章 23: The First Hurdle (Part 2)
The heated battle continued.
Nico rained down Wind Bullets on the Infant Dragon. He tried targeting its remaining eye to completely blind it, but the dragon was now conscious of him and guarded its eye. A surprising display of intelligence for a monster on the upper floors.
Cassian felt that the beast was getting smarter, the longer the fight dragged on. It was becoming less of a mindless monster and more of a predator with honed instincts. Something that certainly didn't fill him with glee.
Instead, Nico targeted spots on its body that had the scales damaged or shattered. His wind cannons didn't do much, but at least they managed to batter it. Those spots were much weaker and vulnerable, and so his Wind Bullets easily penetrated and sunk into its body, filling the monster with puncture wounds and draining it of blood.
Cassian meanwhile was locked in a deadly dance. He had to constantly dodge the dragon's attacks while taking any opportunity to throw in attacks of his own.
Cassian ducked under the Dragon's snapping jaws, barely avoiding the rows of sharp teeth. He swung his sword at the dragon's exposed neck, but the angle was awkward, and his blade skidded off the scales, only leaving a shallow mark that did not hurt the monster.
He gritted his teeth as the dragon countered with its tail that was going to crush his side. He put up his hand and cast Heliotrop. A purple dome-shaped energy barrier materialized from his forearm.
/CRASH/
Soon the tail crashed into it. The shield could only hold on for a fraction of a second before breaking. Then the tail hit the Quen surrounding Cassian's body, almost instantly breaking it too before hitting Cassian himself and launching him across the clearing.
Cassian felt as if his bones were being crushed and organs rupturing. The dual shields were incapable of holding up against the full might of the dragon's tail, but they still did their job and lessened the power of the hit significantly, and yet it still packed this much power.
Cassian shuddered thinking what it would be like if he didn't put that up. He likely would have died instantly.
As he skid to a halt, he quickly took out his potion stash with his one good arm. Most of them broke, and only 3 remained usable. This was the problem of potions. They broke easily if the holder received heavy hits.
He quickly downed it and felt the bruised organs fixing themselves, as well as his cracked and broken bones, putting themselves back together. His arm was in the worst condition. The bones in it were broken in several places. A medium potion would take too long to make it operational again and the dragon was already advancing towards him.
With no other choice, Cassian downed another potion, accelerating the healing rate, cast Quen again, and faced the dragon once more.
He used Igni again to obscure its vision before darting below it to strike at its exposed underbelly. He managed to land several good hits before the dragon roared in anger and tried to crush him with its body weight.
Quickly jumping to the side, he dodged the following attack, before lashing out at its snout. The attack missed however as the dragon drew its head back.
Frustration mounted as he circled the monster, his eyes scanning for another chance. The Dragon reared back, swiping with a claw that Cassian dodged at the last second. He tried to counterattack, lunging forward to slash at the beast's leg, but his footing faltered on the loose stones beneath him.
/Screech/
His sword hit the target but lacked the necessary power to penetrate its scales, ultimately glancing off harmlessly.
'Shit!'
He could feel the weight of every missed strike, every flawed maneuver. He noticed how often he found himself reacting instead of acting, each second-guessing his positioning or the timing of his attacks.
Cassian started noticing just how flawed and weak his swordsmanship was. Against weaker monsters that he physically outmatched, it wasn't a problem. But now that he was fighting a superior opponent, he realized just how much he was lacking.
His talent carried him so far, but it wouldn't be enough in the future. The fight would have been much easier if he actually had training.
He realized in those moments—the stumbles, the near-misses, the wasted energy—that his limited swordsmanship was holding him back.
'If we get out of here, I'll need to find someone to train me in combat. Otherwise, I'll always be stuck fighting opponents that are weaker than me.'
The battle continued the same. Cassian did his best to dodge and strike, but only half of his attacks were successful at dealing satisfactory damage.
He had to make use of Igni and Heliotrop numerous times to avoid attacks and create openings. He even used Axii once to see if it would help, but just as he suspected the spell didn't even take effect for a second. The monster he was fighting was far too above him for that.
However, the infant dragon started adapting to him. It realized Igni dealt no damage and started just charging through it. Yrden on the other hand, produced a distinct effect and it just needed to avoid the circle to not be slowed down.
The dragon's intelligence and adaptation to his methods would have caused Cassian to despair, but he noticed something.
The dragon was slowing down.
Its charging wasn't as fast as before. Its attacks didn't hold as much power. And it was a bit disoriented.
Cassian grinned. Finally, it was weakening. The attacks he and his brother dealt, caused the monster to lose copious amounts of blood and now it couldn't fight as fiercely as before.
Now they just had to seize the opportunity.
"NICO, CONCENTRATE ON THE NECK!"
As if to answer his command, a wind cannon instantly impacted the right side of the dragon's neck, causing its head to snap to the side and its scales to crack.
Cassian took advantage of the moment and dashed into the blindside of the dragon, immediately slashing at the damaged scales and leaving a bloody gash.
/ROOAAAR/
The dragon roared and tried to bite down on Cassian, but its movements had slowed down to the point, that Cassian managed to dodge the attack even at such close range.
The dragon growled in pain, each new gash adding to the torrent of crimson that stained the stone floor. But its will to fight has not lessened a bit since the start of the fight.
Instead, the snarl on its face resembled more of a grin of bloodlust. Its rudimentary intelligence evolved into that of a predator, but now it stopped viewing the person battling against it as prey.
No, he was a predator too. And this was a battle of supremacy between two predators. The golden slit eyes of both combatants locked on one another.
The rage the dragon was feeling had lessened and transformed into immense battle lust and excitement instead. It was starting to enjoy this fight. Even if it realized, the battle was coming to an end.
The two charged at one another once again.
The dragon did its best to crush its opponent, while Cassian unleashed an endless barrage of attacks on its neck, slowly carving away at it and making it bleed like a fountain.
The beast was having difficulty breathing now. The more gashes were added to its neck, the more laborious its panting became. It realized it didn't have much to live, so it abandoned defense completely.
If it was going to die anyway, might as well give the fight its all.
Cassian was in the middle of an attack, he was ready for the dragon to lean back and defend its neck, but he did not expect it to lean forward instead.
His blade struck hard and went deep, deeper than any wound so far, but the depth also made the sword harder to pull out, delaying his retreat, and giving the dragon the perfect opportunity.
Its tail snapped at him with immense speed. Disregarding all the fatigue, pain, and weakness, the dragon put its all into this attack and it struck true.
/BAAM/
Cassian could only brace for the hit while casting Heliotrop again. The same scene repeated itself with both of his shields being broken, but this time the tail struck him in the chest instead of his side.
Cassian felt his ribcage being squashed and lungs compressing, as he was launched to the wall, hitting it with his back.
"Cough, Cough-" He felt as if his breath was ripped out of him and started coughing up blood on the ground.
"CASSIAN!" He heard his little brother's panicked shouting but his head rang too much to hear the rest.
But even in this state, he felt the vibrations through the ground. He looked up and saw through his blurry vision that the dragon was rushing him.
'Damn, that hurt.' Cassian quickly downed his last potion, feeling it repairing his body, but his breath was still laborious.
He couldn't dodge to the sides, the dragon would follow him, and dodging at the last second in this condition was suicide.
Looking back, he saw the vine-covered wall and instantly started climbing up. He had reached several meters of height when the dragon reached him.
Just as it was about to close its jaws on him, Cassian launched himself off of the wall and leaped over the dragon's head. He immediately grabbed onto the ruined scales and drove his sword inside.
The dragon started howling and thrashing around, trying its best to throw off the elf, but he kept his grip. The monster was weakened enough that he could hold on, so he pulled out his blade and drove it back in.
The runesword's edges were blunt and chipped from the continuous impacts with the dragon's scales, but its point was still in good condition.
So Cassian continued driving his sword in the windpipe again and again, turning the meat in the dragon's neck into mincemeat.
The dragon was now choking on its blood, it couldn't breathe anymore and could barely move its body. Its roars turned to choked gasps as its life force ebbed.
"DIE ALREADY, AARD!" With a Warcry, Cassian shoved his hand in the dragon's throat through the gaping wound and unleashed Aard with all his power.
/THOOOM/
The dragon's neck exploded into a shower of gore, the muscles torn from numerous wounds finally being completely ripped apart. The bone holding it together couldn't keep up anymore and broke off, its head falling to the ground, with the heavy body soon following after.
The great beast couldn't even draw its last breath before dying, but there was deep satisfaction gleaming in its eyes.
/Pant Pant/
Cassian stumbled back, his chest heaving from exhaustion, but he couldn't help the incredulous, but triumphant laughter that emerged from his mouth.
They had done it. They won against impossible odds. Against a monster that scared even the majority of level two adventurers…
And it felt great! Cassian had never felt so much exhilaration in his life. He had never felt so alive before, ironically after escaping certain death.
Nico and Leo climbed down from the wall.
Nico was happy that they had won, and that his brother was okay. He never imagined this day to go so wrong, but the ending was incredible, making it worth it.
Leo on the other hand felt a mix of conflicting emotions. She felt amazed as she watched the battle. Cassian was like a hero straight from one of her favorite stories, bravely confronting a powerful dragon and not giving up. Her admiration of him soared beyond anything she felt before. Even more so than her secret admiration of Finn Deimne.
But at the same time, she felt despondent. Worthless that she could not do anything to help and had to sit back and just watch.
They cast their gaze around the clearing, littered with countless corpses including that of the dragon. Their greatest hurdle so far had been overcome, but they had a feeling many more would follow.
"Well, if nothing else, this is going to be one hell of a payday."
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This is it. Their first boss fight. I'm kinda nervous about how I did. Let me know your opinion on it. Was it good? decent? bad? If you have any advice, please let me know too.
Also, I'm planning on making two more novels in tandem with this. One is an original that I'm still in the building phase of, while the other is a DC fic. To be specific it will be set in Young Justice verse. I've more or less designed the MC's special powers, but I'm stuck on what gender to make them. On one hand, writing male MCs is easier, but on the other, both this fic and my original will have a male MC, so I'm kinda interested in changing things up and making a female MC. What do ya'll think?
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