Robert checked his list. Twenty missions, two weeks to complete all of them. He sorted them according to danger level. Some of the creatures he had to defeat were three-star monsters. And most of these had some sort of ranged attack so his kiting technique wouldn't work.
Then came the issue of accessing the realm where the monster could be found. Most of these were under control of this or that faction and they were very particular about letting strangers delve into their passages. Fortunately, for some of these realms, the one who posted the request and those who wanted the monster part were one and the same. But it would still draw some scrutiny on his activities that he would rather not suffer.
He checked the latest edition of the Celestial Atlas, a compendium of the known passages and their links. This one even had the connection between Earth and the Gravity Slime Caverns marked as blocked. With that, he plotted alternative routes he could take to reach these problematic realms without going through the main passage. The interspace was chaotic. One thing it was good at was creating back doors everywhere. Even on Earth, many passages remained undiscovered for quite a long time. People still tried to keep the passages to their private realms from being used. It was an arms race. And new passages opened up all the time.
He used his main talent and went to the location of the first passage.
*
*
Peru, the Andes mountain range.
Robert returned to reality a few miles away from the mountain monastery and walked the rest of the way. The rift cataclysm caused ocean levels to rise, destroying the coastal regions of the nation, where more than half the population lived. The loss of life was massive and the region was never reclaimed. Those living in the mountains took a nomadic lifestyle, migrating north and south along the Andes, trading with their neighbors but mostly living off the land. Their nomadic lifestyle was a necessity because they needed to let the areas regrow.
For some reason, most of the Prime Vestiges and passages in this region had the Wind affinity. So the Peruvian people became known as the Wind Nomads. They lived in peace for two hundred years and weren't bothered by the Fire Nation, the faction that killed most of the puffblooms and wrecked the floating island realm to the point humans abandoned that city.
He approached the monastery and stopped a hundred feet from the doors. The monks guarding the doorless archway bowed to him and he returned the gesture. Then two others came from inside. One of them was a hulk of a man, the other an elder.
"American?" The older monk asked.
Robert nodded. "Yes, I am," he said in Spanish. "I seek permission to delve into the cloud islands passage."
"Yes, yes. Come inside, traveler. Any who seek the sky with the right offerings shall gain entry."
Robert approached, then took a big crate from his storage ring. It contained a lot of meat jerky. Vegetables were easy to obtain with a resident Nature Arch. But the meat was an order of magnitude harder. Robert passed the crate to the muscular monk.
Minutes later, he crossed the passage to the Heavenly Cloud Realm.
It was similar to the Puffbloom Islands in which it was also a realm of floating islands, but the similarities ended there. A dense fog blocked vision and clung to the islands and to itself, forming long strands of what seemed like cotton candy. These strands eventually touched another island and became thick enough to cross into the next island. The winds were strong here. Travelers traversing this realm needed to carefully check the gravity orientation of each island and the wind strength to determine how to cross these dense fog bridges.
Each island had its own gravity and no two islands had the same gravity vector. Either the intensity was different or the orientation. Up in one island was sideways in the next and many had fallen to their deaths. Worse, the islands changed gravity vectors every now and then.
The realm had no bottom. As if some cruel God had played a prank on the realm, the bottom connected directly to the void. Thousands of souls lost their way and ended up down there.
And if the wind, the fog, and the gravity didn't get you, you could bet that the cloud condors would. These monsters were giant flying birds that loved to toss rocks onto people or just get up close and personal for a quick snack. The final danger was the lightning strikes. Without reason or rhyme, lightning could strike anywhere, anytime. It didn't have a set interval, it didn't have a warning. It just struck.
To Robert, the only danger was the lightning. He moved around the passage to get out of sight of the monks on the other side, then used his secondary talent. As a fairy, Robert flew freely, searching for his mark. The condors who dared come closer to the invisible fairy died to a well-placed void lance. Their corpses plummeted into the black abyss underneath the cotton candy islands.
He needed to search for lightning strikes. Because they weren't random. The lightning strikes were caused by the second monster species native to this place. The rainbow serpents, as the natives called them, were flying snakes ten to thirty feet in length, with rainbow wings and the Lightning affinity. They hid in the fog, away from the islands. Almost nobody could hunt them because of that. And if you happened to be found by one of these rainbow serpents, they would fulminate you with a long-range lightning bolt. Little was known about them. Few specimens were ever retrieved, dead. No live captures were recorded. Their Lightning powers were no joke.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
He searched for any signs of lightning. After spending a lot of time in the Gurglock Oceans, where the rumble of thunder was a constant and the lightning, was avoided, it was very odd to go after it. Robert needed one of the snakes' fangs. He thought it was to make a dagger but it could be anything. The fang's roots could gather Lightning Ether and were heavily aspected. He had a crystal box to store the fresh fang. The box would keep the fang in stasis, preserving its elemental properties.
He saw a flash of lightning in the distance and used his main talent. Robert went straight there and dove into the gray clouds to find his mark. Visibility inside was a bitch and he found the rainbow serpent because he ran into it.
Robert then hovered near the serpent's body, below the wings. He worked on his imprint and then used a void punch on the serpent's spine. He blew the monster's body halfway through, its tough scales resisting the void energy by spending a lot of essence. The snakes' talent was called Ether-reinforced scales.
The monster started to bleed. Robert disengaged and wrapped himself with a mage armor spell. The rainbow serpent erupted with lightning, sending arcs and sparks all around itself. The lightning reached Robert and his mage armor shattered. He withdrew to the liminal void to avoid the remaining charge and to wait for the paralysis to end. He was thankful that his flight power was completely magical and didn't rely on aerodynamics or the movement of his wings.
He returned right in the middle of the fray, with another mage armor shield. It broke, he withdrew, and repeated it until the charge ended. Robert felt dumb. He should've used mind blackout from the get-go but now that he was a lousy one-star Arch, the spell became too expensive to use from the get-go. Cheaper alternatives were preferred since he didn't need to catch the serpent alive.
Robert punched the serpent again on the same spot, dodging its gaping maw, fangs dripping venom. he cut the creature's lower body, allowing it to fall down into the void. He noticed that he was still invisible but the serpent had no problem tracking him. Robert only needed to wait. Eventually, the serpent became weak from blood loss and lost consciousness. He rushed in and grabbed the monster's body. Keeping the corpse afloat was a bit of a struggle because it was ten times bigger than him. He aimed at the nearest island and controlled the fall.
Once grounded, Robert quickly harvested the two fangs into the crystal box, then cut off the wings at the base. He was sure someone would want to buy these wings for a good price. And the quest said one fang but each snake came with two.
Robert chuckled. He once read about games people played before the cataclysm, where these monster part collection quests were common. And the monsters didn't have the required body parts most of the time. He imagined killing boars for their hearts, opening the boar just to find it had no heart. How could it live, then?
With his prize secured in his storage ring, Robert was ready to depart. But he had one more thing to do. He dove down and crossed into the black bottom. There, he found himself back in the liminal void. It was the first time he visited this dimension without using his talent. He could move about and survive just fine. Above him, he could see the realm frozen in time.
And all around him, the thousands of corpses of former explorers, condors, and a few rainbow serpents, were dead but preserved exactly the way they died. The explorer's corpses were concentrated mostly around the passage to the monastery. Some corpses were clearly eaten by the condors and then tossed into the void. Or they fell down when the gravity of the island changed.
Robert collected dozens of storage rings, harvested fangs from a handful of serpents, and also gathered any personal items he could find from the travelers. Many of them were monks and he was sure they would appreciate a memento of the deceased.
*
*
Robert emptied some of the lower-quality rings and returned to Earth. The monks greeted his return, praising Inti, the Sun God for guiding Robert back.
"This realm is daunting," The older monk said in Spanish. "It takes more courage to abandon a hopeless quest than to lose one's life."
"I understand," Robert said. "But I got what I wanted and more. I found some dead explorers inside the realm. I hope you can recognize who they were with these personal effects."
"You did? But no bodies remain on the islands for long."
"I know and still retrieved them anyway. Do you have a table where I can place the items?"
"Yes, I do. Sorry for doubting you."
"I took no offense. I just want to help."
"And we honor you for that."
He moved to a table and started to place the personal effects of the people he found down there. Small sandstone sculptures, engraved crystals, pictures, journals, lockets, and jewelry. Even the untouched storage rings he found with dead monks. The monastery monks gathered and started to point at items they recognized. For the next few hours, Robert stood next to the table, receiving the monk's gratitude and small gifts.
"What will you do with the items nobody recognized?" The old monk asked.
"I don't want them. keep them, trade them, toss them back into the passage. But I have also collected a few storage rings from the foreign explorers. I was hoping you would be interested in trading them."
After some negotiations, Robert exchanged most of the rings he collected and even some materials for nine Prime Vestiges the monks had. With such a windfall, he teleported back to the Mall in Pittersville.
*
*
"You didn't!" Yolania shouted at him. She was angry. "You are going to flood the market and plummet the prices for these fangs!"
"Should we do like those dairy farmers and destroy some of the fangs?"
"No. Yes. I don't know. It's such a waste."
"I have a better idea. I'll see if Professor Actus can craft something with them." He hoped Noah could make him another Lightning tempering amulet.
"Fine. I'll take five fangs and the wings," Yolania said. They negotiated the price, and Robert kept it as shop credit because it carried a premium.
Then he was out of there and back to the Imperial Academy. Robert visited Noah and dropped three boxes of Lightning fangs with the teacher. He spent the rest of the day in the gathering chambers, growing his star.