My Almighty Werewolf System

Chapter 8

He blinked. For a world they’d entered through a towering black portal that shimmered like frozen moonlight, this place was alarmingly… normal

The first thing Kai noticed was the scent of pine, not sulfur or brimstone. Just… pine. And the soft hum of crickets in the underbrush.

No floating rocks. No blood skies. No monstrous beasts charging from the horizon as expected by the students.

Instead, he found himself standing beneath a tall, spreading canopy of green. Sunlight filtered through the branches, painting the ground with golden dappled patterns. A soft breeze teased at his cloak, carrying the sweet, clean smell of moss and distant water. Even the grass underfoot looked lush and soft, almost like it had been trimmed for a royal picnic.

“This is… not what I was expecting,” Jace said, his hand on the hilt of his wooden toy sword, with his shoulders relaxed.

Thalia turned in a slow circle, taking in the serene glade around them. “Feels more like a vacation than a death trap.”

Selene said nothing. Her eyes were sweeping the treeline, calm but focused, like someone reading between the lines of a poem. Kai caught her gaze for a second, then turned back to the path ahead.

Still, even he had to admit if this was the famed Soul Lantern Run, the Dean had seriously oversold it.

They started walking, pushing gently through tall grass that whispered around their boots. A winding dirt path snaked through the trees, broken occasionally by bursts of wildflowers. The forest seemed endless and vast. The deeper they moved, the more it felt like the world around them had exhaled.

Even Kai found himself loosening up.

“Imagine if this is the whole quest, just walking through an enchanted forest while someone plays a harp in the background.”

Thalia snorted. “Ten points to Team Eclipse for best picnic vibes.”

Kai grinned. “We could set up camp, roast some mushrooms. Tell ghost stories.”

Selene, walking just ahead of them, didn’t turn, but her voice floated back: “You’d last ten minutes without me.”

Jace raised his brows and shot Kai a look. “Did she just crack a joke? Mark it down, this is historic.”

The laughter was real this time, echoing through the trees like music. For the first time since stepping foot in the academy, it felt like they were just kids again. No factions. No tests. Just five people walking through a dream of a forest, the festival feeling like a warm wind at their backs.

Then Thalia stopped.

“Hey… is that.....?”

Everyone turned. Just ahead, nestled between the fork of an old oak’s branches, hung a lantern.

It was iron-wrought, delicate, with faint silver veins running through its frame. The glass shimmered with an inner glow, not harsh, not fiery, but calm and pulsing like the slow beat of a heart.

Jace took a step forward, whistling. “Is that it? We found it already?”

“No way…” Thalia whispered. “We’re the first team to touch down here, right?”

“We might’ve gotten lucky,” Kai said, disbelief tugging at his voice. “Really lucky.”

They all stepped closer in unison, excitement rising between them like static.

Jace turned to Kai, his brows lifted. “Well? Who’s gonna climb the tree? You or me?”

Kai hesitated, thoughtful. “Maybe we should take a second. It could be rigged.”

But before the conversation could evolve, Selene moved.

She didn’t leap. She didn’t climb. She just vanished in a ripple of after-image and reappeared by the lantern, her cloak trailing shadow.

With a casual flick, she plucked the glowing object from the branch.

The rest of the team stood stunned.

“Well,” Jace muttered, smirking, “that answers that.”

Kai shook his head, laughing under his breath. “Show off.”

Selene descended slowly, the lantern swinging lazily from her hand. “It wasn’t trapped,” she said plainly.

“I’ll pretend to believe that was a team effort,” Thalia added dryly.

But before they could begin their victory celebration, a sound came from the woods to their left, a rustle, a crunch of boots.

Another team emerged through the foliage. Four students, armed and alert, stared back at them with surprised expressions. One of them, an elf with ice-pale hair was also holding a lantern.

Kai’s stomach dropped.

“That’s… impossible,” he muttered.

The other team mirrored their confusion. Then, slowly, they too looked at their lantern, then at the one in Selene’s hand.

The air grew still.

“Oooooh nah, this lantern is fake”, Selene’s fingers twitched. Without a word, she hurled the lantern away, fast and deliberate.

It shattered against a stone. Pieces scattered metal and glass, silver and light.

At the same instant, the elf’s team dropped theirs annoyingly

A second shatter.

And then, something very strange happened.

The pieces didn’t stay broken.

Instead, like drops of mercury drawing toward one another, the shards shimmered and stirred. They slithered across the ground, ignoring dirt and gravity, converging in midair.

In a blink, the remnants of both lanterns fused, merging into a single orb of glass and silver, burning now with a fiercer light. One lantern. Whole. Alive.

Silence fell.

Kai stared. “It wasn’t the real one.”

“They’re fragments,” Selene murmured, more to herself than to them. “Parts of a whole…”

All at once, the stakes shifted in the air as the realization struck them highly.

Lanterns weren’t the goal. Finding them wasn’t enough. You had to gather them all. Break them. And rebuild the true one.

“That is not the issue, who owns the reformed lantern. We, or this unknown unknown Team?” Jace asked.

“The last team standing owns the lantern.............”