Lunetta sat on her throne looking at her advisors, or rather Advisor. It was just her and Voluk sitting in a stone hut he had conjured up, and they were sitting on stone slabs as chairs, at least there was a back support. She had asked if he could make a lumbar support, but after feeling the stone dig into her spine, her tune changed immediately and she welcomed the basic slabs.
"So do we go for the hydra first, and try to build walls east to prevent the sorcerer from invading us?" Voluk asked, they had discussed the very basic details earlier and those were the only threats they knew of. They really hoped that there wasn't something underground that might pop up and ruin their day, kill them or steal their food.
"I think we deal with the hydra, the sorcerer isn't making any big moves and has Lhymen to take care of, the hydra is in our territory and we don't know how to handle it. None of have dealt with one before and this one seems quite aggressive." Lunetta says.
They discussed some of the details of the hydra-defense and a few things had to be done. First the women of the camp, the mages started to create walls in the direction of the hydra. They won't last, but if it attacks before they're ready they can at least ready a response. The next thing they did was get oil ready to be used with fire, pain is a good deterrent and the hydra looked to be an earth variant.
Fire and water variants won't take much damage from fire, since a fire hydra would literally have fire in it, and water counters fire so it's quite a moot measure if taken.
Next up Lunetta did some quick tailoring of armor. It wasn't that great and looked worse than it protected but it was better than the robes the mages wore. After the defenses were organized the mages started talking strategy, one of them suggested having a large stone spike propelled with a larger column of stone by multiple mages, this idea gained quite a lot of popularity and when it was tested out...
The results were quite devastating, the large stone spike weighed around 3 metric ton, and when it was launched at that speed since the larger column would be harder to move, it would retain energy better and with multiple mages focusing on it would make it more like a kind of acceleration system.
The spike hit their target, the target being a rather large oak. It was broken where the spike hit, and the wood looked to be cracking in certain places. The mages then used wood magic to gather up the lumber to be repurposed. Many long wood spikes were also made.
After a while there were stashes of wooden spikes and a few larger stone spikes that littered the ground with their corresponding columns. Until they got better skills they would likely need to use this crude way of making their attacks deadlier. Lunetta watched in amazement at their applications of physical laws.
***
Lunetta's job was to lead the search party that consisted of the elder mage and Voluk. She really hoped they possessed some means to protect themselves otherwise this might get a bit messy, and she didn't want two of her more important members dying. It would make her feel like a garbage leader.
Upon arriving near where she had sighted the hydra, she expected it to peek at them again. Which it did, it made a very ominous display of swinging it's necks around snapping at them, but the heads never got close enough to actually nip them. It then stopped and looked at them with something that seemed like scorn and arrogance.
"What the fuck are you trying to say." Voluk lost his composure and in his irritation blurted it out. He blushed and apologized to his other two squad mates.
The hydra looked at Voluk with contempt and breathed fire towards him. Well that settled whether he was an earth hydra or not. Not being maneuver Voluk created a wall but the flames passed through it enveloping Voluk and he screamed for a moment.
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Then all was silent.
"Why am I not burning?" A voice came from the fire.
Voluk stepped out of the flames and looked at the hydra with curiosity, one of it's heads charged towards him and gave him a lick. They were all still bewildered, was this someone's pet or was this kind of hydra naturally like this? Shrugging Lunetta checked it's level again.
[Dramatic Hydra Level 20] Lunetta looks at the hydra with a mix of irritation and confusion. It did have the name dramatic hydra, but why would it make it's level so high... Oh. Face palming herself Lunetta lets out a deep sigh.
"You might want to leave this area, more humans are around here-" Lunetta starts to speak, though stops once she remembers that this wasn't a high level creature, high leveled creatures were typically the ones that attained sapience. Thinking about rephrasing her sentence or doing her gestures had taken her attention off the hydra.
That's when it attacked in earnest, the many heads snaked over to them like a wave of snakes wanting to entangle them, before she could react she was already thrown away with the rest of her party, the hydra then looked down at them with revised contempt, the juvenile nature gone.
Lunetta just about dodged the next attack, the attack hit the grown causing a massive gash to be left in the dirt and a cloud of dust erupts, upon looking at the location where it had attacked, a deep crater stood. Lunetta was incredibly bewildered at this point.
Not bothering talking to the creature anymore she moved to lob off one of it's heads with [Moonlit Slash] the flesh of the creature was tough however, so she only managed to make a slight nick before it snapped out her, it let out an enraged roar.
A firebolt hit one of it's other heads causing it to reel back in pain. Voluk was looking at it with deep concentration, he opens his arms to allow fire energies to gather and just as the hydra attacks him a flurry of fireballs hit each of the heads. [Fireflurry] was the spell and it was quite effective.
It was like throwing water on a cat though, it didn't deter the monster much but it made it apprehensive. Pain was like that, you can make something feel pain to deter it, but it would not disable them in a sense unless the pain grew so severe.
Lunetta wasn't going to let the elder mage get all of the experience from this so she jumped up and gave it a good kick on the one head letting herself be propelled to a sequence of necks, with a flash of her body and blade she struck at it with a decent amount of force, draining her mana by half.
She felt incredibly exhausted, not only that but she had managed to at least damage it, one of the necks now hang limply. She gave it a grin and then it opened it's mouth.
A bit of expletives and running away later she managed to dodge the fire stream, and earth spikes that followed. This hydra had many tricks and it was definitely out of her ballgame to deal with. At least if she was going at it alone. With Voluk there they had managed to whittle it down a bit.
Then she saw a gaping opportunity, one of it's heads starter to split, with a smirk she jumps up and hits the tender new flesh easily removing the two heads. One of the major weaknesses that hydras have is their health has to focus on the points where it regenerates.
This makes it comically easy to rip off chunks of their health, which can be seen by the hydra's enraged and pale appearance. It let out another scream and lunged at them with it's large back legs trying to get one of it's heads to bite them. With it charging like a bull, Lunetta simply stepped to the side, a few steps actually.
A hydra is quite big after all.
The Hydra hit the ground and it's eyes started to glow brown, it opened it's mouth and sand launched at Lunetta at a very rapid pace, she had to duck and see as that sand hit a distance rock causing it to actually explode.
She looked at Voluk and communicated with her eyes, or rather tried to for a second before giving up. They had never established non-verbal communication, so she just pointed to the forest, to the hydra and to their base and took off into the forest.
He seemed to understand her and soon followed her into the forest, they were going to circuit around, to prevent the hydra from following them. Lunetta had gained some experience and felt like she was close to a levelup. Now if only she could kill that thing.
Yeah, this little expedition of theirs was a failure, she hoped Voluk got stronger at least that way when they saw it again they could try to use their newfound knowledge and maybe that bit of power made a difference, she had already started to think about how it could be applied.