33 Risen#re

Hinata's eyes trembled as she saw the monolith of a creature, its steps were slow, but she knew that if it got close she was going to be deader than dead.

Under the severity of the situation she felt that she had no choice but to give up on her current goal, because for some reason when she saw the rock drake, the only person she imagined that could stop it from killing all of them was Lirian.

As she had the thought she saw a streak of silver racing across the field, it was faster than any stallion she had ever seen, it bounced through the horde like a bouncy ball.

The only difference was that this bouncy ball left a trail of dismembered corpses and blood in its wake, it seemed almost effortless.

She buried her resentment for the moment, so long as he could do something good with the power he didn't deserve and saved her she was willing to put the injustice aside just this once.

Something suddenly caught her eye, just behind Lirian she saw someone racing behind him following the bloody trail he left on the field.

"Mordred," she muttered in confusion as she saw him riding a horse at high speed following after Lirian with a large bag on his back.

---

Mordred watched Lirian dashing towards the rock drake like a madman, with an eager grin on his face, 'It's like he doesn't know the meaning of fear,' Mordred complained internally as he turned back and dashed into the commander tent.

The tent was stuffed full of rations and items, when the two exploration groups split of Lirian had given each of them a dimensional storage, so all the essentials had to be stored in the tent.

Mordred had seen the other set of mountain climbing gear when he got the first set, so he moved through the pile and quickly found the other one.

As he strapped it to his back he began muttering to himself, "Stupid Mordred, you should ask someone else to do this,"

"There are other warriors here, some are much better than you, why don't you just go to Lucas, or Shen Lim, both of them are much better choices," as he muttered to himself he found himself face to face with Lirians horse.

As he mounted the horse, he continued to tell himself not to do it but before he knew it he was already in the saddle and making the horse gallop at its top speed.

---

Lirian could fell the tremors getting only worse, and he had to focus extra hard to keep himself from stumbling.

A rock drake had two claws that they used two walk and two tiny wings on its back, it had a massive head and a long body that stretched out three times longer than its height, its body ended with a long rocky tail.

Lirian finally broke free of the horde at this point he didn't know how many hundreds of beasts he had killed when he heard the sound of something galloping towards him, he pointed his sword when he heard a familiar voice shout at him.

"Hey, hold up man, don't skewer me," Mordred shouted as he pulled the reigns to stop the horse.

"Mordred?" Lirian said in surprise, "What are you doing here?" he asked as the ground trembled once more, causing the horse to fall flat on the ground.

"You said that there are two cores," Mordred answered, "It sounds like a two men job."

Lirian simply nodded, he wasn't about to admonish the class clown for suddenly finding his courage.

"You think you can climb this thing?" Lirian asked instead, he didn't mind the courage but if someone was going to join him, they had to know what they were doing.

"Seriously man, do you ever pay attention to anything I say in class," Mordred said with a grievance.

"Now isn't the time to get into such matters," Lirian chided him and pointed at the massive creature on the side of them.

Mordred shook his head as he cried internally he explained to Lirian, "I go on extreme mountain climbing courses every year during the holidays, just last year I went on a month-long climb through some ancient canyons," he explained.

"Good," Lirian mused, "We are going to run along the side of it and approach it from the tail, we don't want it to spot us before we get on it."

Mordred nodded and followed Lirian, as they reached the tail the drake took another massive step forward.

They stumbled once more and as they slowly rose back to their feet they were at the drake's tail.

"Tell me when to jump!" Lirian shouted at Mordred, as it turned out having a partner could help a little, it saved him from the only part that could prove slightly troublesome for him.

A few seconds passed when Mordred shouted, "Now!"

Lirian pulled out the two climbing axes from his belt and jumped like his life depended on it, a second later he was swinging the axes down and they caught onto the rocky surface of the drake, he heard Mordred land as well, he made a very loud noise as he was still carrying the bag full of gear.

Lirian was sort of glad that he was dealing with a rock elemental mystic beast, it was extremely tanky and tough, so unless you dealt a lot of damage to it, like breaking of a piece of its body it wouldn't even notice you.

On the other hand, if it was flesh and bones, Lirian was certain that if he went all out using form merging he would have been able to kill it in a few minutes, but he would completely drain himself to finish it.

As the two of them began their climb Mordred looked at the drake with a strange look, "Hey Lirian, I recognise this thing we saw it when we first explored the perimeter of the camp!" he said in a surprised tone.

"If you saw the drake why didn't you report it to anyone or scan it?" Lirian questioned.

"Because it just looked like a pile of rocks at the time," Mordred complained as he watched Lirian climb in a carefree manner moving with graceful ease.

Mordred looked down at himself he had his harness on and he knocked in anchors, while tying his rope to secure himself with every move.

"You should hurry up," Lirian complained as he made it up the first part of the tail and reached the creatures back.

"I'll be there in a moment," Mordred called out and initiated a scan with his watch, when he received an alert for first discovery, he cried out in joy and quickly caught up with Lirian.

They held their climbing axes on the side and ran along the spine of the drake until they reached its head.

"Why don't we just blow it's head off?" Mordred asked curiously it seemed less difficult than digging into the beasts' body and finding the cores.

"Because drakes are guardians of the forest," Lirian said simply.

"And that explains everything!?" Mordred said in a puzzled tone.

"You really should spend more time reading books," Lirian sighed.

"The consciousness of the forest is the consciousness of the drake," Lirian explained, "We can blow of the head but that will only anger it, it won't die."

"Instead it will throw all caution to the wind and stampede wildly, until its head grows back, if it does that we'll all die, the only way to kill it is by crushing the cores."

"Okay," Mordred nodded his head, "How do we do that?"

"You leave that part to me," Lirian said, ", for now tell me how close we are to the waterfall."

Mordred glanced down and could see everyone running around in a panic, "We're already there!" he shouted feeling himself panic, at any point this creature would begin its assault and he doubted that anyone was equipped to survive it.

Lirian nodded as if it was only expected, "Tell them to shoot as much lighting up here as possible!" he ordered Mordred.

Mordred didn't waste anytime for an explanation and began shouting to grab their attention, as he did, he felt the energy all around stir wildly and it quickly turned silver as it swirled and spiralled like a pool around Lirian.

Lirian could sense the first bolts of lightning coming his way but it quickly sunk into the drakes back not doing much beside breaking some loose rocks.

That was the problem with lightning spells, before people learned to use laws they would never use much lightning.

Its attraction to the earth was far to great and you'd waste 90% of your energy in trying to make it move with accuracy.

But currently lightning was what Lirian needed, it's level of immediate destruction could not be compared, it was perfect to deal a wave of incredible damage to the drake, with the miss of the first volley he spread out the pooling energy as far as it could go hoping that it would catch some of the lightning.