章 16: Frost Wolf

Yale opened his eyes at twilight and found himself lying beside the Frost Wolf and its little cub. After he asked the system, he sighed in relief as he only slept a little more than a day.

Yale still had some injuries which had not healed, but he was in a far better state than before. Although he looked injured, he wasn't fully burnt like before. Yale was very thankful for the Auto-regeneration skill.

The wolves seemed to be asleep still, but after taking a closer look, the Frost Wolf was awake.

However, its body's state was horrible and didn't seem to have enough power to get on its paws anymore; its life was reaching the end.

The last attack from the Fire-wood Tiger was too strong, and without proper healing, there was no way to survive the injuries it provoked. Yale had the Auto-regeneration skill, and he didn't get hit by the worst part of the attack, so he recovered quite fast.

The Frost Wolf had no way of healing itself, and no one could heal it there, it could only await death.

If Yale were in that situation, leaving the Beast Trial to ask for healing would still be possible. After all, he was Swordmad's disciple, and the clan wouldn't dare to let him die in front of them, but there was no way that the clan would heal a beast from the Beast Trial even if Yale were the one who asked for it.

Yale sat beside the Frost Wolf and thanked it. Yale remembered how the Frost Wolf stopped his fall before.

Furthermore, even though the Frost Wolf knew that it would die, it still protected Yale until he woke up, so Yale felt real gratitude to the Frost Wolf and also felt miserable for being unable to save its life.

On the other hand, the Frost Wolf was also thankful to Yale as he stepped up to protect its little cub when the black wolf fled.

Yale saved the little wolf's life and even reversed the battle with Absolute Protection, so he became an important existence to the Frost Wolf, even if it were doomed to die, it would at least protect him as much it could.

In the following days, Yale hunted some beasts for the Frost Wolf and the wolf cub. The little cub had some problems to eat at the start as it was too young to eat solid meat but grew used to it quickly as its species grew quite quickly. Moreover, although it was very young, it wasn't like if it had been born just the day that the Fire-wood Tiger attacked.

Fortunately, Yale had left the bow and the arrows beside a tree before starting the battle against the Fire-wood Tiger. Otherwise, the previous attack would have burnt the bow and the arrows.

As time passed, Yale's injuries almost completely healed, and his Auto-regeneration reached level four, but the Frost Wolf was nearing death.

Yale decided to remain with them until the Frost Wolf passed on. Until then, he would help them with anything he could because the Frost Wolf won Yale's respect.

The Frost Wolf reached its limit a month after the battle. Its willpower to remain alive was extremely impressive as usually living even three days with these injuries would be already very good. In that month, the little wolf became a little bigger, but it was still only a cub.

When the Frost Wolf was slowly passing away, the little wolf was crying beside its mother, while Yale had tears in his eyes even though he was trying to contain himself.

The Frost Wolf looked to the little wolf and then to Yale. It survived that long because of the concern about its cub and Yale's help, which had been crucial for their survival that month.

Then, the Frost Wolf howled, and a light appeared in its body, which shot directly to Yale's forehead.

Yale was shocked, but he ignored it for the moment because, at that moment, the Frost Wolf closed its eyes eternally.

Yale also started to cry. He would never forget that Frost Wolf nor the time he lived with it.

[System detected that the user received a Legacy.]

[The Legacy doesn't match the user physique. Accepting the Legacy will be detrimental to the user.]

[Remodeling the Legacy to match the user's physique.]

[Legacy remodeled, the user will obtain all its benefits and enhancements without any side-effect.]

Since that light shot into Yale's forehead, the system started with those notifications, but until the system started to speak about the contents of the Legacy, Yale didn't pay any attention to it.

[Obtained new Innate Talent: 3-star Frost Wolf Bloodline: Complete]

[Obtained new Innate Talent: Water Elemental Affinity: High grade]

[Obtained new Innate Talent: Darkness Elemental Affinity: High grade]

[Innate Talent upgraded: Magic Latent Talent: Perfect grade]

[Body reinforced by the strength of the bloodline: Strength increases to 10 points.]

[Body reinforced by the strength of the bloodline: Agility increases to 10 points.]

[Obtained new Passive Skill: Beast Intuition.]

[Obtained new Boost Skill: Bloodline Force.]

[Some skills the user can't use right now have been sealed until the user meets the requirements to use them.]

Yale became shocked as he heard the notifications. That was the Frost Wolf's last gift to him and a very big one.

In fact, Yale shouldn't have received that Legacy as it was a Beast's Legacy. It was meant to be passed only to the beast's descendants, not to humans nor non-related beasts. If the human didn't have a suitable affinity to the beast and receive such a legacy, although it could be a good power boost at the start, it could cause problems in the future.

The Frost Wolf and Yale knew nothing about that; the only goal of the Frost Wolf was to help Yale to become stronger and protect the little wolf.

The little wolf was still too young even with a legacy it wouldn't be able to survive on its own, so the Frost Wolf chose Yale.

Yale had avoided the bad part of the Frost Wolf Legacy thanks to the system, which changed the whole legacy to suit him the best.

Originally, the legacy should have an ice perfect grade affinity, but the system converted it in water high-grade affinity. That way, Yale would have a very good affinity to any water spells, not only the ones in the ice section. For a Frost Wolf, that wouldn't be helpful because Frost Wolf's innate skills didn't include anything else in the water element.

Also, the power of the legacy wasn't good enough to give a perfect grade magical talent, but the system fused the legacy magical talent with Yale's one, and thus, it got upgraded.

Fusing a legacy with oneself innate talents wasn't something unheard of, but it was still extremely difficult. Usually, only the best talent remained, and the other one disappeared.

Yale started to check all the talents and skills generated by the legacy.

[3-star Frost Wolf Bloodline: Complete. It lets the user use Frost Wolf Techniques until the 3-star. It gives the capacity to communicate with wolves.]

It was possible for a human to have a bloodline from a beast. There were two main ways to obtain it. One of them was to be a descendant of a beast that became able to take human form while the other one was to fuse with a beast bloodline to enhance the power of the body.

However, both faced the same problem of purity. The descendants would lose the purity of bloodline with the passage of time, and the act of fusing with bloodlines had a bad purity to start with.

On the other hand, Yale obtained the best bloodline purity because he obtained a Beast's Legacy, and it had been remodeled by the system to suit him fully.

The power of any skill generated from the bloodline would be related to the purity and force of the bloodline, Yale's purity was the best, but the power was lacking in the long-term.

A 3-star beast was very strong to Yale at that moment, but in the long-term, a 3-star beast would become too weak.

However, Yale didn't mind about the prospects of the bloodline as he never asked for it, and to him, obtaining it was more sentimental than anything else because it was as if the Frost Wolf recognized him as part of the family.

The newly acquired elemental affinities were similar to the healing affinity, to upgrade them, Yale would need to absorb massive amounts of that element, and they were already high grade, so upgrading them would be extremely difficult.

[Beast Intuition: Grants the user the intuition of a beast to avoid danger. The power will increase with the quality of the beast's bloodline.]

[Bloodline Force: Activates the power of the bloodline, temporally enhancing the stats beyond their limit. The power increase will rely on the quality of bloodline. Currently: Strength x2 and x2 Agility until 3-star. The power increase will be reduced afterward.]

The first one was quite good as the beasts usually had a better intuition to avoid danger than humans.

However, the second one was awesome, even if it's power could only be used fully until the 3-star, the capacity to double his Strength and Agility meant that at that moment Yale could use it to reach twenty points in Strength and Agility.

The limit as a mortal who hadn't started to practice a Path was only of ten points, but just like the Sword Mastery skill, the new skill disregarded the limits. Even though Yale couldn't use it for a very long time before getting exhausted, he could push his Strength and Agility to the peak power of 2-star. It was a very good trump card.

Yale bowed to the Frost Wolf corpse. That legacy became the best gift he could have expected.

At that moment, Yale stats were all at ten points, and the condition to complete the next sub-quest and obtain the Origin Path training method became fulfilled.

Yale went to the Quest Menu to continue with the Main Chain Quest.