Since it would be impossible to walk across the wurm nest, Mike had come to the conclusion that he either needed to go somewhere else (which also wasn’t possible with his current water supply) or else he would need to fly. Ultimately, most of his time problem solving the night before had been thinking through which methods were even possible. His first thought was a catapult, but testing that seemed a bit iffy–he would hate to land only halfway to his destination. There was also the issue of Autumn and Ash not having Unflinching Meteor, which was a key component to surviving being thrown two miles through the air.
His next idea was to power level Aeromancy and gain the flight skill he had been eyeing for months. The problem with this approach was simply that he was months away from being able to Level Up the skill–and if his previous attempts were anything to go by, he likely couldn’t get the branching flight skill without leveling up Aeromancy through the System’s defined methods.
His final idea was true genius, he actually had a decent amount of experience already, and with a little bit of System intervention it should be possible. Hang gliding…. With Aeromancy providing the needed air current to carry his weight. With this plan in mind, he divided his days into several activities.
The first was actually building the hang glider. He could build the frame out of Quicksilver, making hollow pipes to decrease the weight, but the canvas would be tricky. He tried using the dried wurm hide he had made at the oasis, but by now it was starting to get patchy. Which meant he would have to get new hides. Fortunately, he had a seemingly unlimited hide pool to poach from. Unfortunately, all of his encounters with wurms thus far had been survived by the slimmest of margins, and usually resulted in much of the wurm’s body being destroyed. He briefly considered trying to find a better way of killing the much larger creatures, but constrained as he was on time, he decided to simply refine his previous method and just kill more of the creatures.
To that end, as the sun set on the first day of his preparations, he found himself only steps away from the churned earth. Taking a deep breath, he jumped forward, legs spread wide and his arm straight above him, then immediately activated Unflinching Meteor. Just as before, he was almost instantly engulfed by a large wurmlet, although thanks to his better positioning, he managed to get caught much closer to the entrance of the wurms mouth. With the increased level, it only took 5 uses of Sonic Sounding before his job was complete and he was once again flying through the air, covered in yellow blood, completely immobile, while pain coursed through his body–-it was a scene that would be repeated dozens of times over the next few days. As soon as he became mobile, he inched quietly to the nearest scrap of wurm carcass, put it in his spatial storage bag, before turning inward to level up Sonic Sounding.
After gaining a few more levels easily, something changed with his method of skill advancement: rather than gaining a level with a single kill, he was forced to kill multiple enemies to have enough energy to advance the skill. This meant that he was forced to dive into the creatures mouths while the energy coursed through him. Though it would have been impossible for him to do so when he killed his first wurm, with each iteration, he was slowly adapting. He was getting used to the pain. He was better able to pack the energy around his core, making a cloud that had almost turned into a liquid. He was also better able to coat his skill and maintain the coating–this took a vast amount of the energy, and mostly cleared out his channels to normal levels. Even with these increases, it eventually became too hard for him to contain the energy needed to Level Up Sonic Sounding, so for his last few kills, he managed to Level Up Aeromancy twice.
After killing 30 wurmlets and gaining 2 levels in Aeromancy and 5 levels in Sonic Sounding, which from experience was now strong enough to damage the wurmlets even when he wasn’t lodged into the soft flesh of their mouths, he was finally ready to start building.
Processing the wurmskin required some rather major expansions to the trio’s small lodging. But with the help of the two cubs, he was able to focus most of his time on lining the cooking room with Quicksilver and slicing thin enough sheets of skin, rather than simply digging.
When he wasn’t fighting, leveling up, or building a hang glider, Mike spent his time working on his Aeromancy. With the two extra levels, he was more attuned to the air around him than ever before, and he could even control it. Rather than his previous problem of barely being able to move the wind, he was able to control it, at least to some degree. Probably due to the method of his advancement, his control was nothing like the fine-tuned water weaving that the hobgoblins had displayed, nor was it even as fine as the Wind Blades that the foxes could use, rather, he was able to summon large, imprecise gusts of wind to go in the direction of his choosing. It certainly wouldn’t be enough to make a difference in a fight, he would likely to knock himself over rather than a mobile opponent, but he hoped it would be enough to keep his small aircraft aloft.
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Two other happenings of note were Ash and Autumn hitting to Level 40 by finishing off some wurms that hadn’t died from Mike’s ability–this mostly occurred when he became lodged the wrong direction in a wurms mouth and ended up not projecting his blasts directly into their brains. The other development was that after seeing it seven times, he finally had the fractal that swallowed excess energy from his body memorized to the point where he could draw it out on the sand from memory.
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At the end of six days, Mike, Ash, and Autumn stood at the top of the dune nearest the wurm nest. They had tested the hang glider between some dunes the night before, and found that it did in fact hold their wait and that Mike could more or less control it, but they had yet to test it over any reasonable distance.
“Ok ladies, the plan is to take this out aways, then turn around and come back. We have plenty of time tonight to get it right, so might as well be cautiou…..”
An explosion sound followed by an immense roar rocked the world behind them, and Mike’s biggest fear over the past week was realized: A parent had returned to the nest.
No communication was needed as Mike ran down the slope and jumped the cubs running right behind him before latching onto the tethers tied around his waist. There was a brief feeling of weightlessness as gravity pulled them downwards before the large updraft that constantly assaulted this edge dune caught their weight and carried them upwards as the ground sloped down and away from them. In short order, they were over 300 feet above the desert floor.
Just as Mike began to feel safe, the largest wurm he had encountered thus far, erupted from the ground beneath them, soaring upwards directly towards them. Calling upon the air around him, Mike caused a gust to lift them higher, barely avoiding the maw of the vengeful parent that sought to devour them whole.
As the wurm reached the peak of its trajectory, it arced forward, before diving back into the ground face first, reminding Mike of a whale playing in the ocean. Using one of his hands, he adjusted the cubs to make sure they were secure before sighing in relief–which proved to be a premature gesture as no sooner had they descended to its peak jumping height, the wurm shot out of the ground a second time. Feeling more in control than the first time, Mike simply summoned a large gust of air to lift them higher, but he wasn’t prepared for the geyser of sand that shot from the wurm’s mouth, chafing the skin from their bodies and causing them to spiral out of control.
“How is it finding us? I thought they didn’t have eyes?” he screamed through the turbulence, not getting a response from the two terrified foxes strapped to his back.
They were within 30 feet of the ground before he was able to rebalance their glider, something made harder by the damage it had sustained. More importantly, they were only a few hundred yards from the base of the cliffs, the time having passed much quicker than expected thanks to the adrenaline rushing through their bodies.
Calling on the wind, he forced their aircraft upwards as sharply as he could, causing the frame to begin to bend under the extra stress. It was only thanks to his ability to add Quicksilver to the structure at will that the maneuver was possible.
He anticipated the wurms next move, knowing it would shoot up from behind them before the sound of its thousand ton frame tearing through the earth reached them. Thanks to Damage Premonition, he was able to retract the Quicksilver at the just the right time, causing the three of them to fall towards the ground even as the wurmskin sail continued upwards on the draft. The wurm crashed to the ground 100 feet in front of them, halfway between their current position and the cliffs. They were still falling when the wurm emerged again, aiming for the sheet that was now several hundred feet above them.
Mike was unsure if it could simply smell the sheet or if it had eyes and had lost sight of them in the chaos, but he didn’t have time to worry about that issue at that particular moment, as he had to find a way to fall safely. Unable to think of a better plan, he tossed the foxes upwards right before he hit the sand, activating Unflinching Meteor before impact. His forward momentum caused him to tumble end over end across the sand, hitting into the side of the canyon wall with a loud crack as his body embedded itself feet first into it.
He watched in mute horror as the two fox cubs dashed the last 20 feet to his location, wurmlets emerging from the ground all around them in addition to the adult wurm crashing back into the ground from its most recent jump. The impact caused sand to shoot in all directions, and the fox cubs activated their dash skill zipping across the ground almost faster than Mike could follow. In an instant, they had climbed onto his body, followed by a wave of sand that filled Mike’s wide-open eyes and made him unable to see.
Over the next ten minutes, the trio watched as the wurms hunted them, but for all of their vigor, they never crossed the line of rock that demarcated where the sand ended and the cliffs began.