Chronicles of the True Wizard

He glided his way back to the roof of his tower then headed down into the lab room. He worked on figuring out exactly how a Lightning Bolt spell would work with some input, where possible, from Grim. While he couldn't use a Fire Ball or another elemental variant while it was flying, if he could ground it with a few Lightning Bolts, then he could hit it with Fire Balls. Neither he nor Grim knew which element would be best against the Griffin so he decided to just go with his best guess, lightning then fire. If lightning seemed particularly effective, he would stick with it. Otherwise he would switch over.

His spells were ready and his mana was refilled. He planned on testing out the spells in the forest just before he engaged so, he had nothing else to do in the tower for now. He headed downwards to leave through the front door as he was much faster when running compared to flying. Through the mountains, running was difficult, making flying favorable. Through a giant open field, running was much faster. He could have flown over the mountain to the east, but he also wanted to use his token before he left. As he descended the tower he found Henry and Noah arguing in the lobby. He managed to catch the tail end of their argument when he walked down.

"If he can't even be arsed to help defend his own city, people are going to start leaving." Henry spat.

"Henry, we'll be fine. If the city does get attacked, he'll be here, I promise." Noah tried to calm him down.

"Well where the hell is he now? What if they attack right now? How long will it take for him to be here? All the rest of us are here ready to defend. Where is he?" Henry got a little too into Noah's face.

"Talking about me?" Felix cut in.

They both jumped a little and turned towards him, "Felix, a third fort has now been taken. We have to be on high alert, ready to defend the city. They could be coming for us next."

I know I'm a much higher level than everyone else, but should we really be that worried? Our population is almost half of everyone left alive in the tutorial and I don't see how anyone gets through that wall, it would be hard even for me.

"Well, I'm here now. Was there something in specific you needed from me?"

"You should be around at all times in case we get attacked. You can't just abandon us."

"For your information, I was just a few kilometers north doing that thing you asked me to do. You know, killing a world boss. As a reward I get to upgrade the city's defenses, says it's a bunch of canons. Is that alright with you?"

"Wait, you killed the world boss?" Noah asked with an expression of pure shock.

Felix just nodded.

"Which one was it? What environment was it in?" Henry changed topics immediately.

"A giant turtle that ate mountains, or took bites out of them. It wasn't big enough to eat the entire mountain. Just 30 meters or so tall. Why?"

"The world bosses are all guarding special materials. The turtle was probably guarding rare metals and minerals." Noah whispered to Felix.

"Prove it."

"I'm keeping the corpse, but you can come watch me set up the canons if you'd like."

"Fine, let's go. You can finally see all the hard work us crafters have been putting into your city."

This is why I hate people.

Felix walked out of the tower, Henry and Noah in tow, towards the walls at the entrance to the city. They arrived at the front gates and Felix pulled out the token from his inventory.

[E - Epic] Tutorial Settlement Upgrade Token: Turtle Cannons

This token can be consumed while within the borders of a settlement to provide the specified upgrade. The upgrade will be split among all of the settlements where the similar tokens are consumed.

As the acting leader of a settlement, you may choose to consume the token for your settlement or one you are located within. Would you like to consume this token for Tri-Peak?

Yes.

No.

Yes.

Felix wasn't sure what had changed at first, expecting himself to be teleported or for there to be a loud noise of some kind. Instead he looked around and saw nothing. Eventually though, he looked up to the wall and saw massive turtle shells sitting embedded into the wall at even intervals of a dozen or so meters. He had no idea how they functioned, but they did look very cool, and very unlike a traditional cannon.

Felix didn't overly care how effective they were, but he knew they should placate Henry for a little while so, he flew up to the top of the wall and walked up to one of them. It was easy enough to figure out, all he had to do was fuel it with mana and push a button then it would fire off a blast. It could also regenerate mana on it's own, but it was slower to do so. Felix filled it with mana and aimed it at an empty section of the field, off to the east. He pushed the button and a turtle shell flew out of the cannon trailing fire as it flew. It collided with the terrain similarly to how the world boss had collided with the mountains except this time it created a fiery explosion.

Felix floated back down to Henry and asked, "So what did the crafter's get up to that you wanted to show me so badly?"

Henry proceeded to grumble a little then asked, "So north, if we head north through the mountains we will find the battle site?"

"Here, I'll mark it on your map for you." Felix said, happy to be done with this conversation.

"We'll send a crew out there soon, should be safe with the mountains on all sides. Thanks by the way, for the uh… World Boss. You could have told me you already had a group planning on taking it on, I only wanted the materials."

Felix shrugged.

"You'll be nearby? Within 5 minutes of the city at all times from now on though, right? We don't want to have a siege declared on us and be caught with our pants down."

Seriously? With the cannons, you absolutely need me to be here? Yeah right.

Felix shrugged again, with no intention of promising that. He didn't care that his non answer was sort of a lie, he just also didn't care enough about it to explicitly lie either. Henry walked off, a little skip in his step as he left, clearly excited to plan the mining expedition. Felix turned to Noah, "Anything else need my attention? I'm planning on leaving for a few days at most."

"Nah, and don't worry about Henry too much. He's just worried his forge and all that will be gone soon. Honestly, it's probably just all the other crafters that are worried and they take it out on him. Then he brings the complaints to us. I'll just tell him you are in your lab and are busy tinkering with some new weapon to help protect the city. I didn't know you planned on taking out any world bosses."

Felix shrugged, "Seems like the last thing to do in the tutorial. Other than, well, I have no interest in sieging the other settlements."

"Thank System for that. Well, safe travels. Don't die."

"I'll try."

With that settled, Felix headed out through the main gates and ran south east towards the Griffin. He ended up exactly where he had list time, on the edge of the tree line facing towards the sandy hills. From this distance he could just barely see the Griffin as it lay nonchalantly on the same hilltop as it had last time.

No more losing.

Felix prepared his tracking shots, making them as resilient as he could and snuck up on the Griffin. He made sure to be as quiet as possible as he floated just over the hills. He didn't dare get as close to the Griffin as he had with the turtle, but he figured 300 meters or so would be good enough. He aimed his shots meticulously to strike the largest body parts while avoiding the wings. When he was ready, he mentally started a countdown to force himself to commit, but ended up firing off the tracking shots at 3 anyways. He didn't need a countdown, he was ready.

The tracking shots all hit their mark causing the Griffin to let out a familiar screech before taking off for the air. Before it could start creating a wind storm, Felix let loose a Lightning Bolt striking it in the belly as it flew. The Lightning Bolt caused it to tense up and begin falling for a few seconds, but it seemed to catch itself. Felix was already casting it at 4 times normal strength so he cast it again. Unfortunately, the Griffin remained in the air, though it hadn't attempted a dive just yet. Felix wasn't going to let it do anything though, he jumped to 10 times strength and let loose on the Griffin.

His prey immediately seized up and fell straight into the ground a few hundred meters away. Felix pumped mana into the soles of his boots as fast as he could and bounded towards the Griffin, he wasn't going to let it take off again. He managed to get within a hundred meters when the Griffin recovered and rose to it's feet. Felix fired off a triple sized Fire Ball to get it's attention. He hit it in the joint of it's front right leg which singed the entire front side of it's leg with the resultant explosion. The Griffin screeched again then ran towards Felix who fired off as many Fire Balls and Lightning Bolts as he could. He wasn't sure if the Lightning Bolts were doing a lot of damage, but they were definitely slowing it down. It even tripped a couple of times from having it's muscles suddenly seize up.

It also tried to dodge Felix's Fire Balls, but they were simply too fast, resembling bullets to Felix's eyes. He managed to hit it with 9 Fire Balls and 3 Lightning Bolts before the Griffin managed to close in on Felix. It began trying to swipe at Felix with it's talons, but now that Felix had prevented it from creating a sandstorm, he could see the wind up and predict the strikes. He couldn't dodge all of them, but he blocked those he couldn't and managed to entirely avoid taking any damage directly. He was knocked to the ground a few times and took a few points of damage here and there from landing too hard but it was a much better performance than last time.

On a particularly wide swing of desperation from the talons, Felix dodged and jumped back to gain distance then started to fire off Fire Balls once again. He shot three of them before the Griffin tried to jump backwards and take off with with a powerful flap of it's wings.

Felix already had a Lightning Bolt ready to strike to keep it grounded but the flap of it's wings doubled as an attack, knocking Felix over with a large gust of wind. It also caused the sand around Felix to create a small cloud, but he was ready for that too. He sensed the Griffin's location and charged up another Lightning Bolt at 7 times the power. He fired it off and heard a loud boom before he saw the Griffin crash land as the sand was still falling around him.

Ding You have slain an [E - Special] Griffin (Lvl 87)

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: Griffin's Protection.

Felix confirmed 100% of the Griffin's soul was in his charm and ran over to stow the corpse in his inventory. Once that was complete, he pulled out the token he had just acquired.

[E - Epic] Tutorial Settlement Upgrade Token: Griffin's Protection

This token can be consumed while within the borders of a settlement to provide the specified upgrade. The upgrade will be split among all of the settlements where the similar tokens are consumed.

As the acting leader of a settlement, you may choose to consume the token for your settlement or one you are locating within. Would you like to consume this token for Tri-Peak?

Yes.

No.

Yes. It would be nice to know what that did, but I have more bosses to kill before Henry realizes I'm gone and explodes.

He knew about the Royal Elk in the forest, the boss in the middle of the sea to the south and another on his map next to the mountain settlement he hadn't visited yet. He didn't want to try and fight while flying just yet, so he saved the one at sea for last. The next closest one was the Royal Elk, but killing it meant he would have to loop back for the one in the mountains, so he headed there first. . . . . .