Sira smiled sideways while her tail wagged slowly. “How timely,” she commented without taking her eyes off the bushes. “Just when we were starting to have fun.”

  One of the wolves burst out of the foliage and bared its fangs with a harsh growl. Another appeared behind it. And then two more.

  In a matter of seconds there was already a small pack surrounding them at a medium distance, looking for the moment to pounce.

  Kai did a quick calcution. There weren’t many. They didn’t seem especially rge. And after the divine adjustment, he was no longer the same as before.“Don’t separate,” said Kai while gripping the sword with both hands.

  Katherine nodded without taking her eyes off the animals. Sira lowered her body a little and smiled with an almost mocking confidence.The first to attack was the one on the right.

  It jumped with its mouth open aiming at Kai’s arm, but the sword’s cut intercepted it in mid-air with a dry and brutal sound.

  The wolf’s body was sent flying to one side and crashed against the ground with absurd violence. It didn’t get up again.

  There was a second of awkward silence. Even the other wolves seemed to notice that something didn’t fit. ‘Good,’ thought Kai while barely rotating his shoulder from the inertia of the blow. ‘Much better.’ Katherine didn’t waste time.

  One of the wolves tried to fnk her on the left and she lunged forward with a speed she wouldn’t have had before.Her nails cut the beast’s snout and in the same movement she stepped aside to avoid the charge.

  The animal turned dazed and Sira came in from the side with a quick kick that destabilized it. Katherine finished the job by sinking her nails into its neck.

  “One less,” said Katherine with steady breathing while shaking the blood from her hand with a short gesture.

  Another wolf tried to take advantage of the gap and went directly against Sira. The catgirl smiled in an almost offended way. “Don’t be rude,” she murmured before spinning on herself.

  Her attack was less brute than Katherine’s, but cleaner. She dodged the bite by a narrow margin, grabbed the animal’s neck with both arms and used the beast’s own momentum to make it fall sideways.

  Kai advanced a step and finished off the wolf with a downward cut with the sword. The skull split in two against the earth.

  ‘It wasn’t necessary to use my strengthening and Attack Enhancement skills,’ thought Kai rejoicing despite them being common beasts.

  The combat had ended so quickly that for a moment the forest returned to silence as if nothing had happened.

  Katherine breathed deeply once and then looked at the corpses. “That was… easy,” she said moving an ear with surprise.

  Sira let out a short ugh and put a hand on her hip. “Too much,” she responded looking at Kai sideways.

  “Master hits harder than before.” Said Sira with enthusiasm. Kai observed the bodies on the ground and then lowered his gaze to his own hands.

  No need to fake humility. The difference was evident. The goddess’s adjustment had changed things too much.

  Before, a pack like that would have been a real threat. Now it had seemed like a formality. “Yes, now I can eliminate more enemies,” he said at the end while resting the sword on the ground for a second.

  Katherine crouched next to one of the wolves and touched the fur carefully. “They have good skin,” she said looking at the animal’s back.“They’re not full of mange or anything weird.” Kai raised an eyebrow. Then he looked at the rest of the bodies.

  ‘City.’ The word crossed his mind immediately. ‘Skins. Merchants. Coins.’ He didn’t know how much they would be worth or how prices worked out there exactly, but it was better to arrive with something than empty-handed.

  It was going to be quite strange to appear from the forest with two catgirls and without a single clear reference from the civilized world. “We’re going to take them,” he said while pointing at the wolves with the sword.

  Sira tilted her head. “All of them?” she asked with a small grimace. “They’re heavy.” Kai nodded calmly. “Not the whole wolf, just the skins.” Katherine looked at him immediately and her eyes lit up with approval. “Good idea,” she said while passing a hand over the animal’s back.“In the city they should cost something.”

  Sira sighed dramatically and then smiled. “Wonderful. From fighting we move to manual bor.”

  Kai snorted. “You can keep compining while you help.”

  Sira put a hand to her chest. “What a cruel deal,” she said before crouching next to another corpse.

  They took a while to skin them in the best way they could with what they had on them. It wasn’t a clean or especially pleasant job.

  The blood dirtied the earth and the metallic smell spread around them, but in the end they managed to roll up several usable hides.

  Kai tied them with improvised strips and distributed them as best they could.

  The sun continued to set little by little while they resumed the path. The golden light faded between the canopies and the forest began to transform into a mass of colder shadows.

  The fatigue didn’t hit them immediately, but it began to settle in the legs, in the shoulders and in the slower rhythm of the steps.

  Kai noticed the change when he no longer distinguished certain details of the path with the same crity. He looked up. The sky between the branches had gone from orange to dark blue.

  Katherine also raised her view and then observed around with attention. “Master,” she said while adjusting the bag and the skins, “you can hardly see anything now.” Kai nodded.

  He had thought about it too. Continuing to advance blindly in a forest like that was a good way to stumble upon something worse than wolves.

  Sira yawned barely and stretched an arm over her head. “And sleeping without light doesn’t appeal to me,” she murmured with a half smile.

  Katherine looked at some fallen logs near the path and then pointed to a small clearing between the trees. “We can stay there,” she said while moving her ears forward. “There’s space and we could make a bonfire.”

  Kai studied the area for a moment. It wasn’t perfect, but it was clear enough to see if something approached. “Yes,” he responded at the end. “We stop there.”

  Katherine let out a breath with contained relief and started to advance toward the clearing with more energy. “I can gather dry branches,” she said while pushing aside some leaves from the ground with her foot.

  Sira smiled sideways and followed her with an entertained look. “And I’ll check if our responsible explorer chooses real firewood and not useless little sticks,” she commented with a mocking tone.

  Katherine turned her head slightly. “Search for your own branches.” “I’ll search for the best ones,” responded Sira bringing a hand to her chest with false pride.

  Kai observed them for a second while they entered the clearing and felt again that weird mix of annoyance and amusement that they produced together.

  ‘This is going to be long,’ he thought while adjusting the skins better on his shoulder.

  Then he advanced after them in the midst of the growing darkness, with the smoke of a bonfire still nonexistent already drawing itself in his head as the next small goal of the trip.