The Divine Wolf... or?

After arriving at the cave once more, they all decided to do their own things. Ephine needed to absorb her new mana crystal and enhance her strength once more, Atar needed to train and learn how to control his strength more, whilst Ark needed to plan for the future.

Since Thufrat didn't need any urgent training, he helped Ark with making plans, as Ark needed some help when it came to the common sense of this world.

Getting themselves a home was something that Ark really wanted, since it would make his stay in this world a bit more organised. And it would be his very own home, something he had never felt like he had, even in his old world.

He used to rent a small apartment in his old world, but he had never felt like it was actually a home, which wasn't too weird, he lived by himself, and the only thing he did was sleep and just laze around when he was at home.

The only problem with getting a residence was whether they could afford it, and where they would buy it. As a matter of fact, getting the location right was quite tricky. Even if he wanted to enjoy his life, Ark needed to grow way stronger, and to do that, he needed enemies. Where would he find enemies in the middle of a city? The answer was simple, dungeons.

But not all dungeons were the same in the sense that they didn't have the same requirements on the adventurer. Some dungeons could be cleared even if you were level 20, whilst you could barely survive in others even if you had reached level 50. It all depended on the enemies in the dungeon.

Preferably, Ark wanted a dungeon where he could level up continuously, and to do that, the enemies couldn't be low level, but at the same time they couldn't be too high level either, since they wouldn't be able to survive if that was the case.

What Ark wanted was a dungeon with levels, which wasn't too hard to find, they just needed to find one that had enough levels to let him grow to the point where he didn't have to worry about the upcoming calamity.

Well, he still couldn't be sure if what he saw was even real, but it was better to get stronger just in case it was, if it turned out to be just an illusion, he would still be left with all his strength and he could live the way he wanted.

He naturally told Thufrat all of his requirements, and the two of them started brainstorming. Even though Ark couldn't actually do much other than wait for Thufrat to give him some suggestions for the moment. There were multiple dungeons that fit his requirements, and they were mostly the renowned big dungeons that had been mostly explored and discovered ages ago.

Some of these dungeons were quite close to large cities, which were mostly where they were looking to settle down for now. If they wanted to move in the future, then all Ark needed to do was earn some more money for them.

The fact that him, Atar and Ephine were all wolves didn't matter too much even if they were going to live inside of a city.

They all had several hours worth of time in their human forms, and they only needed to use that time to get into the city and to enter the residence, as well as leaving the city, and entering their preferred dungeon, other than that, they could do whatever they wanted in their wolf forms.

With the help of magic, Ark could make sure that no one would be able to enter their home without him knowing, as it was quite simple magic.

After deliberating and looking over all of the options they had, the city which looked most attractive to Ark was a city in the country of Geotopia. The country's economy was flourishing, the living conditions were nice, and there was an abundance of potions, it seemed like a nice place to live.

The city they had chosen was not the capital though, as no dungeon was close enough, and they couldn't guarantee that they would be able to afford a nice place to live if it was in the capital, they didn't know the prices after all, so it was a bit of gamble.

Naturally, Ark asked both Ephine and Atar what they thought too, as he couldn't just make a decision by himself and expect them to agree with it. The mana in the cave was currently fluctuating like crazy, and the atmosphere was quite heavy.

Ark could guess that she was in the middle of absorbing her mana crystal, so he didn't disturb her, but instead he just laid down outside of the cave in his wolf form.

After watching Atar working hard for a while, Ark decided that he shouldn't laze around too much either, and he decided to train his blink skill for a while. He needed to train it in both wolf and human form after all. It was quite a dizzying sight to see for someone like Thufrat, as all he could see was Ark disappearing and reappearing all over the place like a ghost.

After familiarizing himself with it, Ark was soon able to chain his blinks together quite nicely without waiting much in between uses. The most frightening part was that he could use magic between every use of blink if he wanted to, which would be quite frightening to face.

After an entire session of training, Ark only had half of his mana left, and he didn't want to use much more since they were in the middle of the forest after all. If they got attacked and he had no mana left because he was training, Ark wasn't sure what he would do with himself.

His blink had managed to rise to level 5 already too, which was good enough for now, the range was a little longer, and the activation was faster, which was quite satisfactory to Ark.

Whilst Ark and Atar was training their respective skills, Ephine was in the middle of absorbing her mana crystal. She had never absorbed a mana crystal before, so she wasn't quite sure how it felt, but when she had actually started, she was pleasantly surprised. The feeling of rapidly enhancing her strength was quite thrilling.

She would'ver never thought that she could grow stronger in such an easy way, it was quite perplexing to her, as she had been taught the cruelty and harshness of reality from the moment she was born, and never thought there was such an easy way to get strong. It didn't even hurt like she had expected it to.