This year, ten years after being reincarnated, I was finally given permission to enter the Great Old Forest alone. Father had said it would be fine once I turned eight, but Mother firmly opposed it, so it got pushed back until I was ten. She did insist that I had to be back by evening, though.
So, during the two years from age eight onward, I decided to learn the "Flight" magic.
Wind-attribute flight magic alone only allowed straight-line movement, so I combined it with space-time attribute flight magic and levitation magic to create an original "Sky Flight" magic.
Using this Sky Flight, I flew to how far I'd gotten last time and continued exploring from there, building up experience that way.
After spending about half a year like that, one day I used "Exploration" to scan a ten-kilometer radius centered on myself and found two large reactions near the edge of the search range.
When I used Appraisal on those reactions,
Name…Golden Fenrir
Gender…Male
Rank…A
Species…Phantom Wolf
Name…Silver Fenrir
Gender…Female
Rank…A
Species…Phantom Wolf
…was the result. My current position was about twenty kilometers from the village, and the Monsters were less than thirty kilometers away. Moreover, they were gradually getting closer. Even within the forest, for beast-type Monsters, thirty kilometers would take no more than two hours to cover with ease.
Thinking that, and reasoning that at worst I could at least drive them away, I did my best to suppress my presence and approached from above, hoping not to be detected.
After flying for about ten minutes, I found them. I observed from about a hundred meters up, but both were dark in color and somewhat sluggish in movement. Perhaps because I'd been staring, I ended up making eye contact with one of them.
I regretted not launching a surprise attack to take them down in one blow, and while cursing myself, I dove sharply from above, planning a strategy of striking with magic and then immediately pulling back.
As I was about to fire the ice magic "Ice Lance," the same sensation I'd felt during the Slarin incident suddenly welled up inside me.
I quickly dispelled the magic, keeping myself ready to deploy a barrier at any moment, and descended to the far side of a tree roughly thirty meters ahead of the two wolves.
Without letting my guard down, I crept closer using the tree as a shield. Once I got close enough, I could see that both of them were around four meters in body length, their fur blackened by a massive amount of blood—I couldn't tell whether it was their own or spatter from something else.
The two wolves seemed wary but weren't showing any hostility.
We stared at each other for nearly five minutes from a distance of about fifteen meters. But the moment I steeled myself and moved to close the gap, the two wolves suddenly stood up and began growling toward their surroundings.
Startled, I leaped backward to create distance—but something lunged at me from the side, jaws gaping wide, right where I was about to land.
Instinctively, I unleashed the earth magic "Earth Needle," skewering it from beneath its head. The creature impaled on the spell turned out to be a B-plus-ranked Monster known as a Dragon Snake.
On its own, a Dragon Snake was already a B-plus-ranked Monster, and to make matters worse, this species typically hunted in groups. They usually roamed in packs of four to five, hunting prey together. In groups, their danger level rose to A through A-plus. Their total length was roughly seven to eight meters, and larger specimens could exceed ten meters.
Based on my earlier exploration, there were eight more hidden in the area, excluding the one I had just skewered. Even if I took to the sky, their whole-body jumping power easily cleared ten meters. If I mistimed it, they'd snap at my unprotected parts in a heartbeat. Better to take them down one by one while the two wolves were still around—assuming the wolves would fight alongside me.
And so, a chaotic battle erupted with the sudden intrusion of the Dragon Snakes.
(Three for me, five for the wolves—can I escape with those odds?)
I thought about it, but if I fled, the wolves would surely be killed. Worse still, if the Dragon Snakes weren't satisfied with just the wolves, there was a real danger they could attack the village itself.
(Why the hell are these Monsters all the way out here in the shallow part of the forest?!)
The Great Old Forest spanned an enormous area, and this spot—roughly thirty kilometers from the forest's edge—was still considered shallow. Normally, the Monsters here were only around C-rank. A-rank and B-plus-ranked Monsters should only rarely be encountered once you ventured over a hundred kilometers deeper.
Even as I thought this, I prepared to attack with magic, but the Dragon Snakes kept their distance from me, merely circling around to cut off my escape without actually charging in.
(What's their deal? Did they see me repel that one with magic and hesitate? Or do they have some kind of strategy...?)
"GYAAAN!"
Just then, I heard a wolf's cry of pain from behind me. When I turned, the wolves were losing ground. One had been knocked down by a body check, and the other was biting down on a Dragon Snake's head, crushing it—but another individual had sunk its teeth into its throat, leaving it on the brink of death.
Perhaps the three Dragon Snakes surrounding me saw my moment of distraction as their chance—they all attacked at once.
"Don't underestimate me!"
With a sharp shout, I deployed a barrier against all three, blocked their assault, and fired off three shots of the wind magic "Wind Cutter." The three Dragon Snakes' heads hit the ground the instant they landed, dead.
Perhaps they hadn't yet realized they'd been cut apart—the heads and torsos of the three Dragon Snakes were still moving—but Tenma ignored them and ran toward the wolves.
Of the wolves near the corpses, two had perished: one with its abdomen torn open, the other with its skull crushed.
"Take this!"
Tenma fired Air Bullet at the three surviving Dragon Snakes from an angle that wouldn't hit the wolves, launching compressed-air projectiles at them.
The one clamped onto a wolf's neck took a three-centimeter hole through its head. It didn't die instantly, but the searing pain and shock left it writhing on the ground. It wouldn't last much longer.
The remaining two had been just about to lunge at the fallen wolf when the Air Bullet caught them off guard. Spotting that the other six had already been killed, they turned tail and fled in an instant.
Tenma checked on the wolves. The one whose throat had been bitten was already dead, and the one lying on the ground could die at any moment.
Seeing that excessive blood loss and injuries had rendered even recovery magic ineffective, Tenma approached intending to at least put the wolf out of its misery—only to notice something odd.
Its belly was swollen. Not from being fat. He had briefly wondered if blood had pooled inside, but then he realized his mistake. Its teats were swollen with milk. Which meant there was a baby.
As Tenma was thinking this, the wolf began to strain with all its strength. Labor had begun.
Tenma kept watch over the wolf while staying alert for any other carnivores that might approach.
Roughly ten minutes passed from the time the wolf began straining. A single white pup was born.
The wolf was clearly in critical condition and could barely move its body, but it managed to shift its face and eyes slightly, gazing at Tenma.
When their eyes met, Tenma quickly scooped up the pup and held it out in front of the wolf.
Unable to move at all, the wolf stuck out its tongue and, mustering every last ounce of strength, began cleaning its child.
Once it had finished licking the pup clean, it looked at Tenma again. Tenma carried the pup over to the wolf's teats, and the pup latched on desperately, drinking its mother's milk.
By the time the pup finished nursing, the wolf had already passed away with a look of contentment on its face.
Tenma placed the two wolf corpses and the six Dragon Snake corpses into his Dimension Bag, then picked up the pup and made it his Familiar.
"I'll be your family now, in place of those wolves."
With those words spoken to the pup,
"Your name is... Shiro... that's right,
Shiromaru
!"
"Kyuu~n"
"Nice to meet you, Shiromaru!"
And so, Tenma gained a new Familiar... no, a new family member.
This time, Tenma gained a new Familiar.
I had originally planned to make both parent wolves Familiars, so that by the time he noticed, another one would have quietly joined as well — but both parent wolves were already dead.
Please look forward to the exploits of the wolf pup, now known as Shiromaru!
--- Status ---
Name: Shiromaru
Age: 0
Species: Phantom Wolf (Golden Fenrir × Silver Fenrir)
Title: Tenma's Familiar
HP: 100
MP: 200
Strength: please don't get your hopes up
Defense: same as above
Speed: how should I put it
Magic Power: what's that, is it delicious?
Mental Strength... I have no idea.
Growth Rate... I'll do my best!
Luck... hasn't come up yet
Skills... Negation 10, Pampering 10
Blessing... The Cage of Devotion
Something like that.