Zectas Volume V: The Sequestered Seminary of Sawtorn (17 page)

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"Where are we?" asked Smoke, looking around. A purple flaming Smoke stood next to Eleve, who teleported them to a small grassland in between two forest patches. His life bar was steadily being depleted.
"We are in one of Florissant's special gaming grounds," said Eleve. "There is a high chance that you might die, but I thought it would be okay since you're a Sonstwelter."
"But that won't be good for Igniz," said Eleve. "So, I suggest you cancel your synergized form and do this yourself."
"Gee, thanks for thinking about my well being," replied Smoke with a hint of sarcasm, and obediently ended his infused state with his symbiote. A purple flash suddenly appeared and Igniz was happily flying next to him.
"Of course, Faux. Like I said, I've changed my opinion of you," reminded Eleve. "Now, that I know you have a dark ember sprite."
"So, shall we get started?" said Eleve.
Without waiting for Smoke's reply, she pulled him closer and pointed to one of the forest patches.
"There are foraging santelmos to your left, and voracious servals to your right," she said to Smoke. "Of course there are other creatures in those forest, but those two are the monsters that I want you to focus on."
"Why?" asked Smoke for clarity.
Eleve grinned at him. "Let's just say that something special happens when you kill enough of them."
Smoke's eyes instantly livened with excitement. "I need to kill ten thousand of them before that happens, right?"
"Hey, how did you know that?" pouted Eleve.
"You know, for an elderly HighElf, you sure don't act your age sometimes," suddenly blurted out Smoke. "I mean you act on opposite ends of the spectrum," he quickly added to appease her.
"Hmmp. Don't you know that deep down, all of us are just kids? We never truly grow up," she reasoned out, while her wrinkled face still pouted. "At least that's what I learned from her."
"From Flor—" said Smoke, but quickly stopped himself as to not ensue the wrath of the sensitive HighElf.
"So, can you tell me what abilities I can get from the servals and the santelmos?" asked Smoke.
"Well, aren't we cocky?" pointed out Eleve. "It's not yet a guaranteed that you can get their abilities, because this gaming grounds has a time limit. One can only stay here for eight days straight once a month."
"You should have told me in advance," angrily said Smoke. He quickly did some rough calculations in his head. "Considering our wasted time, this means I have to kill at least sixty of these monsters in under an hour for the next eight days straight. That's one monster per minute."
"I'd say that's about right, and you can only choose one of them too," said Eleve.
Smoke was troubled because this meant that he would not be logging out for Zectas for the next two days in the real world. He would be violating the health rules of the game.
"Hurry! Tell me which one is easier to kill?" asked Smoke.
"That depends on your abilities," answered Eleve. "The santelmos are plentiful and don't attack unless provoked. Whereas, the servals are scattered and vicious."
After hearing Eleve, Smoke ran for the forest filled with santelmos. He had no idea what a santelmo or a serval looked like, but he decided to go with the less aggressive monsters.
"You'll need one of these monsters abilities in order to take the next step!" shouted Eleve to him.
Using his Hyper Jump ability, Smoke reached the forest patch in two minutes.

Smoke ignored the notification window, and immediately set out to find the santelmos. Only seconds into the forest patch, and he spotted twenty of them.
They had humanoid bodies covered in orange flames, and were almost two-meters tall. Most of them were picking up rocks in the forest. They threw them into their mouths as soon as they picked one up, swallowing it in one bite.
Smoke took out two black lightning rods. He was aware that he no longer needed to increase his Lightning Affinity.
However, after dropping his weighted chain and sickle against Ultimo, this was his only remaining weapon that could inflict great melee damage.
Right from the start, he used Lightning Strike on the fire monster. A blue flash of light enveloped the forest. The targeted santelmo's life bar displayed (360,000/400,000 HP).
A flying Igniz overhead blasted his fireballs at the santelmo, but displayed an attack damage of zero.
"I think you have to sit this one out," said Smoke to Igniz.
Immediately, the other santelmos gathered near it, ran far away. Whereas, the injured santelmo's flames became hot red.
It charged at Smoke, but its speed was noticeably slow. Smoke engaged the monster and delivered blow after blow worth 4,000 to 4,500 damage points.
The sluggish santelmo could do nothing against the experienced Smoke. He danced around the red fiery monster, unscathed.
Smoke spent the next two minutes attacking the monster until he finally reduced its life bar to zero.

'That's not bad,' thought a delighted Smoke, picking up the loot of the santelmo.

Despite easily defeating the santelmo, his state of mind quickly dampened. He realized that he could only kill thirty of these santelmos at best, and he already used his Lightning Strike ability.
Recognizing that he needed to increase his damage output, Smoke grabbed the black and silver metallic rocks from his backpack, and threw them to the ground. He used his Electromagnetic Golem Offering and created two minions to his aid.
Next, he used his Master Level Earth Manipulation. He molded a clay golem after its predecessors. Yet, this one was slightly thinner. He hoped that this would make it move faster.
Then, Smoke used his Animate ability on it, giving it a simple command to attack any flaming humanoid monsters like the santelmo.
After completing his golems, Igniz orbited around Smoke, as if asking if he could do something to help.
"Sorry, Bud, but these guys are Fire elementals," said Smoke. "You can't do anything against them."
He then switched out his twin lightning rods for his power chainsaw bow. He only needed to run a few meters before he spotted another group of the santelmos.
Firing four arrows, the same number of red santelmos were charging straight for them. Smoke faced one of them, while his metallic and clay golems challenged the other monsters.
The metallic golems moved like sloths, but their speed were evenly matched against the fiery santelmos. The red flaming monsters damage on his minions only amounted to 500 points, while the monsters could dish out 1,000 points with their strong punches.
On the other hand, his animated clay golem moved slightly faster. This gave it an edge of parrying the santelmo's attacks before delivering a counterstrike.
By the time Smoke killed his santelmo, the golems had damaged their opponents' life bars by at least 24,000 points.
Smoke then proceeded to help them finish off with their respective santelmos. Together with his minions, it took him five minutes to eliminate four santelmos. He had gotten close to the one minute per monster condition. Yet, his mana was only at 16% and was steadily being depleted.
He would have wanted to create a second clay golem, but the Animate ability required him to spend 500 MP/second to retain its form. With his current mana regeneration at 268/second, he could only keep his clay golem for another three minutes.
Deciding to maximize his clay golem's duration, Smoke attacked five santelmos at once. Yet, this proved to be a miscalculation on his part, as the clay golem was the one targeted by two flaming monsters.
One of the santelmo's red hands grabbed hold of his clay golem's neck and arms, giving the second santelmo the opportunity to strike at Smoke's undefended earth minion.
Desperate to save his clay golem, Smoke disregarded the santelmo attacking him, and targeted the one attacking his golem instead.
Smoke was attacked from behind, but only suffered 150 damage points. Wielding his twin lightning rods with blitzing speed, he killed all five santelmos in six minutes. Yet, he suffered 10,000 damage points and his clay golem's duration ended.
"This won't do at all," said Smoke out loud.
Turning around, he quickly headed for the Fourrage forest's exit. His metallic golems slowly dragged their feet as they followed him.
Using his Hyper Jump ability, Smoke reached Eleve in a matter of seconds. Only Igniz could keep up with him, as his sloth-like minions were left behind.
"Faux? It hasn't been even an hour and you're already calling it quits?" asked Eleve.
"No, I just wanted to clarify something first," said Smoke. "Since I'm a Sonstwelter I can leave to go to my world, but if I do that will I be able to return here?"
"I'm not sure on this one, but I think you should be able to," said Eleve. "Provided you didn't die of course."
"Of course," said Smoke, smiling.
"Why are you happy? When you're clearly behind schedule?" asked Eleve, confused.
"I think I was just pressured by the idea of killing one monster per minute for the next eight days straight, that I couldn't see the answer clearly," explained Smoke. "But I think I'll try the more aggressive servals. Maybe, I'll have more luck with them."

'Lemurcats, huh?' grimaced Smoke as he remembered the tiger-like monsters with the face of a lemur. They looked ridiculous because of their faces, but were formidable opponents. He and Saru, the albino Simiavulg, were almost killed when they faced four of them at once.
'I'm sure Saru would have died if Ledur didn't rescue us,' thought Smoke.
After seeing the notification window of the forest, Smoke decided to back out of the forest. He quickly grabbed for an ancient bison jerky and bit a big chunk out of it.
'Golems would be useless against them. The badger dogs could already kill them, what more if lemurcats were added to the mix, and I don't know what these servals are like,' pondered Smoke.
Igniz flew above Smoke's head, but not too close as to upset his thinking.
Taking a peek inside his backpack, he saw that he still had fifty jars of pompom juice. One jar could restore 50,000 MP. He wondered if he should use it here, since he only needed to rest twenty-four minutes to restore his mana bar to full capacity.
"Alright, Igniz, why don't you scout above the trees?" he said to his symbiote who was eagerly waiting for instructions.
At once, the dark ember sprite entered the forest.
His Cunning of the Dire Fox could already sense more than a hundred monsters near the entrance, but Smoke wanted to get a visual of the monsters' locations.
Using Symbiote Vision, Smoke saw one of the lemurcats attacking three badger dogs at once. Then, he spotted a flash of orange-light whizz past them.
While the lemurcat was chasing after the badger dogs, three more blitzing orange-lights passed near their area.
As the three-meter lemurcat was about to lunge on one of the badger dogs, the four orange-lights smashed into the tiger-like monster and pinned it to the ground.
Igniz stopped directly above them, giving Smoke a better view of what was happening. The blitzing orange-lights finally showed their true shape. They were half-meter orange flaming cats with black spots and pointed ears. These monsters were only slightly larger than your average house-cats.
One of the servals went straight for the lemurcat's jugular, while the other three went for the joints on its limbs. The lemurcat's life bar rapidly went down to (84,250/250,000 HP).
Their flaming bodies greatly damage the lemurcat, but the large monster would not give up without a fight. The lemurcat clawed off the serval on its neck, and revealed the serval's life bar (150,000/180,000 HP).
'That's a lemurcat for you, one attack and it already got in 30,000 damage,' thought Smoke, shaking his head.
However, that was the only attack the lemurcat could do. The four servals torched the massive tiger-like monster's life bar to zero.
'So that's what a serval looks like,' surmised Smoke. He then sent a message to Igniz, telling his symbiote to head towards the center of the forest.
Along the way, Smoke saw similar scenarios scattered throughout the forest. He could see badger dogs being hunted down by lemurcats. Whereas, the servals, who hunted in a pack, chased after anything in sight.
'Looks like I was wrong about the lemurcats being the strongest monsters in this forest,' thought Smoke.
Then, at the center of Harceleur Forest, Smoke saw a reversal. Six servals were surrounded by four lemurcats.
The simultaneous attack of the lemurcats scattered the servals' formation. In a single glance, Smoke understood that even two servals were outmatched by one lemurcat. The flaming monsters that fought one-on-one with a lemurcat were devoured in a matter of seconds.
Smoke canceled his Symbiote Vision and jumped straight up. He equipped his Digger's Wand and opened his Wings of Cologus, gliding directly to the center of the forest.
"Igniz, to me!" he ordered his symbiote when he got closer.
The dark ember sprite did not need Smoke's instruction. Igniz orbited closer to Smoke creating a large fiery comet as he traveled around him.
Unified, their large flaming mass burnt the branches of the trees blocking the center of the forest patch as they fell through it.
CRASH
Smoke used his Comet Crush ability, making a deep impact on the ground, stunning both lemurcats and servals in the area.
While the monsters were immobilized, Smoke pointed his wand downward and created a deep pit. Bewildered, all four lemurcats and the surviving servals fell in.
Smoke expertly glided and landed on the edge of his pit. He then turned to Igniz. "You just aim for the lemurcats, while I'll finish off the rest."
Both lemurcats and servals desperately attempted to climb out of the pit, but none of them could do it. They all fell back down.
Igniz hurriedly hurled his fireballs at the lemurcats trapped in the deep hole. Whereas, Smoke used his earth-spikes to attack servals from a safe distance.
After five minutes, multiple notification windows popped up.