Zectas Volume IV: The Salubrious City of Centzo (14 page)

"Consider it dead," stated Smoke confidently.
Before walking away, Smoke's assertive voice became meek. "Mm. Any clues on what type of monster this Aral creature is?" he asked Guro.
"Now that won't be much of a quest if I help," she scoffed.
"Was just wondering, that's all," he said in positively."Then how about if we borrowed one of your rowboats? Would that be alright?"
Guro shrugged and nodded dismissively. "Just get it back in one piece. Now, go, I've got a lot of things to do."
Smoke, Igniz and Ledur bade her farewell and left the lioness Lioumerean's house. Smoke then checked the countdown timer.

'Still plenty of time left,' he thought, as he forced himself to think positively.
 

* * * * * * 

Before they left, Smoke sharpened his weapons against his electro stone and enchanted them with Lightning property for the next ten hours. 
Rowing expertly in Guro's rowboat, Smoke rowed farther away from her house towards the central portion of the dam. Meanwhile, Igniz orbited five meters away the boat searching for the monster.
After thirty minutes of rowing, Guro's house looked like a dollhouse. Yet there was still no sign of Gitna Dam's Boss.
"Smoke, why did you borrow the boat? When we can easily look for the monster from above?" asked Ledur flying directly over him.
"I wanted to get this Aral business done and over with. That's why I thought it would be faster if I used myself as bait. But I guess I was wrong," explained Smoke while looking into the murky blue waters of Gitna Dam.
All of a sudden, his Cunning of the Dire Fox picked up six monsters coming fast towards him. He looked in the direction of the monsters and found the water in the dam boiling with a dark yellow glow. With his chain and sickle ready, Smoke waited for the monsters to come out of the water.
SWOOSH
A three-meter long elongated eel with amber stripes, pointed snout and underslung mouth leapt at him. It was long, but incredibly thin as its body's girth was less than half a meter. As it soared through the air like an arrow, fire came out of its stripes, increasing its girth to three times its original size.
Confident of his high Fire resistance, Smoke thought to test the monster out and blocked the eel's attack with his left arm while his sickle was poised to strike on the right.
The monster opened its mouth wide and revealed four sharp teeth. It took a bite out of the DarkElf's arm and damaged him for 300 points. It then tried to burn him with fire blazing out of its markings, but Smoke took zero damage from its fire attack.
As the monster finished its attack, Smoke slashed his sickle across the eel's elongated body and revealed its life bar and name, fire eel (67,500/80,000 HP).
SWOOSH SWOOSH SWOOSH SWOOSH SWOOSH
He was about to do another attack on the fire eel, but five more were heading his way. He leapt up and attacked with his sickle. It sliced across the monsters' bodies as he swirled it around rapidly.
With his Lightning enhanced weighted chain and sickle, all six fire eels dove back in the water with 84% left on their life bars. The rowboat rocked wildly as Smoke landed. He instantly threw his sickle in the water after them and damaged three more before they dove in deeper.
'A water monster with Fire attribute. Now, that's something you don't see everyday,' he let out an amused smirked.
Smoke noticed Igniz attacked the fire eels with his fireballs, but it had no effect on them at all. "Don't worry about it, bud."
He also realized that Ledur who was flying above him, could not to attack as the fire eels were out and into the water in less than a few seconds. This time, Ledur was preparing to dive in, and waited for the fire eels to come out again.
However, Smoke had another idea. "Ledur, can you and Igniz fly farther away? I'd like to try something out."
Boiling water surrounded his rowboat as the fire eels encircled around it. He placed his feet firmly on the rowboat and activated Cyclone of Slaughter. Sixteen afterimages of sickles and iron balls encircled around him. He pointed the blurring chain and sickle into the water. A flurry of water erupted and ripped out chunks of the fire eels flew up along side it.
'Wonder what these fire eels taste taste like,' he thought to himself while smirking.
He could see the life bars of the fire eels rapidly decreasing to below 40% in less than three seconds. The fire eels tried to swim away but his weapon's ability created a strong vortex, pulling the monsters closer to the rowboat and prevented them from escaping.
As the fire eels were constantly being damaged by the sickle and iron ball, they instinctively found refuge directly under Smoke's rowboat.
Cornered, the fire eels started attacking the bottom of his rowboat. Smoke almost went overboard due to the fierce rocking motion. Any more violent movement, and his Cyclone of Slaughter would have been canceled. Despite this, Smoke continued attacking anything in the water. However, the fire eels refused to go down without a fight. The monsters jumped out to the sides of his rowboat and scorched the dry wood of his boat by scraping their flaming bodies against it.
The rowboat caught on fire. He would have started taking Fire damage if it weren’t for his high resistance to it.
Smoke focused on the jumping monsters and slaughtered all of them in pairs. In no time at all, the fire eels were no more, but so was his borrowed vessel.
"Now what do I tell Guro?" he asked himself while placing his palm on his face.
Even though he set out on her quest to increase Intimacy with her, he went and got her rowboat destroyed instead.
Ledur patted Smoke’s shoulder as soon as the DarkElf glided to shore. "Don't worry about it. As long as we get that Aral monster, I'm sure she won't mind the missing boat."
"Right." said Smoke and nodded positively. "But what are we gonna for bait now?"
Smoke scratched his head while thinking of a solution. 
Abruptly, Ledur zoomed towards the central portion of the man-made lake.
"What are you doing?" Smoke shouted out to him.
"Looking for the Dam Boss," stated Ledur flatly.
Before Smoke could talk him out of it, the winged Tikbalang was already back in the middle of the lake, flying closely above the water, randomly tapping it with his hooves to lure the monsters from deep within.
It wasn't even five minutes, and a horned bull shark launched out of the water. Ledur easily dodged the attack and struck the two-meter monster with his hoof before it plunged back into the water.
Lightning enchanted arrows sailed through the air as Smoke could only attack with his power chainsaw bow from the shore.
Eight arrows struck the bull shark, but its life bar still displayed (227,420/250,000 HP).
"Igniz, fly out there and light up that shark," he ordered his symbiote.
Posthaste, the dark ember sprite flew straight and gave Ledur cover fire.
Together, they spent the next ten minutes dealing with the bull shark before ending its final HP.
Smoke then angrily called Ledur back to the shore. "Don't pull a stunt like that again," he said strongly. "You could have been killed."
"I was only luring a monster, and I only  followed what you were doing earlier. Besides, we don't have time to spare," argued Ledur back at him.
Smoke knew Ledur was right and conceded. "Alright, but we've got to do it together."
Ledur nodded in agreement. With Smoke, Igniz and Ledur in concurrence, the three of them set out and flew over the man-made lake. The winged Tikbalang still flew near the water's surface,  whereas Smoke readied his chain and sickle to strike at a moment's notice.
Ten hours went by and the sun had already set, but they still didn't see any signs of Aral. They've already killed over three hundred fire eels and a dozen bull sharks. They only fought against those two creatures, due to the fact that the other monsters in the dam were too afraid to go near them.
Since it was a moonless night, Smoke ordered them to take a break and created a small campfire near the shore. The fire was only there as a source of light as the meat of the fire eels they collected were already good enough to eat raw. Their meat was always warm as if freshly baked out of the oven.
After eating, he thought to get some rest and was about to log out of Zectas for a proper sleep. He had already skipped the scheduled power nap four hours ago.
"I'll be back. I think I'll be a while," he said to Ledur while stretching his arms and yawning. "Don't do anything reckless while I'm away, you hear?" he said to Ledur.
Smoke stood up and prepared to logout, but before leaving, he checked his customized countdown timer.
 

'I have to get back soon. Time is running out,' he thought to himself and disappeared from the virtual reality world.
 

* * * * * * 

Smoke groggily opened his eyes. He only slept two hours in the real world as eight hours had already passed here in Zectas.
However, his sleepiness instantly disappeared after he saw Ledur's severely wounded body lying down near their encampment. Igniz was helplessly orbiting around him with a worried expression.
At once, Smoke ran to him and checked the damage on his winged friend. Ledur's life bar displayed (50,212/403,992 HP).
He helped Ledur sit up and quickly assessed his situation. 'Good. His life bar isn't going down.'
"What happened?" asked Smoke while inspecting his friend. He then found a large cauterized wound behind Ledur's black wings. He presumed that it was Igniz's handiwork. He feared that Ledur was inflicted with Bleeding.
"I found it..." said Ledur in agony. "Aral came out at exactly midnight."
Smoke nodded guiltily. 'I should have considered Aral was a nocturnal creature. I knew I should have slept for just an hour.'
"It came out from the middle of the lake," he said while trying to raise his hand but could only muster the strength to point with his index finger.
"What kind of monster was Aral?" Smoke asked as he wanted to know what they were up against.
Ledur could only blink as he didn't have enough strength to move most of his muscles.
"It was an olm...but I've never seen one that large." Ledur had a difficult time talking.
"What's an olm?" asked Smoke as he had never read about them in the monster books he acquired.
"They're...dragons...but..." said Ledur as he tried to explain, but it was clear that each word he uttered was painful.
Smoke could no longer watch him suffering. "No, it's alright. Just rest now."
Ledur blinked twice and closed his eyes to sleep. Smoke then placed medicinal herbs the Lioumereans gave him. He hoped that it would help recover Ledur's lost HP.
He walked away from Ledur and called the person he could always turn to when he was in trouble.
"Hey, how are you," said Smoke pleasantly. "I didn't catch you at a bad time, I hope."
"It's okay. I'm fine. Everyone's fine. Now, what can I help you with?" replied Darius, the legendary Beggar Legati.
Smoke was taken aback. Darius was usually friendly no matter what time he called.
"Are you alright? Is there a problem in Nanahuatl?" asked a worried Smoke.
"Like I said, everything's fine. We're not in any imminent danger. So, just get on with what you want!" he stated strongly.
Smoke couldn't understand what was wrong with Darius, but decided that learning about the olm was more important at the moment.
"I was hoping you could tell me what an olm is?" said Smoke bluntly.
"An olm? Is a subspecies of a dragon," Darius voice slowly became calm as he started explaining about Smoke's unknown monster. "It's really interesting because although it is classified as a water dragon, it is also a lightning dragon. It has two black metal rods coming out of its ears that can fire lightning bolts."
"Really?" he said with clear interest. Smoke decided to ask his follow up questions while Darius was in a good mood. "How big do these olms usually get?"
"Olms grow to a size of about one meter, but I've seen one reach up to two meters," explained Darius.
"Interestingly enough, olms become the strongest monsters in a lake because their lightning bolt ability easily subdues the rest of the creatures." described the old Beggar whose love for sharing knowledge overcame his irritability. "Instead of having 100% Affinity to Water, they have 75% Affinity to both Water and Lightning."
Smoke listened to him intently as he too loved hearing Darius talk about his extensive knowledge in Zectas.
However, Darius voice instantly changed after he finished talking about the olm. "I assume that's all you need from me?" he asked in an annoyed tone.
Given Darius' temperament, Smoke decided it was best to cut their call short. "Yes. I think that's it for now..."
CLICK
"...Thank you for your help," said Smoke but his last sentence wasn't heard as Darius had already dropped their call.
'I wonder what's wrong with him? I better visit Nanahuatl when I have some free time.' he thought to himself and made a mental note to do so.
Thinking back on the task at hand, Smoke couldn't imagine how a two meter water dragon with lightning ability could injure Ledur to that extent.
'He did say he had never seen an olm that big before. So I guess it's bigger than two meters.' thought Smoke to himself while deciding on what to do before midnight.
Smoke checked the time. He still had seventeen hours before Aral was suppose to come out, but then he checked the his customized countdown timer.