Chapter 245: The Hunt for the Air Serpent

A ceaseless hum filled the spacious hall of the Hunters' Guild in the Kingdom of Nellis. Dozens of adventurers chatted away, slammed mugs of frothy ale onto oak tables, and constantly crowded around the massive quest board, sifting through fresh bounties.

​Noah stood before the high, polished registration counter, silently watching the girl in the formal uniform. For a second, the noise around him seemed to fade, and images of the past surfaced in his memory:

​The daytime wind rustled through the treetops. On the ground before Noah, barely breathing from fear, lay two adventurers who had come here for the green crystal.

​"Hold on," Noah said, measuring them with a cold stare. "Who gives you these quests, and why are you looking for this crystal?"

​"T-the Guild!" one of the mercenaries stammered out, shrinking under his gaze.

​"What is a guild?" Noah asked.

​"The Hunters' Guild..." the second guy explained with a trembling voice, swallowing nervously. "It's a place where people take quests, complete them, and get paid for it."

​"Can you find strong monsters there?"

​"Yes... yes, of course you can," the guy said nervously.

​"Show me this place."

"Sorry... but it's too far from here," the mercenaries said, but upon meeting Noah's eyes, they immediately relented and pointed:

​"We... we can point you in the right direction!"

​They hurriedly led him to a wide trail and gestured forward:

​"Just follow this path straight ahead, and eventually, you'll reach the Kingdom of Nellis."

​The memory faded, and Noah was back at the counter. The girl behind the partition smiled warmly, tucking a stray curl behind her ear:

​"Hello! My name is Mary. Would you like to register or collect a bounty?"

​"Register," Noah replied in an even tone.

​"Alright. Your name, please?"

​"Noah."

​Mary carefully lowered her quill to the thick parchment, wrote the first letter, and paused, looking up:

​"Noah... and your last name?"

​"Just Noah."

​"Alright..." Mary quickly finished writing the name. "What is your class?"

​"Swordsman," he stated without hesitation.

​The girl spent another few seconds marking the paperwork, then pulled a small brown tag made of treated wood and metal from a bottom drawer. Swiping her palm over it with a sealing spell, she handed it across the counter.

​"Congratulations, you're registered! Your current rank is E."

​Before Mary could even lower her hand, Noah pulled out a flyer he’d already ripped from the wall and placed it right in front of her:

​"I want to take this one."

​Mary glanced at the flyer, and the smile instantly froze on her face. A single, large letter glared red at the top of the page: S.

​"I'm sorry..." the girl smiled, embarrassed and a little strained. "But you can't take this quest just yet, as you haven't reached the required rank."

​"Why not?" Noah calmly cut her off. "Why can't I just take it?"

​"Well... the Guild won't be able to guarantee your safety in that case," Mary tried to explain gently. "It's better to rank up slowly, do simple errands, and then..."

​"If I can take it, then fine," Noah cut her off again.

​He snatched the flyer off the counter, turned around, and headed for the exit.

​"Wait!" Mary cried out, leaning forward over the counter. "Let's at least find you a party!"

​Noah didn't look back, continuing straight for the open doors. Mary just sighed heavily and slumped back into her chair.

​Stepping out of the Guild building and onto the bustling street, Noah unfolded the paper on the go and began reading the lines.

​At the very top was a drawing: a white creature with a long, scaly body and blazing, bright-blue eyes.

​Below it were a few sparse lines of description:

​Creature: Air Serpent

Habitat: The highlands of the "Eternal Mountains" zone. Dwells in a giant tunnel-like cave connecting the mountain peaks.

Abilities: Unknown

Age: Unknown

Potential: Unknown

​His fingers clenched into a fist, crumpling the paper with a dry crunch.

​He had already taken a sharp step forward, ready to dash off, but suddenly froze mid-stride. It took him a couple of seconds to realize a simple fact: he had no idea which way these mountains were.

​Noah looked around and stepped toward a random passerby—a middle-aged man in a simple city doublet.

​"Where are the Eternal Mountains?" Noah demanded without any greetings.

​The man flinched in surprise, gave the strange youth a bewildered look, and said:

​"Yeah... I know where they are. But why would you go there?"

​"Just tell me," Noah interrupted.

​"No problem," the townsman muttered, pointing down the street. "Go straight from here, leave the city, and you'll pass a massive lake. Cross it, and right after a deep ravine, the Eternal Mountains begin."

​The man opened his mouth to add something about how dangerous it was, but a gust of wind whipped the tails of his coat.

​The townsman blinked and turned—but there was no one beside him anymore. He looked around, shrugged, and trudged on about his business.

​Meanwhile, Noah was already sprinting at full speed. The buildings of Nellis were instantly replaced by the forest, and then the expanse of a massive lake opened up before him.

​Fifteen minutes passed. Noah's feet barely touched the shoreline pebbles, and his blistering speed sent high sprays of water tearing across the surface.

​Another ten minutes of his relentless dash—and the ground beneath his feet abruptly gave way. A deep, dark abyss stretched out before him. Without losing a second, he pushed off the very edge of the rocky ledge, effortlessly cleared the chasm, and landed on the opposite side.

​Lifting his head, Noah held his breath.

​The "Eternal Mountains" zone sprawled out before him. These were ridges of giant, snow-capped peaks, their sharp summits piercing the sky.

​Noah gripped the hilt of his sword and fixed his gaze upward—all that was left was to find that cave.

​He immediately bolted up the rocky slopes. The higher he climbed, the harsher the frost became. The wind lashed his face with a whistle, and the temperature dropped below freezing, but Noah didn't give a damn about the biting cold.

​Local beasts—white-furred winter wolves and hunched snow goblins with bone spears—kept leaping out from snowdrifts and frosted ravines. But Noah didn't even slow his pace.

​Short, lightning-fast swings of his sword sliced the monsters out of the air before they could even register his presence. The creatures' blood froze right in mid-air, while Noah was already dozens of meters higher up.

​A few minutes later, he conquered the final steep incline and burst onto the very summit of the central peak.

​Before him, stretching across the gaps between the crags, was a massive, tunnel-like passage. From the outside, the cave looked as if it were forged from translucent ice, shimmering with a faint blue glow.

​Noah stepped under the icy archway without hesitation. Inside, there was a ringing silence. The walls gleamed with a smooth crust, and the air was so crisp that his breath instantly turned into thick steam.

​Is this really an Air Serpent? flashed through Noah's mind.

​Before he could even take ten steps inside, Noah felt the air ahead compress into an ultra-dense mass.

​Noah instantly tensed his muscles, intending to dodge and step off the attack line, but the solid blast of wind was faster.

​B-A-A-A-M!

​The massive, pressurized stream of air slammed squarely into Noah with crushing force.

​The shockwave instantly blasted him out of the tunnel. Noah flew out of the cave, shot across the open gap between the peaks, and smashed into the next mountain along the ridge with a deafening thud.

​The bedrock gave way: Noah crashed deep into the cliffside, leaving a massive crater in his wake.

​Forcing his eyes open through the dust cloud, Noah immediately focused his vision. A second, equally dense blast of air was already screaming across the chasm right at him, carving through space.

​Noah kicked off the shattered guts of the cliff and launched himself head-on into the incoming attack.

​He slammed right into the center of the wind stream. The invisible sharp edges of the compressed air shredded his clothes, carving deep cuts into his skin, and threw Noah back once again.

​He violently crashed into the exact same mountain just a bit lower, carving out yet another deep crater in its surface.

​Noah quickly got to his feet amidst the crumbling rocks, wiped a scrape on his chin with the back of his hand, and hissed through his teeth:

​"Damn it..."

​He locked his eyes forward, toward the icy passage.

​There, wrapping its giant body around the entire exterior of the pale blue tunnel, was the Air Serpent itself. Its snow-white scales glinted, and its blazing blue eyes were fixated on Noah.

​Staring at the beast, Noah could no longer hold back the grin tearing across his face—nor did he want to.

​Suddenly, a squall of transparent blades swirled around him. He burst into motion, dodging the strikes with a couple of lightning-fast dashes.

​The air blades shattered the crags behind him with a roar, but Noah was already instantly standing on the beast's spine, right at the base of its long tail. He drew his sword and delivered a sweeping downward strike, intending to cleave through the scales.

​But the blade jammed dead just two inches from the monster's body. A continuous, ultra-dense armor of pressurized air swirled around the Air Serpent's torso, completely absorbing the force of the physical blow.

​Before Noah could recover his balance, the tail whipped sharply upward.

​A massive updraft caught Noah, spun him at terrifying speed, and launched him high into the sky.

​Now in free-fall among the clouds, Noah felt the dense air around him rapidly compressing. Invisible constraints wrapped around his body, intent on crushing his ribs and internal organs mid-flight.

​Noah gripped the hilt tight. Tensing his body, he pumped his blood into his right arm. His forearm muscles swelled, and thick veins bulged under his skin.

​SLASH!

​Noah swung his sword. The slashes that erupted from his blade cleaved through the vise of compressed air, shattering the trap.

​Noah then landed hard on a rocky cornice, absorbing the momentum of his fall, and immediately rolled into a series of evasions—another barrage of air blades crashed loudly into the spot he had just occupied.

​Stone exploded into fine dust. Noah nimbly spun through the incoming strikes, forcing the blood to boil in his right arm once more. Pushing off the cliff edge with brutal force, he launched himself straight at the Air Serpent's protected neck.

​WHOOSH!

​Noah drew back his blade and thrust it straight at the beast's throat.

​The air barrier took the hit, trying to halt the blade, but his slashes punched through the defense.

​Noah's slashes pierced the compressed air and tore a deep gash through the scales on the Serpent's neck. Dark blood spurted from the wound in a thick stream.

​The Air Serpent surged upward and threw its head back, letting out a deafening roar of pain that shook the icy peaks.

​The Serpent shot high above the peaks. Its colossal body levitated in the freezing sky: its tail dangled over the abyss, while its horned head with blazing blue eyes towered over the highest crag.

​It opened its maw wide, and a concentrated echo of air erupted from within. The shockwave reached Noah in fractions of a second, deafening him and paralyzing his nervous system for a brief moment.

​Noah shook his head violently, throwing off the stupor, just in time to see another colossal torrent of air rushing straight at him.

​He sliced it in half with his sword and, pushing off the cliffside with everything he had, vaulted straight toward the hovering Serpent's neck at full speed.

​Noah readied his blade for the finishing blow, but mere inches from the scales, his strike was dead-stopped in mid-air once again. Noah found himself literally suspended in the invisible barrier, floating right in front of the Serpent's snout.

​Feeling a new wave building inside the barrier, Noah pivoted: he yanked his sword free, slipped behind the Serpent, and drove the tip into the scruff of its neck from his twisted position.

​The blade halted against the dense layer of air once more. The Serpent whipped its head around, intending to devour Noah whole, but in that very second, the delayed slashes manifested right inside the protective field.

​The compressed air around the beast's neck tore apart with a screech. Noah's slashes dug deep into the flesh, leaving deep, bleeding cross and diamond-shaped wounds across the Serpent's scales.

​The Serpent let out a wild shriek. Noah backflipped away, but as he fell, he managed to snag his blade into the air layer right by the beast's tail.

​WH-O-O-OSH!

​Noah hung over the abyss by his right arm alone, tightly gripping the hilt embedded in the monster's dense aura. The Serpent desperately tried to shake him off, spinning in an erratic frenzy.

​A hurricane-force wind battered Noah right in the face with such power that he had to squeeze his eyes shut, pouring all his strength into keeping the blade anchored in the thinning protective shell.

​With a deafening crack, the Serpent crashed heavily onto the mountain peak, crushing boulders beneath its weight. Noah was thrown from its tail and instantly sprang to his feet.

​However, the wounds on the Serpent's neck began to close right before his eyes at an incredible speed. Hissing angrily, the beast grew even more aggressive. A chaotic ring of hundreds of spinning air blades instantly materialized around its body.

​Noah tried to lunge forward but stopped dead, realizing that getting close was impossible—the spinning blades would simply shred him to pieces.

​A gigantic air needle took shape directly above Noah's head. With a deafening hum, it plummeted, spearing into the exact spot where he stood.

​B-O-O-OM!

​Noah vanished from beneath the strike in a fraction of a second, appearing right in front of the Serpent's snout.

​"A-a-a-a-a!" With a savage scream, Noah unleashed a barrage of chaotic strikes.

​The slashes shredded the vortex shield, broke open the healed wounds, and covered the beast's entire body from snout to tail in a solid grid. In a split second, the Serpent was riddled with hundreds of deep cuts.

​The monster recoiled in horror. Suddenly, its snow-white scales instantly shifted to dark gray, and every single wound on its body regenerated on the spot.

​Changing form, the Serpent triggered a colossal shift in air pressure. Dozens of mini-tornadoes erupted all across the Eternal Mountains, merging within seconds into several massive Hurricanes.

​The tornadoes easily began tearing away entire cliffs, pulling stone boulders and blocks of ice into a giant maelstrom that engulfed the entire mountain ridge.

​Noah stood in the dead center of this storm. The wind ripped at his clothes, mountains were crumbling all around him, and with his eyes wide open, he gripped his sword and said quietly:

​"Finally, you're taking me seriously..."