The Divine Wolf... or?
Chapter 144: An eye for an eye.

The high-orc had a bad premonition as it saw Ephine gathering a scary amount of mana, but before it could do anything, her attack was already heading for its head. The high-orc wanted nothing else but to run away for its life, but it was too late to do anything now. The javelin that she had conjured up out of water magic was now completely crystallised, and it was flying straight for the orcs face.

The orc wanted to dodge the attack, but Ephine wouldn't let him.

Since she didn't want him to move, she just created wind pressure around him, keeping him contained in one place, making him unable to dodge the javelin. Since he had nowhere to run to, the orc started to panic. It didn't want to die yet, there were still tons of things it wanted to do, like raping, murdering and pillaging some more!

It wasn't satisfied yet, as it had grown quite fond of killing and raiding small villages.

The javelin didn't go straight through the orc as Ark had expected. Instead, the javelin exploded right in front of its face, sending small shards of ice flying straight into the high orcs face and body. The shards were tiny, but there were too many to count, and the orc instantly started to scream in agony.

Blood gushed from the thousands of small holes all over its hideous body, even ripping parts of it apart completely.

It was quite a horrific sight, but Ephine was angry, and she didn't want to let the orc off easy with a quick and painless death. The orc just kept screaming in agony, falling down to what was left of its knees, trying its hardest to keep from falling over. The agony of the orc didn't stop for a while, and when it did stop, the orcs heart did as well.

Ark didn't feel bad for the creature, and neither did Ephine, the orc deserved every second of the torture it experienced before it passed away. Not only that, but if it was possible, then Ark would've wanted to vent a little anger as well. But the orc was dead, and Atar was already feeling better. The shock from the pain was still there, but it would slowly wither away with time.

It pained Ark a little to see him like this, but since he knew that everything would be fine with some rest, he tried to not think too much about it.

Ephine had vented her anger already, and at this point, she had calmed herself down. There was still enough time to fight some more, but both Ephine and Atar were a little tired, and Ark decided that it was probably for the better if they just continued another day. There was no real hurry to get strong in a single day, at least not for them.

Ark on the other hand, was definitely anxious to get stronger. The visions he had seen down in the ruins were enough for him to desperately chase after more strength, and strive to improve himself.

There was nothing he was more scared of than losing what he had right now, and he would do practically anything to protect it. This peace he felt every day, whether he fought battles or not didn't matter to him, he still felt at ease as long as he was surrounded by people he liked, which he currently was.

Ephine and Atar were special to him, that was just a fact, and it would probably never change, at least not for no reason.

Even Ark had felt the feeling of friendship before, even in his old world, though it was short-lived. But one thing Ark had never experienced before was having a family. Though Atar and Ephine might not be his actual family or anything, Ark already felt like he belonged with them, and he had never felt the same before.

A feeling of belonging was something special, and it wasn't easy to replicate or substitute with something else, which was why Ark treasured it as much as he did.

Since staying next to a bloody corpse was pretty much inviting trouble, the trio left the scene behind, and wandered off into the woods. None of them were hungry, and there was pretty much nothing for them to do, so they decided to do exactly that, nothing. They found a nice place to sit down fairly quickly and then made themselves comfortable.

Atar wasn't in any sort of pain anymore, and so he was back to his normal happy mood, albeit a little more reserved than usual, but that was only natural.

After they had all seated themselves, they just started to chat with each other. There was no real subject they talked about, and they just talked about whatever they felt like. There was still time left for them in their human forms, and it wasn't like someone had a better idea at the moment either way.

Even though the conversation was a little stale in the beginning, it soon became a lot more relaxed, and everyone started to enjoy themselves.

Atar wouldn't usually be interested in conversations, but he certainly loved hearing Arks numerous stories, and it seemed like he never ran out of something cool to tell him about. Atar acted like the little child he was, and just eagerly listened, occasionally butting in to tell his own stories, stories he was really proud of.

All of them had a lot of fun for a change, and the usual sounds of roars and beasts fighting was replaced with humans talking and laughing.

Unfortunately, time was beginning to run out, and they didn't have much more than half an hour to talk left. Even if they could basically talk in their normal forms, it wasn't as convenient, and the conversations became slightly weird. In their wolf forms, they didn't talk, they communicated, and there was a slight difference between the two.

A casual conversation like this was a lot harder to execute.

As they were talking, a familiar sound broke the silence. Footsteps. Ark had heard this sound way too many times, and he knew that humans were approaching them. As they were in their human forms, Ark decided that it was probably for the better if they just stayed put and acted like nothing special.

Trying too much would only stand out, and he only told Ephine and Atar to not bother the humans that were passing by, as he didn't want any trouble right now.

Ephine didn't need a reminder, but Atar definitely needed one, as he wasn't good at acting, and he was definitely not really comfortable around humans yet, and Ark didn't expect him to be. It was odd for a magical beast to talk to humans, and as such, Ark knew that it was for the better if they just took things slow.

He didn't want to bring the two of them into a city if they weren't comfortable with humans, or even their own forms for that matter.

As he was a little lost in his own thoughts as usual, the humans that they had heard approaching finally stepped out from between some trees.