Rise of the Devourer

Book 3: Chapter 42 — Wyvern Cliffs Pt. 12

The suns had set over the horizon, and Noah walked around the hive, rather quickly finding the shade wyvern curled up around itself. There were still marks on its body from the attack by the thunder wyvern hive but its wounds had mostly healed as the creature rested.

The creature raised its head to regard him with a silent acknowledgement, before returning back to its sleeping position, pretending as if it hadn’t seen him arrive.

Noah smiled as he walked up to the wyvern, patting its scaly body. He felt the powerful muscles running underneath the creature’s skin.

“What do you say, we go out there and practice a little bit,” Noah asked.

The wyvern kept its head down, eyes closed as it grunted and huffed. A second later, it swooped a wing under Noah, picking him up and throwing it onto its back, before heading off into a running start.

The wind rushed by as the wyvern leapt, before spreading its wings out, and within seconds they were out of the hive, flying under the moonlit skies above the forest. From here, Noah could see the various lights shining in the distance from the city of Drakonias.

Noah clung onto the creature’s back as the two moved silently through the night sky. He smiled, watching the world pass him by.

***

The two had taken some time, flying around, as the nightshade wyvern had shown Noah how it hunted. The creature was practically invisible at night. Its wings barely made a sound as it swept through the air, gliding gracefully before pouncing on unsuspecting prey, killing them before they realized what had happened. An ambush predator at its finest.

Noah had taken to accompanying the creature, watching off from the side or directly from its back as it hunted, but the two needed to work together, learn how to combine their strengths.

The wyvern did not seem to agree much with that thought, but was tolerating his antics nonetheless.

“So, you could come in silently and then I’d use my spear to skewer the enemy, then bind them with my chains and you could land on them with your claws before blasting them with fire,” he explained to the wyvern that sat next to the corpse of a monster it had hunted just now. The wyvern yawned.

Noah watched the wyvern, thinking about how it could make it listen. It was like a rebellious teenager. Though it seemed to be willing to let Noah accompany it, but it wasn’t very willing to listen to his commands. It did not think of him as his superior, merely a pesky human that was worthy enough to bring along.

That was fine, he could work with that, but he definitely needed to earn the wyvern’s respect.

“Why don’t we try it on those deidacrocs?” Noah asked the wyvern, pausing as he thought over it. “Or, don’t tell me you’re afraid.”

The wyvern glanced at him, snorted, then turned around and lay back down again, chewing at its meal.

“I thought you would be less afraid, a mighty wyvern and everything, but I suppose even wyverns are gonna have limits,” Noah tried again, shaking his head in an exaggerated look of disappointment. “Well, guess I’ll just do it on my own then. It’s fine, I can go kill that thunder wyvern on my own.”

He glanced at the wyvern one time, the creature not paying any attention, and then Noah turned around and walked away.

Intentionally keeping his speed up, Noah moved away quickly, using Arcane Step to make his way through the dark forest. He wasn’t entirely sure the shade wyvern would follow him, and if he did, it would be difficult to tell, even for him, but Noah hoped that it would.

He struggled to hold back his smile when he felt the slightest of whispers from behind him, sensing the creature following him from afar.

***

The river flowed with a calming noise, brushing against the smooth rocks and pebbles sitting underneath the river bed. Noah could sense the presence of many large deidacrocks, similar to the ones he’d fought in the astral rift where he’d Zax. Though quite a few were both larger and stronger here.

He eyed one in particular, underneath the shore, watching him closely, ready to strike should Noah turn around. He used Analyze on the creature.

[Draconian Deidacrock (Legendary) - ??]

A draconian deidacrock is what happens when you take a crocodile, feed it a ton of steroids, give it the ability to breathe fire and shoot lightning and then ask, what if we crossbred it with a dragon? These murder machines have so much murder in their bodies that Michael Myres would probably want an autograph. Bigger, meaner, and stronger than a normal Deidacrock these creatures can blast apart anything short of a… well, honestly, nothing. The word deida is from an old language, which when added as a suffix meant ‘the bringer of violent death’ which should tell you exactly what they thought of this monster. If you see one of these, you don’t want to stupidly read descriptions about how murderous they are but instead, turn the other way and run.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

If only you were so smart, huh?

Noah scratched his head at the mention of obvious reference from his home. That… was stranger than anything before, even the mention of Noah being directly in the references. Was the system taking knowledge from him? Or had that been someone else? He knew other Outerworlders existed on Erandir so perhaps someone from Earth had found his way here in recent times and the system had learned this from them somehow?

He shook his head, putting the question out of his mind. Noah bent down, picked up a rock at the slowly creeping in deidacrock, tossed it in his hands a few times. Then, with a mental trigger, he activated metamorphosis, funneled nearly half of his mana into the stone as his body transformed in an instant and then filled it chock full of void annihilation and abyssal inferno before throwing it as hard as he could.

The water exploded, the crock rearing back in pain but Noah didn’t wait. His runic chains formed around his arms as he threw them around the crock’s mouth, blocking the fire building within them. With a powerful screamed he pulled the creature towards him, angling himself onto its back the crocodile thrashed, its body tearing the ground and bolts of lightning shooting out of its spiky scales on its back.

Noah continued, muscles aching with strain as he pulled the creature up, remaining atop the monster, before he began to punch. His strikes landed, covered with void annihilation, and crackling with each hit. Wyrm’s curse continued to seep away at the monster’s strength, predator’s mark weakening it even further and Noah used life siphon to drain the monster’s life force with each strike that hit the creature.

The deidacrock, indignant, injured, and enraged, flipped itself over in a death roll, freeing itself partly of Noah’s strikes and pulling him alongside its massive body. Lightning strikes flickered once more, the creatures dragging Noah with it and threatening to bite his head off.

Noah dodged the attack, but found his arm in the creature’s mouth as the monster twisted, tearing it off from his elbow cleanly. Before the arm was completely cut off, Noah filled the limb with the stored up energy from Abyssal Inferno as the deidacrock swallowed the limb. A fiery explosion rocketed the monster from its insides, sending the creature twitching onto its back.

Noah stumbled back, clutching his shoulder, but with metamorphosis, life drain and wyrmblood all active, the limb grew back within seconds.

He filed the move he’d just done off in his mind as a possible attack to use, if the situation was desperate enough.

Before the deidacrock could recover enough, Noah jumped in, spear forming in his hand as he took the weapon and used it to concentrate his void annihilation. The crimson spear turned dark, lightning crackling around it as Noah slammed it through the deidacrocks underside, piercing it entirely.

The massive creature thrashed, shivering and twitching before turning still as it died.

You’ve killed [Draconian Deidacrock (Legendary) - lvl 247]!

[Wyrmblood Guardian] has reached level 145!

[Abyssal Predator] has reached level 145!

Noah sighed, stumbling back, before looking behind him at the wyvern, hidden underneath the bushes. The shade wyvern walked out from the underbush, looking at the creature he had killed, and then back at Noah before snorting, as if to say ‘I can do that much too’

“Your turn then,” Noah said to the creature, walking up to it and patting it on its shoulder.

The wyvern looked down at Noah and then at the river before it let out an irritated growl. Noah chuckled to himself.

***

The suns began to rise as he watched the shade wyvern picking fights with deidacrocks all night. The two had taken turns, stacking kills one after another in an attempt to one up each other, and Noah sat there, buried and battered and his abilities all spent from his fights, as he watched the shade wyvern pick a giant deidacrock in its claws and drag it out onto the shore, blasting it with blue flames and dodging its lightning strikes.

The B rank adult deidacrocks mostly remained underwater, both Noah and the shade wyvern avoiding them as they would pick off the kills the two left behind, eating the creatures and fighting one another for the biggest slice.

He watched the shade wyvern huff in frustration as his latest prey shot a bolt of lightning at him with striking precision before darting back into the water and escaping into the river currents.

First Dawn broke moments later, the sun peering over the horizon as its rays bathed the forest, Noah smiled as he stood up.

“Guess it’s my victory then,” he said, and the wyvern let out an irritated growl covered in deep blue flames.

“So, will we be doing the hunts from tomorrow in my way?” He asked the creature, who avoided looking at Noah, but did not dissent. Noah smiled in response.

Noah took a moment to glance at his levels. He’d gone all the way up to 148 in two of his paths, and 147 in his remaining one. All in a single night of work.

He knew that wouldn’t continue as he kept up his training, but it certainly was some rapid growth, even compared to the training he’d done back on the airship. The fact that the threat was more real seemed to have supercharged his growth. Zax had told him it was like that. The amount of risk he put himself under would always increase the rewards he got out of it. His title of Titan Slayer was also helping him a lot. He suspected it was partly why he’d jumped nearly 10 levels simply from surviving the strike from the thunder wyvern, even if it hadn’t been on his own ability. The level difference meant he got just that much more out of that encounter.

If it was going to be like this then he could certainly look forward to the rest of his time in this place.

Jumping onto the shade wyvern’s back, the creature spread its wings out and then the two made their way back to the hive.

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