The man who landed was, of course, Edison.
He straightened from his crouch, snow sliding off his shoulders, and wrapped a hand around the shaft of the spear buried in the frozen earth. With a sharp tug, he wrenched it off the ground.
"Now that," he said lightly, rolling his shoulder, "was a nice entrance."
"You jumped from tree to tree trying to make a cool landing entrance and you almost didn't make it in time," Guide replied in a dry tone. "You'd be a lot faster if you just ran on the ground. Also—turns out it's not a damsel in distress like you hoped. Just a random middle-aged dude. Must be disappointing."
Edison snorted. "Hey, first of all, I wasn't hoping it'd be a damsel. I said it would be a huge plus. Then again, I made it in time, didn't I?"
Edison then turn his attention towards the giant beast.
The Druvask stood at the very edge of the torchlight, retreating half a step deeper into shadow. Its massive silhouette shifted, snow crunching beneath it's hooves. Steam rolled from its nostrils in thick bursts.
Edison lifted the spear in front of him, grip tightening.
The Druvask he had killed earlier had been the size of a small cow.
The largest one he'd ever ecountered—the one that had nearly punched a hole through his stomach—had been about the size of a rhino.
But this…
A bead of sweat slid down his forehead.
This thing was almost as big as a small elephant.
Its shoulders rose high, muscles layered thick beneath scarred hide. Jagged tusks curved forward, their edges chipped and uneven as if they had shattered and regrown. Dark veins pulsed faintly beneath it's frost-matted skin.
Several arrows still jutted from its body.
All Edison could see were the two beady eyes glowing in the darkness.
The hunter behind Edison shifted, still breathing hard as he held the bow in his hand, the flame of the torch on the ground sputtering wildly.
Edison didn't look back.
"Well," he muttered under his breath, eyes fixed on the looming shape in the dark, "it's… big."
"Very big," Guide replied flatly. "In fact, I'd categorize it under 'significantly concerning big.'"
Edison silently cursed.
Is it even possible for this thing to grow this big?
His mind raced through possibilities.
A giant Druvask?
For a split second, a name surfaced in his thoughts.
Wrath of the Freljord?
No.
He dismissed it immediately.
That was an extremely powerful spirit—something closer to a force of nature than flesh and blood. This thing in front of him was a living breathing physical being.
"Edison!"
"Careful, stranger!"
Guide's sharp warning overlapped with the hunter's cry of alarm.
The Druvask had already moved.
It charged.
For something its size, it was terrifyingly quiet. Just a sudden surge of mass and muscle exploding forward, snow blasting outward beneath thunderous hooves.
As if it had known Edison's attention had drifted.
Edison's eyes widened.
He threw himself to the side just as the beast tore past where he had been standing, a wall of muscle and frost-matted hide rushing by close enough that he felt the violent displacement of air.
It wasn't aiming for him.
The Druvask barreled straight toward the hunter.
The hunter, already on edge, reacted instantly. He released the arrow mid-charge and dove aside.
The arrow struck the Druvask's tusk and bounced off harmlessly.
The beast thundered past the hunter by inches, its sheer mass missing him by the narrowest margin. Snow and dirt exploded in its wake as it continued forward, unable to stop its momentum.
It slammed into a thick tree trunk several meters ahead.
Wood cracked with a deep, groaning creak.
The tree shuddered and fell.
The tree hit the ground with a thunderous crash, snow bursting upward in a choking cloud of white.
Edison got to his feet and hurled his spear with every ounce of strength he had. The weapon cut through the air with a sharp whistle and struck the Druvask hard in the flank.
The impact landed solid.
The beast roared, a raw, furious sound as the spear punched through thick hide and bit deep into muscle. Dark blood sprayed across the snow.
"Okay," Edison muttered.
He didn't hesitate and charged.
He would handle it the same way he had the other three—close the distance and end it fast. One clean hit. Primordial flame concentrated into his hand, straight into its gut. Burn it from the inside out.
Druvasks had notoriously thick skulls. Trying to crack one open with a spear—or worse, his bare hand—while dodging tusks the size of scythes was suicide.
The belly is always softer.
He was nearly within striking range when the Druvask's body jerked strangely.
Its hind leg stamped down.
For a split second, Edison felt something shift.
A faint tingle in the air.
Then a violent wave of freezing force exploded outward.
The force hit him like a battering ram.
Edison felt his feet leave the ground as the invisible blast slammed into him, hurling him backward through the air.
He crashed into a tree trunk with bone-rattling force.
All the air was driven from his lungs in a single brutal impact.
He dropped to the snow, gasping soundlessly as agony flared through his back and ribs. Frost spread across his clothes almost instantly, creeping like veins of ice. The cold even seeped inward.
It felt as if someone had forced freezing air directly into his chest and all over his organs.
Edison coughed violently, a thin cloud of white mist bursting from his lips.
Inside him, the primordial flames stirred.
Heat flared through his core, pushing back against the invasive cold. The freezing ache dulled as warmth surged through his limbs, melting the frost that had begun to form along his sleeves.
He sucked in a ragged breath.
"What the actual… fuck?"
He looked up and saw that the Druvask was glowing.
A faint blue radiance pulsed beneath the thick hide, tracing jagged patterns across its massive frame. Its eyes, once red with fury, burned an icy blue.
Even its tusks were etched with thin, luminous lines that crawled along their length like frozen lightning.
The beast let out a grunt of pain and twisted its head, trying to hook the spear lodged in its flank with it's tusk but it couldn't get the right angle. Blood seeped slowly from the wound, steaming faintly against the snow.
Off to the side, the hunter lay sprawled and unmoving.
The earlier blast had thrown him several meters back. Frost crept across his leather armor and scarf, half his body dusted white against the forest floor.
The Druvask's low growl rolled through the clearing.
It locked its glowing eyes onto Edison.
Edison exhaled once and pushed himself upright. His hand hovered instinctively over the purple orb at his waist.
But before he could take out his hammer—
That tingle came again.
He moved on instinct.
Edison hurled himself sideways just as a jagged pillar of ice exploded upward from the ground where he had been standing. The spike shot up with violent force, shards scattering outward as it pierced the air.
He landed in the snow and rolled, coming up in a crouch.
Turning his head, he saw the Druvask's body glowing brighter now. The patterns along its hide pulsed in rhythm with its breath.
"It's using magic," Guide said with a hint of surprise in his head.
"So that's what the tingling I've been feeling is," Edison muttered, finally taking out the hammer.
The weapon felt heavy in his grip.
It had been over half a year since he'd come to this world.
Hyper Adaptability had been working without pause the entire time. His body still couldn't fully contain the Primordial Flames—that much hadn't changed.
But it could now hold mana.
And more importantly, he could feel the mana.
The Druvask pawed the ground again, blue light intensifying beneath its hide.
Edison tightened his grip on the hammer.
"Alright," he muttered. "Kinda regretting getting myself into this."