Chương 145: Chapter 143: The New World

Gigi and Ash go and collect driftwood along the shore, being careful not to set foot in the water. There are almost certainly going to be beach guardians here, and there's no reason to think that they would be any weaker than the one we've already fought. If anything, they will probably be stronger. Best not to tempt fate. While they're doing that, El and I do what we can to make the camp a bit more comfortable. We move some rocks to form a fire circle, then some bigger rocks for makeshift chairs.

There's always something nice about having a place to sit down that isn't just the ground. Even if you just use the rocks for chairs, it's more comfortable.

"So how long do you think it'll be before we get attacked?" El asks me.

"We've been in this land for almost an hour now. I figure it's gotta be soon."

"We might not get attacked until we move further inland," I say. I look in that direction. There is just a big, dusty plain going off as far as the eye can see. I don't see any movement anywhere. Which tells us very little. But there are some rocks in the distance. Not enough to be called mountains, more just big piles of stone.

"This place reminds me of a desert," I say.

"I think it is a desert," she says.

"Just because it's not all sand everywhere doesn't mean anything. The ground is still pretty coarse."

"Do you think this whole continent is just barren and dead?" I ask her. She shakes her head.

"Probably not," she says.

"But remember that the last continent we were on had a desert of sorts before reaching the shore, too. Maybe that's just how the land is. We'll find trees and grass and whatever once we start traveling again."

"How long do you think it'll be before Vincent and Amanda get here?"

"I don't know. What did his message say?"

"They were about halfway, he thought," I say.

"But they couldn't be more than seven hundred or so miles across the ocean. That's barely halfway to the island."

"Do you think they'll reach the island?" I shrug.

"They might not. It might not be in their direct path. Assuming they're managing to stay straight. God, it might be a week before they get here. Can you imagine how boring that must be?"

"Just flying straight at ten miles an hour?" El laughs and shakes her head.

"I couldn't do it. Even if I had the mana, I couldn't do it."

"Me either," I say.

"I think I'd probably just drown."

"I might turn back," she says.

"Maybe try to find a dragon to fly me across." I wonder if Vincent will do that. He might. Amanda won't; she'll keep flying forever if she needs to. That one is full of determination. Once she has her mind set on something, I don't think there's much of a way to change it.

"What should we do while we wait?" I ask.

"We could have sex," she says. I roll my eyes.

"Is that all you ever think about?" She shrugs.

"I like sex," she says.

"And I'm straight, so you're my only option."

"Gee, thanks." She laughs.

"Don't worry, you'd probably be my first choice even if there were options."

"That makes me feel much better," I say. I think I spilled some sarcasm on my shirt, my voice is dripping with so much of it.

"We could do it now," she says.

"While Gigi and Ash are collecting firewood."

"What if they come back?" She shrugs.

"They can either join in or wait for us to be done," she says.

"Or they can have sex themselves. I don't know how they swing."

"I appreciate the offer," I say.

"I really do. And you're gorgeous. But I just don't think it's a good idea."

"Why not?" I need a good reason. And suddenly, one occurs to me.

"It's like you said," I say.

"We might get attacked at any moment. We need to know that we're safe before we consider doing something like that." She can't really argue my point. It's what she brought up, after all.

"Fine," she says.

"But one of these days, you're going to run out of excuses." I smile at her. Do I want to run out of excuses? El is a very attractive woman. She's got muscles so corded, so well defined, that you could use her body to teach an anatomy class. Her muscles ripple under her skin, and yet that skin still looks soft to the touch. She looks like a wild creature, ready to fulfill all my most violent sexual fantasies. She seems like she could toss me around like a rag doll, and that is oddly appealing.

Do I want to break my celibate streak with her? The others might get jealous. Or they might get in line for their turns. At one point or another, both Gigi and Ash have made it clear that they want to sleep with me too. It wouldn't have to mean anything unless we wanted it to. So do I want it to? I'm saved from my musings when El suddenly stands up, her axes in hand. She's looking in the distance, and is already in a fighting stance.

"What is it?" I ask, standing up and looking in the direction she's staring. There's a cloud of dust. It seems to be coming towards us. It's not coming from the shore, so it isn't Ash and Gigi. I can't tell how big the cloud is; it's still pretty far away. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Looks like we're going to see what kind of creatures are in this world," El says. She squints her eyes.

"Can you make out anything?" I squint my eyes, raising one hand to shade it from the sun. The cloud of dust is definitely getting closer. And it's moving pretty quickly, too. I can't tell how many forms are making up the dust. It looks like just one, but that might split into several more as it gets closer and I can see more detail. My eyes are better than they've ever been, but the sun is setting almost directly behind the dust cloud, so I can't make out any real detail.

El starts to move towards the dust cloud, putting some distance from our camp. I follow her, drawing my bow. We watch in silence for ten, maybe twenty seconds. Eventually, the shapes begin to get a bit more distinct. They're only about five hundred yards away when I see that there is more than one creature making the dust cloud. At about four hundred yards, I can make out that there are three of them. At three hundred yards, I can see that they look like rhinoceros. But bigger. Much bigger.

Two hundred yards away, I can see that the horn on the front of the rhinos is much bigger than I've ever seen on a rhino. If I had to guess, I'd say that the horns are about five feet tall. Easily tall enough to skewer us. One hundred yards away, and I can almost shoot them from here. I draw back my bow and wait for them to get a little bit closer. Sniper Shot has a good range on it. I take aim for the one in front and let loose when they're about eighty yards away.

The arrow arcs through the air, coming down and slamming into the front rhino. It does about thirteen hundred damage, meaning these creatures have around two hundred armor. Dire Rhinoceros. Very rare elite creature, level 45. HP: 21, 209/22, 500. We move to the sides, and the rhinos slowly start to shift their direction. They are clearly charging right at us. I fire a Power Shot now that they're closer. 1, 845 damage. Mab's Rage can defeat them, but I don't want to use that just yet.

There might be more monsters later. We can handle these three. El starts to charge at them, cutting the distance down even further, while I move to the side and use Rapid Shot. I keep shooting at the same rhino, trying to cut it down before it gets to me. I don't think that's going to happen. Even with bleed, I'm just not doing that much damage. I've dropped it down by about half of its hit points, but I'm not going to kill it before it reaches me. I leap to the side to dodge as it thunders past me.

It whips its head around, the long horn catching my leg as I dive out of the way. I take 400 damage from the grazing blow. There's no time to put my bow away, so I keep it in my left hand as I draw my sword with my right. I roll back to my feet to face the dire rhino, as it tries to stomp on me and then skewer me with its horn. I can't tell where the third one is right now. I have to give all my focus to the one in front of me. I know that El is dealing with at least one of them. Hopefully two.

A rhinoceros is not known for its stealth, but with the kind of focus I'm giving to the one in front of me, it's possible that another one could move to flank me. I just hope I'll notice before it's too late. I slash my sword against its horn when it tries to skewer me, pushing the horn out of the way. I know that rhino horns are actually made of hair, but so hardened that it works like steel. I can't cut through the horn with my sword, but I can deflect it.

I start using Stinging Defense, cutting it a little bit at a time as it basically tries to fence with me using its horn. I know that's not its only weapon, but it is its most effective one. And while Stinging Defense doesn't do much damage to it, I think I might be able to level the ability up soon, so I keep it going. It's actually not doing any damage at all. I keep knocking the horn aside, and my stamina stays at full, but I'm not doing any actual damage.

Stinging Defense only deals 50% of my defense rating in damage at this point, and that's just 175, which is less than its 200 armor. I'm not even putting a dent in it. But it does seem like the skill is frustrating the creature, and I'll take that while I plan my next move. I do a Bleeding Strike, dealing 414 damage to the beast and making it bleed a bit more. I'm only doing about three hundred damage with each hit, and with Stinging Defense up, I'm only hitting it once every five or six seconds.

But it'll get the job done. I'm still being careful, in case this creature can do something unexpected. I guess I learned my lesson from the mummy. It doesn't hit all that hard, only doing about 400 damage on the rare occasions when it gets through my Stinging Defense. So I'm doing about three thousand damage a minute, and it's doing about twelve hundred back to me in that same time period. I can handle that for a lot longer than it can. It's already down below ten thousand hit points.

When I finish off the one rhino, I see where the third one has gotten to. Both of the remaining rhinos are fighting with El, and she seems to be splitting her attention between them. She is not doing as well as I was doing, and I move to help her. I'm sure she could have finished them on her own eventually, but she's not sorry for the help. I'm able to take a second to put my bow away and draw my dagger before joining in the battle.

El gives me a grin as I step up behind the one rhino and stab it in its flank, dealing 592 damage to it with a sneak attack. The rhino whirls around faster than I would have thought possible, swiping at me with its horn. The horn manages to connect, and I feel the impact on my ribs. It deals 600 damage, but it also leaves an opening for me to deal another 828 with Bleeding Strike. I use Killing Blow. Of course, it doesn't work.

But there is a notification when I use it that makes me think that maybe I leveled it up. I'll check the notifications after the battle. I keep using Stinging Defense, hoping to level that up too even though it technically isn't doing anything at all. Over the next few minutes, El and I kill the other two dire rhinos. They get a few good hits in, but not enough to get through either of our Shells. When they eventually die, El is breathing a bit heavily, and so am I. That battle took longer than I anticipated.

My stamina still never drained, but it wasn't recharging, either. Now that the battle is over, I watch my stamina climb back up to full while El lets out an exultant laugh.

"That was fun," she says.

"Do you think they taste good?" I smile at her.

"I don't know. I guess we're going to find out." You have defeated dire rhinoceros x3. You gain (67, 500/2) 33, 750 experience. That's enough experience to level me up. I do the same thing I did last level with my twelve points. I now have 490 experience out of the 308, 000 I need for level 43. El does not level up. I'm slowly catching up in the hit point category; now I have 16, 942. Still more than ten thousand fewer than El. But I'm about to hit two hundred vigor.

Maybe she won't put all her points into her main stats for a while. No, that's ridiculous. Of course she will. I check my notifications as I start to skin the rhinos and start cutting away steaks for us to eat. Sure enough, both Killing Blow and Stinging Defense both went up. Stinging Defense. Common Ability 2/5. Casting time: instant. Stamina cost: 1/second. Cooldown: instant. Defend against unarmed attacks, dealing 60% of your defense skill in damage to your opponent each time they attack. Killing Blow.

Rare ability 3/20. Stamina cost: 200. Casting time: instant. Cooldown: 5 minutes. Strike an opponent for 140% maximum damage. 2% chance that target will instantly be reduced to 0 hit points. Does not work on all enemies. Also, my dagger skill increased by one to fifteen. The rhino meat steaks are a bit tough to eat. There's a lot of marbling in the meat. But it's pretty close to beef, all things considered. Ash and Gigi are happy to see that we have dinner when they get back.

They pull enough wood out of their spatial bags for us to build a big fire that will easily last us all night. They probably have several days' worth of wood, if we're careful.