The Divine Wolf... or?

After having a sumptuous lunch, they all decided to split up again. Although Ark had gained a few stat points from levelling up, the amount was fairly negligible for now. Since he wanted to level up as fast as possible, Ark decided to start hunting between the first and second zone of the dungeon. The difficulty was naturally a bit higher, but Ark felt like that was actually a good thing.

His strength had skyrocketed lately, which was obviously a good thing, but it also had some natural downsides. His raw strength was naturally higher than before, but his combat experience wasn't. Although beating someone down using overwhelming power is relatively easy, defeating someone using lesser power isn't.

That was something Ark definitely needed to work on. This was also one of the main reasons he decided to fight stronger enemies. The enemies between the first and second zone were definitely stronger, but Ark decided to use the same amount of strength he used earlier.

This naturally trained his mana manipulation, but since he also spent a lot of time in his human form, he also trained his swordsmanship. Training was a lot more effective against actual enemies compared to doing it by himself, which was why his skills levelled pretty rapidly.

After training for another 2 hours or so, they all met up with each other again. To Ark's surprise, it seemed like everyone else had gotten some considerable gains that day, at least compared to what they would usually get in a day. With new equipment and harder enemies, everyone was excited to get stronger gradually.

The best way of obtaining strength was naturally through training oneself and fighting. A gradual increase in strength also felt much better than just getting a sudden power-up.

If you gradually got stronger, you would be able to control your strength pretty easily, the opposite of what would usually happen if got a lot stronger all of a sudden. In that case, you would still have to spend time adjusting to your newfound strength, and fighting an enemy while you're not accustomed to your body would usually lead to instant death.

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Although Ark felt like he had found a great way of getting stronger, the biggest winner of the day was actually Atar. With his new equipment, he could be more offensive and playful whilst fighting, which was in tune with his nature. If he refined it a bit more, he would be able to find a natural fighting style that was suited to him, which would in turn make him a lot stronger.

There was a considerable amount of force contained within his small stature, if he learnt how to use it efficiently, he would eventually become a real force to be reckoned with.

Ark could already feel a slight change in Atar's aura, which made him a little ecstatic. If there was one of them who needed to get stronger the most urgently, it would definitely be Atar. With that said, they left the dungeon in a great mood. They had all found their temporary paths, the only thing left to do now was walk down them.

When they got back in town, the first thing they did was return to the mansion. Before doing anything else, they needed to relax for a bit and unwind. Since Ark had levelled up 3 times, he just put the points into his intelligence. Although it didn't change much for the moment, there was no real point in holding onto them, and he still got stronger, no matter how little.

As he looked at his status, he had a vague feeling that he was going to evolve soon, something which he looked forward to.

Evolution was an elevation of being and usually led to an incredible increase in strength, who knew what benefits he would get from his next evolution? Maybe he'd see another massive increase in strength, maybe even an increase in elemental affinity.

To Ark, the strength gained from evolution was something he looked forward to way more than something like levelling up, since it was more of a qualitative increase after all.

Since they all needed some time to relax and digest what they had learnt today, they all just kept to themselves for a bit. Even though he was supposed to relax, Ark just kept practicing with his magic circles. At this point it had basically become a bit of a habit, and he had a lot of fun just experimenting with them, something that would definitely come in handy later.

One use of the magic circles that he had figured out through experimentation was the mana gathering circles that he could now create. Although he could only make them gather a specific element, he could make one for every element.

Normally a mana gathering circle was fairly useless, but since Ark needed to absorb mana for his mana body, they could prove very useful to speed up the process, something which Ark appreciated a lot. If he kept levelling the skill up, he would eventually be able to create mana gathering circles that gathered mana of all the elements, and at a much greater speed too.

Of course there were other uses of mana circles, especially after levelling the skill up even more, but for now, that was the greatest use Ark had for the skill.

Whilst Ark was training his magic circles, the rest were all busy with their own things. Ephine was training her mana manipulation, no matter how high the level of the skill, she still trained it relentlessly. Her best advantage in combat was her great control over mana, something which she wouldn't give up on.

If she got complacent and stopped training as a result, then her advantage would soon naturally disappear.

Thufrat wasn't really training, he just sat silently, staring out into space. He looked like he was just relaxing like he was supposed to, but in reality, he was working hard too. Although he wasn't the smartest, he was trying his hardest to come up with good strategies to beat the opponents he had found in the dungeon. Today had been a bit of an eye-opener for him.

If he had the right strategy, he was sure he could beat his adversaries, but if he just ran in head first, he would probably suffer once more.

Normally, Atar would be the only one of the four who wasn't doing anything other than having fun, but after seeing Thufrat come back covered in injuries earlier, he had been shocked. He had never really noticed it before, but he could sense from Ark's desperation that something was coming, something he wouldn't be able to help with.

Although he was still young, he could think for himself, and he really didn't want anything to happen to this family of his.

Even if he couldn't protect this by family himself, he could at least make sure that he wasn't a burden to them. With that thought at the back of his head, Atar started practising more intensely than he had ever practised before. Well, it wasn't like he had ever really practised hard before anyways.