“Although Bebe is physically small, his defensive abilities are incredible. The power of this flame is approximately on par with a fire-style magus spell of the fifth rank, but it isn’t able to harm him at all.” Linley quietly watched. Despite having been in the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts for so long, Bebe had yet to meet a genuinely worthy opponent to do battle with.
Bathed in flames, Bebe was motionless. But then suddenly, he moved!
“Shkkkkkkkkreeee!”
With a terrifyingly high-pitched howl, Bebe transformed into a black shadow that sped towards the Velocidragon with vicious speed. The Velocidragon, which had continued to breathe out flames this entire time, suddenly widened its enormous, lantern-sized red eyes, while suddenly slapping forward with its long, whip-like draconic tail.
The incredible speed of the Velocidragon’s tail actually approached the speed of the little Shadowmouse’s movement.
“Whoosh!” Bebe’s movements were extremely bizarre, and he was actually able to dodge the hyper-fast attack of the Velocidragon’s tail, and immediately tried to bite at the Velocidragon’s throat. But the Velocidragon, in turn, immediately turned his head down and then tried to bite back at Bebe.
But clearly, Bebe was still a bit faster. As he gave the Velocidragon a vicious bite on the neck, a sharp ‘crack’ sound could be heard, as one of the thick scales on the Velocidragon’s neck was actually broken, and then swallowed whole by Bebe. Bebe was a creature that was capable of even devouring stones and bones. This Velocidragon scale proved to be edible by him as well.
But just at this time, the Velocidragon’s tail swept towards Bebe. “Thwack!” A high-pitched slapping sound could be heard, causing Linley to shiver. But Bebe had long since dodged and scurried away again.
“This Velocidragon has such a huge, thick neck. That bite Bebe gave it was nothing more than a light wound.” Linley breathlessly watched this battle between creatures of totally different sizes. “This Velocidragon’s tail moves in such an unpredictable manner, and it’s able to twist and turn at high speeds as well.”
The tail of a Velocidragon was not only fast, it was also agile and unpredictable.
“Shkreee!”
Bebe once more turned into a vicious black shadow. Erupting from the water, Bebe once more dodged the draconic tail. But just as he dodged, the tail suddenly changed directions in a rapid, unpredictable manner. With a sudden twist, it struck Bebe a direct blow.
The vicious black shadow was sent flying into the faraway woods.
“Bebe!” Linley’s chest tightened.
But the Velocidragon only stared cautiously at the forest, as though keeping an eye out for a dangerous foe. Suddenly, the little Shadowmouse, Bebe, came flying down at him from atop a particularly tall tree. The Velocidragon’s tail immediately twisted to strike at him, but this time, Bebe had learned from the previous painful lesson. With a twitch of his tail, he too suddenly changed directions in mid-air.
The little Shadowmouse was a blur. The draconic tail was also a blur!
The two blurred shadows chased each other about in mid-air. The little Shadowmouse would occasionally be sent flying by the Velocidragon, but every so often, he would also manage to land a vicious bite on the Velocidragon as well. They continued their fight, fighting all the way from the lakeshore to the forests. One mighty tree after another was knocked down by the Velocidragon’s tail as the Velocidragon and the Shadowmouse continued to fight without pause.
“From what I can see, it seems as though Bebe has a slight advantage.”
Linley nervously watched the fight. By this point in time, the huge Velocidragon had already lost seven or eight scales, and blood continuously flowed from seven or eight wounds, covering half of its body in blood. The Velocidragon’s enraged roars continued unabated.
Its tail whipping back and forth, any tree touched by the Velocidragon’s tail was snapped in half. One mighty tree after another toppled over, and an area with a diameter of approximately two hundred meters around the two combatants was totally cleared.
“But can Bebe keep on being hit like that, by the Velocidragon’s tail?”
Linley began to worry. The offensive power of the Velocidragon’s tail was very high. If it smashed into a stone, the stone would crumble; if it smashed into a tree, the tree would snap. This sort of offensive power made Linley’s heart grow cold. Linley knew that if he was struck so much as a single time by that tail, his life would be gone.
“Whack!” Bebe was sent flying again, but in the blink of an eye, Bebe once more transformed into a furious black shadow as he charged into the fray again, screeching.
By now, the Velocidragon was covered with blood, with many damaged scales all over its body. It looked to be in a bad way.
“Raaaawr!”
With an angry roar, the Velocidragon actually turned and began to leave. At high speed, it began to run towards the core areas of the mountains. In a short period of time, the Velocidragon disappeared from Linley’s vision. Bebe actually pursued it for a while as well before turning around and coming back to Linley.
Linley dropped down from his tree just as the little Shadowmouse, Bebe, also ran over to him, his body shrinking back to its normal size.
“Bebe, are you okay?” Linley immediately asked him through their mental link.
Bebe jumped onto Linley’s shoulder and stood erect on his hind legs, as he looked arrogantly at Linley with his beady little black eyes. “Boss, what sort of magical beast do you take Bebe to be? How could I be afraid of a Velocidragon?” Pride and self-delight suffused Bebe’s adorable little face.
But suddenly, Bebe twitched his tail. Shaking himself, he said, “But that Velocidragon’s tail really is a rather nasty piece of work. My entire body hurts.”
Seeing this, Linley couldn’t help but chuckle. The Velocidragon’s tail wasn’t just a ‘rather nasty piece of work’. It was an extremely nasty piece of work. Linley was extremely glad that Bebe had been able to withstand so many blows from it without sustaining any serious injuries.
“And this Velocidragon’s scales and meat really are thick. Even at my maximum size, I couldn’t bite through him.” Bebe sighed. “But I’m confident that if we kept at it, I, Bebe, could’ve bled him to death. This Velocidragon was pretty sly though. It kept on moving about, and never let me bite it on the same place twice.”
Linley secretly laughed.
There was a huge gap between the sixth rank and the seventh rank, in terms of combat ability as well as other factors. Most likely, that Velocidragon’s intelligence was not much less than a human being’s. How could it possibly allow the little Shadowmouse to bite it in the same place twice?
No matter how thick the scales and flesh of the Velocidragon were, it couldn’t withstand being bitten by Bebe multiple times. This Velocidragon most likely also realized that he wouldn’t gain any benefit from continuing to fight, which was why it had fled.
“Bebe, want to give a magical beast of the eighth rank a go?” Linley mentally teased.
Bebe’s little eyes suddenly turned as round as the moon. “Boss, don’t mess with me like that. Dealing with that magical beast of the seventh rank was exhausting enough. I hear that magical beasts of the eighth rank are ten times as powerful as magical beasts of the seventh rank. Even if their movement speeds aren’t as high as mine, their attack speeds are most likely higher.”
Movement speed and combat attack speeds were two different speeds.
For example, the Velocidragon was perhaps much slower in terms of movement speed, but its tail was able to attack at an astonishing speed. Although some larger magical beasts appeared to be slow and clumsy, when they really started to fight, they were as fast as lightning!
After all, if they were mighty enough to be described as a magical beast of the eighth rank, they would definitely overmatch a magical beast of the seventh rank.
“Heh, looks like you know when to be humble after all.” Linley chuckled while stroking Bebe’s little he
ad. “Alright, my clothes should be dry by now as well. Let’s go take a rest on top of the tree, then eat some food. After a while, we’ll continue onwards.” As he spoke, Linley leapt seven or eight meters up onto a branch, and then he continued to lightly jump up, before leisurely coming to a rest at about twenty or thirty meters above the ground.
40
The Black Dagger
The fifty first day in the mountain ranges.
“Do all of these killers think I’m easy meat?” Linley glanced at the corpse of the female assassin, dressed in black. This woman had only been a warrior of the fifth rank. Assisted by his magic, Linley had been able to kill her by himself.
Doehring Cowart laughed. “Anyone who sees you will be able to tell that you are just a kid, a stupid kid who doesn’t know how high the heaven is or how deep the earth is, a kid that dares wander these mountains alone. Why wouldn’t they want to get an easy kill like you?”
Linley felt helpless.
He was still just fifteen. Despite having the physical size of a fully-grown man, his face still betrayed his youth.
“This woman wounded me as she died. It’s not a big deal that I have another scar, but she ruined my clothes as well. Now I only have one set of clothes remaining.” Seeing the giant, gaping hole in his clothes, Linley didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
Linley had managed to acquire several sets of clothing from attempted assassins, but he had lost even more, here in the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts.
“Boss, the magicite cores in this person’s bag are worth a couple thousand gold coins. Can a set of clothes be worth that much?” Bebe immediately argued.
Hearing these words, Linley laughed.
After having spent well over a month in these mountains, the scars on his body had grown more and more plentiful, but so too had the number of magicite cores in his backpack.
“Forget it. From now on, I’m going naked from the waist up. I’ll save my last set of clothes for when I go back. No one will see me anyhow, here in these mountains.” Linley determinedly tossed aside the ruined set of clothes, going bare-chested. His black dagger in hand, he marched onwards.
During this period of time, this black dagger had provided Linley with quite a bit of assistance.
After walking for a while, Linley began to casually murmur the words to a spell. After a short moment, a gust of wind began to swirl around the area, with Linley at the center. This was the Windscout spell once again. In an area with a diameter of three hundred meters centered on Linley, nothing could escape his attention.
Generally speaking, after walking for an extended period of time, Linley would be cautious and cast the Windscout spell. After walking for a while, Linley once again cast the Windscout spell.
“Ah, a group of people? Why are those people hiding on top of that tree?” Linley felt curious.
At this moment, about a hundred meters south of Linley, around ten or so people were hiding on top of an enormous old tree, with a girth so wide that seven people would have had to link hands to surround it. Curious, Linley couldn’t help but quietly sneak closer.
Slowly, carefully, Linley crept into a patch of tall, thick grass, from whence he had a vantage point to peer at the ten people on the tree.
Those ten or so people were all wearing black clothes, and each of them had a black dagger sheathed at their waists.
“Black dagger?” Linley’s gaze fixed upon one black dagger in particular.
In terms of both shape and coloration, it was identical to the one in Linley’s hands. In addition, the ten or so people hiding on top of the tree gave Linley a similar, sinister feeling, very much like when Linley had encountered that first assassin.
“The same black clothes, and the same black dagger, and…” Linley noticed that the backs of all of these men were bulging slightly.
Linley couldn’t help but think back to that first assassin, who had had his backpack tightly strapped to his back, beneath his clothes. It was only because Bebe had ripped the assassin’s clothes open that they had discovered the backpack.
“They belong to the same organization.” Even an idiot would come to this conclusion.
Linley’s heartbeat involuntarily began to speed up. At this point in time, the people hiding on the tree were talking in a low tone.
“Why haven’t #18 and #7 come back yet?” One of the black-garbed men asked unhappily.
“Possibly dead,” another black-garbed man said coldly.
“Watch the time. We’ll wait until night falls. If they aren’t back by nightfall, then regardless of whether or not they’re still alive, they will be considered to have failed,” another black-garbed man said coldly. Hearing his words, the other black-garbed men fell silent.
Hidden within the grass below, Linley could guess that the person who had just spoken was the leader of this group of black-garbed men. He secretly felt startled. “The person who tried to kill me originally was a warrior of the sixth rank, specializing in the darkness-style. Most likely, their leader is even stronger.”
Linley immediately moved to retreat, but after just taking a few steps back…
The leader suddenly frowned and swerved, staring directly at Linley.
“Swish!”
A black blur shot out at Linley at high speed, shocking Linley. He realized, “I’ve been exposed!” He immediately utilized the wind-style Supersonic spell, and at the highest speed he could muster, fled deeper into the forest.
As far as Linley was concerned, the deeper one went into the mountains, the more dangerous it was. His opponent, upon seeing him run into the deep, dangerous mountains, might hesitate and refrain from chasing him. Linley had already made up his mind that after going a bit deeper in, he would change directions and leave.
Seeing the black backpack on Linley’s back and the black dagger in his hands, the expression on the face of the leader of the group changed.
“#2, deal with him,” the black-garbed leader ordered.
The higher the ranking number was, the stronger one was. The leader had already been able to accurately gauge Linley’s strength from Linley’s movements just then.
“Yes, lord.” One of the black-garbed men immediately jumped down from the tree and began to pursue Linley with astonishing speed. But because Linley had a significant head start, and had been quite far from him to begin with, the two of them started off at a seventy-meter distance.
But this black-garbed man really was very fast, seemingly a bit faster than even the first assassin.
“What astonishing speed.” Linley agilely made his way into the mountains, sometimes crawling, sometimes jumping.
But from behind, the black-garbed man continued to coldly pursue, and the distance between the two continued to shrink. Sixty meters. Fifty meters. Forty meters. Thirty meters. The longer Linley fled, the closer the pursuing assassin got.
Ten meters. Nine meters. Eight meters. Seven meters!
Apparently terrified out of his wits, Linley headed directly for the deepest parts of the mountains.
“Wind-style magus?” The black-garbed man could tell that Linley was being aided by wind magic. “Even aided by wind magic, he’s so slow. Looks like he’s a warrior of the fourth rank, at most the peak of the fourth rank.” Totally confident in his ability to kill Linley, the black-garbed man continued to draw closer.
On the surface, Linley seemed terrified, but in reality, he was quite calm and steady.
“We’ve run a few kilometers. Those ten assassins shouldn’t be able to see us from here.” A cold look suddenly flashed through the fleeing Linley’s eyes, and at the same time, the little Shadowmouse, Bebe, which had been crouched over, ‘terrified’ on Linley’s shoulders, suddenly moved.
Whoosh!
The little Shadowmouse suddenly expanded in size before the assassin’s eyes, and reached him in the blink of an eye. The assassin could clearly see the little Shadowmouse’s fiercely sharp teeth…
The dark-robed man, just five or
six meters away from Linley, had considered the dark Shadowmouse beneath notice, but upon seeing Bebe’s amazing speed, his cold face showed an expression of astonishment. “What is this speed?!” The dark-robed man hurriedly waved his dagger to block.
Clearly, this dark-robed man was somewhat stronger than the original assassin. At least when facing Bebe, he had the presence of mind and speed to wield his dagger.
“Swish!” Bebe swung his sharp claws fiercely.
“Clang!”
As Bebe’s claws slammed into the assassin’s dagger, the black dagger exploded into fragments, while Bebe’s claws, undamaged, immediately slashed violently against the dark-robed man’s head, directly shattering it. The man died on the spot.
“The gap between the sixth rank and the seventh rank really is enormous.” Seeing this, Linley couldn’t help but sigh.
Bebe was a terrifying Shadowmouse who could even force the mighty Velocidragon, a magical beast of the seventh rank, to flee. Based on the power of Bebe’s sharp claws and sharp fangs, killing a warrior of the sixth rank was as easy as eating rice.
“Rip!” Linley ran over to the corpse and tore the dark-garbed man’s clothes apart, immediately grabbing the hidden backpack. Without doing anything else, he immediately turned and fled northwards. Gusts of winds arose around his legs, and he began moving with such grace and agility that he left almost no trail in his wake.
After a while, a second group of dark-garbed men finally arrived. Seeing the injury on #2’s head, all of them frowned.
“A magical beast?” The images of many different magical beasts suddenly began to swim about in the mind of one of the dark-garbed men. “A Blue Shadowmouse of the sixth rank? Or a Violet Shadowmouse of the seventh rank? Or a Gold Stoneater Rat of the seventh rank?” This fierce but tiny claw mark must have been left by a rodent-type magical beast.
In the Mountain Range of Magical Beasts, some people believed that the most terrifying possibility was encountering a magical beast of the eighth or ninth ranks. Others believed that it was encountering a terrifying swarm of pack-type magical beasts. But in the heart of the dark-garbed man, the most terrifying possibility was encountering a Stoneater Rat swarm or a Shadowmouse swarm.
Coiling Dragon_Book 1 of the Coiling Dragon Saga Page 36