Chapter 170: Storm Scar Vulture

Before Jaxir could complain any further, a sharp cry split through the cloudy sky and something black tore past the cliff face hard enough to drag a wake of wind behind it.

His head snapped toward the blur just in time to catch the spread of enormous wings before the creature disappeared into the mist. Jaxir stared after it for a moment, then released a long sigh.

He looked down at what little ground he actually had to work with and immediately disliked the situation even more. The old tree jutting from the cliff was large compared to anything that should’ve been growing sideways out of bare stone, but the main trunk was barely three meters from the cliff to its broken end, with two branches extending another meter or so to either side. At roughly a foot and a half thick, it gave him somewhere to stand, but not somewhere to dodge.

The bird called again from somewhere above the clouds, and Jaxir finally caught sight of it turning for another pass. Its wings opened as it banked, stretching nearly the entire three-meter length of the tree beneath him. He focused on it before the creature could disappear again.

Name: Storm Scar Vulture (Elite)

Level: 25

"Of course."

The vulture tucked one wing and dropped, accelerating toward him while the wind around its body began to howl. Jaxir waited until the last moment before stepping off the side of the tree, catching one of the lower branches with his free hand as the vulture swept through the space he’d just occupied. His staff came up at the same time and several Casts snapped after it.

They missed.

The vulture had already passed beyond the angle Jaxir could comfortably track, and the Casts flew into the violent air behind it before the wind ripped their structure apart. Jaxir hung there for another second while his robes snapped against the cliff face, then hauled himself back onto the trunk.

"Goddammit."

He crouched low and watched the vulture climb through the clouds again, but this time he didn’t bother preparing another immediate attack. There were too many problems with this fight that had nothing to do with whether he could hurt the creature. The first one was annoyingly obvious.

What stopped it from simply leaving?

Jaxir could dodge every swoop perfectly and land an attack every time it passed, but none of that mattered if the vulture decided it had taken enough damage and flew somewhere he couldn’t follow.

He didn’t have some convenient Aggro Ability that would force an Elite twenty-five Levels high in the sky to keep throwing itself at him. Once it decided the fight wasn’t worth continuing, he would be standing on a tree yelling at clouds.

The second problem was regeneration.

If the vulture had any meaningful HP recovery, then the time between each pass could erase whatever little damage Jaxir managed to deal. It could circle for minutes if it wanted, recover, and only return whenever the advantage shifted back in its favor. Trying to kill something that completely controlled when each exchange happened sounded miserable.

Jaxir’s gaze followed the direction the vulture had disappeared.

"It has to have a nest."

That was the only location the creature had a reason to defend instead of simply abandoning the fight, which meant getting there would solve at least one of his problems. Unfortunately, a nest belonging to an Elite vulture that lived on top of a cliff was unlikely to be conveniently located somewhere safe and flat. Jaxir glanced upward at the wall beside him and made a deicision.

He opened his Luxy connection.

The elderly merchant appeared a moment later, and her expression changed almost immediately when she took in the cliff, the clouds, and the empty space beneath Jaxir’s feet.

"What kind of hell have you summoned me into this time?"

"We don’t have time." Jaxir opened her inventory before she could build momentum. "I need three dozen Twinkle Step Vestigem Cards."

Luxy’s mouth opened, likely to complain about the fact that he had apparently called her onto the side of a cliff. Jaxir completed the purchase before she could say anything more, and thirty-six cards transferred into his Inventory. The vulture screamed somewhere overhead.

Luxy vanished.

Jaxir stared at the empty space where she’d been, then slowly looked upward.

"Rude." He pulled out one of the cards before deciding that whatever divine merchant rules had just dragged her away were probably the least important part of his current situation.

The Twinkle Step card activated between his fingers, its circuits flashing before the familiar attraction spread through his body. Jaxir planted one boot against the cliff face and felt the pull immediately take hold, enough that he could shift his weight forward without falling away from the stone. He pushed off the tree and started climbing.

The card didn’t make him faster, but speed wasn’t the problem when his hands and feet no longer needed proper holds to keep moving upward. Jaxir ran along sections of nearly vertical rock, using protrusions where they existed and simply sticking to the wall for the short stretches where they didn’t. The old tree quickly disappeared beneath him.

The wind became worse as he climbed.

At first it came in uneven gusts that pressed against his back or tugged at his robes, but every few meters upward seemed to make the air more violent. Jaxir lowered his body closer to the cliff and kept moving, trusting the Twinkle attraction to hold while he searched the stone above for any sign of the nest. Another shriek echoed through the clouds.

The vulture still hadn’t attacked.

Jaxir climbed higher until the mist began thinning around him, and for the first time he thought he could make out the darker shape of an overhang somewhere above. If the creature had built its nest anywhere around here, that looked like the most likely place. He shifted toward it.

A wall of wind hit him from the side.

Jaxir’s body ripped away from the cliff before he could react, the Twinkle Step attraction stretching for an instant and then breaking as the force overwhelmed it. His stomach lurched as the stone wall spun past him and he began tumbling through open air. Only then did he understand what the worsening wind actually meant.

Twinkle Step wasn’t strong enough.

The attraction could hold him to ordinary surfaces, but it wasn’t some absolute gravitational lock, and the winds higher up the cliff were already stronger than the card could resist. If the nest was above him, getting closer would only mean climbing into even worse currents. Jaxir twisted in the air while the cliff rushed past.

"...Goddammit."