"This porcupine’s quills are extremely venomous! Everyone, be careful!"
Flora Bloom shouted to her scattered companions as she released Three-Eyes.
Three-Eyes seemed thrilled by this environment. Upon receiving Flora Bloom’s command, it opened its third eye and attacked the porcupine.
The porcupine was incredibly fast. It was hard to imagine that a creature with such a large, seemingly clumsy body could move quickly enough to dodge the attack from Three-Eyes’s third eye.
However, it had underestimated Three-Eyes’s attack. When Saul Sterling had previously used his superpower to probe Three-Eyes, the creature’s attack had locked onto the superpower itself, tracked Saul Sterling down, and struck him.
Three-Eyes fired two attacks in total.
The porcupine, thinking it had dodged the attack, was about to charge toward Flora Bloom and the others. Suddenly, two beams of brilliant white superpower light slammed into its body. The power was immense, piercing straight through its thick, sturdy frame. The second beam quickly caught up to it as it moved.
This blow shattered the porcupine’s head completely. Just like that, the massive, powerful porcupine collapsed beside them, lifeless.
Confirming the porcupine was dead, Flora Bloom started forward to collect the carcass for her storage space. ’After all,’ she thought, ’a porcupine this large... once we remove the venomous quills and thick hide, the meat is fatty and delicious. That’s the meat for our first dinner back at the base sorted.’
And then, the unexpected happened.
An even larger black wolf sprang from out of nowhere, lunging violently toward Flora Bloom. No one had sensed its approach—not even Flora Bloom herself.
Everyone thought she was done for—that if the blow didn’t kill her, it would at least leave her seriously injured. But all they saw was Flora Bloom instinctively clutching her stomach, eyes shut tight, as the giant wolf flew over her head. And then, a voice echoed in her spiritual link.
"Master, be careful!"
’Master? Be careful?’
Flora Bloom got to her feet. She saw that the giant wolf hadn’t been aiming for her at all; it had pounced on a brown bear that had suddenly charged out to attack her. The wolf’s first strike was a success—it tore a huge chunk of flesh and brown fur from the bear’s shoulder.
"ROAR!"
The brown bear roared in pain and was about to retaliate furiously, but the giant wolf, refusing to be outdone, leaped forward again, sinking its teeth into the bear’s thick neck and holding on.
Blood poured from the brown bear’s neck. Driven by a powerful will to survive, it swiped its massive, sharp claws at the giant wolf’s stomach.
"ROAR!" Not to be outdone, the giant wolf put sudden force into its front paws. One claw plunged into the bear’s eye, while the other, combined with the crushing force of its jaws, tore the brown bear’s head clean off.
However, its failure to dodge left a deep gash on its own abdomen.
Flora Bloom watched the giant black wolf. Now, it was acting like a well-behaved dog, sitting before her and licking the blood from the fur on its paws before starting to tend to the wound on its abdomen.
"You’re... that War Wolf Clan cub?"
The giant wolf wagged its tail at Flora Bloom and let out a happy "AWOO," as if to say she had guessed right.
"Little Wolf? How have you gotten so big in just a week? This is..."
Flora Bloom took out some spiritual water to heal the cub’s wound, but just as it was about to touch him, he dodged it.
"Master, I don’t need spiritual water!"
The wolf cub just used its claws to tear open the massive bear’s hide and, to her surprise, began to devour the bear meat in huge gulps.
And as he ate, the noticeable gash on his stomach actually began to slowly heal.
’Replenishing one’s energy and healing injuries by consuming the life essence of flesh and blood... Flora had never seen anything like it. But why wouldn’t the cub let her help him heal? Why would he rather heal slowly on his own?’
"Master, we of the War Wolf Clan grow extremely quickly! We are born to fight, and we are sustained by battle; combat is how we grow. The life force in living flesh is rich. At my current stage, it’s more than enough to fuel my early development, and this meat is sufficient to heal my wounds!"
’As expected of the War Wolf Clan. They grow through combat, and can even use the flesh of their prey to heal.’
The cub ate for half an hour, devouring more than half of the brown bear—its appetite was clearly enormous. Flora Bloom had specifically asked him to leave the four paws. The cub had already eaten the bear’s gallbladder and heart, so Flora Bloom collected the hide, the hard bones, and all the remaining untouched cuts of meat, tossing them into her storage space.