System Change

Derek felt elation as he held on to a protruding scale on the wyvern’s upper neck, where it meets its head. The wings of the beast had stalled after his attack landed on the side of its head. Just as he got a good grip on the beast, it began to plummet to the ground. Derek held on for all he was worth.

With the beast’s wings being outstretched when it began to fall, it plummeted at an angle, almost in a glide. Derek hadn’t received a notification, so he knew he couldn’t hope for the beast to be dead. It had to be stunned, just as the wyrm had been. Still, he couldn’t let this opportunity pass him by.

With a quick thought, Derek sent his halberd back into his storage bracelet. It was much too bulky to do anything while in his current situation. Gripping the scale tightly with his left hand, he transferred all the void energy he could to his right, and pounded down on the back of the beast’s skull with a hammer fist. Still unable to quickly launch attacks with the same hand over and over, Derek immediately shifted the void energy to his left hand while grasping for a scale with his right.

Once his right hand gripped the scale, he removed his left and let another fist fly. In the five or so seconds it took for the wyvern to begin its fall and finally reach the ground, Derek managed to strike the beast six times. He stopped his attack at that moment and held on with both hands, bracing himself for impact.

The wyvern hit the ground and skid forward hundreds of feet on the ground, demolishing what was left of the already destroyed rubble. Dust shot up around him and the monster, but as soon as he stabilized even a little, he went back to pounding on the back of the beast’s head. It’s got to be doing something, right? He thought as he drew back and launched another attack on the creature.

Of course it’s doing something. If it wasn’t, this damn dragon would have broken out of its daze and at least tried to throw me off. As the wyvern slowed to a halt, its head and body fell to the side, causing Derek to have to shift his position. He was back to the side of its head, where his attack with the halberd had made direct contact. There wasn’t even a scratch on its scales.

Derek inwardly cursed at the beast’s insane regeneration speed. Even if had only healed a slight white mark on its protective scale, it had done so in less than ten seconds. Is this what it’s like fighting against me? He questioned himself. It made him feel a slightly sorry for both Shae and Edgar, both of which had sparred with him in the past, but only a little.

He mostly felt sorry for himself, as he was able to get a good look into the beast’s eye, which was open and staring out into space with a distant look. The eye was as big as half his body, and the beast was obviously still stunned, but he couldn’t find a trace of blood from the wyvern at all.

At best, his current strikes were rattling the brain, disrupting the beast’s ability to move, like a boxer getting caught in the chin by a light strike. But his attack was constant. The beast was going to have one hell of a concussion if it made it out of its current situation, which Derek didn’t plan on letting.

Finally, his cooldown with Sweeping Slash was over, and he re-summoned the halberd in his dominant hand. This time, after striking the beast with his left fist, he channeled all his void energy into the blade of the halberd and used Sweeping Slash as he slammed the halberd into the wyvern’s temple.

With such a strike on a still target, the blade of the halberd dug into the scales behind where the arc of energy from the skill created a small cut. Even so, the physicality of the attack was not enough to draw blood. But the result from the void energy released with the skill gave him a welcome surprise.

Slowly but surely, the already dark sclera of the wyvern became tinged with a red hue, and a relatively small amount of blood flowed from the beast’s ear, indicating that the attack had at least caused some amount of damage. If nothing else, it created some hope that Derek would be able to finish the job he started. He only needed to wait for Multi-Strike to come off cooldown, and pray that Avery was able to keep the attention of the other wyvern and all the lesser monsters while he slayed it.

Derek continued pounding away on the beast. To his dismay, even with the continuous strikes, the blood in the eye of the wyvern actually began to recede and soon, there was no trace it was ever there. He shook his head out in consternation. His previous one punch kill move had be relegated to nothing more than a stun-locking skill. At least itseems to be an infinite stun-locking skill.

After a few minutes, his Multi-Strike skill came off of cooldown. With a great deal of excitement, he gripped his halberd in both hands, sent every last drop of void energy he could muster into the blade, brought the weapon high above his head, and slashed down as hard as he could onto the beast’s temple.

It was by far his most lethal attack, combining Multi-Strike, Channel Void, and Sweeping Slash along with his Heavy Weapons Mastery. But he didn’t let up after that. He focused on the beast as he began alternating hits between his fist and his halberd.

As usual, it took a moment for the seriousness of the void damage to take effect. Underneath Derek, the wyvern’s body, head, wings… everything… began twitching uncontrollably. He had to forgo one of his punches to hold on to the beast again, so he wouldn’t fall off.

This is it! He happily thought. He could finally put an end to the damn wyvern, then go help Avery with everything else. Once one wyvern was down, the others would follow quickly. He had no doubt that if both he and Avery worked together, they wouldn’t have a problem taking down any one wyvern.

Derek rode the spasming out, hanging on for dear life. It was quite rough, and he respected cowboys, back before his world turned to shit, even more while he was at it. Finally, after some time, all movement from the beast ceased, and Derek let out a sigh of relief and glanced at his notifications.

To his horror, he had multiple notifications, but they were all notifications for skills leveling up. Nowhere in the list was the kill notification he had expected. Blood was gushing out of every orifice on the wyvern’s head, but it still wasn’t dead.

He looked deep into the wyvern’s eye. It still had a far off look, but its focus seemed to be coming back. In a panic, he struck down on the side of its head once again. And he continued and continued. For ten minutes, he pummeled the beast to no avail. He used his skills the second they came off cooldown, but he just couldn’t kill the beast. He tried combining Chain Lightning with Channel Void to get some sort of Void Lightning ability like Silvi had, but it didn’t work. He even switched it up and tried attacking at its eye.

That actually proved worse than the side of its head, as it regained its consciousness during the attack and almost threw him off. He was barely able to subdue the beast once again by hitting it in the temple. He didn’t know what to do now. He had no clue if the beast was healing as fast as he was damaging it, or if he was slowly chipping away at its health.

The protection and defense of the wyvern had was surreal. But the skills he was using were rapidly leveling as well. In fact, it all seemed even faster than when he was fighting the golems at a low level. This put him in another predicament.

He had no clue how long Avery would be able to hold everything off, but it had already been at least 15 minutes, and that was pushing it. But the greedy side of him wanted to continue training his skills until he couldn’t anymore. Channel Void had hit level 18, Greater Meditation, which he used for recovery, even leveled once and was now level 11. Unarmed Combat Mastery even hit level 17.

Multi-Strike was level 13 now and had an even shorter cooldown. If that continued, in two more levels, it would add another hit, which could possibly even be enough to finish the fight. Both Heavy Weapons Mastery and Sweeping Slash hit level 20, but that wasn’t a surprise. They were both already close when the fight started, especially Sweeping Slash, which was already well into level 19.

What was surprising was the notification he received when Heavy Weapons Mastery reached level 20.

Heavy Weapons Mastery ready for specialization.

Spend 1 Skill Point for specialization?

It was different from the preview notification he received when Meditation hit level 20. It wanted him to specialize and not upgrade. Still, Derek’s theory that General Skills could upgrade and class skills couldn’t, had been reinforced by the notification.

However, he left the skill alone for now, as he wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, and didn’t want to risk it while in his current situation.

Finally, coming to a decision, Derek decided to try something different. He would try to rely on another person.

‘Edgar, can you hear me?’ he sent out through Telepathy. Honestly, he was quite late to the game on that skill. Pretty much every high ranked adventurer already had it. He wasn’t sure if he was close enough to the prince for it to work, however. He was really banking on Edgar’s own Telepathy making up the difference.

‘Kind of busy,’ Edgar’s voice came through.

‘This will only take a second. Just listen and tell me if it’s possible,’ Derek said. ‘I have downed the wind wyvern, and I’ve had it stun-locked for over 15 minutes, but I don’t have enough offense to finish it. Is there any way you can get away from your wyvern long enough to use that lightning skill on this one? I think if we combine attacks, it will die.’

Derek waited for a few seconds before Edgar finally responded.

‘Do you have any extra mana potions? If I leave this now, I’ll be starting from ground zero again, and I’m sure I’ll be running low before I’m finished.’

‘I do. You can have some after we deal with this,’ Derek said, hope renewed.

‘Fine. Let me lead this dragon further away, so I can get a far enough away to use the skill.’

‘Got it. This wyvern is on its side. There should be a clear shot to its heart from underneath, where there is less defense.’ Derek explained.

‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

Derek waited, continuing with his relentless attacks on the wyvern. His Multi-Strike skill came off of cooldown during that time, but this time, he didn’t use it.

Soon enough, he saw a flash of light, and Edgar was there. He pointed his sword down at the wyvern, and the same beam shot out directly at the beast. This time, though, the beam looked even stronger than the one Edgar had used against him. Which led Derek to the question: How much had Edgar been holding back in their spar?

The beam penetrated the beast’s underside and continued. Derek let out a breath. It looked like it was working. For hopefully the last time, Derek raised his halberd, and released his most lethal attack on the beast’s head.

In a distance, Derek heard a roar. The fire wyvern was closing in, along with a few smaller beasts that had been interfering in Edgar’s fight.

The twitching of the beast started, but stopped much sooner than usual this time. Derek looked into the wyvern’s eyes as Edgar’s beam disappeared. The light in its eyes had dimmed. Derek punched one more time for good measure, and a notification appeared.

This time, it was the notification he was expecting. The wyvern was dead.

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