Chapter 181 - Gathering Fireflies (2/2)

Defense: 98; Attack Speed: 120; Movement Speed: 126; Willpower: 66 ; Balance: 72; Focus/Search: 95; Reflect Damage: 6; Magic Resist: 37; Luck: *; Charm: *;

Attributes: Strength 93, Agility 88, Endurance 62, Intelligence 56, Vitality 58, Perception 53.

No Special Racial Attributes or weakness.

Free Attributes Points: 0;

After allocating his attribute points he went into stealth. He was already in the habitat of the salamandrids which were creatures like a crocodile with longer feet. They stay on the ground most of the time and crawl at high speeds unless in a fight when they tend to jump a few meters to land on their prey.

He had to be in stealth to avoid monsters. His priority was to find salamandrids and fireglow insects. The area was close to volcanoes and the heat made the surroundings different from that of a forest. The trees were sparse, but there was shrubbery all around the place which he could use to hide. The problem was that many of them hard thorns and were prickly, which would pull him out of stealth if he wasn't careful enough.

The place was hotter at night than the White Heart City was during the day. He had started to perspire, and he felt it hard to maintain stealth. It was even costing his stamina to deplete faster. He always used heat resistance potions in such areas, but now in his hurry, he had completely forgotten about it.

He moved slowly avoiding any beast he could see. There were cinder wolfs and ash panthers roaming around occasionally. It was twilight already and most of the monsters were going back to their lairs and congregating in groups for the night other than a few which tend to stay away for longer periods of time.

Luckily for Shadow, salamandrids and fireglows tend to stay out in the night. Salamandrids stay in holes like lizards mostly in hot areas at most of the day and come out at twilight. With fireglows hovering on their back while feeding on their dead skin, twilight was the best time to search for the salamandrids and Shadow had about 20 minutes before darkness completely sets in.

[Salamandrid] (Common monster)

Level 18;

HP: 8500/8500;

[Fireglow] (Common insect)

Level 15;

HP: 5000/5000;

Soon, he found one salamandrid crawling by a tree with a few fireglows. It was like a shining 2-meter-long target that was moving. He slowly went behind it and moved toward the fireglows and took out his net to try and capture it. The fireglows had low health but moved very fast and in an erratic fashion. So, it was very hard to catch them without a net. The fireglows weren't insects which actually had fire but released a light which looked like fire. Else, the net would have burned on contact.

He had to be careful with the net. The place was very dangerous, and the ground could suddenly have cracks and spew out fire. That could easily burn the net. The net could even be burned by the flames of the salamandrid. So, he needed to be very careful as the fireglows just hover over the salamandrid and it was a daunting task to capture them without touching the salamandrid.

He carefully crouched behind salamandrid and waited for the appropriate time before using the net to capture a fireglow. The minute he caught the fireglow in the net, the salamandrid had noticed him and swiped its hind claw at him and tried to strike him with its tail.

He quickly evaded as he ran to the side going to its blind spot, before putting the fireglow in the bottle. He then put the net back, before pulling out his weapons. Salamandrid are usually quiet and crawl around slowly, but one they notice anything around it they become vicious attackers which roar and attract the attention of the other beasts. The stronger ones might come closer to them while the weaker ones run away.

The salamandrids cause fire damage whenever anything touches them at any place other than the head and this is the worst thing about it. It restricts players from fighting it without fire damage. It also keeps jumping on the players, trying to pin them under it and kill them.

This behaviour of the salamandrids made them a headache to kill even for people at level 18. Players usually tend to form group when handling them. The good thing was that the same behavior which frighted most was also its weakness. Their weak spot is the belly and underside which could be cut easier than its back and legs as it had no thick scales underside like it had on its back and limbs.

Still it would cause a lot of damage when the salamandrid jumped on a player. One had to make a quick slash while evading. It would be a very risk attempt, but he had the experience. As the salamandrid jump towards him, he ran towards it, so that he could get beneath it while it was in the air and swung the void dragon's talons over his head with all his might making half a meter long cut on its belly.

The wieght of the beast caused the blades to go about 5 inches deep into its flesh causing it more damage than a simple attack. There were immediate notifications of it causing bleed and cripple effect on the beast. The beast lost 10% of its health and had a bleed effect of 50 HP per second.

The beast roared in pain as it fell behind him. He quickly turned around and continued to attack the salamandrid. With its underside having a big cut, it could no longer jump. Even it movement reduced as it lay down and on the ground and began to growl at Shadow.

Shadow had known that the wound would only heal in some time and it was his best chance to injure the salamandrid as much as possible. Once, it was crippled and had slower movement, he had better options for attacking. The back of the beast was the largest area but had the hardest scales and densest flames making it the worst point to attack. The tail was the same as the back and the limbs were better.

The head wasn't on flames and like all other beasts was the weakest point. The eyes and snout were the weakest points. All beasts protect their head, but currently the salamandrid was crippled and couldn't move it fore arms fast enough to block his attacks. Shadow took his chance to quickly attack its eyes and snout managing to blind it in one eye after the other and even injured its snout making it much easier for him to continue his attacks or get away.

He initially thought of getting away from the salamandrid as he already had the fireglow, but then he remembered that he also needed to gather firestones. As the salamandrid was currently blinded, he had a thought of trying to do the same thing as Robert and he did with Boredrevers. He had always kept fruits, bread and meat with him in his bag. They could be used to feed it. The only difference was that instead of using poison he thought of using a dynamite as a whole.

He quickly pulled out a dynamite and some meat rolling the dynamite in the meat. He lit the thing and threw attacked the beast to make it roar while throwing the dynamite in its mouth. The beast immediately closed its jaws trying to bite it and swallowed it as he had expected. A moment later, a muffled explosion sounded as the salamandrid puked out blood and flesh while it tipped over on its belly and the cut that he had previously made opened up much larger with the beasts heart and lungs burnt and hanging out of it.

The salamandrid made small whimpering sounds as more of its blood poured out of its wound and throat. Notifications indicating that the salamandrid had received 4000 HP damage and got a bleed effect of 300 HP per second. He checked the notifications and continued to attack at the overturned beast at a rapid pace to increase the rate of damage. The firestones would also be found in their stomach, so he began to focus his attack to enlarge the cut and get deeper into the stomach.

Within 10 seconds, the salamandrid stopped whimpering and died. It was one of the fastest kill of a salamandrid that he had ever done, but he didn't really want to repeat this method again. Most of the parts of the salamandrid which could be foraged were wasted.