Zectas Volume IV: The Salubrious City of Centzo (15 page)

If he waited for midnight to kill Aral, he would only have ten hours left before Horrabelle's army storms down on the three villages.
He shook his head strongly and decided that killing Aral was not the answer.
"Watch over him, bud," he said to Igniz. "I've got to go back to Guro's house and reason with her."
Smoke leapt up and hurriedly glided back to the house on top of the dam, in front of the man-made lake filled with powerful monsters.
In less than thirty-minutes, Smoke reached Guro's house. He landed softly and knocked on the door, but no one answered. He called out her name, but not a living sound came out from the house.
Due to Aral's expected arrival set for seventeen hours from now, he changed his mind and thought to risk it. However, with Guro missing, his plan to use Beggary on her was now out of the drain.
While standing outside of Guro's house, he found ten torches laid against the wall. Since Aral was supposed to come out at midnight, he decided to "borrow" the torches as they could at least help increase their visibility of the area.
Smoke returned to where Ledur and Igniz was. As he had no idea how to set a trap for a creature with unknown size, he planned to meet it with brute force.
In preparation for Aral's arrival, he used his Earth Manipulation on the grounds near the shoreline. He started constructing two earth towers. He planned on them having a height of twenty meters, a width and thickness of seven meters.
Hours went by and he had finished his first tower. This tower was a standard square tower, but with one eye-catching twist. On top, it had a ramp pointing down towards the lake. He then started creating one meter boulders and with his Earth Manipulation lifted them to the top of the tower.
While doing so, he found Ledur and Igniz standing behind him. His dark ember sprite was orbiting around Ledur as if trying to help him walk. The winged Tikbalang was limping a little and tried to sit down against a tree.
Smoke found that Ledur's life bar was already fully healed and that his motor skills were almost back to 100%.
"What are you doing?" asked Ledur as he pointed to Smoke's earth-based structure.
"It's our secret weapon against Aral," he said proudly with a wide smile. "Are you feeling better?"
"I am. Thanks to you and Igniz." Ledur smiled gratefully at the two of them.
"Do you think you're up to telling me exactly what kind of olm this Aral is?" asked Smoke eagerly.
"Sure..." replied Ledur. The winged Tikbalang proceeded to describe his fight with the olm boss of this dam.
After Ledur's detailed retelling, Smoke realized that setting a trap for Aral was out of the question. Meeting it head on was their only course of action.
Given the new information on Aral, Smoke updated Ledur on his battle plan for their midnight battle. Smoke then whipped up a quick and easy fire eel meal and ate with his friends. After filling their satiety bars, Ledur was fully recovered.
Together, the two Earth Manipulators built Smoke's second tower in no time at all. The towers were spaced ten meters apart. They've loaded each tower with at least twenty boulders.
After which, he told Ledur that he would leave for a while and get some rest in his other world. Smoke wanted to be fully charged before facing Aral.
 

* * * * * * 

Ten minutes before midnight, Smoke was sitting on top of an earth tower. He was busily coating his weighted chain and sickle with poison.
Ledur was standing next to him, watching the man-made lake.
"I think the paralysis I got from being shocked by its lightning attack lasted for more than ten seconds," stated the winged Tikbalang as his hoof scratched his chin.
"Yeah, but that was a direct attack." Smoke nodded as they continued on reviewing their battle plans. "Besides, you said its whole body lights up before it uses it. We should easily be able to..."
BZZT BZZT BZZT BZZT BZZT BZZT
He stopped talking as the alarm he set went off. "It's time!" declared Smoke. Ledur, Igniz and himself all flew towards the center of the man-made lake.
Before reaching the center Smoke, Igniz and Ledur broke off into different directions. Ledur went slightly right, Igniz went slightly left and Smoke descended.
All of them started making loud noises on the surface of the water. Igniz used his fireballs and created loud splashes as it hit the water surface. Ledur flew lower and used his hooves as he did before, tapping on the water surface. Whereas, Smoke used his white metallic staff and strongly smacked the lake with it.
Two minutes till Aral's arrival; Ledur flew back to the two towers in preparation for the next phase of their plan while Smoke and Igniz remained soaring above the center of the lake. Their vigorous disturbance on the lake's surface brought the monsters deep within to its surface and they searched for the culprit who perturbed them.
Thirty fire eels emerged and created an uneven circular formation of fiery glow on the lake. Four horned bull sharks joined them shortly after.
Smoke had hoped for more monsters, but this was still better than nothing. The monsters were getting restless and started to dive back into the lake's depths. Hurriedly, Smoke used his poison arrows and Igniz his fireballs to aggravate the monsters once more.
As they were harassing the lake monsters below, a light bluish glow started to rise from the center of the lake. It rose rapidly and leapt out of the water. Aral's serpent-like body had a length over twenty meters and a girth of two meters. Its bluish-white scales gave it an eerie glow and greatly illuminated the entire lake. It had four dragon-like limbs that looked like it would have trouble holding up the massive water dragon.
As it was falling back into the lake, its one meter head attached with the two black metal rods, stared directly at Smoke before it dove back down.
SPLASH
A colossal column of water rose up and lightly reached Smoke as Aral's massive body made contact with the lake's surface. The Boss of the lake remained swimming on the surface, while the other monsters started to dive down.
However, before the other monsters could flee, Smoke used his Berserker's Ring of Flames on top of the water and created an upside-down red casting circle on it, catching Aral and the rest of the lake monsters.
Instantly, the lake monsters started to take a red color as they were inflicted with Berserk, but Aral's bluish-white scales remained unsullied.
'What? Is Aral immune to my ring's Berserk?' Smoke couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Despite Aral's immunity, the rest of the monsters still performed as he planned. All of them caught in his casting circle attacked the mightiest monster and went after the blue glowing monster.
SHRIEK
Aral let out a loud, high-pitched piercing sound as all of the monsters attacked it. The fire eels and bull sharks lost all their sense of fear and flung themselves towards Aral, taking out chunks of its bluish scales. Whereas the horned bull sharks charged their horns deep into Aral's elongated body.
Nine seconds passed, and Smoke canceled his casting circle. Even though he could have kept it up to fifteen seconds, he didn’t use all of his mana as a precautionary measure.
The monsters' were freed from their Berserk status and dizzily swam around the giant olm.Yet despite their joint efforts they only dented Aral's life bar as it displayed (742,150/800,000 HP).
On the other hand, Aral glared directly at the DarkElf gliding above the water. Its entire body started to glow even brighter.
Smoke knew that it was time for them to leave. He signalled Igniz, and together they hurriedly soared away. While gliding away, his eyes were focused on Aral and saw two lightning bolts aimed directly at him.
Fortunately, he evaded the two lightning bolts and was steadily nearing the two earth towers he had built.
A constantly glowing Aral remained near the center of the lake as it began electrocuting the monsters that attacked it earlier.
Smoke stopped midway towards the tower and ordered Igniz to fly back with him. He equipped his power chainsaw bow and released a barrage of poison arrows at once, while ordering Igniz to attack Aral with his fireballs. Yet, their ranged attacks could not go beyond 200 points of damage.
Despite their low output, they still kept attacking Aral with their ranged attacks. The gigantic olm glared back at him. It charged another lightning attack and its body glowed once more. It launched two more lightning bolts at Smoke. He quickly closed his cloak and instantly plummeted, only to open it up again and glide upward.
As Smoke was able to avoid its lightning bolts twice now, Aral left him alone and resumed attacking the groggy monsters. These targets barely moved as they had not fully recovered from the after effects of Smoke's Berserk.
BOOSH
In under ten minutes, Aral devoured all of the monsters on the surface of the lake. Whereas an ignored Smoke and Igniz inflicted a total of 54,820 damage points.
Smoke smirked as he watched Aral's life bar display a value of 86%.
Aral's body glowed once more and attacked him with the same set of lightning bolts. As he had seen this attack for many times now, he was easily able to dodge it using the same trick of closing his cloak and gliding back up.
'Maybe I overestimated this monster,' thought Smoke smugly and released eight poison arrows as a counterattack.
Aral remained persistent and charged for another lightning bolt attack, and again Smoke closed his cloak. Yet, this time was different.
The gigantic olm dipped its long tail into the lake and flipped up a torrential column of water. Smoke got blasted out of the sky and was plummeting straight down the lake.
The lake Boss then charged for another attack and released its lightning bolts when Ledur came out of nowhere and scooped the falling Smoke out of harm's way.
Igniz hurriedly flew to the soaring winged Tikbalang who landed Smoke safely on top of their earth tower.
"Thanks, Ledur. That was close," he said, smiling as adrenaline was pumping hard inside him.
"Now, what was that line you always say about being reckless, again?" sarcastically asked Ledur.
"Yeah, yeah. Let's just proceed with phase two," said Smoke sheepishly.
Smoke hurriedly placed the torches he borrowed from Guro’s house, on the sides of the downward ramp facing the lake.
Aral swam skillfully on the lake's surface after them. It followed Smoke near the shore of their towers. Enticed by the torches that looked like fire eels, the giant olm lunged out of the water. It tried to grab the torches on the tower to the left, only to be met with a rolling boulder, smashing directly into its head.
THUD
Ledur pushed the boulder with his Earth Manipulation and made a loud dull sound upon impact with Aral's head. It wobbled and swayed as its body was falling into the water.
SPLASH
The water dragon sunk back into the lake and received a damage of 1,000 points.
Five seconds later, it went up again for another attack. Yet this time Ledur threw off five boulders, but as it came rolling down, Aral easily avoided all of them. Or so it thought.
Ledur's boulders may have initially missed Aral, but the winged Tikbalang used his Earth Manipulation on the falling boulders and broke them into four equal pieces. He then transformed them into earth javelins and tried to plunge them into the giant olm's body. Each spike only did 1,500 points of damage as it did not fully penetrate Aral's blue scales.
The boulders turned into sharp earth javelins managed a total damage of 30,000 points.
Surprised by the sudden earth attack, Aral retreated deep into the lake.
Smoke would have wanted to use his Earth Manipulation and helped Ledur, but his mana was still at (5,884/255,034 MP). His only contribution to the battle now was a steady bombardment of poison arrows, but even that was taken away from him the moment Aral submerged.
Still deep within the lake, Aral did two more lightning bolt attacks, but it was neutralized by the earth tower and dispersed into the ground.
Then, the blue glowing inside the lake disappeared.
"Did it give up?" asked Smoke.
"I doubt it," replied Ledur flatly.
All of a sudden, a large column of water blasted out from the lake and destroyed a large portion of Ledur's tower. Immediately after, more water blasts launched out from the lake as Aral's tail flipped large columns of water.
Piece by piece, Ledur's tower was being torn down by Aral's water blasts.
Smoke switched to his white metallic staff and stepped in front of the torrential attacks. With his palm facing the lake and his staff planted firmly on the tower, he created a purple concave Manatl which was three meters in diameter.
SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD
Sounds of the Manatl successfully blocking the attacks echoed, but the barrier wasn't big enough to block it completely. Smoke got drenched with water as some of it sprayed out of his Manatl. Fortunately, the water had lost most of its force and he received no damage.
Five minutes into Aral's repetitive water blasts, it stopped attacking and its head came up to inspect Smoke's barrier. It looked at it intensely and dove back into the water. It then resumed its repeated water blasts as if it was on to something.
SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD SCHILD
"My Manatl won't hold much longer," said Smoke to Igniz and Ledur. "Fall back!"
Ledur and Igniz flew off the earth tower and landed on the ground below it.
In the brief moment that Aral stopped attacking, he canceled his Manatl and transferred the gathered energy to his white metallic staff.
He leapt off and was about to glide down when a water blast came straight at him. He came crashing to the ground and tumbled hard, smack into a tree. He only received one clean shot, but was already substantially damage. His life bar was now at 65%.
Presently, farther away from the lake, Smoke's party had no way of damaging Aral. Yet the same thing could be said for the the gigantic olm as well.
Ledur and Igniz speedily ran to where Smoke was, but before they could do anything, a blue glow shone above them. They all looked up and found Aral glaring over them from on top of Smoke's earth tower. Its body glowed a shimmering blue as it coiled itself around the tower. Two more lightning bolts launched out of the black metal rods coming out of its head.
Seconds before Aral's attack could reach them, Ledur created an earth wall in front of them and dissipated the lightning to the ground.
Two minutes had passed and Aral still kept firing its lightning bolts.
"Looks like it has an endless supply of that attack," he thought out loud. "We've got to get closer!" said Smoke strongly and pointed towards the tower.
Ledur than manipulated the wall to slowly move forward. It would stop and take Aral's lightning bolt attacks and move again afterward.
Aral kept on assailing them with its lightning bolts until Ledur's earth wall stopped. It had only moved forward for twenty meters.
The gigantic olm stopped attacking as it noticed a hole on the ground behind the earth wall. It  stretched its entire body to get a better view, but then felt something leap up from behind it. Aral turned around only to see Smoke's energized staff, smashing into its face.
WHAAM
Smoke's charged strike dealt 260,000 points of damage and left Aral with 49% on its life bar. He had Ledur use the Digger's Wand and create a tunnel for him to take Aral by surprise.
An injured Aral was about to dive back into the lake when suddenly, the earth tower collapsed on its body.
Ledur used his Earth Manipulation and trapped the gigantic olm. Shortly after, he collapsed the other one and turned all the tower pieces into a hundred earth javelins. The hard, sharp javelins stabbed Aral's elongated body in several places. The winged Tikbalang severely mangled the giant olm for 150,000 points of damage.
Aral was ensnared under the rubble of the earth towers, while multiple earth javelins protruded out of its body. It was left with (247,000/800,000 HP) on its life bar.
Ledur than manipulated the rubble two interlock with the ground, creating a mesh-like net over Aral. Smoke, Igniz and Ledur joined in on battering the last HP out of Aral’s body.
Yet, its shiny blue scales proved to be harder than expected as Smoke’s sickle could not cut deep into it.  Still; Smoke, Ledur and Igniz persisted and kept on attacking the helpless monster. Its life bar quickly dwindled to less than 8%.
In the midst of hacking the monster, his weighted chain and sickle glowed. This indicated that he had enough mana to activate the Cyclone of Slaughter. Coincidentally, Aral’s tail broke free due to its persistent struggle.
Before he could activate his ability, Aral's tail whip came out of nowhere and flung him upward, directly in front Aral's two black metallic rods, charging for an ultimate lightning attack.