A shadow rushed between two Forbidden Forest trees, cruising through the forest, zig-zagging among the trees. The figure seemed to know its way around the woods as they sprinted through the woodlands without losing much speed while twisting, turning, and jumping through any obstacle that presented itself in the path.
"This! Feels! Great!"
Quinn didn't know his way around the Forbidden Forest woodland; sure, somewhere in his mind, he had the layout of trees he had seen memorized, but Quinn never accessed or immersed those memories; it was inefficient for him to do so.
So how could he move through a densely packed forest with plenty of short-range altitude obstacles? The answer was pure athleticism — an elevated level of athleticism enabled by the use of body magic.
"These enhancements are mad!" he grinned as he spun to the side to avoid a tree, and then without missing a beat, he kept running.
Quinn was a fifteen-year-old with an above-average base physique granted to him by genetics. He exercised regularly without fail and took care of his body; as such, Quinn was the most physically fit among his weight class. His jogging speed was higher than others' sprinting speed. And currently, that person was accessing ninety percent of his total physical capability.
He kept running, running, and running. Quinn didn't stop, which was unusual as he couldn't keep running for this long, even at his ninety percent.
The answer was once again body magic.
There were two different ways a user could improve their body magic skills.
First, they could increase their percentage accessible throughout the board and enhance every category simultaneously. Quinn had employed this method to get himself access to ninety percent of his physical capabilities. But that was it — ninety percent was Quinn's limit; he couldn't push it above ninety as his magic failed due to instability. He didn't have the skill to bring his body above ninety percent.
He had reached a cap — a cap that restricted his progress, and Quinn didn't like his progress to be hindered, so he set on looking for ways to kickstart his progress so that he could continue to grow.
And from that came the second method.
Body magic was divided into five broad categories: Speed, Strength, Endurance, Durability, and Reflexes.
For Quinn to reach ninety percent, he had to access ninety percent in all five categories. He had done that and thus had reached his current limit, and that's where the second method kicked in — if he couldn't pull all five at the same time, how about tackling the five categories one at a time. One was much easier than five. Quinn didn't have to corroborate five different sets of magic and only work with one-fifth load — that was something he could work with.
Thus he started working using the second method. According to the instructions, he targeted one of five — Endurance: the ability to sustain the prolonged physical effort.
The start was slow: the first step along the way was to push his natural endurance above the ninety percent he had complete control over. The last ten percent was a tricky block to cross; his human body showed resistance against his wishes. The limit that could be achieved by pure physical exercise was eighty percent, with the last twenty percent reserved for life-and-death situations. Quinn had already encroached half of that reserve, and his body wanted to keep the remaining for its original purpose — for emergencies.
To perform any magic, the user needed to believe that what they were doing worked — During his occlumency shields build, he had believed that his hexagon design would be solid and stable. While understanding took care of the actual functionality behind the magic, it was imagination that took shape to that functionality.
So it was a slight problem when his physical instincts "believed" that the last ten percent of his physical capabilities wasn't there at all, that there wasn't anything to access, and Quinn was already working with hundred percent. Talk about a wrench in his plans. It took Quinn a lot of time and effort before he could override that physical instinct that limited him.
He did them all while channelling magic, trying different ways to mold magic to gain desired effects by running, shovelling ground, boxing, and whatnot. The result was access to one hundred percent of his stamina. He could keep doing things longer, much longer than his non-magical-base sixty percent.
Now, as Quinn ran, he passed the cautious acromantula infested area, the troll clearing, and kept running. Soon he reached yet another clear area — it was dark as the surroundings' canopy was so outreaching that they covered the sky above the clearing.
"Finally," said Quinn, leaning forward as his hands on his thighs supported his body. "Oh boy, didn't think maintaining a hundred and twenty percent of stamina would require that much control."
No matter how hard Quinn trained, he couldn't keep running at speeds closer to sprinting than jogging for a dozen minutes. To achieve that, he needed to surpass the natural hundred percent limit and enter the realm of magical augmentation.
"As expected," he mused, "I can only augment my stamina by thirty points over the all-around ninety percent. Anything above that will collapse the magic."
As the name suggested, body magic was magic and thus supernatural. It allowed Quinn to go above hundred percent and enter levels not achievable by his body. To achieve it, instead of his body, his magic covered anything above a hundred.
Currently, he could only make his magic cover thirty points on his muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance (ability to transport oxygen throughout the body).
"Yeah, this was the right decision," affirmed Quinn, standing up straight, "Going with augmentation rather than hundred across the board. This will be a better fit for me."
When Quinn reached the ninety percent block, he was presented with two choices. The first was to get every individual stat to a hundred and then learn to manage all five on a hundred percent before entering the field on augmentation. The second choice was to get one stat to a hundred and then learn to artificially (magically) augment and repeating that with every stat before moving on to merging them to push his entire physical above its full capabilities.
Both were equally apt, but Quinn went with the second as he thought if he learned to augment, it would be easier to grasp how to merge and manage all five when he learned it.
"Alright, then, let's move on," said Quinn, ending his body magic thoughts, "now, where am I.. ."
He looked around, and there wasn't much to see except for a tree-free area surrounded by many trees.
"Well, let's move on, I guess."
He took in a deep breath and checked how long his body could take getting its endurance augmented; body magic had its limits — out of the one hundred and twenty percent that he was pulling, a hundred was his body's natural endurance, and the magic would stop if he went lower than a certain point.
"Hmm.. . without a rest, I can go another fifteen minutes," he formulated. "Let's go —"
Suddenly, Quinn felt someone was staring towards him. His attention to his surroundings peaked, and he looked around to see what had triggered his senses. His dark vision eyes peeled through the darkness.
"Found it," he whispered. It was very faint, but Quinn caught it among the tall grass and bushes present on the base of trees.
He slid his hand from left to right for an arc of water to manifest in the air. He snapped his fingers for the water arc to become razer thin and cut through the air towards the one who was watching him. The razer sharp water cut through the tall grass and bushes, but there was no one there.
"Hiding behind the tree, huh."
Magic concentrated in front of him as Quinn cast a potent piercing spell; he was going to nail the offender by going through the tree. But just as he was about to unleash the attack when he heard a growl behind him. Immediately, Quinn raised his left hand behind him and initiated a spell that could disintegrate flesh and bones on contact while holding the piercing spell in his right.
He looked back, and his eyes weren't already diluted; they would've diluted to their fullest as ten feet away from Quinn stood a wolf, and Quinn could immediately tell that this wolf was of a magical species as even while on four legs, the wolf's height came to his chest.
Quinn heard a rustle where he was about to shoot the piercing spell, and he turned his head just enough to see another gigantic wolf walk out into the clearing.
"Why do you invade our land?"
The second he heard the words, Quinn's eyes widened, and he immediately cut the supply of magic to his spells and instead charged a brand new spell and shot it towards the wolf closer to him.
The aurora blue spell hit the wolf right in the face, and Quinn watched in anticipation to see the effects, but nothing came. The wolf, other than being startled, stood there unaffected.
"Huh? why didn't it —"
Quinn didn't have time to finish his sentence as he heard a roar from the second wolf behind him. He turned to see the enormous wolf charging towards him with a snarl. The sight of the giant wolf was scary, and Quinn didn't want the wolf anywhere near him.
He tapped his foot on the ground once, and his magic responded as metal chains with cuffs shot out of the earth and snapped around the running wolf's ankles. The wolf's speed was so high that it didn't get time to stop in time, and the chains became taut, pulling all four of its legs, causing it to slam onto the ground.
Quinn didn't have time to celebrate. He turned back and saw that the first startled wolf had recovered and had just pushed the ground to charge Quinn. He breathed out, and a large strip of earth between them froze over. And from the layer of ice covering the ground, dozens of big gnarly spikes shot out with crunching and crinkling noise.
The wolf didn't seem bothered as it continued to charge, and the moment its front paws came one step within the iced region, the wolf planted its feet before taking a might leap.
"Oh, shiiit!" uttered Quinn, his eyes wide as he saw the wolf's feral face and sharp bite coming towards him.
He raised both of his to the front of him and cast. The air in front of his hands seemed to thrum in power as a circular ring distorted in front of Quinn.
「Viking's Charge」
It was a spell Quinn had learned from the Nordic book of Vikings he got from Denmark. It took him a lot of time to translate Younger Furthak for this spell into English to finally get the information on the spell's working.
The circular air ring shot the wolf and pushed him back like the wolf's frame did nothing. The wolf went flying back and yelped when it hit the ground. With the force it was shot, the wolf rolled on the ground and skid in an effort to stop himself, but the task was arduous as it took a lot of effort to get back on its feet.
But once again, didn't have time to gain with this one as the second wolf had freed itself from Quinn's chains and was already inbound for Quinn. It ran straight at Quinn with a feral shine in her eyes.
"So fast!" commented Quinn. He pulled his hand back before fully pushing the hand solid. And the magic seemed to be in sync as a thick pillar of ground projectile along with a feral for growl.
It was an instant for the wolf; the pillar shot out of the ground and hit it in the jaw. A painful yelp sounded out as the wolf rolled backward from the force.
"Stop!" yelled Quinn, raising his hands towards each wolf, "Let's talk!"
The wolf, which had been blasted in the face with the Viking's Charge, snarled at the hooded and masked human in front of him. "You attacked first, human! Why stop now? I won't stop till I get your neck in my jaws!"
"I apologize; I was startled," said Quinn, his voice distorted. He wanted the fight to stop because of his initial spell failure.
The wolf, who had been hit in the face with a pillar, finally got up, and this spoke in a female voice, "Let's see what the human has to say."
The male wolf snarled indignantly before walking over to the female wolf while keeping a vigilant eye on Quinn.
"What do you want, human?" asked the she-wolf.
Quinn stared at the two gigantic wolves, and he couldn't believe that they were standing in front of him.
"You two aren't Animagus."
The first spell he had shot was an Animagus cancellation spell that would revert a magical into their human form. Quinn knew that there were no wolves in the forest because there weren't any records of a native wolf species, so when he heard the wolf speak up, he thought that someone had figured out how to speak while in their animal form.
"Animagus, what's that?" asked the male wolf cautiously.
But it turned out that the records weren't true or at least incomplete.
Quinn stared at the wolves, observing the two grey wolves with curious eyes. "Do the two of you know your ancestry?"
The two wolves' body language immediately became defensive. The vigilance in their eyes deepened.
Quinn noticed that, and behind his mask, he smiled, "So you do know. I can't believe that I'm seeing your kind, especially here in the Forbidden Forest.. . Tell me, are you direct-progenies or descendants?"
"Y-You —! Human, you know about our kind?" spoke the female wolf. In their entire lives, they were told that their kinds were scarce in number.
"I've heard about you," replied Quinn, "answer my question, or you direct progenies or descendants?"
The two wolves exchanged glanced at each other before the female wolf answered, "Descendants."
"Fascinating!" voiced Quinn. "Is there any difference between you and the direct progenies?"
"We don't know.. . there hasn't been a direct in our tribe since our first ancestors. Other than them, we all have been descendants," answered the he-wolf. "As for the difference, it's said that they were stronger, faster, and tougher."
"Hmm, I see, I see."
The two wolves in front of were an extraordinary breed of wolves.
It was known that werewolves couldn't pass on their Lycanthropy to their children. As such, the only way to continue the species was to bite others. But there was one particular case in which werewolves could create special progenies.
If two werewolves — one male and one female. If the two werewolves were to conceive a child on a full moon night, that child when born wasn't a human but a pure magical wolf. A wolf breed that was bigger than any typical wolf species and held human-like intelligence and speech.
But this wolf species was extremely rare. The two wolves in front of him weren't children of werewolves, but children of the wolves born from werewolves. Which, in turn, was also rare as the breed was so rare that chances of seeing a direct male and direct female together were itself sparingly rare.
"How many of you are there in the forest?"
The wolves didn't answer, but Quinn didn't miss the he-wolf's glance in a particular direction. It told him that these two weren't alone and there were more of them.
'I see; I'll come to observe them later,' he thought, planning to get some observational data about this very rare species.
"Well then, wolves, point me in the direction of the cursed vault, and I'll be on my way, away from your land."
"Cursed vault? What is that?" asked she-wolf. They didn't know that term.
".. . how about cursed mines? Have you heard of that?"
"Oh, you mean the Sunken Crypt?" said the she-wolf in recognition. "It's that way. You'll know when you see it." She said, lifting her paw to point in some direction.
"Thank you, I'll be on my way."
"Human, are you thinking of going inside the crypt?"
"Yes, I am. Have you two gone inside?"
"No, we haven't," replied the he-wolf before he glanced at the she-wolf, who nodded back.
The two wolves gave Quinn a stare down before they left wordlessly, leaving only Quinn behind.
"I'm inquisitive about their culture and civilization; I wonder how it would be different and regular wolves," muttered Quinn before moving on to the pointed direction.
"I'll know when I see it, huh, let's see what's all this about."
With that, Quinn had moved one step towards the fourth vault.
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Quinn West - MC - STAMINAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!
Forbidden Forest Wolves - Pure Werewolf's Progenies - Wolves ~ By Selina Gomez.
