From Thalin’s tone, Wulf guessed this wasn’t too unexpected—at least, not yet. From his own knowledge, yetis often hunted in packs.

  But that meant the yetis were hunting. Not just wandering the woods, caught by accident.

  “I’m gonna need to find a weapon soon…” he muttered.

  “Yes, you are,” Kalee whispered back.

  She wasn’t supposed to hear that.

  “Hey, you don’t have one, either,” Wulf whispered.

  “I’m working on it. But I have spell Skills. You don’t have anything.”

  Wulf narrowed his eyes. She was sorta right, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get creative.

  Three yetis jumped out of the forest, pushing between the trees and howling. One pounded its chest, and the others charged forward. Their pounding footsteps shook the ground, sending vibrations up Wulf’s legs.

  Wulf held out his arm, pointing his bracer at each of the yetis, and drew on the Field.

  There were two Low-Coal yetis, and one Low-Iron.

  He glanced at Kalee, then Thalin, who had done the same assessment. Low-Coals were stronger than he was hoping, but most good Ascendants could hit above their weight.

  “Alright, you two,” Thalin said, “These two are strong. It's best we back off.”

  An abrupt change of mind. Clearly, Thalin hadn’t been expecting them to be this strong.

  “Wait,” Wulf said. “We can handle it. If you take out the Iron, we’ll keep the Coals off you. I’ll get the one on the right, and Kalee can get the one on the left.”

  She nodded in agreement. “We came all this way. May as well do something.” She held out her hands and took a fighting position.

  The yetis charged, and Thalin unleashed his wave of flame, but it wasn’t broad enough to catch all three. As discussed, he aimed for the Iron. Just one Low-Coal for Wulf to deal with. Time to see how close he was to Umoch’s level, if nothing else.

  Wulf pushed open his coat and drew out two vials, then leapt aside, dodging the charging yeti from the right. He took the cork stopper out of one vial, the corrosive potion, and splashed it in the yeti’s eyes, then returned the vial to his pocket. He’d still need that glass.

  The yeti scrambled to a halt, scratching at its eyes with one hand while flailing about with the other. But it had been a weak potion, and nowhere near enough to melt the yeti’s face. It bought him time.

  He flicked the stopper off his second vial, then splashed the glowing green poison up into the air. It was a weak greenvein poison, but it would serve his purposes. Activating [Arm of the Alchemist], he located the potion, infused it with mana, and halted the droplets mid-air. He held up his hand to concentrate his focus, but though his practice with the Skill had slightly improved his mana control, he didn’t want control, now.

  He flicked his hand forward, and a hailstorm of droplets rained down on the yeti. He put all his force behind them, all his will, and they snapped down in a blink.

  Droplets of poison slit the yeti’s face and shoulders, or penetrated deep into its flesh. It fell face-first into the dirt, kicking up a wave of pine needles and debris. The yeti howled, but it wasn’t dead yet, and though Wulf had gotten poison into its body, such a weak greenvein poison would just give the yeti a head-cold.

  Wulf stretched out his hand, then, with the rest of the mana in his storage core, drew out his last spare vial from his pocket, manipulating the weak poison inside. Another low-quality potion he’d made before his encounter with Umoch.

  After this, he only had his hastily made speed potion left.

  But he’d make it count. He darted to the side of the flailing yeti, flask hovering beside him. It was a toxic-looking neon orange. He popped open the stopper and drew out a tendril of the liquid. If the yeti just ingested it, it’d make him nauseous, but Wulf had other ideas.

  He guided a tendril of poison around the yeti’s neck and tightened. The blind yeti, with stinging wounds all across its body, now, lurched back. Its legs kicked and thrashed. Wulf tightened his wrist, willing his potion tendril to tighten, crushing the yeti’s windpipe with all the mana he had left.

  The yeti collapsed into a heap, unmoving, dead. Wulf’s Skill sputtered out, and the potion scattered across the ground. Panting, he fell to his knees, and tucked the vial back into the pocket of his coat.

  Meanwhile, Kalee was handling her yeti, and Thalin was turning the writhing remains of his into ash.

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  Kalee had rolled up her sleeve, revealing a set of disc-shaped plates of copper strapped to her upper arm. Runes ran all along them. Instead of activating the rudimentary constructs, though, she plucked them off her arm and…consumed them. They just disappeared in her hand, turning to a puff of blue sparks.

  The sparks formed into a runic circle around her hand, indicating a spell Skill, and she slammed both her arms down like she was fluffing a bedsheet. A wall of invisible force struck the yeti from above, crushing it and pushing it down to the ground with immense force. Bones cracked, ice shards snapped, and the yeti howled.

  And the Skill ended. All it got was one burst of strength.

  Thankfully, she had two more small discs strapped to her arm. Barely wider than her bicep, which was already quite thin. Still, she consumed them one at a time, using them to crush the yeti with two more immense blows.

  It wasn’t a force from above…rather, from below. It was as if she was strengthening gravity in a patch beneath the yeti.

  On the third pulse, it stopped moving.

  At the same time, Thalin’s foe fell dead. Its fur had burnt to a crisp, its flesh melted away, leaving only a blackened skeleton.

  Both of them turned to look at Wulf.

  “How…?” Kalee breathed.

  “I’m just fast,” Wulf replied, crossing his arms.

  They both turned toward Thalin, who regarded them skeptically. He pointed his broom at them, then said, “You two are strange kids.”

  Wulf and Kalee shared a glance. They both snickered.

  After a few seconds, though, Wulf looked the mountainwatcher in the eyes. “Sir…I promise, I can Pilot golems. I’m not just a…potion maker.”

  “They’re called Alchemists, sonny,” Thalin said. He planted his broom down. “Say, though. I don’t mind you two being a little out of the ordinary. All these Academy pricks, just doing the same thing over and over again, going through the motions, never doing anything special. I could use a change. I myself never tried to be special, and look where that got me. Glorified janitor.” He sighed. “I won’t tell anyone, certainly not Langold. It’ll be our little secret.”

  Wulf nodded quickly. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Kalee added. She rolled down her sleeve. Wulf wouldn’t have noticed before, but now, he made out the faint edge of a metal disc strapped to her thigh as well—beneath her skirt and tights.

  “Can I…uh, take some of the yeti stuff?” Wulf asked, turning back toward the corpses they’d left behind. “For potion making. Alchemy.” Tufts of hair from powerful monsters could be a powerful alchemical ingredient, at least, according to his textbook, and the yeti’s ice spikes still weren’t melting in the milder weather. They must’ve been unusual, and he figured it’d make an excellent ingredient, too.

  “Take what you want,” Thalin said. “But be quick about it.”

  Wulf ran over to the yeti corpses—the Low-Coals, which hadn’t been incinerated in a wave of flame. He snapped the spines off their backs. They were cold to the touch, and unlike other icicles, they didn’t even get slippery in his hand. They weren’t melting any time soon.

  He stuffed one pocket full with ice spines. According to the Field, they were all Low-Coal grade, and he wasn’t exactly sure what he could use them for, but that didn’t really matter with his set of abilities. They’d melt with enough temperature, as shown by Thalin’s flame, and hopefully, become a perfect base for his next potion.

  Though…it was sorta disappointing to not have a way to control his results. He’d need to work on that. There had to be a way, right?

  When he was making potions for Kalee, he’d look into it. But for now, he just had to gather resources.

  He sifted through the yeti’s fur, looking for the cleanest, least mangy patches, before ripping it out and stuffing it into an empty vial. Same as the spikes, the fur was Low-Coal quality.

  Once he’d filled up his empty vials, he turned to face the others. “I’m good.”

  “We should head back,” Thalin said. “These three were looking for us, and with the clamour they made, I’m expecting to have more here any minute.”

  “These are…more aggressive than usual, right?” Wulf asked. “They only go after wagons because the noise angers them.”

  Thalin scoffed. “Correct. How’d you know that?”

  “I read it. In, a, uh, textbook,” Wulf said.

  Thalin shook his head. “Come along. We’ll head back now, and I’ll report this to the headmaster. He’ll send an expedition out to hunt them down properly if they’re this aggressive.”

  They turned around and continued back the way they came. As they walked, Wulf leaned closer to Kalee and whispered, “In the weeks before a demon attack, the local regular monsters would get agitated. Aggressive.”

  She exhaled slowly. “My thoughts exactly. I was…hoping we’d have a little more time to get ready, though.”

  “We can’t have changed enough to make the demon attack any different, right?” Wulf asked. “I still remember where the first was. On the outskirts of Arotelk.”

  Arotelk, one of the Istalis Academy’s satellite cities, wasn’t anywhere close to the size of some modern metropolises, but it was a good size nonetheless. And it had been the site of the first ever demon attack, too, in Wulf’s last life.

  One of the sites, at least. All over the world, stars fell from the sky, crashing in the countryside, and slaughtering nearby towns until the kingdoms and empires finally defeated them. But they’d just been the first wave.

  Arotelk had only been one casualty. The world had been in a golden age, at its peak, and that all came crashing down in a matter of hours. Academy Ascendants had tried to help Arotelk, but they’d been vastly unprepared.

  The sight of the destroyed city had angered Wulf beyond measure last time. It’d been the reason he actually started striving, despite his slow start.

  But this time…they could stop it from happening.

  “Eight-Nine,” Kalee said. “That was the date. Second Secondday of Eighthmonth.” Her face darkened, probably the same as Wulf’s had. Maybe even a little more. “We have about three weeks before it begins.”

  Wulf looked down. “I’ll do something about it. I have to.” He glanced at Kalee. “You’re with humanity, right?”

  “Who else would I be with?” She shook her head, and a distant pain shone behind her eyes. “I…suffered greatly at the hands of a demon in my last life. I won’t let that happen to others if it can be helped.”

  Wulf nodded. “I…might need to get myself in the cockpit of an Oronith much sooner than expected.”