Zectas Volume III: Malediction of Veneficatl Valley (26 page)

"Thank you, I'm honored by your offer, but I'd like to explore the unknown world on my own for now. Maybe someday we'll meet again."
Smoke's jubilant expression immediately changed. This whole time, he had expected that Saru would join his private army and be his Manatl mentor.
"But why? I mean, I know that you can handle yourself, but interacting with other people will still be a difficult task."
"The Saru from before I met you would probably agree with you. But you've taught me to face the challenges head-on; to step out of my comfort zone. You've given me the confidence that I had always been lacking. For that, I am thankful, Smoke." Saru offered his hand to Smoke.

'Great, but he's still leaving anyway.'
"I see. Well, if you ever change your mind or need my help, just give me a holler and I'll be there as fast as I can." Smoke shook Saru's hand and pulled him in for a hug.
Smoke became a hugger after he noticed that it slightly raised Intimacy with the hugged Zectian if done correctly.
"Well, I best be on my way. I'm sure you and your men have a lot of catching up to do."
Smoke nodded and silently watched as Saru walked towards the forest clearing.
"So, what should we do now? Head for Vigilantez's temples or search for the witches?" Ledur asked once more.
"Let's head over to the nearest Vigilantez temple after having a reunion party. I want a sure thing. I've already lost a bird in the hand as it is."
Smoke noticed the albino Simiavulg's pace becoming slower as he was about to enter the forest. He saw Saru turn around and wave him goodbye.
With a forced smile on his face, Smoke waved back.
'All that hard-earned Intimacy for nothing!'
 

A sandstorm cleared up and revealed a four-story ruined castle carved out from the side of a mountain. A Paladin Lord looked down from the highest terrace and watched the scorching hot desert in the land of Grand Malodorant Dragonis.
Apparently, Tristan had made it to one of the lost cities created by the ancient Draconian race. The precious treasures once stored in this great castle had long been looted by plunderers throughout the ages.
Despite the castle being a complete ruin, Tristan still had his guild occupy it. The well-designed defenses of the castle stood the test of time. Tristan decided that it would be a fitting headquarters during his stay in the land of the dragons.
To fight on equal ground against the gigantic monsters of these lands, Tristan divided his men into regiments of one thousand members.
For a Sonstwelter, death in this area meant a one-way ticket back to the last checkpoint outside of Grand Malodorant Dragonis: a village situated two thousand five hundred kilometers away from where the ruined castle was located.
Originally, he headed to this challenging land with 10,000 DracoRicco guild members, but Tristan decided to weed out the weaker ones during a battle against four-and-a-half-meter-long wyverns.
This first culling left Tristan with 7,000 members. Yet at this point, the surviving members only numbered 3,203 individuals. This was due to the feuern wyrms.
The feuern wyrms were orange wingless dragons with a length of seven meters from head to tail, but the girth of their body was only one and a half meters.
These blazing orange dragons decimated most of his men and kicked them out of the land of the dragons by sending them to their last checkpoint.
Despite the fact that these dragons were wingless by nature, they could still fly thanks to the ability to transform the flame that spread along their backs into fiery wings.
Within the safety of the ruined castle, Tristan reorganized his men. He assembled the swiftest Light Knights to challenge the flame-winged dragons. He ordered his men to target one of the feuern wyrms that would stray far from its kin.
"Men, you are our final hope of obtaining a Feuern stone. Leave with the knowledge that you're the best of the best. We will confidently await your arrival." Tristan dispatched the last of his Light Knights with these final words of encouragement.
One hundred fastest mounted Knights rode out of the castle on brown acinonyx cheetahs. They branched out into groups of ten and traveled far until they found a pack of feuern wyrms congregated in the clouds.
The flame-winged dragons circled above them. From a safe distance, the knights stalked them for days. Finally, one of the feuern wyrms strayed away from the others. Due to the feuern wyrm's massive length, it could only rest on long stretches of land.
The feuern wyrm's orange scales slowly adapted to the shades of brown in the desert land with patches of green vegetation. This camouflaged it as an ordinary knoll, which made it hard for anyone to detect it in the desert.
Especially for the swarm of a thousand desert locusts in search of a vegetation patch. The ten-centimeter-long desert locusts all headed straight towards the feuern wyrm.
Lying in wait, the feuern wyrm suddenly sprang up with its mouth wide open. It sucked all of the desert locusts into its mouth like a vacuum.
The Light Knights used this opportunity and attacked the feuern wyrm from two directions.Ten Light Spears rained down from behind the big rocks where the knights hid.
From scattered locations, four more groups of Light Knights released their spears and confused the feuern wyrm.
The Light Spears' damage of 20 to 50 points only tickled the feuern wyrm's hard scales, but it annoyed the monster nonetheless. The wingless dragon could not tolerate anyone who would dare attack it.
After the feuern wyrm found the source of the attack, it spew fireballs and melted the rocks from which the Light Spears came from, only to see knights mounted on acinonyx cheetahs running in the opposite direction.
These Light Knights learned from their comrades who died in the previous hunting attempts.
Out of necessity, they moved faster with their brown acinonyx cheetahs. Their mounts in turn developed higher endurance, which was one of the acinonyx cheetahs' weakest points.
The angered feuern wyrm stayed low on the ground as it chased after the knights. As fast as the feuern wyrm was, it couldn't catch up with the veteran Light Knights.
With their lives on the line, the cautious knights quickly noticed a sunset-like glow behind them. The feuern wyrm opened its mouth and launched a fireball towards the fleeing knights.
The acinonyx cheetahs took drastic measures and leapt sideways. This created an opportunity for the feuern wyrm to close the distance between them .
SNAAAPP!
It tried to take a bite out of one of the Light Knights, but ate nothing but air. The wingless dragon was short by only two centimeters.
With the feuern wyrm's mouth closed, the attacked acinonyx cheetah used it as a springboard and dashed away for dear life. The lost gap between them was quickly re-created.
Yet, it could not outrun the fireball that was launched in its direction immediately afterwards, and the acinonyx cheetah and its rider tried to take another evasive maneuver.
SCORCH!
The Light Knight and the acinonyx cheetah died instantly, even though the fireball merely grazed them. The rest of the fleeing knights rode at top speed of one hundred kilometers per hour. They still had more than sixty kilometers of desert to cover if they wanted to survive.
As the Light Knights scurried, they met a slew of monsters. There were aardwolves, sandcats, bronze jackals, and even a bearded dragon.
Yet, all of these monsters hurriedly scampered out of their path once they spotted the ferocious feuern wyrm chasing after them. The feuern wyrm kept spewing fireballs, but it mostly hit rocks, which melted upon impact. Unfortunately, even the splash damage from the feuern wyrm's fireballs was enough to kill the knights that weren't able to move away fast enough.
On the horizon, the sixty-nine remaining Light Knights finally saw the outline of the ruined castle carved out from the side of a mountain. The Captain of the knights called his guild master. "Master Tristan, we're at the five kilometer marker."
"Very good! Keep up that pace." Tristan faced his guild members inside the ruined castle and shouted, "Everyone, the feuern wyrm is coming! Get into position!"
All remaining DracoRicco members scrambled to their designated locations. Aero Magi and Aqua Magi hastened to the second floor and excitedly waited at the windows of the castle walls.
While Assassins, Iron Knights, Elemental Knights, Paladins and a Shadow Phantom bolted outside of the castle gate and hid behind the giant boulders lined up towards the ruined castle's entrance, Pyro Magi, Electro Magi, Hunters, Snipers and Rangers watched from up high on the third floor. Six hundred High Priests and Priestesses were scattered between all three groups.
To an outsider, this scene may have looked chaotic, but all of the DracoRicco members present here knew exactly where they had to go and what was expected of them.
The Light Knights saw the castle's wide gateway and ran straight for it. The feuern wyrm remained focused on the knights and followed them blindly.
As soon as the last Light Knight entered the castle, a massive perlite gate was lowered and prevented the feuern wyrm from entering.
The feuern wyrm tried to melt the gate with its fireballs, but they proved to be ineffective against an unmeltable perlite gate.
As soon as it saw that the gate remained undamaged, the feuern wyrm formed its fiery wings and flew upwards, but the Hunters, Snipers and Rangers on the third floor immediately threw a perlite net at it and forced the monster to the ground.
Right after the feuern wyrm was netted, Tristan's hidden ground forces came out from behind the boulders. They were carrying two-by-one-meter shields made out of the same material. The ground forces quickly nailed the perlite net to the ground.
Surrounded and netted, the feuern wyrm coiled its long body. It forced its mouth through the net and began spewing fireballs. Despite the restricted space, it writhed around to fire at all directions using the gaps in the net.
The wingless dragon's do-or-die attack forced the ground units to back off as the fireballs blasted away ten of Tristan's shield-bearing members.
As they were flung into the air, their backs were exposed and the feuern wyrm released multiple smaller fireballs aimed at each one of them. All of them were killed as soon as the small fireballs made contact.
Unbeknownst to the feuern wyrm, Tristan's magical division comprised of Aero and Aqua Magi began creating two casting circles above its head.
As the casting circles moved horizontally and started to overlap, traces of frost mist could be seen in the air around them. The shield-bearing units then got within spear range of the monster.
They plunged hundreds of ice-enchanted spears into the monster's belly, but could only damage it for 120 to 210 points.
"Don't falter! Attack!" yelled Tristan to his guild members from the third floor of the ruined castle.
The ground units organized in a rotary motion worked with clockwork precision and alternated their spear throws at the tangled beast.
After five minutes and more than a thousand spear attacks, the feuern wyrm's life bar displayed (468,560/800,000 HP). The accumulated damage weakened the monster and affected its flame wings.
This gave the Aero and Aqua Magi the much-needed opportunity for their melded freezing spell to work. The two casting circles of water and wind directly above the feuern wyrm merged into one. The combined casting circle descended upon the beast and enveloped it in a tube-like prison.
Tristan went down to the second floor and shouted. "Ground forces, retreat!".
The shield-bearing division immediately followed the order and took refuge behind the boulders. Ice fog with almost zero visibility formed inside the tube.
The feuern wyrm struggled from within the tube prison filled with ice fog. After two full minutes of the combined spell of the Aero and Aqua Magi, the tube-like prison dispersed. Everything stood still, including Tristan's forces.
A cold mist descended upon the ground forces from where the tube-prison once stood. "Aero Magi." Tristan commanded. A strong gust of wind dispersed the mist, revealing a glistening feuern wyrm, frozen solid in its death pose. Its head stuck out of the perlite net with mouth wide open.
"Ryaaaaaaaaaaahhh!" Tristan shouted as he leapt with his two-handed dragonslayer sword from the second floor of the ruined castle.
SLICE!
In one fell swoop, Tristan severed the feuern wyrm's head and killed the dragon. Under normal circumstances, the feuern wyrm's experience reward would have given Tristan ten levels.
However, because there were more so many DracoRicco members participating in the fight, it only gave a big boost to all of their experience bars.
The members quickly gathered the materials dropped by the feuern wyrm. A Sonstwelter with a Job of a Shadow Phantom walked over to Tristan and handed him a Feuern stone.
"Thank you, Bones. Now we just need nine more." Tristan grinned as he examined the orange stone.
"Tristan, I'm not sure if we can get that many with the members we have left." argued Bones.
"Tch. Don't be so negative. I want to resurrect Valdurath and that's why we're here. I'd like to see Amahan's pathetic Djinn fight against a fully-recovered Ruby Dragon." said Tristan as he walked towards his ruined castle.
"Hmm. Amahan did obtain three out of four Essence pieces that he's supposed to collect. So maybe a fight between Valdaruth and Comataz will really happen."
Tristan and Bones' discussion was interrupted when a beautiful Arch Bishop greeted them as they reached the perlite gate. "Well done, but we still lost a total of eighty members in this hunt."
"Stop reminding me, Aurora. Bones already told me the same thing." said Tristan as he returned the salute the other guild members were giving him.
"By the way, have you guys seen Smoke's latest video upload?" asked Aurora.
"The one where he did nothing but sit and meditate with a staff?" answered Bones.
Tristan shook his head. "I don't get that guy. I wonder if he'll get a lot of views with just that video. Though, I've never seen those ape-man creatures anywhere in Zectas before. Anyway, how is our food supply?" said Tristan as he tried to change the topic.
"We still have plenty of food, and I believe those curious-looking creatures are called Simiavulgs. They are supposedly as rare as Centaurs, if not more. Each continent is said to have only one Simiavulg village." added Aurora.
"And how do you know that?" asked Bones.
"I read it on a thread posted by this guild called Dikaya. They used to rank fiftieth, but after they failed to enter a Simiavulg village, they dropped to below the top hundred."
"Can we drop Smoke's weird quests already? Who cares about what that freak is doing? Aurora, I want a complete status update on everything."
"But I just gave you one before the hunt..." said Aurora with a sigh.

* * * * * * 

Nash watched the number of views of his Simiavulg training video soar to ten million. The video had a slow start, but it picked up more viewers after someone posted information about Dikaya's failed attempt to enter a Simiavulg village.
Most of the comments were questions about the results of the Simiavulg training, but he didn't answer any of them. There were many speculations and Nash loved reading them as he watched the comment count increase everytime the page auto-refreshed itself.