Blake rubbed his eyes, trying to shake off the grogginess of a restless night. As he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, he noticed that he had received two new work orders during the night.
He opened the notification and his eyes widened in surprise.
The first was to travel to a specific location in the Rocky Mountains and defeat a monster blocking a trade route. The second was to return to the city to battle his next opponent, Wilfred Regis.
He remembered the old Math teacher-looking guy, and he’d been pretty powerful even at Rank 1. He’d forced Kenji Nakamura out of the arena to secure the win. If Regis was Rank 3 now, he’d climbed the ranks quickly.
Blake had never received two work orders in a day before, and he’d never had one that required him to leave the city. He’d gotten quests from the City Hub that took him into the Wilds, but never a work order.
This was highly unusual. He opened the work order up again to look at the details.
Work Order: Trade Route Maintenance
Highway 40, a vital trade route connecting New Meridia to the trade routes across the Western United States, has been cut off by an empowered monster called Gorgos the Goliath.
You must defeat Gorgos and stop New Meridia’s trade routes from being attacked.
This Work Order was set by Chelsea Otto, on behalf of the Office of the City Lord, Clay Atlas.
Blake sneered at the last line. He wasn’t sure what Chelsea’s motivations were, but he was sure that she was up to something.
Blake had a feeling that the work order was just an excuse to get him out of the city and away from the prying eyes of the public. He had been in New Meridia long enough to know that the City Lord and his minions were always up to something.
Blake had no choice but to accept the work order. He wished that he could talk to Harry, but the messages were still stuck on sending status. Was the city somehow blocking all messages from being sent to Harry Grenfell? Blake would have to do this with his monsters, but they would be more than enough to defeat this goliath.
Plus, he had his new monster to try out – whatever the Fire Wings card would summon.
As he gathered his things, Blake had this gnawing suspicion that he was walking into some kind of trap. He still had all eight of his Rank 3 anima available to use, and he would bring out his Meteor Colossus if he had to. He set the Gorgos the Goliath work order as his main quest focus, then headed out into the city.
A quest marker directed Blake to leave through the Southern Gate of New Meridia, but he stopped by the City Hub first to check if there were any other quests he could do while he was out. If he had to spend the anima, he might as well get the most out of it that he could.
The hub was teeming with people, all trying to get their hands on the latest quests. Blake approached the City Hub Kiosk, where a clerk stood waiting to assist him. The clerk, a young woman with a friendly smile, greeted him.
“Good morning, sir. How may I assist you today?” she asked.
“I’m here to pick up a quest that will go with this work order,” Blake replied, and selected the Gorgos work order to share with the clerk.
“Very good. Please take a look at the available quests on the screen and let me know which one you would like to accept,” the clerk said, gesturing to the large monitor behind her.
Blake scanned the list of available quests and saw one that caught his attention: The Lost Expedition. The quest marker was just a little bit to the south of where the target monster would be.
Maybe it was related? This was a quest to find a missing expedition team that had headed into an old water treatment plant looking for materials to help maintain New Meridia.
“I’ll take The Lost Expedition,” Blake said, and the clerk nodded, bringing up the details on the screen.
“Very good, sir. Ah, you’re a Rank 3 Challenger, so you’re more than ready to take on this C Grade quest. Find the expedition and bring them back to safety if you can, but if you can’t, bring back evidence that you’ve found them. The reward will be less if they’re dead.”
Blake nodded. That wasn’t the best outcome for him if they were dead, but he’d do everything he could to keep them alive if they still were.
“I understand. I accept the quest,” Blake said.
Blake thanked the clerk and left the City Hub, heading out of the Southern Gate of New Meridia.
He stood outside the Southern Gate of New Meridia, reading the work order and quest in his hand. Done with all the prep he could do, Blake gazed up at the clear blue sky and took a deep breath, feeling the thrill of adventure coursing through his veins.
He reached into his pocket and brought out his power card deck. He splayed them all out in front of him and needed to decide which of his beasts he wanted to use.
He’d ridden on the back of Berserker Wolf plenty of times, but he didn’t get much experience for summoning it for that purpose anymore. It had been a good way to level it up in the early days, and now he might be able to do the same thing for his Pyrestalker.
Then his eyes fell on his new card: Fire Wings. The card was meant to summon a pair of flaming wings that would allow the Challenger to take to the skies. For him it would summon some kind of monster that would hopefully have the capabilities of flight. He hoped that whatever came out of the card would be big enough to be able to bear his weight.
He played the Fire Wings with a tingling anticipation, feeling the familiar rush of energy as the new monster materialized before him.
The wings were the first thing to appear, and then a slender serpentine body burst into being beneath them. With a hiss and a roar, the gleaming red scales of the Fire Drake stood before Blake’s eyes.
Some kind of energy transference was happening between himself and his monsters. This was doubly obvious when he approached the Fire Drake, and a magnificent saddle with flame motifs appeared from nothing, perched between the drake’s long neck and the joints where its wings attached to its shoulders. The undersides of the wings shimmered in the air, like they were super-hot.
“Whoa. You’re not going to burn me if I get on you, right?” Blake asked as he stepped toward the Fire Drake.
Without warning, the magnificent creature slithered toward Blake and rubbed itself against him, the motion reminding him of a serpentine house cat. The Fire Drake opened a wing as though it wanted Blake to reach out and touch it.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Blake tenderly reached out toward the Fire Drake’s wing and placed his hand gently on the super-heated membrane.
His eyes widened in shock when the heat didn’t burn him at all! He felt the warmth, but it didn’t harm him.
He sent a quick query off to his AI assistant to ask why that was.
She replied almost immediately. ‘The damaging effects of coming into contact with your monsters do not affect you. You are their master, and the heat of your Fire Drake will not harm you.’
Blake mounted the Fire Drake, stepping up into the saddle. Its powerful muscles tensed beneath him. With a roar, the Fire Drake leaped into the air, beat its massive wings and took off into the sky.
The wind whipped Blake’s hair as they soared across the fields, and he found himself giggling to himself with pure unadulterated joy at the sensation of flying. The Fire Drake was a powerful, majestic creature, and Blake felt one with it as they traveled across the land.
The countryside was a blur of green and gold as they raced over the fields, and Blake caught glimpses of wildlife as they passed by. The beasts of the mountains parted away from Blake and his Fire Drake, as though the monster was an apex predator. It probably was.
As they approached the foothills of the mountains, Blake was awestruck by the breathtaking scenery.
The mountains rose up to meet them, their peaks soaring high into the sky, and Blake felt a sense of awe at their sheer size and foreboding energy. Again, he noticed that the mountains themselves looked different. Power of the cards had changed them over the course of days, turning an already beautiful landscape into something outright fantastical.
Blake commanded his Fire Drake to circle back around toward the work order marker in his interface. He headed for Highway 40, and he was met with a scene of destruction and devastation.
The once busy trade route was now a mess of twisted metal and broken concrete. Cars and trucks had been sundered into tiny little pieces, and the road was littered with debris.
Fires burned all around, casting an orange glow on the wreckage. The smell of burning metal and rubber filled Blake’s nostrils, and he could hear the crackling of the flames and the creaking of metal as it cooled.
Blake’s heart sank as he took in the extent of the damage.
This had to be the work of Gorgos, the monster he’d been sent out here to slay. Massive footprints led away from the highway.
As Blake rode his Fire Drake above the rubble, he felt a pang of sadness. People had been killed in the attack and left where they fell. He felt a responsibility to stop the monster from causing any more harm. Blake just hoped that the people of the missing expedition weren’t among the dead.
He pushed the emotions aside and urged his drake forward, further along the highway.
Blake began to hear the sounds of destruction and spotted something massive stalking on the road. The cars bounced and moved with each step the massive monster took, and Blake could hear the sounds of cars being crushed and trucks being destroyed.
There in the center of the destruction stood Gorgos the Goliath.
The monster was a minotaur. He was mostly humanoid, standing on two legs, but his legs ended in bull-like hooves. Gorgos was a massive beast, standing well over eight feet tall with a bulky, muscled body. Its skin was a deep, dark brown, almost black, and covered in a layer of fur that was matted and unkempt, which was thicker from the waist down.
The fur was a deep reddish-brown, shot through with streaks of white. The minotaur’s horns were a foot long, curling up and back from its head, and sharp enough that Blake didn’t want to get too close. Many of the cars and trucks laying around the highway had horn imprints on them.
Its eyes were a deep, fiery red, and they blazed with an inner light both terrifying and mesmerizing. The minotaur’s nose was broad and flat, with wide nostrils that flared as it breathed. Its jaws were massive, with rows of razor-sharp teeth that glinted in the light.
Not an herbivore…
The minotaur dragged along a massive stone club, which was easily as long as the beast was tall. Solid stone, the club must’ve weighed a significant amount. Despite its size and weight, the minotaur swung it with ease, lazily crushing anything that got in its way.
As he approached, Blake saw a noticed group of people huddled together in fear. Gorgos was about to crush them with his hammer, and he had to stop the monster before it was too late. He urged his Fire Drake forward, and they charged into battle.
The Fire Drake raked the back of the Gorgos’s shoulders as it flew past. Blake had assumed the drake would have some kind of breath attack, but it didn’t. Maybe he could fuse it with a card that would give it that kind of power?
The minotaur roared in surprise and pain, then turned toward Blake and his Fire Drake as they flew around in a massive circle. The drake came to rest on an overturned truck, and Gorgos started to stalk toward him.
Blake drew his Meteor Strike card. If he didn’t end this quickly and decisively, then these people might not make it out of this encounter alive.
He played the Meteor Colossus into the world and felt the rush of energy as the monster materialized. Blake swelled with power himself, feeling his own strength and toughness increase with the appearance of his most powerful monster.
It was made of solid stone, and its eyes glowed with a bright, fiery energy. Its fists and shoulders burned with flames.
The Meteor Colossus reached a hand down to Blake as though inviting him to climb up. Blake climbed onto the Meteor Colossus’s back and gave the signal to attack. Blake hung on as the Meteor Colossus charged forward, its massive feet pounding the ground with each step.
Gorgos turned and saw the colossus, then bellowed with rage, swinging its stone club with devastating force. But the Meteor Colossus reached out with both of its massive hands and caught the club!
The sound of the impact was like a thunderclap, and the minotaur’s eyes went wide.
That’s when the Fire Drake attacked from behind! It had taken to the skies and circled around behind the massive minotaur and launched itself at the monster. Its claws sunk into the minotaur’s exposed back, and its snake-like neck lashed forward and latched onto the enemy’s neck.
Gorgos let go of its hammer. Blake’s eyes went wide as the minotaur basically handed the win to the Meteor Colossus on a silver platter.
“Attack it with its own hammer! Now!” Blake called out.
The Meteor Colossus flipped the massive hammer around in its grip like it was made of wood, not stone. Then the colossus swung the hammer at Gorgos and slammed it right into the monster’s chest.
The impact was catastrophic.
Gorgos the Goliath was sent flying, its body smashing into a collection of destroyed cars with a massive thud. Blake rode the Meteor Colossus forward, denying the minotaur a chance to recover. The Meteor Colossus brought the hammer down upon the minotaur, crushing it with each blow.
With a final roar of triumph, the Meteor Colossus ended the life of Gorgos.
The minotaur’s body dissipated into light, coalesced again into a power card way up high in the air, and it floated down to land in Blake’s open hand.
The card was called Boulder Crusher. The image on the front of the card matched the aesthetics of the hammer Gorgos wielded, but the described effect summoned the hammer, the Boulder Crusher.
It was meant to increase the strength and the critical hit chance of whoever wielded it. It was slow to attack, but the attack rating and potential spike damage chance was through the roof. It took two anima to use as well.
Blake figured that he’d probably summon a giant minotaur like Gorgos if he used it.
Between this card and the Meteor Colossus, Blake was a veritable powerhouse of anima-fueled destruction waiting to be unleashed.
For a brief moment, Blake considered simply fighting his way into the prison beneath Atlas Tower and rescuing his parents and Harry but decided against it. That kind of violence would be crossing a line that he never wanted to cross.
No. He would play Clay Atlas’s games and take every little bit of power he could while he did so.
He would bide his time, until he could rescue his parents and his friend on his terms.
Blake remained on the back of his Meteor Colossus as he headed toward the place he’d seen the survivors taking refuge. As he approached, three figures emerged from the shadow of a destroyed truck.
They looked relieved, but also shaken from the recent attack. When they saw Blake and his monsters, their faces lit up with hope.
Blake dismounted from his Meteor Colossus and approached the survivors.
“Are you all okay?” he asked, his voice filled with concern.
The survivors nodded, tears of relief streaming down their faces.
“Thank you so much,” said a middle-aged woman with a broken nose and a split lip. “We thought we were done for, but then you appeared. Are those… monsters?”
“They’re my monsters. Don’t you worry, they won’t harm any of you. I’m Blake Thornwood, and I was sent out here to kill the minotaur. I’m also searching for an expedition that was expected to be back in New Meridia already. You can come with me while I look for them if you like,” Blake said.
“This expedition,” an older man said with consideration. “What pray tell were they doing?”
Blake opened the quest summary to make sure. “Um, it says here that they were out searching for parts to help fix an issue with the water purifier back in New Meridia?”
The old man sighed. “My son was on that expedition, and we were on our way out, looking for him as well.”
“Well then how about we kill two birds with one stone?” Blake asked. “I’m a Rank 3 Challenger, and as you can see, I’m more than capable of providing some muscle.”
The old man smiled and accepted his offer.
A notification appeared in Blake’s view.
Paragon points received. You came to the rescue of those who couldn’t defend themselves, and pledged to protect them while the old man searches for his son. More good deeds will only reap good rewards.