As Felix approached the battleground where he had last seen the Giant, he expected to see signs of battle from the previous fight. Instead, Felix saw nothing. There were no bodies, no blood stains, nothing to indicate there had previously been a battle here at all. He knew the Giant had thrown stones at the army, he had seen it, but none of the stones around the area were displaced at all. He found the Giant itself laying on the mountain side, as if tanning, although the sun hadn't even risen over the horizon yet.
It wasn't the most human like enemy he had fought, that would be the vampire and it's thralls, but it was the least threatening human like enemy so far. Felix felt a little bad hitting it and starting a fight as it seemed to just be napping on the mountainside. Unfortunately, he had a tutorial to complete so he fired off his tracking mana shots, though he doubted he would need them for this one. The tracking shots didn't pierce it's hide at all, instead shattering against it's body. Felix wasn't too worried though as he doubted he would need them here and the resulting splash of liquid mana still provided him some sense of it's location.
Felix had decided ahead of time to just stick with pure Force Bombs. The Giant's skin seemed to be made of large flagstones so he doubted cold, fire or solid mana would have had much of an effect. He settled on triple sized spells to be sure he had enough damage to kill it without running out of mana. He was just hoping he was able to damage it at all.
The giant rose to it's feet faster than Felix had expected possible for a creature of it's size. It immediately reached down and picked up a large stone to it's left with both arms before lifting it above it's head and tossing it in Felix's direction. It's aim was much better than the turtle's but it wasn't perfect as it was off by a few meters. It still would have done significant damage had Felix not dodged to the side though.
Unfortunately for the giant, with it's better aim, came a much longer ramp up time. As the Giant bent down then lifted another stone over it's head, Felix managed to nail it's body with 8 Force Bombs, and that was before the stone had even left it's grip. That wasn't all of it's tricks though as it stomped on the ground and, likely with a little help from a skill or magic, caused a minor earthquake in the immediate area.
Felix was almost knocked over by the quaking ground but he quickly jumped up and floated off the ground to avoid the strikes. He then used the last spell he could concentrate on to hit the Giant while it was essentially helplessly stomping the ground. Were it's body not shaped like an adult male statue, Felix would have thought it was a child throwing a deadly, earth shattering tantrum. Felix only managed to hit it 3 times while floating as he only had a single spell of concentration remaining. The Giant seemed to realize it's current tactic wasn't working so it stopped stomping and switched it up. Instead it started pelting a barrage of small stones and chunks of dirt, basically whatever it could get it's hands on, towards Felix.
Felix had to cast the Mana Shield on his chest to ensure he didn't get hit from the rain of debris he was subject to. Unfortunately, the debris also meant it would be difficult for him to hit the Giant with any projectiles berceuse they were too likely to detonate prematurely. Felix glided over to the side to get out of the way of the spray, but the Giant's aim followed. Though Felix wasn't ready to fly too far off the ground in combat, he felt he didn't have much choice, so he glided up into the air and forwards, until he was directly above the Giant. He used his last spell to cast a Mana Shield under him and the Giant's projectiles began to rain down upon itself, while Felix was relatively safe.
As soon as it realized it was throwing things on itself, it switched over to trying to hit Felix with single large stones it could throw with one arm. It's fire rate had greatly slowed, but it's aim and lethality was much better. Felix dodged from side to side to avoid the stones and ultimately ended up giving up on one of the spells he used to fly, instead pressing his feet together. With the extra spell of concentration freed, he began firing back with Fore Bombs. The Giant was occasionally hitting Felix but, his Mana Shield absorbed the impact, and Felix was hitting the Giant almost every time he fired. This continued until Felix had landed 9 blows and had to block 2.
In a last ditch attempt to end it's prey, the Giant did something that Felix would never have expected, it crouched down and jumped to try and grab him. Felix immediately forced mana into his boot enchantments as they were the fastest thing he had and shot himself to the side. His aim was abysmal but he managed to avoid the grab, unfortunately he had also sent himself plummeting into the side of the mountain. He quickly dropped everything and cast Feather Fall on himself. As his descent slowed, he managed to find his bearings and caught a glimpse of the Giant running at him as fast as it could. It wasn't very close so Felix had time to release his Feather Fall, hit the ground and begin running away as he launched Force Bombs over his shoulders.
The Giant quickly closed in on him and tried to swat Felix like a fly. Felix engaged the enchanted plates strapped to his boots and shot himself to the side avoiding the slap by a dozen meters or so. He fired another Force Bomb into the side of it's stone beard and continued running. The giant continued to chase and swat at Felix as he returned a single Force Bomb every time he dodged. The giant attempted to swat Felix 5 times before he fell to the ground, dead.
Ding You have slain an [E - Rare] Stone Giant (Lvl 91)
Ding You have gained a level in [E - Common] Caster
Congratulations!
You have slain a World Boss.
The experience will be split among your party of 1 and you have obtained an upgrade token for any tutorial settlement. The token may be consumed in any settlement granting an upgrade based on the World Boss slain. The upgrade will be split evenly among the settlements where the tokens are consumed.
Upgrade: Stone Giant's Living Stone.
Once again, no idea what that does.
Felix consumed the token and checked his charm. He was worried the army would get some amount of contribution towards the kill, but the congratulations screen as well as the 100% soul on his charm reassured him. He was just as surprised when the Giant's corpse vanished into his inventory as he was with the worm, even though the Giant was smaller.
One more.
Though Felix wanted to take time to practice his flying, he felt like he was kind of on a roll. He decided to scout out the next boss so he could properly prepare before doing anything. He really didn't want to delay the fight to tomorrow or later which meant he had around 13 hours to be ready. He floated over the mountains and landed just beyond the tree line then ran south through the forest. He reached the beach where he could just make out something on the horizon and floated into the air. He then glided a few dozen meters above the ocean and approached where he knew the world boss would be.
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He headed towards what he could now see was a large serpent with shiny scales and a long spiky fin running down it's back. It was mostly silvery with a slight pink tinge around the fins and gills. It was easily as long as the sand worm, though much thinner. It was currently swimming, or rather thrashing, around in a circle creating the endless surfing waves Tiki-Kahuna enjoyed.
[E - Special] Great Sea Serpent (Lvl 93)
He floated back over to the nearest chunk of land and began to craft a surf board out of solid cast mana. This would allow him to move it freely with mana manipulation using only a single force spell to counter gravity. It took him half an hour to craft it to satisfaction then he began practicing his air surfing. He once again had Grim try and hit him with mana bolts as he darted around in the air. His overall mobility was worse as he couldn't change directions as quickly, but the top speed he was comfortable flying at was much higher.
He and Grim had come to the consensus that lightning was probably the best option for fighting the sea serpent. After just under 10 hours of training his flying, Felix felt ready. He wasn't perfect at flying, but he felt a lot more comfortable with the board beneath his feet than he had with four separate force spells propelling him.
Once he had beaten the Sea Serpent, he will have completed the tutorial, at least in his mind. He wasn't sure what he would do at that point. He did have a lot of things on his todo list to knock out. He also wanted to spend some time getting to know Grim better and getting any useful information he could out of him, and finally decide whether or not to soul-bond. Plus he would have an entire month to himself. All of that came after the sea serpent fight though.
Felix rode an invisible wave through the air and over to where the Sea Serpent was currently making it's mark on the otherwise calm ocean. He started off with his tracking shots which got the serpents attention. What followed was the most fun fight and as a result the most fun Felix had had since the start of the tutorial. The Sea Serpent tried to shoot jets of water at Felix, which he just rode over with his board. He had to repair it manually, but it wasn't difficult to do as he flew around.
The Serpent also tried to jump into the air and catch him, but Felix was just too slippery. When the serpent jumped, it gave Felix the perfect opening to unload a barrage of Lightning Bolts. When he finally killed the serpent with his 17th triple sized Lightning Bolt, Felix felt sad that the fight was over. At no point during the fight had he felt like he was in danger, he had simply felt excitement. Maybe it was the surfing he enjoyed, he wasn't sure.
The Serpent had died mid jump so Felix rode down to touch it's body before it collided with the ocean and stowed it in his inventory. At this point he had accepted that they would all fit, though he wasn't sure why. He knew other's had found out the hard way that there was a limit to everyone's inventory, he just expected to have hit it by now. Felix figured the people who had figured that out, must have tried to store a mountain or two.
Congratulations!
You have slain a World Boss.
The experience will be split among your party of 1 and you have obtained an upgrade token for any tutorial settlement. The token may be consumed in any settlement granting an upgrade based on the World Boss slain. The upgrade will be split evenly among the settlements where the tokens are consumed.
Upgrade: Serpent's Wrath.
Finally, I get to relax. Just chill and hang out for the rest of the tutorial. Maybe I'll read some books or learn to fight with a sword. I also want to learn some martial arts at some point.
Tutorial Announcement
All 9 world bosses in the tutorial have been slain.
With the death of all of the world bosses, a new challenge has been unlocked. At the center of the tutorial map the seal containing the final boss for the tutorial is breaking. This boss is much more difficult than all of the other world bosses and will require the best of the best in the tutorial to come together and fight as a team. There will be opportunities for all to participate, even non combatants, and special rewards will be given to those who do.
This boss is recommended to be taken on by 25,000 level 50 - 60s. The seal will be broken and the boss will be available to fight when there are 9 days left in the tutorial. If the boss is not engaged in a fight within the first five minutes of it appearing, it will disappear. It will be available to fight for 1 day if engaged. If it has not been defeated at that point, then it will disappear.
Fuck you. Of course. Whelp, who needs to relax anyways?
Felix consumed the token and turned to Grim and wrote, "Can you see the announcement?"
"No, I've been blocking The System from interacting with me. Don't really trust it."
Felix copied down the contents of the Tutorial Announcement on to one of Grim's pages then wrote, "I was supposed to have a month off, to relax, catch up on some things I've wanted to do. Now I have this to deal with."
"You don't have to deal with it, but why are you complaining? You would much prefer this."
"You're right, it's making me a little giddy to be honest. I was hoping those other fights would be more engaging but honestly, once I got serious, they were kind of easy."
"Maybe but, you're a monster."
"I don't think I'm that different."
"Think about it this way, how much mana did you use per fight?"
"Anywhere from a third to three quarters of my mana pool."
"How much mana per strike for a lightning strike on the serpent?"
"Just over 4k."
"If someone only focused on intelligence and managed to make it to class and profession level 100 with a common profession focused on intelligence, say 3 per level plus 3 free points. How big would their mana pool be? How many of those lightning strikes could they cast?"
"They'd cast at most, 3. I see your point."
"Also the fact that you can cast spells so easily is kind of insane. Where I came from, there was no system, no spell lists. People either cast simple spells or inscribed spells onto tiles then filled those with mana to cast spells, or inscribed them on different sides of a wand or staff, or into an orb. Ultimately though, they can't just create spells on the fly. It takes an hour or so to inscribe a normal spell, less for easy ones. I don't know why you are the way you are, but you are a monster."
"I don't think I appreciate that enough. It would annoy me so much to have to add and remove spells from my spell list, then chant and wave my hands and wait for them to cast. Oh man that would be hell. Why would anyone want to be a caster? Just pickup a sword or bow."
"Because at higher levels, they cast Fire Balls and other large effect spells. Oh also, the fact that you can actively regenerate your entire mana pool between the fights is insane. The fact that you do it at all is not that impressive, the fact that you first touched mana a few months ago, is mind boggling. I know you used the single use, solid mana batteries, but making those is also kind of wild."
"Oh yeah that would have been impossible if I couldn't just regenerate my mana pool using the batteries. Also I guess they're more like mana consumables."
"Yeah I guess, still kind of insane. They are crude and a little silly, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone just making anything like it on a whim."
"I'll have to make a lot more of those, they were the real stars of the show. Those and the surf board."
Speaking of surfing…
Felix decided to go inform Mike his free waves were unfortunately done with so he glided over to the east where Tiki-Kahuna was. When he got there though, he found the town completely abandoned. At first he was worried they had been raided, but then he noticed that there was nothing strewn about, left behind or even damaged. Everything had been taken cleanly. The only thing remaining was the massive bar in the center, that was completely empty. . . . . .