Starting from Zero

Chapter 140: Challenge

Translator: blackberrry Editor: blackberrry

Once the hailstorm was over, I quickly crawled out from behind the rock, the ground outside had been piled up with hails to a height of close to 15cm.

"What the hell!" Hope looked around, Mt. Fuji was completely transformed into a white world.

"The Japs have run away, I reckon they won't be doing anything else today!" Felix looked at the gathering point which was in complete disorder. The things that the Japs have not destroyed were still there, and it seemed as though the majority of the things belonged to Spellcasters.

I picked up a hailstone the size of an apple. "It won't only be today, I doubt anyone of them will come until these things disappear! With so many hailstones piling up everywhere, it's impossible to walk!"

"Now what's going on with the sky?" Hope looked up to the sky.

"What do you mean what's going on?" I raised my head up to look as well.

The strangely sunny and cloudy sky that cleared right after the end of the hailstorm suddenly had dark clouds, the immense regiment of clouds churned and collided into one another, forming even larger clouds. The dense mass of clouds made us unconsciously feel a strong oppression, it isn't any ordinary power, nature is an unstoppable force that has always struck fear in humanity.

"It looks like it's going to rain!" Felix looked up and commented.

Hope immediately retorted: "Didn't it JUST rained?"

"Who cares what it is, they are all catastrophic!" I quickly summoned Lucky and jumped onto his back. "Get up, we will fly above the clouds, regardless of what it is, it can't do anything to us as long as we are above it!"

Felix nimbly jumped up, but Hope dare not move at the sight of Lucky. "I-is….is this a dragon?"

"Of course it's a dragon, or do you think it's a lizard? Get up quickly!" Seeing that Hope wasn't moving, I instantly summoned Phiona out: "Bring her up and follow us!"

Phiona instantly transformed into her battle form and grabbed onto Hope's shoulders and lifted her up, while Lucky opened his wings and with a leap, we soared into the sky.

The sky already had signs of bad weather when we left the ground. A gigantic lightning bolt grazed past Lucky's wings, and the rock that we had used to hide from the hailstones was struck, and instantly shattered into countless of small rocks. After the lightning, the wind started to pick up. Lucky displayed his superior flight skills with us, he expanded his wings and welcomed the wind without the need to flap his wings, the wind was sufficient to increase our altitude. By the side, although Phiona was much lighter, she did not possess extraordinary large wings that were disproportionate to her body like Lucky. She could not raise her altitude by using the wind and had to continuously work her wings to keep up with us.

When we were about to approach the cloud layers, lightning bolts started to gather. A bolt of lightning flashed ahead of us, and although it was more than ten meters away, the intensity of the voltage gave rise to static, which caused an electric arc to flash across my armor, making me look like a light bulb!

"Watch out!" Phiona cried out.

With an unthinkable flexibility, Lucky somehow managed to swerve to the side, and we watched as a white ball of light that had electric arcs twirling all around it flew past us.

"What the hell is that?" Felix, who was in a state of shock, was about to open his helmet's visor with the intent of wiping his perspiration when I immediately swiped it back on.

"That was a ball of lightning formed by a high compression of charged plasma, those are what the army's pulse cannons shoot. If you don't want to become a roasted goose, don't open your armor, your metal armor isolates the electric current from your body, although there will be a huge build up of static on your armor, but you won't feel it inside, but so long as you open any part of your armor, the static will instantly roast you alive!"

"Then will your companions be fine?"

"Can't you see that I only summoned the two of them? Black Dragons are heavily resistant to all magic*, although this is lightning, most of the mage classes' offense attacks are of the lightning attribute, thus Lucky is not afraid of lightning, furthermore, this is just static lightning, electric that doesn't flow can't really harm anyone! As for Phiona, she is naturally invulnerable to magic**, this little bit of lightning can't affect her!"

"Watch your front!" Phiona cried out again. Another lightning strike landed in front of us, Lucky did another swerve around this lightning strike, but almost turned us into roasted meat!

One after another, lightning strikes kept striking down around us, while many large balls of lightning were converged in the center. But by relying on Phiona's acute senses and Lucky's superior flight skills, we were actually able to get through this series of lightning bolts and flew to the cloud layers. Once we got out of the dark clouds, the golden and dazzling sunlight instantly enveloped us.

The dark clouds and the endless lightning strikes continued beneath us, but it no longer mattered to us, we were much safer above them!

"Oh my god, look there!" Hope pointed ahead.

I followed her direction and looked over, and noticed a completely pitch black monster floating ahead of us in the distance.

This monster's body somewhat resembled a Chinese mythical dragon, with its long body that was covered with scales, and the tip of its tail resembled a shark's. But its head looked terrifying, which was roughly half the length of its body, and its gigantic beak resembled more of a bird. But the terrifying teeth growing out of its beak definitely meant that it wasn't some herbivore! It had three gigantic and red eyes on its terrifying head. BUT, the eyes on the left and right covered half of its head, making it look like a mosquito, and although the middle eye is considerably smaller, it possessed eyelids, and its constant blinking most probably meant that this eye is important to this monster. This monster did not have any legs or claws, but there was a pair of fins between its head and body. Overall, this monster should be some aquatic animal, but I don't know how it is actually flying above the clouds!

I suddenly realized that there was a man riding on its back. That golden robe looks familiar! I activated Star Gaze and focused on the man on the monster.

The identification of the man scared me.

Isn't he the guy with the same class as me, that Soul Manipulator?

"That's Ikeda Rikio!"

"What? What did you say?" Hope looked at me anxiously. "That's Ikeda Rikio?"

I nodded my head. "With THAT, I can confirm that his Soul Manipulator class is the same as mine!"

That shouldn't be a Servant, but a Companion of his. To be able to control such a humongous thing should mean that he has other Companions! I don't believe that anyone else will be able to obtain a Dragon through a fluke like me, that means he must have definitely caught that beast after using another Companion.

Ikeda Rikio also noticed us.

It isn't easy to conceal ourselves with the size of Lucky flying around!

He most probably considered as Japanese people who had flown above to avoid the lightning, as he controlled his monster to slowly float towards us.

"What do we do?" Felix started to tense up.

"Don't worry, we have the advantage in the sky!" I jumped up: "Quickly prepare for battle."

When Ikeda got closer to us, he suddenly stopped. He had somehow managed to recognize us. It had to be Felix's fault, he had the China Flag imprinted on his armor which was easily recognizable even from a distance!

"China man!!!!" Ikeda controlled his Monster to float towards us.

"Why are you calling out for your grandfather?" At that point of time, I no longer cared about any propriety of speech!

"Humph!" Ikeda Rikio snorted in disdain. "Don't be too pleased! I know who you are, you are that Devil Ziri, who wiped out Lord Matsumoto's three thousand men!"

Damn, I am being called a Devil once again!

"Matsumoto's subordinates are all weaklings, your strength can only be considered above average. Today, I will kill you, and bring your corpse back to parade around! That's right, I heard that you have many companions, I wonder if you can compare to me? Come out! My Companions!"

Ikeda Rikio summoned out his Companions, which caused the space in front of us to distort, and I immediately knew that Ikeda was trying to scare us. The appearance of Companions would not produce much effects, and his summon was obviously the same as I did the last time when Lucky, when I had the intention of scaring others. The distortion in the air became worse and worse, and in an instant, three black holes appeared before us.

The first black hole shrunk quickly, and a gigantic flaming bird appeared in the sky. It looked extremely similar to Phiona, but its entire body was covered with red flames. I immediately recognized it as a true Fire Phoenix, which was coincidentally the perfect adversary against Phiona, which was an Infernal Dark Phoenix***! Upon appearing, It let out a screech and flew to Ikeda Rikio's side and faced off against us.

Seems like its a highly intellectual Companion.

I got Hope to go offline for the moment, and then got Phiona to fly forward and faced against the Fire Phoenix.

The second black hole also shrunk, and after it disappeared, a gigantic insect that was completely golden appeared in front of us. It was just a Flying Ant that was enlarged many times, but its enormous pincers looked extremely powerful. As it flew, it released a buzzing sound like a bomber aircraft. It also flew to Ikeda Rikio's side and hovered around.

"TANK!" I summoned Tank to confront the Flying Ant. Luckily, Tank's size was clearly larger than the Flying Ant, and furthermore, Tank had consumed a Dragon before.

Evolved Tank shouldn't need to exert itself just to get rid of this damn ant. Once Tank tramples on this Flying Ant, it can link up with Phiona to get rid of that Fire Phoenix.

I was just calculating the time that the third black hole needed to close when a purple Faerie Dragon appeared in front of us. The Faerie Dragon looked similar to Lucky, but it was completely bright purple, and its eyes were larger. The Faerie Dragon had appeared quickly, and I had no choice but to activate my Wing Blades and flew away from Lucky. Lucky confronted the Faerie Dragon (Of course, I had requested for Felix to go offline as well.).

Lucky's size was similar to the Faerie Dragon, but it meant that the Faerie Dragon was higher leveled than Lucky. After obtaining Lucky, I had carefully read through Dad's admin FAQ(I secretly did it), and found out that Lucky was classified as a Saint Dragon-type in the Dragon Race, and had an overall increase in stats, thus having a substantial increase regardless of defense or attack, even its life was much more than an average Dragon.

Adding its Dark Transformation into a Black Saint Dragon Lord, Lucky was equipped with a Black Dragon's heavy resistance as well as its ferocious and violent character. As these two categories of Dragons belong to the larger scale Dragons, Lucky's final form would be extremely large. But the Fairie Dragon was a type of Small Dragon that used Magical Attacks. Same Level Faerie Dragons should be smaller than a Saint Dragon or a Black Dragon, but the Faerie Dragon in front of us was as large as Lucky, which meant that it was higher level. But I was not too worried for Lucky, after all, it was a Dragon Lord, with his crown, Lucky had no fear towards the Dragon Race, as its double amplification of stats against Dragons basically made Lucky a Dragon Killer!

Right when Lucky got into position, the monster beneath Ikeda Rikio rose. Unknowingly, Ikeda Rikio had summoned a large Bird, which looked to be at a very low level, which looked to be his old Companion before he had obtained the high leveled monstrous Companion.

I quickly summoned Loong-er to face against the monster, whatever that thing was, it'll still die facing against a Ryu! According to the situation, the possibility of me winning was extremely high. Phiona and the Fire Phoenix looked to be equal, the Flying Ant would not be able to win Tank, Lucky could trample over the Faerie Dragon without a problem, but it would take some time. The only variable was the unknown monster, but as long as I could win in the battles and have my other Companions join Loong'er to fight it, no matter how powerful the monster was, it would be useless.

It was a pity that we were not on the ground, otherwise, summoning the Phantom Knights would have saved a lot of time!

"You have many Companions!" Ikeda Rikio spoke with sarcasm: "These are all the Companions I have, luckily, all of my Companions are aerial units! Hahahaha! I did a thorough research on you from Matsumoto's side, it seems that none of your Servants can fly right? Now, I will let you have a taste of my Aerial Army. Come out, my Servants."

It was a miscalculation, Ikeda's servants were actually all aerial units. The sudden appearance of 8 Thunderbirds surprised me, they were extremely fast, and utilized both physical and magical attacks, although their magical attacks were only lightning attributed, the Thunderbirds' lightning were far more deadly than any Mage Classes. What they released were compressed plasmas!

The addition of the 8 Thunderbirds was out of my calculations. Regardless of how Ikeda Rikio separated the 8 Thunderbirds as supports for the Companions or to use them all to target one of my Companion, it would be disadvantageous for me, It had destabilized my plans!

Oh right, I have my Dragon Wasps, I'm level 479 now, 958 Dragon Wasps should be enough to lock 4 of those Thunderbirds down.

Recalling the additional 'Companions' that I had, the Fire Gem on my head immediately flashed with a silver light with a mental summon. None of the fire red Dragon Wasps that I remembered appeared, but a flow of mercury flew out. This mercury formed into a silver ball 3 meters in front of me, which had a fine line of mercury that was directly connected to the Fire Gem on my Helmet. This mercury kept on pouring into the silver ball, which quickly grew to a size of close to two meters in diameter.

The connection stopped when the silver ball was exactly two meters in diameter. After that, it started to split itself into countless of small silver droplets that floated around me. Every single silver droplet flickered with lights. I observed the little droplets that had exploded prematurely. The things that came out were completely silver, as though they were truly made of silver! The shape of them looked like bees, but their heads had exaggerated mandibles, and all of their leg tips resembled extremely sharp silver needles, while at their fronts, they had what seemed like mantises. The terrifying part about them was that they were all at least a meter long each, their bodies were already twice the size of Dragon Wasps and looked more like a flock of birds! Their stingers at their ends were cone shaped that was at least 30 cm long, and their silver appearance made the sharpness terrifying.

All of these silver droplets started to flicker with silver light. Two to three seconds later, the silver droplets suddenly exploded that were actually as immense as bombers, and actually overwhelmed the buzzing sounds of Tank and the Flying Ant.

I quickly asked Phantom that was already merged with me: "What are those things?"

"They should be the product of when the Fire Gem absorbed the mercury, I don't know what it is called, the system prompt should have something, you can take a look."

I immediately opened the system prompt chat box and scrolled down, as expected, I saw a large chunk of information upon scrolling down. It was information regarding the evolution of the Dragon Wasps, due to a large number of Dragon Wasps, it had flooded the system prompt chat box with repeats of their evolutions. I scrolled to the top and finally saw the information.

Silver Wasp

Level 300 Creature

High mobility

Possess outstanding attack second to none against same level mobs

Can Respawn Indefinitely.

It was a short description and did not even mention any numerical values, but just these stats were enough to scare people already. Although Level 300 was not considered extremely high, I could summon close to a thousand of them!

I will definitely sting Ikeda Rikio into a swollen fatty! Hahahaha!

"Do you still have any more things you haven't summoned?" Ikeda Rikio was shocked by the appearance of the Silver Wasps. In the ambush the last time, I did not reveal the Dragon Wasps to them, thus it was impossible for Ikeda Rikio to learn of this from Masayoshi Matsumoto. With the sudden inclusion of so many things, it would be weird if he was not shocked.

Imagine, 958 Silver Wasps in the air is able to occupy the size of a football field! Furthermore, the sound produced by them is truly terrifying. And by being above the clouds, the sunlight on the Silver Wasps refracts and produces a dazzling light that made them look even more imposing! How terrifying is that!

"Kill them all!" I stared at Ikeda Rikio and gave out the simplest command. All of my Companions rushed forward at the same time.

Phiona and the Fire Phoenix were the fastest, as Level 1000 Class Bosses, with noble backgrounds, and as High Dexterity monsters, they were the first to collide. Lucky and the Faerie Dragon were Dragons, thus their movements were slower and were the next to collide. The Silver Wasps inherited the Dragon Wasps' trait of being fearless, and the swarm of them rushed over and immediately enveloped the 8 Thunderbirds. Tank and the Flying Ant were both low intellect Companions and chose the simplest method of battle - head to head collisions. The two gigantic insects collided and produced a low bass sound, but the Flying Ant was instantly flung out, in terms of physical attacks, Tank was still number 1! Loong-er and the unknown creature were obviously Intellectual Companions, as both of them did not rush at each other, but prepared their respective spells.

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(*) Chapter 7, Black Dragons are 75% resistant to magic, but in the Chinese translation, it wrote that Black Dragon disregards all magic, I will put heavily resistant due to its 75%

(**) Chapter 33, Phiona stats say she is invulnerable to magic

(***)It was translated previously that Phiona was an Inferno Dark Phoenix, but I have to correct it as the correct Chinese translation meant that Phiona is related to the underworld or hell, thus I corrected it to Infernal.

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