The Divine Wolf... or?

Before long, the table they used to eat their meals was filled with various dishes, some that Ark had prepared himself, and some that they had just bought from the market the day before. Without wasting too much time, they had a nice and fulfilling breakfast together, before they set out for the dungeon once more.

Ark was anxious to try out his new powers, and everyone else was just excited to get stronger and get more experience, as well as money too!

Atar just followed Ephine and Ark without thinking too much about it, whilst Thufrat was happy to spend time with his friends and earn money whilst he was at it too. Although they had plenty of time to do whatever they wanted, Ark still wanted to get their daily trip to the dungeon over with, and the could do whatever they wanted later in the day.

In the future, he wanted this to be a habit since there wasn't much you could do in the morning anyway.

The journey to the dungeon was pretty dull, and there weren't many adventurers outside the dungeon this early in the morning either. Since there was no one to stop them or talk to them, they all quickly entered the dungeon upon arriving. The sight of the magic circles on the door still marvelled Ephine, and Ark made another mental note to research a bit about it later.

The sight of the forest of the dead was the same as the day before, eerie and creepy.

The eerie howls of the forest's residents would send chills down any normal person's spine. But in Ark's case, all he could feel was excitement. Today was the day he tried out his newfound powers after all. With his newfound affinity to mana, Ark felt closer to his surroundings than ever before, which also meant that it had become even easier for him to sense and find opponents.

Because of the ease at which he could find opponents, Ark estimated that even without his new powers, he would still double the rate at which they levelled up!

As they were walking around in the forest, Ark suddenly stopped.

"Can you guys let me take care of this one? I want to try something out."

Seeing nods of affirmation, Ark smirked. All of a sudden, a dark silhouette came sprinting at them from the underbrush. Seeing the decaying body of a fierce panther dashing straight for them, Ark acted quickly. With a confident smirk on his face, he looked at the panther, and lifted one of his front paws.

The panther that was initially dashing towards them was now suddenly ripped off the ground, and thrust into the air.

With the help of wind mana, Ark kept the panther suspended in mid-air, as he tried his new skill. With a mere thought, the mana in his body raged like waves, and the panther in the air could feel a shadow death looming over it. It didn't think anything was wrong though, it was an undead after all, of course death and decay followed wherever it went.

The mana in Ark's body represented his pure power, and that power was currently invading the panther's body. Unbeknownst to the panther, it was being destroyed from inside out, and fast at that. The mana crushed everything it passed, and soon the skeletal structure that supported the panther's body was gone, and so was its life.

He was a little surprised at the power of the new skill, but the functionality was more or less what he had predicted, the only difference was the power.

Although the use of corrosion took longer than just killing the panther by cleaving it in two, it had other uses. First off, it was much harder to trace, you could essentially kill someone by looking at them. If they were strong, they could just use their own mana to fight it off, but if his opponent was weak, or just didn't think straight, this would be an easy way to kill someone.

Another use that he thought of was something he was about to test, he just needed another subject to test it on. The body of the panther had no real use, as basically every part of it was ruined, but the mana core could still be salvaged for some money. Since that was the case, they left after taking it, leaving the body there to rot, or well, it was already rotten, but still.

As they were walking around the forest, Ark was in a great mood, he had more or less already established how useful his ability was, he just needed to test it a bit more to find out where its real strength lies. Not only that, but his telepathy had also been steadily levelling up, and he could now essentially communicate with his mind, which he had done earlier successfully.

After walking around for a bit, Ark soon found another presence in the dark forest. Since that was the case, he could finally test out his second theory, which would determine how useful this ability really was. He already had an inkling, but he couldn't be 100% sure unless he actually tried it out. Without further ado, he walked straight for the presence, even speeding up his pace a bit.

Before the presence, which turned out to be a bipedal creature could sense them, Ark used his skill once more. This time though, he used his mana to invade the creature's brain. The brain was enveloped in the creatures own mana, but Ark simply eroded the mana before he proceeded to take out the creature's brain in one fell swoop.

The creature he had attacked was an evolved variant of a skeleton warrior.

Although it wasn't very smart, it still had a brain, and some degree of intelligence, meaning it relied on its brain to work properly. Although it noticed what was happening, it was already too late at that point, and it soon collapsed on the ground, dead. Ark was feeling more and more impressed by this new ability of his.

Since he could pretty easily erode other's mana, he could just destroy other people's magic before it could even threaten him.

He could also stop them from using mana by eroding their body, since they would have to defend their body with their mana. Before he could get too excited, he noticed something in the corner of his eye. He glanced at Atar, and saw him pouting silently.

"Atar, what's wrong?" He asked, a bit apprehensive, did something happen that he wasn't aware of?

"Papa, why are you the only one who gets to have fun, I want to fight too!"

Ark was simply speechless, was that why he was sulking? He wanted to fight too?

With a chuckle, Ark ruffled his hair lightly.

"Of course you can have fun you brat, I just needed to test something, how about this, the next monster's yours?"

"Really?"

"Do you think I would lie to you?"

"Hmmm, maybe?"

At this point, Thufrat couldn't help but burst into laughter.

"This kid..."