Chương 53: Chapter 54: Wyvern

It's about three in the morning when I come across a dead deer, or what's left of it. It's already been gorged upon, and mostly what's left behind is good only for the carrion. But there's something stuck into the deer that makes a difference. It's a spine, almost like a porcupine quill, though closer to an inch in thickness and about as strong as a wooden dowel. It takes a second of examining it, but the system does eventually identify it as a wyvern spine.

It apparently is what killed the deer, stabbing it in the neck. I don't know if it was from a distance or not, but it looks like it was. Does that mean that a wyvern can fire those things at people? Probably. So I should be ready for that. The wyvern didn't leave much of a trail on the ground for some reason, but the smell is pungent and noticeable even over the blood and gore smell of the dead deer.

I'm able to follow the scent trail through the forest, across a creek, and around a small hill that is strangely bare of trees. And there, nestled in to the bottom of the hill, is another cave. And inside the cave is what I've been hunting this last hour or so. Wyvern. Rare elite dragonoid, level 21. HP 10, 500/10, 500. That might be too much for me to handle on my own. Ten thousand is a lot of hit points. It would take me a long time to do that much damage.

At my current rate of doing about two hundred damage per hit, we're talking about more than fifty successful hits to the thing. Then again, I have my hit points, Shell, and the ability to recast Shell at least once. And Mab's Rage will do a good portion of the work for me. On the other hand, it's a dragonoid. Which means it's related to dragons. Which suggests that it might breathe fire as well as be able to throw the spines on its tail. I creep a little bit closer, to see if I can tell more about it.

It seems to be sleeping right now, probably sleeping off its meal and digesting. I might be able to get a few surprise attacks on it before it even knows I'm here. It looks like a snake with wings, though the head is shaped more like a crocodile with a beak than like a snake. At the end of its tail is a pad filled with those spikes, ready to hurl them at a moment's notice. I just need five of the spines. Four, now.

If I could get it to attack with the spines and maybe hit a tree, then eventually go back to sleep, I could collect the spines and sneak off without having to actually fight it. On the other hand, its hide is probably pretty valuable. Or if not the hide, then the scales themselves. The way they're layered over one another, creating a shimmering pattern that seems to move and fractal out every time the creature takes a breath, makes me think that they're probably pretty valuable.

Aesthetically if not actually useful for armor. But I'm guessing they are useful as armor. Which might limit the amount of damage I do at a time and make it take even longer to kill. On the other hand, as long as I can keep it from dealing too much damage too quickly, I will kill it. And it's worth exactly half as much experience as I need to make it to level twenty three. Hard to turn that down. I know I'm long since out of hands, but I'm not sure what to do.

Part of me wants to be sneaky, to slip into its lair and retrieve four more spines, then sneak back out without waking the beast up. That feels like it would be a badass thing to do, and would finish both the quest for following a creature back to its den and the quest to get the spines. It also puts me further on in the quest to catalog level fifteen or higher and the one for level twenty or higher monsters. So it would get a lot done without risking anything. Unless, of course, it woke up while I was sneaking.

Then I'd lose the element of surprise and have to fight it straight on and hope that my skills and my abilities as they are will be enough for me to claim victory. That's a risk. But it would take the decision out of my hands if that happened. Stop waffling. Face it, you want to kill this thing. You want to prove that you can, and you want the experience. So stop going back and forth, stop trying to think how you can maximize your gains. You're not going to sneak in and grab the spines and then try to kill it.

Just kill it and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. I take very careful aim and use Sniper Shot. I let the arrow fly, and immediately activate Rapid Shot. Then, just in case it works, I use Distract to try to hide where I am so that it will go the wrong direction and I can get another Sniper Shot. The first shot does 1, 274 damage, the rapid shot another 910. The wyvern wakes up quickly and starts flapping its wings, flying out of the cave and in the wrong direction. My distraction worked.

With the bleed effect from the arrows, it ends up taking 4, 365 damage. That's a good amount off the top, and I still get at least one more volley at it. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. The distraction isn't going to work again, but a minute later, when it starts heading back to its cave, I repeat the Sniper Shot and Rapid Shot combo, leaving it with less than eighteen hundred hit points. It sees me and fires its spines faster than I can follow.

It just whips its tail and I feel the impacts on my chest. 41, 57, 55, and 60. I guess those are the four spines I still needed. It roars as I charge forward, and it breathes fire on me, doing 270 damage before I can reach it. Just in case, I cast Mab's Rage before engaging with it. It's a good thing I do, because it is fast. Faster than I am, even with my bonus to attack speed. It darts back and forth, snapping at me with its fangs and slashing at me with its tail, sometimes shooting spines and sometimes not.

Because it's hitting me more often than I'm hitting it, we're doing about the same amount of damage as one another. But on top of the damage that I'm doing is the 38 points of damage it takes every second from Mab's Rage. I do 207 damage to it, it does 206 damage to me. But in that time, it also takes 152 damage from the spell. I do have to recast Shell before it dies, but I don't take any actual damage from our fight.

Instead, I'm left to realize that while Mab's Rage is a great spell, and will probably be even greater as it levels up, it's a spell that isn't meant for a one on one battle. It's better off against a group. Preferably a group that can't survive its onslaught. I end up collecting twelve spines instead of just the five; maybe the others can be useful some other way. I also strip off a bunch of the scales from the wyvern, and even take some of the feathers from its wings just in case those are valuable too.

I briefly consider sleeping in its cave. There are unlikely to be other predators that will willingly come into a cave that smells so heavily of wyvern, and it's easily big enough for me to set up my bedroll. It's even got an overhang where I can build a fire, and the wyvern itself would offer a whole lot of meat. But in the end, I push the wyvern's body into my spatial bag and decide to move on.

I don't know for a fact that wyvern's are solitary creatures, and it would be just my luck that I'd be sleeping there when its partner came home. But I do need to find somewhere to sleep. It'll be dawn soon, and that means sunlight. Sunlight is good to sleep in, but I have to be careful of other predators. I need to find somewhere safe for me to be able to sleep for a few hours. I think about my needs for the camp. This isn't something I've had to think of before.

Usually, I'm thinking about how Gigi, El, and I can set up camp, what we need. But they aren't here right now. There's just me. I'm the one sleeping. So while I won't have anyone to watch over me, what will I need to feel safe enough to sleep? I don't think I sleep all that deeply, but I don't know how hard it's going to be for me to sleep if I don't feel safe. I'd rather stay up until exhaustion was more of a factor if I was willing to sleep somewhere dangerous. So I need to feel safe.

I'll feel safe if there is some kind of early warning. That's the real value of having someone on watch, after all. The idea isn't that they will protect you while you sleep and let you continue the whole night through interrupted. The idea is that if something dangerous does come, they're able to give you an early warning. They're able to wake you up when danger comes. So I need something like that. That tells me I need trip wires.

They don't have to be attached to any traps, just to something that will make enough noise to wake me up. They just need to be able to tell me when they snap. It's like in that old movie where the guy breaks the light bulb outside his apartment and spreads the glass on the floor. He's not looking to kill anyone with the shards of glass; he just knows that it's going to make noise when someone comes to the door. Noise that he will hear and that will wake him up.

So as the sun rises, I start to lay out those traps around a tree. I lay out trip wires that are attached to a few heavy logs. The trip wires pull out the brace that's holding those logs up. If anyone steps on my trip wire or knocks it too hard, the brace will dislodge and the logs will fall. The sound of them falling, hopefully, will wake me up. Just in case I also set a few snare traps. Those aren't meant to wake me up, though the sound of them going off will probably have that effect.

They're more meant to catch me breakfast. With all those traps laid, my trap making skill up to five and my survival up to six, I try to see what else I need to be able to feel comfortable sleeping. Maybe I should climb the tree. That would get me out of the range of just about any predator who might come snuffing by during the day.

I'd be able to hide up in the tree, so even if something does come set off my traps, they won't necessarily know where I am, and maybe I can get an attack off before they know I'm there. It occurs to me that the best, most clever option would be to put all the traps around one tree and then climb up another tree, one that had a good view of the first tree. That way, even if someone was looking for me specifically, they'd think I was in one tree when I was actually in another.

That would give me a chance to get away, or to start combat on my terms. Maybe I should do that. The problem is whether or not I'll be able to get comfortable enough to sleep up in a tree. Because you need to be comfortable to sleep. I've been awake for a long time. Not quite twenty four hours, but coming close to that. And I've been active all day and night. I've been moving away from Elmspire at consecutive five minute miles, faster than most humans can run at all.

I've probably put a hundred miles between me and Elmspire. I don't have to wait for exhaustion. Exhaustion is already here. Dawn has fully taken hold of the world by the time I climb up the tree, just about ten feet away from where I've set all my traps. I briefly wonder if that means the traps were all a waste. No one is chasing me. I'm just being paranoid. But still, it's possible that something like goblins will come along and try to trap me up in the tree, or something like that.

I'm paranoid, but there might be good reason for it. I climb up about fifteen feet, until I find a nook where the limbs of the tree diverge to settle into. My legs are dangling to either side of one limb, but I'm pretty sure I blend in well. I shift the leaves around a bit until I'm sure that I'm well covered, and then I put my head against the tree and close my eyes.