Devon took a deep breath, steadying himself. He tried to think if anything was left to do before he potentially threw his life away, but nothing came to mind.
He'd finished shaping up Trey's squad of overseer hunters earlier that day. They hadn't required much in the way of training, the initiates already had all the experience they needed from the life or death struggles of the tutorial. All he'd done was make sure they met a baseline of competence and put them through a small series of tests to make sure they wouldn't go off and do anything rash. Then he'd simply told them to await Trey's orders.
Well, not like they'll have to wait long. The cutoff point is tomorrow, after all.
According to Trey, the timer on the title Protected no longer listed days but hours. If Devon's internal clock was right there were about 20 hours left to go. It would expire just a few hours after noon.
[Create Task Force] - Cleared
Karmic Influence: Minimal.
Complexity: Normal
Time investment: ~3-5 Days
Reward: All stats +5.
If he looked only at the amount of stats he'd gotten from the plot it didn't seem very worthwhile compared to the other plots he'd completed considering the time he'd put into it. He supposed it was an indication of the system's preferences in objectives. He hadn't had to manipulate or lie too terribly to anyone to complete his goal.
He looked out over the forested plateau of the mountain from his vantage point on one of the ruined buildings. In the distance he could see his target stalking through the jungle, on a hunt for a scent whose origin Devon knew well.
The lord of the mountain was so large that its back arched along the tops of the trees. Seeing the creature, even from a distance, was enough to send chills down Devon's spine. He had not forgotten the primal fear he'd felt at their last encounter, and he doubted the tyrant had forgotten the invader who had gotten away.
Devon wished desperately there was a way around doing this alone, but according to everyone had said roughly the same thing when he'd gone around Plainstown asking for people's experiences with the quest type.
Ascension quests were not something you could have assistance with. They were a task assigned to individuals and any outside interference would fail the quest. He'd assumed as much when he'd fought the mad brewmaster, but the accounts of others confirmed it.
But it wasn't entirely bleak. Ascension quests didn't have timers on them, so once issued they'd stick around until the user gave notice they had no intention of completing it or the quest was somehow invalidated by circumstance. He even had the command necessary to cancel ascension quests thanks to the cursed king's command list.
This meant time was somewhat on his side. He would be busy preparing in the hours leading up to the end of the protected period, but that still left about 18 hours for him to hunt as he pleased. And there was no requirement to hunt the lord in a single fight.
Devon would take his time against this foe, even more cautiously than when he'd hunted the ape leader. He'd use every dirty trick in the book to bring down this behemoth, because that was the only possible way for him to survive. There was simply too much of a difference in perceived strength for Devon to dare confront the beast directly.
By virtue of numbers alone, Devon should be in the same general realm of power as the lord. The stats from Potential and his plots had elevated his pool of power far beyond what it had been when they'd last met.
Even so, I can't shake that vision… that feeling of absolute fear from that time.
He knew it was simply a mental obstacle he needed to get over, but thinking about something logically didn't necessarily mean he could accept it emotionally. It was one of the more annoying aspects of being human.
In that sense, this was a trial he should have put himself through regardless of whether or not he had a quest to do so. He himself had called the tutorial a place where they defined themselves. If he left this place without conquering his fear it might have created a mental block he would never get over.
Enough stalling.
He stood up. His target was approaching, as he'd anticipated.
The initial location he'd chosen was near the edge of the plateau, with a steep cliff drop off the edge.
Devon had slaughtered all of the buff raptors in the area and stacked their corpses in a pile, hopefully creating a strong scent of slaughter that would draw his opponent here. It looked like his plan had worked.
He shot a glance towards the cluster of trees that hid a passageway into the underground ruins that ran beneath the entire plateau. If he could manage to kill the lord here then great. But if he felt the situation was getting a bit out of control, as it likely would against such a massive opponent, he still had an escape plan.
There was no need to bet everything on a single battle. Time was on his side.
Devon dropped down to ground level and took cover around the corner of the ruined building. He held his spear in its basic state and held the hammer attachment in his other hand. The sheer size of the lord of the mountain made Devon discard the idea of using his bladed attachments entirely. Any gashes he made along that massive body would be the equivalent of paper cuts to Voltar Pura.
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The spearhead's needling attacks too would become mostly ineffectual past his opening attack unless he managed to expose some kind of weakness in the colossal dino.
Indeed, about the only thing he could count on to deal consistent damage would be his hammer. Blunt attacks combined with his skills would allow him to deal internal damage instead of only superficial external, at least he hoped.
The lord of the mountain stopped before the pile of its fallen dinosaur kin and sniffed the air. As it did, Devon slipped out of his hiding spot and rushed forward.
His target was the joint in its leg. If he could shove his spear into that sensitive area and give the golden rod a massive blow then he could destroy the connective tissue between bones, completely disabling the limb.
But the lord wasn't nearly as oblivious as he'd hoped. Devon wasn't sure if it had seen his shadow moving among the bushes or heard him step on a twig, but Voltar Pura let out a great roar before turning towards him.
However, it didn't stop there. It kept turning, swinging its massive body around until its enormous tail smashed into the pile of bodies, sending them hurling through the air. The impact of that blow completely obliterated what was left of their forms, rendering them into mere chunks of meat and bone that Devon had to throw himself to the side to avoid.
When he got to his knees he saw that all of the shrubbery he'd been using for cover had all been blown away, and the once green forest was soaked in red. Voltar Pura was also covered in gore, but it didn't seem to mind so much. Its eye held a bestial rage, entirely directed at Devon.
So much for plan A.
Devon immediately shifted gears and dashed back towards the ruined structure. He ran through a doorway and immediately threw himself to the side as Voltar Pura barreled straight through the wall behind him.
This particular ruin happened to be mostly hollow, with the majority of its interior floors lying in rubble at the base. The lord of the mountain unflinchingly climbed to the top of the pile, swinging its head back and forth as it tried to find where Devon had hidden.
Devon clicked the hammerhead into place on the spear. His opening gambit had failed, the spear would have little other uses in this confrontation. He still planned to aim for the joint of a leg, it was the most obvious weak point he could identify other than the head. But he sure as hell wasn't going anywhere near those jaws without a good reason.
He jumped off the broken ledge that had once been the third floor as he tossed a pair of throwing daggers at the monster's eye. The things had been inexpensive and relatively simple to learn. Their use was more of a distraction, but if he could actually hit the eyes then all the better.
As expected, his blades bounced uselessly off the scaled hide surrounding the eye, but it did cause the giant dino to flinch a bit. In the small window that flinch afforded him, Devon touched the ground and burst off it in a cloud of dust, his enhanced physique obliterating the already broken-down rocks beneath him.
Activate skill; Bone Breaker.
He felt raw strength flow through his arms as he brought his hammer to bear against the lord's knee. Pure power slammed into flesh, and the limb bent unnaturally as he could have sworn he heard a faint crack. But when the force of his blow was spent it still held true.
Devon had to dive under the hulking form of the beast as its maw came frighteningly close to clamping shut on him, then had to dive forward again as it tried to drop itself on him and crush him under its mass.
The huge green body of the lord made contact with the ground just as he rolled out from under it. He turned around, but wasn't prepared for a wall of flesh to slam into him as the creature lurched to the side with the force of three semi trucks, hip-checking him.
The force of the impact sent Devon off his feet and he tumbled down the slope of rocks. He barely managed to regain his orientation in time to realize Voltar Pura was leaping through the air after him.
He dived to the side as the lord flew by, its collision with the slope of rubble sending up a small explosion of pebbles. The weight of its own mass caused the massive beast to slide down the slope, where it crashed into yet another wall.
Devon felt a flash of recognition and scrambled to his feet as cracks could be heard resounding through the structure. That wall Voltar Pura had slammed into was a massive weak point in the remaining structure of the building, and he'd been planning on breaking it himself to bring the roof down on the dino. The stupid behemoth had simply beaten him to it.
He dashed outside as the ancient stone building collapsed completely, cloaking the area in a thick cloud of dust.
The lord of the mountain roared out from the ruined structure, thoroughly unphased. Devon hadn't expected the stone to do too much damage when the creature could break through the ancient walls with ease, but he'd hoped it would do at least something.
Whatever, I'm still in position.
He could see the great shadow of the beast through the haze of dust, and sent a fireball towards the creature. Voltar Pura's head snapped around at that, and it instantly charged towards Devon.
It completely shrugged the fireball off, but the flash of magic had been nothing more than an eye-catcher anyway. It barreled through the space Devon had been only moments before, only to realize the infuriating human wasn't there anymore.
The lord of the mountain turned on its heel, looking for the shape of the insect that dared challenge its rule, only to find that there was no longer any ground upon which to turn. It realized too late it had been lured off the edge of the cliff as its vision was obscured, and it let out a roar as it plummeted down the sheer drop.
Devon watched the behemoth crash straight through one of the smaller plateaus that littered the mountain ascent. He couldn't help but smirk to himself. The thing may not have been hurt by some rocks falling on top of its head, but he was sure it would have felt a fall of that height.
Now to find the next location.
He knew that a mere fall would not have killed the lord of the mountain. From the beginning, his plan here had not been to kill it. His objective was to layer injuries upon the beast until it was weak enough to hunt without fear of getting taken by surprise.
Feeling his head, he winced. It had only been a single attack, but the beast's hip check had been extremely painful. It had rattled his bones and had likely left him with a concussion.
I was right to be cautious. Stats aside, the thing that makes that creature so damn dangerous is its sheer mass. It's so absurd I have to wonder if the system even bothered considering how stats affect that thing.
Devon popped a healing pill as he turned away from the ledge. There would be more than enough time for the item's cooldown to reset by the time he lured the lord into his next playpen. Time was on his side, after all.
He moved his foot to step away from the ledge, but frowned when his ankle caught on something. Looking down, his eyes opened wide as he saw a crimson tendril wrapped around his ankle. He hadn't seen the thing through the cloud of dust that was settling over the edge of the cliff.
You've gotta be-
He didn't have time to finish his thought before the tendril snapped taunt and yanked him over the edge.