"Flesh… soul…"
"No wonder I couldn't activate the crystal nexus despite channeling so much magical power. Was it lacking soul power?" Ezreal put down his chopsticks and frowned.
"But where can I find a soul?"
Ezreal didn't consider using his own; he wasn't foolish. Both soul and body are crucial components of a person, so experimenting with himself was out of the question.
Ezreal pondered for a long time, then stood up and walked to the balcony. After carefully checking that there were no pedestrians on the street, he used an Arcane Shift to teleport into the night sky, a hundred meters above the ground, and summoned a Crimson Raptor.
The moment the golden light of Arcane Shift dissipated, powerful red wings flapped, and a monstrous bird with a blue head and red body, as large as a car, appeared beneath Ezreal, steadily catching him.
Ezreal tightly gripped the blue feathers on the Crimson Raptor's neck, using his consciousness to command the massive monstrous bird to fly towards the forest outside the city.
The Crimson Raptor, as a wild monster in the League of Legends lore, is actually more like a giant rooster with magical powers. Its flying ability is quite ordinary, but it runs very fast.
The smaller ones are called Raptors, and only the large ones are called Crimson Raptors. In their juvenile stage, their head feathers are crimson, and their body feathers are blue.
As adults, the colors reverse: their head feathers turn blue, and their body feathers become crimson.
These creatures, originally only skilled at running around on the ground like ostriches, had their size further increased and their flying ability significantly enhanced after being summoned and boosted by the explorer's gauntlet.
Five small Raptors can perform short-distance, low-altitude flights.
And the greatly enlarged Crimson Raptor can perform long-distance, high-altitude flights with its huge and powerful wings, and its speed is also decent.
Riding the Crimson Raptor, Ezreal soon arrived at the forest outside the city.
This forest is vast, but no magical beasts live within it.
The reason is simple: first, it's too close to Magnolia, and the magical beasts in this forest were long ago dealt with by the city guards as a preventative measure.
Furthermore, Grandma Porlyusica lives in seclusion deep within the forest.
To provide a safe environment for this honorary consultant of the Fairy Tail Guild, who only uses healing magic and has virtually no combat ability, the Fairy Tail Guild has basically cleared out all magical beasts and even large predators that could threaten Porlyusica throughout the entire forest.
Now, the large animals remaining in this forest are only docile creatures like Great Horned Deer, macaques, and koalas, as well as ecological predators like foxes and forest wolves, which are about the size of dogs.
Ezreal controlled the Crimson Raptor to land on the ground, then dismounted with a flip.
Under the night sky, the forest was filled with the chirping of insects and birds, rustling sounds came from within the woods, and the autumn wind made the leaves rustle, while dry leaves swayed back and forth on the ground.
The bright moon hung high, but its light was mostly blocked by the dense branches of towering trees. Scattered moonlight pierced through the tree trunks and leaves, falling into the forest, making it look eerie and desolate.
Ezreal spread his hands, channeling his magical power, and from his center, opened eight dimensional portals.
White vortices stood in the air, initially only fist-sized, but as they slowly rotated, they grew larger and larger, emitting increasingly bright white light, finally expanding to over a person's height before stopping.
Heavy breathing sounds came, and along with them, a chilling malice emerged. A massive purple two-headed wolf, with its mouth agape revealing a mouthful of stark white fangs, silently stepped out of the white vortex.
Behind this two-headed purple wolf, two slightly smaller gray wolves, comparable in size to wild oxen, appeared, one on its left and one on its right.
The three giant wolves walked, their massive bodies making no sound whatsoever, and their four pairs of eerie green eyes were particularly striking in the darkness.
Immediately following, from an adjacent white vortex, another group of three giant wolves emerged.
Then, from two more white vortices, purple poisonous gas billowed out, and then green-skinned Marsh Frogs, as massive as land tanks, slowly lumbered out.
Twelve Crimson Raptors stood silently behind Ezreal, their wings folded, their fiery red eyes like twelve pairs of red light bulbs, eerie and chilling.
Further in the distance, two Ancient Krugs, about four meters tall and as massive as small hills, with bodies made of grayish-white rock, stood in the night, leading their smaller, two-meter-tall Krug sons.
As these massive and imposing Summoned Beasts appeared, the surrounding insect chirps quietly ceased, and even the autumn wind seemed to weaken.
"Dimension: Magic Share!"
"Amaterasu: Sunshine Arrow!"
"Life Alchemy: Soul Shaping!"
Ezreal held his left hand in a sword-finger gesture against his chest, his eyes briefly glowing golden. The Summoned Beasts' eyes also flashed with the same golden light, indicating that his Magic Share was complete.
Then, Ezreal issued a command to the group of Summoned Beasts: "Hunt all non-humanoid animals within a ten-kilometer radius."
At Ezreal's command, these large creatures began to run wildly. Their fierce and primal aura was fully exposed.
As they ran, the ground trembled slightly.
Ezreal went nowhere, standing still. He raised his left hand, and a white orb of light, the size of a human head, appeared in his palm. The surroundings instantly brightened, the orb's luminosity comparable to a large incandescent bulb, and the temperature around it rapidly increased, the air becoming dry and scorching.
He loosened his grip, and the white orb slowly floated to a position about seven or eight meters above Ezreal's head, hovering in the air like a small sun, emitting light and heat.
Ezreal closed his eyes tightly, his consciousness splitting into several parts to cast consciousness projection onto his Summoned Beasts.
The two-headed Shadow Wolf moved silently through the dark forest. When Ezreal possessed it, he saw two grayish-white perspectives, which was the Shadow Wolf's unique night vision talent.
As excellent hunters, Shadow Wolves move swiftly and silently at night. With their night vision and excellent sense of smell, they can easily find and hunt large animals in the forest.
Ancient Krugs are massive and bulky, but their speed is average. Their exceptionally conspicuous size combined with their astonishing weight makes hunting tasks quite difficult.
However, the huge sounds they make as their heavy bodies move can awaken even the sleeping large animals in the forest, providing convenience for the Shadow Wolf packs, Raptor flocks, and the two Marsh Frogs in their hunt.
The two-headed Shadow Wolf quickly spotted a startled Great Horned Deer.
This creature lived up to its name; its size was similar to a sika deer, with a pair of straight antlers on its head, at least half a meter tall. Startled by the Ancient Krugs, it was now running wildly.