Book 1: Chapter 79
The next world boss he was heading for was directly north of him. If he looked out from the top of his tower towards the north, all he saw were mountain peaks. He didn't want to scale multiple mountains just to get to it so he had decided to finally learn how to fly. Now that that was complete, he wanted to train his reaction time and fighting instincts. He had flown north a few kilometers into the mountain, Grim once again following him. Once he was far enough away from the city, Felix looked for a large enough open space and ended up in the valley between two mountains.
He waited for Grim to catch up and wrote on his pages, "Can you cast offensive spells?"
"Only ones that you already know."
"Can you try and hit me with high speed Mana Bolts so I can practice dodging and blocking?"
"Sure thing, I can't move very quickly and I can't cast spells multiple meters away from my body like you can, but I should be able to fire off a barrage of Mana Bolts."
"That should be enough."
Felix had Grim float on the opposite end of the valley and try to hit him with Mana Bolts. Felix blocked and dodged and did whatever was necessary to avoid the strikes. Fighting a book meant that there was no wind up so he had no way to predict when he would cast. Felix was hit by a lot of Mana Bolts, the majority of them at first. He slowly got faster though, both with dodging and activating his shields.
After almost 2 days with only breaks to meditate and regenerate, Felix had learned which strikes he could avoid, and which he was forced to block. Now he had to find out if that translated to other forms of attacks. Unfortunately, Grim couldn't quite manage what Felix could with mana blades, so he couldn't test himself against those.
Felix didn't think he was ready to take on the world boss just yet, but he did want to know what he was preparing himself for. He decided to sneak up as close as he could to inspect it. He flew low and slow over the mountains, both due to his comfort with flying and for the sake of stealth. Right at the point where his map indicated a world boss would be Felix saw a giant turtle. It was black with a slight orange glow and multiple spikes on it's shell. It was currently taking bites out of the mountain next to it.
[E - Rare] Colossal Mountain Turtle (Lvl 86)
Felix turned around and flew south a few dozen kilometers back to the valley he had used to train with Grim.
"Ever seen one of those before?"
"Nope, that one is new to me."
"Any idea what I should prepare for with that one?"
"My best guess is that Fire isn't going to be the ideal element, based solely on the orange glow."
"I could go with the exact opposite. I can do Cold Balls, like Fire Balls. I should probably also add a little force too to spread the cold and probably choose a better name for them, Frost Balls?"
"I think that's probably your best bet. Frost Shot?"
"That's better, not perfect though."
Felix spent a few hours tuning his Frost-Force Balls and settled on double sizing them for the fight. He also worked on Grim's suggestion of using high affinity mana projectiles to track targets. Testing out his mana senses, with the highest affinity mana he had, he could sense it from half a kilometer away with some precision and over that with much less. He ended up creating something that he found disgusting, but effective. He created what was essentially a projectile syringe to inject high affinity liquid mana into the targets blood stream, which should make it nearly impossible to remove for a few hours. It also let him sense the entire target, instead of just the projectile lodged somewhere on their body, so long as they were less than a kilometer or so away from him.
This time, Felix felt more ready than before. He wasn't sure if he was falling prey to bias, but he felt like now he was much more prepared. Where before, he had felt arrogant and overconfident, now he just felt confident and sure of himself. Felix glided over to where he knew the turtle was and began creating a handful of tracking shots. The turtle didn't seem to notice or care and continued to munch on rocks. As it took a bite, the orange glow coming from within it's shell would brighten briefly then slowly die down. It seemed like the turtle also found these particular rocks very tasty as it's tail would not stop wagging whenever it took a bite.
Once Felix's tracking shots were ready, he created a few simple but powerful force spells to fire them. In order for the tracking to work, he needed at least the tips of the projectiles to pierce the targets skin. If he used too much force it would either shatter before piercing, meaning the projectile wasn't strong enough, or it would shatter under the skin, which should work just fine. For a turtle, he would need to also make sure he hit it in the limbs and not the shell. Felix's aim was decent, but not that great so he snuck up as stealthily as he could on the turtle. The turtle either didn't notice or didn't care as Felix stood less than a hundred meters away from it. Felix suspected he could have walked right up to it without it caring, but he was already more than close enough.
Standing this close, Felix realized how absurdly massive the turtle was. It's legs were almost as wide as small houses meaning it would be trivial to hit it's skin with the tracking projectiles. He was worried his tracking shots wouldn't pierce deep enough into it's thick hide so he adjusted them slightly. It towered around 30 meters to the highest point on it's shell.
Felix prepared himself to jump away and carefully aimed all of his tracking shots. He fired them with a few thousand mana worth of force each and darted away. Though he wasn't facing the turtle, he could tell they had hit because of the loud roar that followed him and reverberated through the mountains. He knew they had pierced the skin because he could feel the mana slowly spreading through it's bloodstream.
Once he felt he was far enough away, Felix turned around but the turtle was completely gone. He quickly referred to his mana senses to track it but that turned out to be unnecessary as Felix heard a massive boom from the mountain just above and behind him. The ground shook and Felix turned to find the turtle's shell lodged in the side of the mountain, all limbs retracted. Dirt and small stones showered down around Felix purely from the impact. With nothing exposed, Felix couldn't really hit it with anything so he just prepared a couple of the Force and Cold Balls he had decided on and tested before hand.
The turtle pulled it's limbs free from it's shell and took a few seconds to reorient itself. In that time, Felix let loose all of his double size attack spells and began running. He managed to strike the turtle once on the side of it's head and thrice on it's front legs. The turtle quickly recovered from the blows and seemed angry as it roared once more. Felix watched this time, as he ran. The turtle ben down slightly then jumped and rocketed itself in Felix's direction using it's legs and tail. As soon as it left the ground, it's limbs retracted into it's spinning shell creating a giant ball of death.
Felix continued running in the direction he was going and the shell impacted slightly behind him and to his left. He turned away from it and fired a few more spells behind him at the turtle as soon as it's limbs reemerged. He was about a hundred meters from the turtle at this point and was gaining distance. This time when it jumped, it's aim was a little better and it landed just 50 meters away from Felix as he ran. Felix once again shot off a few offensive spells as it emerged, except this time, it didn't prepare to launch itself. The turtle's glow brightened and it locked it's eyes on Felix before bellowing out a massive stream of fire in his direction.
Felix quickly pumped mana into the steel plate on his chest casting a Mana Shield in front of him. The shield was big enough to cover his entire body, especially if he crouched, and diverted the stream around him. It ended up draining a few thousand mana but managed to hold off most of the strike. All of the residual heat from the fire was easily dealt with by his cloak.
Frostforce Ball?
Felix prepared 5 of his Frostforce Balls and fired them all off when the fire breath subsided. He managed to hit it's head with two of them, the rest on it's front legs and exposed chest. The turtle roared and shot itself forwards again, it's aim still lacking. This time, as soon as it left the ground, Felix didn't bother moving as he knew it had shot itself much too high in the air. As expected, the turtle soared right over his head and landed almost 200 meters away.
Frostboom Shot?
Felix fired off more of his Frostboom Shots as it exposed it's skin, mostly hitting it's tail this time. Felix was starting to see large craters where his strikes were hitting, about the size of softballs. The wounds didn't bleed right away though, as they were initially frozen solid. As it turned towards Felix once again, he noticed that some of the strikes on it's front legs had started to bleed a dark sludgy blood. Felix was ready to dart off to a side to dodge it's canon like strike but was surprised when the turtle simply started charging him.
Frozen Burst?
It wasn't very fast though, so Felix jogged backwards as he fired off more of his Frozen Bursts into it's hide. Suddenly, the turtle launched itself forwards, not bothering to retract it's limbs, instead trying to catch Felix in it's maw. It was fast, but not nearly fast enough. Felix had time to fire off a triple sized Frozen Burst into it's open mouth and bolt off to the side with the steel plates beneath his heels.
Felix managed to distance himself by a hundred meters or so to the side before turning around and watching the turtle struggle to lift it's legs as it tried to turn. It stumbled and fell causing Felix to feel bad for it just before he finally finished it off with a single spell.
Glacial Blast.
Ding You have slain an [E - Rare] Colossal Mountain Turtle (Lvl 86)
Ding You have gained a level in [E - Common] Caster
Congratulations!
You have slain a World Boss.
The experience will be split among your party of 1 and you have obtained an upgrade token for any tutorial settlement. The token may be consumed in any settlement granting an upgrade based on the World Boss slain. The upgrade will be split evenly among the settlements where the tokens are consumed.
Upgrade: Turtle Cannons.
Finally, Felix felt the charm hanging around his neck hum. He pulled it out and immediately noticed the eyes glowed with just a pin-prick of blue light. He identified it.
[E - Legendary] Charm of the Boss Conqueror
This charm is made to absorb part of the souls of tutorial world bosses when they are killed. It will absorb a portion equal to your overall contribution towards the kill. This charm will contain the souls for later use.
Note Charms: Charms are pieces of equipment that grow with their wielder upon level up and evolution. The benefits gained from a charm are completely unique and more than one charm may not be equipped at once.
Note Bond: Some magical items, particular ones that grow alongside you, must be bonded. To bond to an item to yourself, flood it with mana or energy for a few minutes to imprint your soul into the item. To un-bond an item that either you or another has bonded with, keep the item away from it's wielder for an extended period of time.
Current Souls:
Colossal Mountain Turtle (100%)
Well, one down 8 to go. Tutorial Screen.
Tutorial Status
There are 75,692/100,000 people.
There are 34 days, 8 hours, 21 minutes remaining.
You have completed all available dungeons.
You have killed 1 world boss.
You have captured 1 fort.
The wording changed. I wonder how much of the drop in people is because of the sieges.
Felix didn't bother examining the Turtle's pockmarked corpse and instead just stowed it in his inventory. He wasn't sure it would work at first, but his inventory didn't seem to have any issues with it. He then turned back south, towards the city and floated into the air. He encountered Grim on his way back who wrote to him while he gently glided through the air.
"Congratulations. Looks like that went rather smoothly. I assume it's the Griffin next? For hitting it through the wind, have you thought about lightning? Theoretically, it should be fast enough to hit it before being disrupted by the wind. Ionizing a path is almost instant and being hit by lightning would suck for a flying creature."
That's not a terrible idea at all.
Felix spoke aloud as he glided back over the mountains, "Can you hear me by the way? Understand what I'm saying?"
Grim wrote back, "I can hear you, I can't decipher your language though. I only know how to read and write it."
Felix nodded. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .