The third clearing was a set of low hills, covered by a carpet of grass made out of cloudstuff. Will walked cautiously inside, but the only living thing in the clearing was a small rabbit, made out of dark grey cloudstuff.
Without hesitating, Will launched a Thunder Ball at the rabbit. The rabbit, however, just jumped into a hole in the ground and vanished, causing the skill to miss completely. Will approached the burrow, but only managed to get halfway there before the rabbit popped out of a different hole, and fired a spray of razor-sharp hail at him. The attack caught Will by surprise, and he’d gotten caught in the middle of the spray. Fortunately, his armor managed to blunt most of the damage, but by the time he’d turned to look at the source, the rabbit had vanished again.
The hail also proved to be too much for the already quite battered Wild Sage. When Will looked at where his pickled minion was, the remains could best be described as “pesto”.
Sneaky little bastard, aren’t you? But I guess I’ve got no one to blame, other than myself. Quote the Fudd and you invoke the Bunny. Well, Doc, two can play the burrow game.
Will ran towards first barrow entrance he’d seen, having to dodge another spray of hail on the way. This time, he’d been expecting the attack and managed to avoid most of it, only catching the very edge of the cone-shaped skill. The attack had, of course, come from a completely different direction, with the rabbit seemingly able to move instantly through its tunnels.
The burrow was too narrow for Will to enter, and as much as wombats were tunneling animals, Will wasn’t that confident about his own ability to fight the rabbit on its home turf. Instead, he used his claws to quickly demolish the entrance, blocking it with a large pile of cloudstuff, which seemed to behave just like regular earth.
What followed was the most annoying game of Wack-a-mole Will had ever had the dubious pleasure of playing. The cumulonimbus lagomorph had twenty different entrances to its tunnel system, and Will had to run over and collapse each and every one of them, while dodging hail attacks all the way.
When the rabbit was down to just one tunnel entrance, Will stood to its side, and waited for the hare to exit. When the monster popped out of the tunnel, simply appearing at the entrance rather than moving in any reasonable manner, Will charged at it.
As much as the rabbit seemed tricky, it didn’t appear to be very smart, and hadn’t changed anything about its attack pattern from the beginning of the fight. Even with just the one entrance left, it still fired its spray of hail at Will. This time, however, Will was a lot closer to his enemy, and was moving fast enough to stay under the attack until he could reach the rabbit.
And once he’d reached the rabbit, the fight was more or less over. The monster was, if anything, even more fragile than the regular cloudbeasts Will had fought so far. Without its hit and run tactics, it couldn’t stand up to Will’s assault, and died within seconds.
Stormbeast slain!
Gained 10 XP
Well, that was annoying. And the damn thing is only worth as much as a regular monster in the medium difficulty Spaces. Then again, it was more annoying than actually difficult, so I guess it does make some sense. Either way, that’s all, folks!
Harvesting the rabbit yielded the same Living Cloud drop as the regular Cloudbeasts, which Will had expected, since it was the same drop he’d been getting from the more dangerous Cloudkin in the other cloud Space. He still grumbled about it, of course.
The next cloud clearing had another forest, this one with a trio of monkeys, two of which were Cloudbeasts. Those two attacked Will by throwing small clumps of cloudstuff that Will did his best not to try and identify. The third one was a Crankscout, and that one was throwing small lumps of brass, which hit a lot harder than the clouds. None of the three was much of a challenge for Will, however, and he got rid of them quickly and moved on.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The only thing of note in the whole clearing was the fact that Plenty managed to get him one Living Cloud at excellent quality, instead of just good.
After the monkeys, Will found himself in a cloud savannah, facing pride of cloud lions.
There were three lionesses and a single large male, all of them made of the white cloudstuff Will had learned to associate with the regular Cloudbeasts. The male’s mane, however, was a bright, electric blue. Will suspected that the male was an elite.
The lions were significantly better coordinated than most of the other monsters Will had fought before. The wolves he’d run from on his first turn were probably the only other well-coordinated group he’d seen.
At the beginning of the battle, the male lion roared, and bolts of lightning blasted down from the sky, hitting both Will and the lionesses.
But where Will was hit for slight damage, the lionesses seemed energized and started to move faster. The females circled around Will, moving fast enough that he couldn’t keep track of all three at once, while the male stayed back, away from the fight.
Not willing to give the monsters the initiative, Will charged at one of the females. The Cloudbeasts were much bigger than Will, but as he’d seen before, they were somehow lighter and less solid than regular beasts should have been, and he easily knocked the lioness down. He only had a couple of seconds to keep attacking before the other two arrived and chased him away, but that was more than enough to deal fairly heavy damage to the fragile Cloudbeast.
As soon as Will moved away from the attacking lionesses, however, the male roared again. This time, it only called lightning down on the wounded female, but the skill instantly healed the monster, which stood back up and went back to circling Will with its pride mates.
Healer and support, huh? Will thought. I’m going to have to do something about that lion.
All three lionesses attack at once, jumping on Will from three different directions. Will countered by using Thunder Burst, hitting all three and knocking them away. With all three females staggered, Will charged the male, and managed to knock it down and rake it with his bronze claws.
The females rallied and chased him away before he could finish off the lion, but when Will looked back again, it seemed like the male wasn’t capable of healing itself the way it could heal the others.
All three females were surrounding the male now, and Will launched a Shock Ball, managing to catch the male and two of the females in its blast.
The lion immediately roared again, healing the wounded females. Two of the lionesses leaped at Will, leaving one behind, presumably to guard the male.
By that point, Will had no intention of wasting time on fighting the lionesses, figuring that as long as the male was alive, it would heal them faster than Will could attack. Instead, the wombat charged at the guardian lioness, trusting in Unstoppable Force to let his charge hit both monsters one after the other.
The maneuver would never have worked against regular lions, which would have out massed Will by about five times, but the Cloudbeasts were far lighter than flesh and blood animals, and Will could easily knock away the lioness and reach the lion waiting behind.
Another round of savaging the lion was enough to finish it off, and with the healer gone, the lionesses were quick to follow.
The lion was indeed an elite monster, and Will came out of the fight with twenty-five XP, four Living Clouds, and one Lightning Mane
Well. This had been a lot easier than my previous elite fight. None of them even managed to hit me! If I had any doubts about the progress I’ve been making, this definitely puts them to rest. Then again, this is still an “easy” Space.
The next clearing was just a large plain plain. There was quite literally nothing there, other than the surface of the cloud. Even the resident monsters weren’t actually on the plain, being instead a pair of white eagle-looking birds made of cloudstuff, one white and one dark grey.
The white Cloudbeast fell to Will’s Thunder Bolts withing seconds, but the Stormbeast seemed to completely ignore the skill.
Damn that gnome! ‘Your target will need to have both resistances in order to negate it’ my well-padded wom-butt!
Out came Will’s trusty Wand of Vinegar Stream, and down came the Stormbeast, bringing Will’s count to two out of the five he needed to kill.
And bringing Will’s XP up to a hundred, which Will immediately poured into his Thunder aspect, bringing it back to level two.
Aspect: Thunder
Tier: Advanced
Level 2
XP 0/400
Change skill to Thunder Ball, dealing Thunder (Lightning/Sonic) magical damage.
Bolt, Blast or Ball damage is raised by one category
Skill has a 20% chance to stun target for 1 second
Skill has a 20% chance to disorient target for 5 seconds
Well. Getting the stun back is good. No idea how good disorient would be, but it probably won’t hurt. For all the good that does me against the bloody Stormbeasts. I should have expected this though. Bob did say that the Storm aspect included both Lightning and Sonic. Which means that it’s probably not the aspect I want to work towards.