“It’s a stupid plan. It might work.” Lloyd said. “Do it.”
Albert laughed. He took out the rocket launcher, both it and its explosive missiles having been upgraded as much as possible with [Magical Item Creation].
“Wish me luck.” He said, and teleported.
He appeared right behind the newly set up military camp, landing in a small puddle of freezing mud. He wasn’t spotted thanks to the rain, but still he didn’t waste any time and readied his weapon, took aim towards where the magic was stronger, and fired a missile through the air. It sailed at great speed above the military camp, and continued onwards towards the great dragon guarding the tower.
Before the missile even impacted the dragon, Albert was already back to his starting position, waiting. A very powerful explosion rocked the forming lake, and a shockwave travelled through the air and reached the camp after a delay of a few seconds. Albert couldn’t see the damage he had caused, if even there was any, but immediately felt the dragon react to the nuisance and shift its position.
It uncoiled from the tower and shot towards the camp. Albert kept observing it with magic sight for a moment longer than he needed, noticing how he could now see its outline even through the rain thanks to his better senses becoming accustomed to it. Then, when shots started being fired by the BSA men, he knew it was time to act.
He teleported to the closest point to the tower he could, and made a run for it. In his mad dash, due to the rain and his constant worry that the dragon might be back, he failed to notice the barely visible shield shimmering a fair distance away from the tower. As such, he impacted it, driving the air from his lungs.
“Oof.”
“What did you hit?” His grandpa asked. From his point of view, Albert had been repelled by a solid wall of nothing.
“Shield.” Albert said. He readied a fireball and shot it. “I can’t breach it. Can you see it on satellite?”
“No. It doesn’t appear.”
New Quest: Impenetrable Barrier I.
· There is a barrier surrounding the Pillar, making it inaccessible from the outside. The overabundance of magic makes teleporting inside all but impossible. There is, however, another way.
· Distract the Stone Dragon until reinforcements arrive.
· The head is rotten, but the men are good: The mission will be considered a failure if all the HDF agents perish.
· Reward: Dodge Level Up – Mana Crystallization Level Up
“Gramps! I just got a quest!” Albert yelled in the storm.
“What does it say?”
“It says that reinforcements are coming?”
The sounds of battle grew stronger.
“It must be your mother. You need to buy her time.”
“Fine.” Albert said. He knew what he had to do, although he didn’t like it.
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With a sigh, he teleported back to the military camp. Inside of it, this time. Some of the men must have seen him coming, but none of them paid him any mind. They were too busy shooting everything they had at the gigantic dragon head that was homing in on their location like an angry god.
It was truly huge.
Without delay, Albert teleported again and started shooting at it. He was still too far to be in fireball range, but he could still count on the rest of his arsenal his mother had given him. The thing was: in order not to fail the quest immediately, he had to lead the dragon away.
He teleported outside camp. From there, he took aim, and shot another missile. This time he could see the impact, when the magically improved piece of ordnance hit the side of the great dragon made of stone, and exploded. Chunks of rock were sent flying through the air and fell to the ground in a deadly shower, and more stone beneath the destroyed layers was exposed on the side of the dragon’s body.
Compared to its size, the damage was tiny. In a matter of moments, a new layer of darker stone grew and was pushed up from below to replace the damaged armor and scales.
“I think you made it angry.” Lloyd said.
“Not enough. I need to draw aggro.” Albert said. He put away the rocket launcher and took out two heavy machine guns. He activated [Strengthening], took aim and began shooting a barrage of high caliber magical bullets at the creature.
He ran backwards, and when he felt that his bullets were running out, he put the guns away and started to throw fireballs backwards into the rain, aiming for the general direction of the dragon’s head. The machine gun fire had caught the monster’s attention, and it had turned its stony face to look at the attacker. And while the bullets had cracked some scales, the damage was healed in a matter of moments.
When the fireball was cast, however, the dragon was facing its caster. This meant that it hit it squarely in the face, in two places since it could be split into two. The second fireball managed to sneak into its nasal holes, causing an itch that could not be scratched.
A mighty roar shook the lake, sending ripples through the surface of the accumulating water. Albert felt it, in his bones, the anger and the wrath of the beast.
He was already running away at full speed, bullet time and all. He didn’t need to turn around to know that the dragon was following him, and that it was fast.
“It’s gaining on you.” Lloyd said. A little light had come to life on his desk at the Control Room, and he knew Bullet Time had been activated. He spoke into a microphone and the Lair sped up his audio so that Albert could make out the words.
“I know!” Likewise, his audio was slowed back down to normal when it was played by the Lair.
Albert kept shooting fireballs as he ran. He had a full inventory of 320 single FU mana crystals to top up his mana whenever he needed to. All his attacks were, however, highly ineffective.
“We need to find another strategy.”
The BSA contingent hadn’t been idle as Albert diverted the dragon’s attention away from them. They too had an arsenal of weapons that could be used against the dragon. In fact, as the dragon was gaining ground on Albert, right before he had to teleport away to safety, they finished regrouping and were once again providing support.
A flash of light from cannonfire lit up on the side of the dragon’s long, thin body. Then the sound of many bullets impacting followed suit, accompanied by other explosions. The thick scales protecting the creature fell down in droves, replaced by newer ones. But the new scales were thinner and softer, unable to protect it from gunfire as effectively.
The dragon didn’t give up the chase. It simply tanked the hits and kept going after Albert. It opened its maw, and was ready to swallow him. It didn’t know that Albert could teleport apparently, and that he had been holding a position in the map since the beginning of the fight so that he could be sure the teleportation wouldn’t fail.
Albert disappeared when he was right in the maw of the beast, and before he was gone, he also left a little gift.
From his new vantage point far away, Albert saw the dragon dig up a chunk of ground with its mouth that was bigger than an excavation site. Water rushed into it, forming a little lake as the dragon pulled back, but before it could open its mouth to spit all the earth it had ingested, the explosives Albert had left there detonated.
A few sharp teeth were knocked out and took flight, and smoke could be seen seeping through rapidly closing cracks in the dragon’s mouth. At the same time, Albert noticed that the tail of the dragon was becoming loose, as both his attacks and the BSA gunfire were depleting the dragon’s reserves of stone for regeneration.
It had lost a few meters of length already, the tip of the tail disintegrating while its face regenerated.
“Yeah, but the problem is that it’s still more than 600 meters long, Albert!” Lloyd shot back.
Not only that. His disappearance meant that the dragon was once again going to attack the military camp. And this time, it looked like it was properly pissed. It stopped a fair distance away from them, and opened its still damaged mouth.
A breath attack was coming.