh.
After that, Gray began peeling the wolf hide away from the hind leg.
His movements were very steady. One hand gripped the already-cut flap of hide and pulled downward with force, while the other held the skinning knife, carefully using the blade to sever the fascia and fat connecting the skin to the flesh.
“Zeliel, come give me a hand. Lift this leg,” Gray said.
With the two of them working together, the hide on the wolf’s hind leg was soon peeled off whole like a sock.
Then came the torso. The skinning process was filled with the dull sounds of fascia being torn and the sweet, bloody stench of flesh exposed to the air.
Zeliel felt his stomach churn, but he forced himself not to turn his head away.
He knew this was a skill he had to learn.
The commission issued by the Adventurers’ Guild only placed a bounty on the wild wolves’ lives; a left ear was enough as proof to claim the reward.
As for the remaining pelts and other materials, the party was free to keep them and sell them on their own.
An undamaged wolf pelt could sell for around three or four silver coins. For low-level adventurers, this was also an important source of income.
Just now, the party had killed a total of fifteen wild wolves, and there were several corpses with intact pelts worth skinning.
This unexpected windfall even added a trace of joy to Marcus’s usually stern expression.
Gray began making the first cut at the hind leg of the final wolf corpse.
His movements were clean and efficient, filled with the beauty expected of a veteran. By comparison, Zeliel looked much clumsier.
His task was to grip the already-cut flap of hide and pull it backward with force while Gray cut through the fascia, creating a taut surface for him.
But the work was more strenuous than he had imagined. The slippery fat clinging to the wolf hide made his hands feel as though they had been coated in oil, and several times, he nearly lost his grip.
“Hold it tighter, Zeliel!”
Gray gave instructions without raising his head. “Yes, keep that amount of force… Those hands of yours don’t look much like a mage’s.”
From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Zeliel’s hands. There were thin calluses on the knuckles, and the veins on the backs of his hands stood out clearly. One glance was enough to tell that he had endured hardship.