Chapter 208

Luke was expecting to find some sort of scaled foot or claws to be pressing down on him, but when he twisted his head to look, there was nothing there. Whatever was holding him down had his arms pinned to his side and was pressing on his back hard enough to dig his mace into his skin. Luke was struck by the inane thought that he was lucky he wasn’t using a sword, otherwise it might be slicing him in two right now.

He tried to force the weight off of him, but that only caused it to press down harder. Still struggling, he activated [Life Surge]and shoved up. The weight disappeared for just an instant, but that was all Luke needed to get his feet under him and use [Burst Step]. He tumbled to a stop thirty feet away and spun around to see what had attacked him.

There was nothing there.

“I see you standing there. I hear the air filling your lungs and the thudding of your heart. I can smell the sweat on your skin. But I do not feel you, thing that looks like a man. What are you?” a voice said from nowhere. It was so deep Luke could feel it in his chest, and so loud that he took an involuntary step back.

“Show yourself!” Luke called out.

“It is no fault of mine that you lack the capacity to find me,” the voice replied, amusement in its tone now.

“So you’re just chicken shit then.”

Whatever had attacked him, and Luke was expecting it to be a pearlescent dragon, it apparently didn’t know about bloodline skills. Considering what it was supposed to be guarding, Luke would have thought the gods would have done a better job filling it in. But he wasn’t about to complain about it, not if it worked in his favor.

“What does this mean?” The voice just sounded confused now. “I am not a chicken, nor am I shit.”

Luke scanned the trail behind him. It was only about five feet wide, too small for anything he would consider a dragon to fit on. But it had attacked him from behind. It either had to be there, or it had already circled around behind him. Keenly aware of the seconds wasting away before [Life Surge] expired, Luke pushed his rank 2 [Detection] skill as hard as he could.

What gave its position away wasn’t anything the monster did wrong. It was truly invisible as far as Luke could see, but whatever skill granted it that power didn’t make any effort to deal with environmental factors. Luke spotted the outline of a three-toed claw pressing down on the moss growing on a boulder on the west side of the trail, an outline that was five feet wide. If that was proportionate to how big the rest of the creature was…

Suddenly, Luke wasn’t so confident in his ability to win this fight.

Desperately, he willed [Analyze] to pick up the probably-dragon sitting invisible in front of him, to give him some idea of exactly how fucked he was. Nothing came back. Even though he knew where the dragon was, he still couldn’t see it. Then again, all he had was an imprint in the moss. That could be nothing more than a footprint. Maybe the dragon was behind him now, maw hanging wide open and poised to swallow Luke in one bite.

“It means you’re too afraid to come out and fight me fairly,” Luke said, stupidly taunting the monster. But if his words got the probably-dragon to come out of hiding, then it wasn’t stupid.

Colors shimmered in front of him, so close he could reach out and touch them. For a moment, he caught sight of an eyes at least three feet in diameter. Instead of having a white portion and a pupil, it was a prisma-color orb that shifted through the whole spectrum so fast that Luke saw every color he could name and a dozen more he didn’t have the words for in an instant.

[Name: Animar the Shimmer Scale]
[Level: 76]
[XP: 1672467/1713117]
[AP: 0]
[Strength: 179]
[Agility: 146]
[Stamina: 277]
[Perception: 182]
[Skills:]
[Claws That Break the World (5)]
[Fangs That Pierce the Sky (5)]
[Wings That Part the Clouds (5)]
[Eyes That See Beyond the Horizon (5)]
[Scales That Shed Magic and Steel in Equal Measure (5)]
[Mind That Cannot Break (5)]
[Breath That Drives Mortals Mad (5)]
[Know Terror, and Tremble (5)]
[Dominion Over Light (3)]
[Perfect Metabolism (3)]
[Shard of Contorted Time (3)]

“Holy fuck,” Luke whispered. By the time he’d uttered those three syllables, the dragon was already gone again.

Its voice came from all around Luke, a deep, echoing chuckle. “Rest assured, whatever you are, there is no such thing as a fair fight against me. There is only my will, and you living as long as I desire you to continue doing so.”

It was hard to argue with that, all things considered. Luke was glad he hadn’t wasted months and months grinding up more levels. He never would have gained enough power to fight Animar fairly, not even if he’d spent the next year doing nothing but grinding. He’d have to take a ship back to the west continent just to find enough things to kill, given how badly the demons had wrecked everything over here.

He could have done it if he had [XP Cycle], but it was too late now with the dragon standing right in front of him. Luke hadn’t gotten a good look at how big the damn thing was, not when most of his vision was taken up by an eyeball the size of a beanbag chair, but he was willing to bet that he couldn’t outrun it. Luke was only going to run away from this fight if Animar let him.

It was a good thing Luke had a hard counter to this much raw power.

He reached up a hand and pressed it against something hard and cool in front of him. Light played through his outstretched fingers and he had a brief look at shimmering rainbow-hewed scales. “Very pretty,” he said.

Then he activated [Inflict Status] and gave Animar an [XP Reset].

The reaction was instantaneous. A roar so loud that the ground itself spiderwebbed with thousands of cracks as it shook blasted Luke backward a step. Suddenly, the dragon was no longer invisible. That did not make it any less intimidating. If anything, standing two feet from a now fully-revealed dragon far, far bigger than a house had the opposite effect.

The [XP Reset] might have stripped it of thousands of AP, but it hadn’t made the dragon any smaller. Luke got a good look at claws longer than swords as they raked through stone like it was mud before wind buffeted him. He might have fought it to hold his place, but Luke wanted some distance between himself and Animar, so he let it carry him backward.

The dragon lifted itself straight up into the air, supporting itself on wings at least as big as a 747’s. Its scales were no longer every color. Now they were more of a dull pearl, like chrome without the luster. “What have you done?!” the dragon roared down at him.

[Name: Animar the Shimmer Scale]
[Level: 1]
[XP: 0/10]
[AP: 1]
[Strength: 45]
[Agility: 16]
[Stamina: 100]
[Perception: 96]
[Skills:]
[Rend (3)]
[Tear (3)]
[Slash (4)]
[Bite (5)]
[Mangle (3)]
[Wing Slash (4)]
[Sustained Flight (3)]
[Wind Burst (2)]
[Magical Awareness (4)]
[Thermal Awareness (2)]
[Magnetic Sensitivity (3)]
[Blind Sight (5)]
[Iron Hide (3)]
[Elemental Resistance (5)]
[Mental Fortitude (3)]
[Disciplined Mind (2)]
[Invigoration (4)]
[Illusory Fog (3)]
[Inflict Penance (2)]
[Folding Lung (4)]
[Dragon Shroud (3)]
[Shroud Twist (1)]
[Veil of Illusions (2)]
[Hibernation (5)]
[Manavore (5)]

That was a lot more reasonable, relatively speaking. Most of those abilities were either things Luke recognized from other monsters or from looking through the skill store. There were a few unusual ones—what even was [Folding Lung]—but Luke might actually have a shot at killing this version of Animar, especially in a few seconds when he activated [Inflict Status]again.

Animar’s jaws unhinged and a wall of mist jetted out to wash over Luke, immediately blinding him and making it feel like he was standing in a shower of hot sparks. Compared to the heat the molten demon had punished him with, it was nothing. The only real problem was that it blocked Luke’s vision of the dragon, not that he needed it for [Inflict Status] to function, but he wasn’t keen on having to fight Animar off from inside its mouth or being struck with those claws.

Without thousands of AP to reinforce its skill and stats, it was a lot easier to keep track of Animar. Luke could feel the changes in the air when the dragon moved, and he knew when it swept down to attack him. He ripped his mace free of the shirt he’d used as a sash to hold onto it, activated [Burst Step] and pushed himself straight up.

Level 1 it might be, it was still a dragon. Animar wasn’t surprised by Luke’s attempt at evading it. When Luke emerged from the mist, the dragon was heading straight at him with fangs gleaming in the daylight. Its eyes burned with hatred and its roar, even when Luke was off the ground, still made his body vibrate.

The dragon swept down on him, perfectly lined up to snatch Luke out of the air. Still enhanced with [Life Surge], Luke channeled [Power Strike] down his arms and struck the dragon across the snout so hard that the enormous creature’s head twisted sideways. It crashed into Luke cheek-first and transferred enough momentum that they both hit the ground, albeit fifty feet apart. It would have been further, but Luke scrambled to stop his momentum before he went over the side of the trail and fell another two hundred feet into the valley below.

“Kill you! Rip you to pieces and feast on your guts!” the dragon howled. It got back on its feet deceptively fast and charged forward, wings now held close to its flanks to help it squeeze onto the trail. Even then, it more skipped across the air above, leaping and bounding from perch to perch as it pursued Luke.

System hadn’t been very helpful finding the best poisons and curses to pair with [Inflict Status]. That was no surprise to Luke, who’d never been able to figure out all the obscure rules System followed anyway and had long since given up trying. Despite that, Luke had come up with a few good ones. With his victim possessing 100 stamina even at level 1, Luke knew he’d need the best of them.

[You have inflicted the status condition ‘Infinite Black Abyss Elder Leviathan Venom’ on your target.]

One part paralytic, one part nerve flayer, one part wild hallucinogenic. Luke hadn’t had the balls to try that one out on himself, but it had been wildly successful at keeping things still when he’d tested it on monsters prior to killing them. It had also caused victims to bleed out of every orifice and their pores, so it made quite the mess.

Luke did not want to meet the monster that produced this poison naturally, but he did want to see if Animar the Shimmer Scale would succumb to it. The first symptom he’d noted in his tests was a loss of balance, and sure enough, Animar missed its step coming down from a leap. Its foot slid out from under it, pinching its leg in the trail, and the dragon probably would have flipped over if it didn’t have so much mass. Instead, the stone broke and it bulldozed thirty feet of rubble before it came to a stop.

“You… mortal. What… what did you do?” the dragon demanded.

100 stamina was nothing to sneeze at, and Luke respected how resistant to poisons in general that made Animar. Since he did not give the dragon a chance to recover, Luke advanced on its prone form and lined up his first strike.