The Divine Wolf...or?

As Ark walked away from the group, they started moving too. The leader put Thufrat on his back as they left the scene. Ark just walked straight back from where he came. As soon as he had entered the forest, and was sure that he was out of sight, he turned back into his wolf form. As he once again stood on all fours, he felt at home. Even though he had been a human for most of his life, recently, he had gotten used to walking on all four. He still enjoyed his human form more though, having hands is nicer than you might think.

As Ark was walking leisurely in the forest, he decided to speed up and get back to his tree. The more he stayed in this world, the more he wanted to grow more powerful. Power was everything here, and Ark was starting to feel some urgency. Being able to protect what he wants was something Ark desperately wanted, especially after this incident with the lich. He didn't want to see his friends suffer because of his incompetence, or at all for that matter.

Since he traveled very fast, he arrived at his tree in less than half an hour, this time he didn't have to run with Thufrat on his back after all. As he once again stepped into his humble little home, he felt like this journey had been successful in the end. Sure, he got caught up in some serious trouble, and he had to join some mysterious faction that he didn't know of. But he achieved what he wanted to with this trip, which was to get help for his friend.

After sitting down inside of his tree, Ark started to ponder a little. He had been thinking about it for a little bit now, but he really wanted to get some more elements. Not necessarily for their power, but because of their utility. He was also just very interested in magic overall, and he would like to go as far as possible in the field of magic. He had no other interests after all, and it wasn't like the entertainment found in his old world existed here.

Now, the only problem he had was his body, would it be able to handle obtaining more affinities? He wasn't sure. He managed to get his fire affinity because of it's relation to water, intertwining the two elements into something new, but still managing to retain their original properties. Well, he would find out without trying, but before doing so, he decided to pull up his status screen once more.

Name: Ark

Condition: Normal

Species: Radiant Ice Wolf

Level: 28 (43)

Mp: 255/255

Strength: 30

Agility: 45

Dexterity: 30

Endurance: 30

Vitality: 30

Intelligence: 85

Night Vision [Lv.2]

Water magic [Beginner Lv.4]

Growth [Lv.Max]

Inspect [Lv.5]

Mana manipulation [Lv.6]

Mana perception

Mana recovery [Lv.2]

Herculean strength [Lv.1]

Swift [Lv.2]

Stealth [Lv.4]

Regenerate

Enhanced Stamina

Small Fire Affinity

Small Water Affinity

Big Ice Affinity

Big Light Affinity

Mental Fortitude

Yin Yang body constitution

Holy Spear: Dawn

Shapeshift [Lv.2>4]

Spear Mastery [Beginner Lv.7>9]

Status points [5]

Seeing this, Ark was a little surprised. His [Shapeshift] skill had managed to level up twice, even though he didn't even exhaust all the time he had left. Ark could kind of guess the reason as to why it happened though. He was fairly certain that it was just because he had used his human form to fight, which made his connection to that form grow deeper. If it was just him walking around and doing nothing, then he wasn't even sure if it would've leveled up even once. The same thing applied to his spear mastery, it probably got two entire levels because he had killed people with it.

He also noticed how he had managed to get another level and had 5 status points to spend. This time though, he decided to put 5 points into dexterity, making it 35. He had noticed his need for this stat when he was wielding his spear. The dexterity stat made it easier for Ark to make complicated movements with his body, something you really needed if you were going to wield a spear or most weapons for that matter.

After having ȧssigned his points, Ark glowed in white light for a second or two before going back to normal. After the light had faded away completely, Ark activated his Mana perception. In the air around him, he could see a multitude of particles floating around, minding their own business. The different elements included wind, earth, water, fire, ice, lightning, light, darkness and spatial. With an abundance of darkness particles, since this was in the twilight forest after all.

Ark wasn't really sure which element he should start out with since most of them were pretty enticing. After some contemplating, he decided to start out with the wind element. There wasn't that much of a reason except for the fact that he liked the wind. He didn't want to start out with one of the harder elements such as lightning or darkness, he didn't really think he would be able to do anything with the darkness element anyways since his light element seemed to purify it as soon as it entered his body.

The wind element would probably be a bit harder than something like the earth element since the earth was more gentle in nature, but Ark wanted to try it out anyway. After Ark had decided to try and get a wind affinity, he turned on his Mana manipulation and started pulling on the wind Mana in the air around him. It took quite a while for the Mana to start moving, but when it did, it moved surprisingly quickly.

When it entered his body, it started to cut him from the inside, it did everything in its power to escape him. Even though it hurt a lot, Ark could slowly bring it under his control, it took quite a while though. After having successfully reined in a single wind Mana particle, Ark started doubting if it was really the right choice to be doing this, at the rate he was going, he wasn't even sure if he was going to get the affinity today or not.

Therefore, Ark got a pretty bold idea, he wasn't sure if it was going to work or not, but he still wanted to try it. All the elements that existed could basically restrain one another. Now, if he tried to absorb all of the elements in the surroundings at once, he believed that he might be able to get the affinity of all of them at once. This was mostly a wild guess though, and he had no concrete evidence that something like this would actually work. But it was worth a try, right?

As this outrageous idea crossed his mind, Ark turned on his Mana manipulation once more. After he had turned it on, he created a vortex above his head, which pulled in almost all of the mana in the surroundings. Since he went all-in this time, he pulled on the mana a lot more violently. As he urged the mana to enter his body, some of the particles slowly started to move. As they got closer to the vortex, they started to speed up more and more.

After a minute or so, all of the elements had already entered his body more than once, this was the easy part. The hard part was to get them to stay, and integrate with his body. As the elements entered his body in a speedy fashion, Ark urged them to gather above his marrow. When they arrived there he waited for a little while until some more mana gathered there. Even though the process was pretty slow, Ark had a lot of patience.

As more and more mana gathered, Ark finally decided to pull the trigger and forced the mana to intertwine with one another. For this to work, he also had to make sure that he had appropriate amounts of each mana, and that they were all an equal amount. Since there was more darkness mana in the surroundings, Ark had to spend an extra minute or so to expel some of the darkness mana he had accumulated. This entire process did hurt quite a lot though, but Ark could handle it so far.

After everything was ready, Ark forced the different types of mana together and made them dance above his marrow. As they danced and intertwined, Ark was in a lot of pain. When they had all intertwined an incredible amount, Ark forced the mana deep down into his marrow, in an attempt to make it work. As he did this, he could feel a pang of pain hit him like a truck, and he instantly vomited blood. As he was about to pass out, he could hear a monotone voice inside of his head once more.

"Host has obtained the skill [Overlord Of The Elements]"