Blessed Time: The Complete Series: (A LitRPG Adventure Box Set), page 55
Tier III - Heal 9, Paralytic Sting 4, Explosive Thicket 2
Tier IV - Regeneration 5, Healing Wave 6
Air: 6
Tier I - Gale 8, Air Knife 17, Air Supply 4
Tier II - Wind Shield 8, Sonic Bolt 12
Tier III - Updraft 3, Pressure Spear 8, Sonic Orb 3
Tier IV - Flight 3
Blessings
Mythic Blessing of Mursa - Blessed Return, Ageless Folio
Skills
Anatomy: 7
Arcana: 11
Enchanting: 21
Fishing: 1
Herbalism: 5
Librarian: 5
Ritual Magic: 26
Spear: 20
-Wind Spear: 12
Spellcasting: 32
He had enough HP that a single hit wouldn’t reduce him to paste, but Micah suspected that a direct hit would be hard to recover from. Even if it didn’t kill or disable him, it would put him on his back foot and alter the flow of battle. Without another adventurer to step up and distract the rastgar, it only had to knock him on his back and pursue Micah while he tried to regain the initiative.
If he was going to win this fight, he would need to strike first and move swiftly. Unfortunately, its scales were likely as thick and hard as high-tier mail. Micah might be able to pierce its armor with the help of his martial art, but a casual or glancing blow wouldn’t do much damage, even with his spear’s enchantments.
He had two options: disabling it long enough to land six or seven decisive blows, or dancing around the monster trying to whittle it down. Unfortunately, Micah suspected that paralytic sting and plant weave wouldn’t be enough to properly hold the monster down.
With his Body and Agility attributes he should be able to endure a prolonged fight, slowly whittling the creature down until he could finish it off with his more powerful close-ranged magic like sonic orb. It wouldn’t be fun, and Micah would have to spend the entire battle dancing a hair's breadth from defeat, but that would be good practice.
Even if he reached the level he’d need to fight Krosst, the Khan had an entire lifetime of dangerous battles behind him. If Micah just relied upon the strength of his Luoca to continuously overpower dungeons, he’d have the attributes needed to fight the Khan, but he wouldn’t have the reflexes and killer instinct needed to prevail over a well-honed veteran of a similar power level.
Well, Micah chuckled mirthlessly to himself, foresight and haste might work as substitutes in a pinch, but the two spells devoured mana at a prodigious rate. They were incredibly useful at key moments to swing the battle in his favor, but unless Micah managed to reach level 50 or 60, there was no way he could keep them active for an entire battle.
Quietly Micah prepared himself, casting wind shield, regeneration, and haste. At some point Telivern, Drekt, and Trevor had arrived beside him. Along with Ravi they spread out slightly in order to get good angles on the upcoming fight, each of them prepared to jump in if Micah’s life was at risk.
Of course, that would mean that he’d failed. The entire point of this expedition was to prove to Drekt that he could take down monsters well above his level without outside help. The big man might be willing to help out if Micah “almost” defeated the rastgar on his own, but as far as he was concerned, that was beneath him.
He’d told Trevor and Drekt that he would bring down the rastgar without assistance, and that was exactly what he was going to do.
Micah closed his eyes to center himself, steadying his breathing. Excess thoughts dropped away. There wasn’t any time for concerns about what might come later or what his audience thought. The rastgar was a powerful foe, and it demanded his utmost respect and focus.
“All right, boys,” he began, only to be interrupted by a low, playful growl from Ravi.
“And girls,” he conceded. “It’s time to show you how proper spear fighting is done.”
Under his breath, Micah began quietly casting poison fog. It might obscure his actions and impress Drekt slightly less, but two of the rastgar’s heads were scanning the area at all times. If he tried something stupid like blindly charging the monster, it would spot him, and he would discover if the truth behind the bestiaries’ warnings regarding its breath weapons.
He suspected they weren’t embellished.
Of course, the creature also regenerated. In fact, like most monsters related to hydras, rastgars were fairly famous for it. If he was forced to slowly bleed it in an effort to chip away at its hit points and stamina, that could take half a day. Poison would help make up the difference, stressing its prodigious Body attribute and slowing the monster’s regeneration to a crawl.
At least, in theory that was what would happen. Most of the accounts he’d read about adventurers fighting a rastgar simply mentioned that they blasted it with spellcasters while melee fighters kept it pinned down. A logical strategy that unfortunately wasn’t available to Micah at the moment.
The spell went off without a hitch, filling the bottom of the valley with a thick cloud bank as Micah leapt from cover and sprinted downward with the speed of a freshly loosed arrow. It had been a while since Micah had just run for running’s sake, but between his physical attributes cresting 20 and an active haste spell, he flew down the hillside toward the startled monster.
As soon as Micah hit the bottom of the valley, he realized he was in trouble. The grass was all roughly the same height, but it hid ankle-deep water surrounding knee-high clumps of grass. He could still move quickly, but the grass required at least half of his focus to avoid tripping.
The front of Micah’s wind shield hit the fog, pressing the gas backwards as he rushed toward his quarry. He was still too far away to see the rastgar, but he could hear its angry bellowing as it stomped about in the cloud bank.
Micah began reciting the incantation to foresight, hoping that the rastgar couldn’t hone in on him by sound alone. A jet of acid shooting past his shoulder brought a frown to his face.
Then a shadow loomed in front of him. Up close, Micah’s doubts tripled. The rastgar’s torso was slightly over twice his height, with each head mounted on a serpentine neck that was only just shorter than him.
One of the heads lunged at him, jaws snapping as Micah hastily batted it aside with the pole of his spear.
His grunted incantation and the splash of water around Micah’s feet were the only sounds as the weight of the attack pushed him back slightly. There was something about the thick fog that just ate up ambient noise. It was almost like he was stuck in his own little world with the monster.
One of the rastgar’s heads reared back, clearly preparing to utilize a breath weapon. Micah kicked off the ground, lunging to the side. His breath caught in his throat as the uneven ground blurred past him. He slammed his left foot into the ground, and relief flooded his body as he managed to avoid any obstructions.
Micah blurred forward, haste turning him into little more than a flickering shadow as he slipped under a slash from the creature’s arm. Then the incantation finished, and the world faded into rainbows of possibilities.
Swearing, Micah aborted his attack and launched himself into the air, the jump angled slightly at his opponent, just as the rastgar unleashed a bolt of lightning into the shallow marsh. The creature jerked back, more stunned and confused than harmed by the backlash from its attack as the current bit at its ankles.
He reached the apex of his arc and came down, spear leading the way with its sonic enchantment buzzing. It sawed deep into the scales covering the rastgar’s chest. Even surprised, the monster instinctively jerked its many heads away from his descending form.
Scales and purple ichor spattered everywhere as his weapon carved a jagged line down the monster’s well-muscled chest. Micah’s first blow had dealt much more damage than expected, but he was hardly happy.
The uneven terrain had already forced him to use foresight, burning through much of his mana, but an electric-based attack changed things considerably. Even if the rastgar would shock itself with every attack, it was only a matter of time before it realized that it could absorb the paralyzing effects of the electricity much better than him. One moment of insensibility was all it would take to alter the entire course of the fight for the worse.
The rastgar bellowed in pain and rage. Micah ignored the clumps of grass. With the help of foresight, evading them was trivial. He shifted his weight slightly, angling his spear upward so that an incoming claw dragged itself across the weapon’s humming head.
More blood and scales disappeared into the mist as he used the powerful monster’s momentum against it. A second later, Micah was inside its guard
He settled into the final stance of Wind Spear, thousand falling leaves. The martial art was wretched, and he honestly needed to find a way to upgrade it, but it was still satisfying to watch his spear flicker like a phantom as it poked and thrust almost a dozen times into the stomach of the rastgar in the matter of a second.
A head snaked downward, seeking to strike Micah from behind. Ordinarily, this simple action would have almost ended the fight. A crushing bite from his blind spot would have robbed him of almost half of his hit points and crippled his shoulder for the duration of the struggle. Of course, that was only if the monster didn’t manage to hold him in place long enough for its claws to rip his arms out of their sockets.
With the help of foresight, the attack only served to imbalance the rastgar. Micah threw himself into a barrel roll, passing through its legs effortlessly. His spear slashed sideways, cutting deeply into the monster’s hamstring.
Unfortunately, even with perfect placement, a sideways slash from the spear couldn’t match the penetrating power of a thrust. The enchantment did all it could, cutting through the rocklike scales of the rastgar and severing some muscle tissue, but even as the blow landed Micah glimpsed the near future and knew it wasn’t enough.
The creature wheeled around, stomping downward toward his scrambling form. Micah rolled to the left and was rewarded with a splash as a taloned foot slammed past his head.
There wasn’t even a moment to strike back as Micah scrambled to his feet and shifted back a couple of paces.
His breath came unevenly and his body was soaked, but his spear didn’t waver as he leveled it at the rastgar. It stepped toward him, a noticeable limp in its injured leg. The once purple ichor staining its chest was now dried and black as the toxins from the fog attacked the open wound directly.
The future flickered as foresight began to fade and the rastgar drew back its head to unleash another breath attack. Micah tensed his legs, prepared to dodge and take advantage of the moment of distraction as soon as the monster struck.
His eyes widened.
“Oh fu—” Micah didn’t complete the word. He didn’t have that luxury.
He jumped, the words to updraft heavy as they stumbled off of his tongue. Flight would have been better, but there was no way that he’d be able to get the spell off in time.
Flames spewed from the rastgar’s throat, and the clouds created by poison fog erupted. Updraft kicked in at the last second, shoving him past the blast’s epicenter, but the heat and pressure still kicked like a mule. Specifically, a mule that was the boss of a high-class dungeon.
The breath left Micah’s lungs as he was thrown upward, spear slipping from his nerveless hands. His vision blurred from an obvious concussion. Distantly, he hoped that the burning he smelled was his hair rather than a stroke or some other sort of neurological event.
Then his back slammed into the damp ground.
Between updraft and the marshy soil, he didn’t break anything, but it still felt like there was a carriage on his chest. Micah coughed weakly. Three hundred and twenty hit points left.
He blinked. His eyelids felt far too heavy.
Something deep inside of him whispered that he should just let them close. There was no way that the monster could have survived that blast.
His eyes opened again, vision dim and blurry. Micah wasn’t sure if it had been a second or a minute.
The poison fog was gone entirely and the field around him was burning. Luckily, the fire wouldn’t spread too far due to the abundance of standing water, but the stalks of tall grass still crackled merrily.
Micah heard a splash. The ground beneath him vibrated in time to a massive, clawed foot planting itself near him.
He blinked at the rastgar standing over him without comprehension. By all rights it should be dead. Its torso was a charred and wretched mess, and it was missing its left arm entirely. The rest of its body didn’t look much better; two of its heads drooped uselessly, and the leg he’d injured earlier was a shattered wreck.
A clawed hand reached down and grasped Micah by the front of his armor. His body screamed in agony as the beast picked him up. Idly, he wondered if Trevor and the animals even knew to come to his rescue, let alone whether they would make it in time.
One of the remaining heads wove sinuously through the air. A snakelike muzzle sniffed him curiously before its fanged maw opened.
TWENTY-FIVE
TRIUMPH
Micah’s arm was far too heavy. It felt like his body was covered in sandbags as he moved his hand upward at a glacial pace to point at the rastgar’s head.
Its breath—warm, moist, and infused with the foul scent of carrion—washed over him as the monster’s jaws moved toward him languidly. Micah’s vision blurred, slipping into double as his hand finally reached the apex of his arc.
His wrist flicked and mana hummed through his system. Air knife slashed past the monster’s unfurling tongue and jabbed into the unprotected flesh of its open mouth.
It jerked its head back, simultaneously using its grip on Micah’s armor to yank him to the side, away from its fresh injury. A low growl emanated from the other head as it snaked toward Micah, its slit reptilian eyes narrowed dangerously.
His vision returned to normal, still blurry and dim, but regeneration was doing its work. Micah blinked rapidly, trying to clear the fog from his brain. The rastgar wasn’t rushing to the attack; his previous spell had ensured that.
On the plus side, this gave him a couple of seconds to think. Of course, the monster’s cautious approach meant that Micah wouldn’t have an easy opening. Almost on their own, his hands closed around the rastgar’s giant wrist, where the monster held him off the ground using its sole remaining arm.
The scales were warm beneath his fingers, still radiating heat from the explosion. The rastgar made no move to stop him from grabbing its arm, confident that it could overpower his concussion-addled strength if Micah tried to escape. Instead, it kept its eyes on him as its head moved steadily closer, wary of any sudden movements on his part that might bring it renewed pain.
Micah began reciting the incantation to sonic orb, locking eyes with the monster. Its gaze was almost hypnotizing, especially in his addled state, but instinctively, Micah knew better than to look away or cease his chanting. Either would be a show of weakness that would lead to an immediate strike. Instead, he needed to put on a front of alert readiness in order to keep the rastgar wary.
A victorious smile plastered itself across Micah’s face as the spell finished and a ball of humming and squealing energy appeared between his hands. To be precise, the orb flickered into existence in the exact space occupied by the rastgar’s wrist.
For a second, Micah’s body shook as the vibrations from his spell traveled through the claws holding him, but then he was falling. The rastgar screamed in agony and flailed with its arm, its claws flopping about bonelessly.
He splashed into the marsh and rolled to his feet unsteadily. The rastgar staggered backward a step, only to fall entirely as its injured leg gave out under it.
Micah frantically looked for his spear. It was somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t find where the blast had thrown it in the burning hellscape the marsh had become. Gritting his teeth, he pulled out the dagger he used for skinning his quarries.
It wasn’t much of a weapon, little more than a handle and a blade that Micah enchanted to keep its edge, solely because he could. Even damaged by the explosion, it wouldn’t do much to the rastgar. Its scales were more than a match for the tiny blade. Still, it was better than nothing, and if he could find a spot where an earlier attack had chipped its armor away, he might be able to do a little bit of damage.
He stumbled forward, casting explosive thicket. He was low on mana. Foresight was a thing of the past, and the explosion had shattered and dispelled wind shield. Right now, the only spells still operating on him were regeneration and haste, and haste was beginning to stutter and flicker.
The rastgar rolled onto its stomach and tried to push itself up with its one remaining arm, but its claw was useless, flopping and splashing pointlessly in the marsh as the monster thrashed helplessly in the spongy soil.
The elongated and sharpened spikes of explosive thicket jerked upward into the crippled monster’s chest. Even with the damage caused by the blast, most of the spears shattered fruitlessly, but at least a couple struck weakened scales or the terrible scar inflicted by Micah’s first strike.
The rastgar shuddered, its two remaining heads flailing and screaming. One mouth vomited acid, a viscous slug that hissed as it interacted with the water of the marsh. The other gnashed their fangs feebly.
Micah pressed his hand against the twitching and mewling monster and cast paralytic sting. At the height of its glory, the spell would have only slowed its movements for a couple of seconds. Even heavily wounded, the rastgar’s Body attribute would have resisted the spell after a couple of seconds.
It collapsed, frothing from its remaining heads as Micah shimmied up its body. The monster’s back was mostly untouched, but with quick and sure hands he slipped the skinning knife into the gap between two scales and pushed.
The blade might not have been the biggest or the sharpest, but with almost twenty points of Body attribute behind it, the weapon slipped under the scale in a second. With a grunt and a twist of the knife, Micah popped it off. The scale splashed into the water, and his dagger began questing for another gap in the rastgar’s armor.
