Year 79, seven months after the evolution
Isaac was having a strange day — he was having a strategic meeting, in a way...
It was more animalistic. Yet he and several of the monster pack leaders sat in a circle, all eyes on him, waiting for him to lead them into the desert.
They were smarter than he had realized.
But they were here now.
The meeting was held at the desert's edge, which had undergone dramatic changes. The air smelled of blood, and the overwhelming sense of death was unlike anything he had ever experienced.
What was more worrisome and surprising was what Isaac spotted as soon as he could see into the desert.
‘Was that an elf?’ The thought itself was mind-boggling, but he was in a fantasy world. ‘And a dragon to boot.’ He had shaken off the surprise fast...
However, the most important point was that something humanoid existed in the world, and it was being killed.
This enraged his dragon being.
At a closer look, he could see a wall of vines, earth, and nature itself barring the worms from the jungle further south.
The number of elves Isaac saw was barely more than two hundred.
And the worms...
There were tens of thousands; it was not a good number game for the elves.
But they kept fighting, even when they lost some of their own.
Their attacks kept the horde down... if barely.
The elf who had first caught Isaac's attention was in the desert, casting magic at a rapid pace. Vines and roots shooting out, killing worms relentlessly.
But the worms kept coming. With each attack, the waves grew larger and more intense.
Isaac was beginning to have doubts about whether they could succeed in this... his worm-killin frenzy.
He looked back at his gathering. His small monster horde counted in the hundreds—maybe.
More monsters kept coming.
It was do or die, right?
His magic flexed, and he looked over the gate monsters around him. And roared.
The monsters did so in kind and joined him.
They charged into the desert.
Isaac took to the sky to get a better overview of the horde of worms. And it surprised him.
There were no worms in the desert as far as he could see, except on the attack side to the elves.
If not above ground, they were likely underground, as more worms kept pouring out of giant tunnels near the elves. Looking closer, Isaac saw even more, some buried under thousands of dead worms.
Luckily, as far as Isaac could see, most of the worms were the younger type and not the Hunter worms, but there were a few.
Getting closer to the heat of the battle, Isaac took one last glance at the monster around. Most of them had spread out. Some of them even start to use their magic to alter the terrain and themselves.
That being the huge mammoths... ‘was that camouflage?’
Shaking his head, Isaac refocused...
He would target one of the holes in the ground, seal it for good, and cook some worms as a pleasant bonus.
Flying high above, Isaac concentrated his mana on the ambient mana, gathering the fire motes he needed. His skills: True Fire Marked Claws and True Draconic Fire.
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The mana motes flow to him like water.
As his altitude peaked, Isaac began a rapid descent, diving into the pit beneath the worm horde. The mana swirled faster and faster around him until he gave it a spark.
The flare of his True Draconic Fire, consuming and taking over the ambient mana, blasted outward. In a conflagration of true fire, he hit the swarm of worms like a meteor. The fire billowed outward, consuming the worms in seconds, reducing them all to ash.
Nice—
You have leveled True Draconic Fire to level 15
You have leveled True Fire Marked Claws to level 11
—and there are the levels.
Isaac found himself in the thick of the worms, and one Hunter worm was now charging at him.
The worm's stubborn constitution kept it alive despite mortal wounds from Isaac's true fire attack.
For once in Isaac Dragon's life, he focused on maintaining the fire tornado and dodged the few attacks from the worm instead of exhausting himself.
The Hunter worm, seeing no way out of its death...
Did something new.
It retreated from Isaac, far enough that the fire tornado didn't reach it, and—
Began devouring its own kind.
What the—
Isaac didn't get time to react.
It started to heal from its wounds—slowly, but visibly. If it continued, the Hunter worm could become more
dangerous than Isaac had thought.
Shit
It looked like he needed to be fast... and try to conserve his mana use.
He looked at his current pool.
Mana pool: 260 / 279 (Soul damage ~ )
‘Used ten mana so far already, ’ he grumbled to him self.
It was more or less than he would have liked, but this was now a literal war zone.
The fire still spinning in the opening, now growing hotter by the minute...
He had tried something new and succeeded in a new technique he had tested: the spell, he could now call it, was anchored to the tunnel's opening and would soon explode, hopefully sealing the tunnel.
And as Isaac had done this in seconds, the anchoring of the spell was easier than he had expected, surprising even him self.
Isaac dashed towards the worm.
The worm, still feasting on its lesser kin, somehow sensed Isaac’s fast approaching.
In a swift motion, Isaac aimed for the worm's head. The worm anticipated and dodged, but Isaac still tore out a large chunk, halting the worm's healing.
Isaac stayed cautious, not wanting to get entangled with the Hunter worm. As he watched, he sensed its unnatural constitution weakening. Despite surviving injuries that should have been fatal, the worm's burns were catching up to it.
‘Ha, look at me fight smarter, not harder.’ Isaac thought to himself, dodging and harassing the dying worm. He started a new firenado, trying to kill the now-stuck worm in a battle of attrition.
He just needed time and smart use of mana, and he could kill all the Hunter worms one at a time.
While killing hundreds of worms in the literal crossfire of his firenado.
