Free Web NovelChapter 16: Eric Algar
The smell arrived before anything else.
Miasma first, thick and low to the ground, the kind that clung to the inside of the nose and didn’t leave quickly. Then rot underneath it, something older and heavier. Then the sound, a wet rhythmic dragging from the maw of the giant salamander as it pushed through the undergrowth, following the trail of the creature it had been chasing through the forest.
Atop the tree, buried under a covering of branches he had arranged before taking position, Ethan slowed his breathing until it was barely there. His grip on the crossbow was firm without being tight. His eyes tracked the salamander’s approach without moving his head.
Below, the creature being chased hit the edge of the depression and registered what was ahead of it. The hollow dropping away, the uncertain ground at the lip of it. Its instinct ran the calculation in a fraction of a second.
It accelerated.
—whoosh
It launched itself upward, clearing the edge and angling to carry its body over the depression in one arc, intending to land on the far side and keep running.
The bolt left Ethan’s crossbow before the creature reached the peak of its arc.
It struck the neck cleanly, and the momentum that had been carrying the beast forward collapsed. It dropped into the hollow and hit the bottom hard, the sound of impact rolling up through the pit walls and dissipating into the surrounding trees.
The salamander stopped at the edge.
It stood there for a moment, its head low, something in its body language shifting. It had been following that creature through this section of forest for a while and it had just watched the chase end in a way it hadn’t caused. The ground ahead of it felt different. The air around the depression had a quality that its instincts were processing without being able to name.
Ethan didn’t give it time.
"Now!!"
—snap
The rope, buried under a thin layer of dead leaves and soil, pulled taut around the salamander’s rear leg in an instant. The tension held and then increased, a sustained drag that the salamander felt the moment it tried to step back from the edge.
It pulled against it.
Its head dropped to look at the thing around its leg, the confusion in its movement visible, a creature that had never encountered resistance it couldn’t understand. Then it registered Vlad.
Seven feet of armored figure standing at the base of the pit, radiating something that bypassed the salamander’s processing and landed directly in whatever part of a beast’s brain handled threat recognition. The blood energy coming off Vlad wasn’t loud. It was just present, the way something deeply dangerous was present, without needing to announce itself.
The salamander wanted away from it.
—shuu
—shuu
Two rounds of arrows drove into the trees on the opposite side of the rope, their trunks already compromised from Ethan’s earlier cuts. The collapse came quickly, the weight of the falling timber catching the salamander across the top of its head and shoulder, not enough to kill, but enough to break its footing entirely.
"Grawww!!"
It went down sideways, its legs losing the ground, the rope still tight around the leg as it was dragged toward the edge and over.
Ethan was already moving.
He dropped from the tree and descended at a controlled pace, crossbow up, his eyes on the beast the entire way down. freёwebnoѵel.com
—boom
—boom
—boom
Bolt after bolt drove into the salamander’s forehead as it fell, the shots landing in close succession, tracking the movement of its skull as it tumbled. Not killing blows. Suppression, keeping the creature’s nervous system occupied, preventing it from organizing a response before it hit the bottom.
It landed in the deepest section of the pit where the natural stone had broken upward into rough uneven spikes over years of pressure from below. The impact shook the walls of the hollow.
Ethan hit the ground at the edge of the pit and kept his crossbow leveled.
The beast moved.
It always moved. He had planned for that.
He kept the distance and kept firing, controlling the space between them, not letting the creature find its footing long enough to redirect its attention. Below him Vlad had already closed in, moving at the speed that consistently surprised everything it encountered, spear leveled and driving forward into the salamander’s chest.
The impact connected.
"Grawww!!"
The retaliation came immediately, a sweep of the salamander’s arm that caught Vlad across the torso and sent him backward several meters, his boots dragging lines into the pit floor before he stopped.
Ethan’s eyes narrowed.
A normal tier 9 beast couldn’t move Vlad like that. He had watched the stone bull go down. He had watched the white lion go down. None of them had pushed his summon back with that kind of force. Whatever this salamander was, it sat at a different point within the tier than the beasts he had faced before.
"Doesn’t matter. It’ll die anyway."
He said it without bluster, reaching into his coat for the specialized bolts he had prepared before entering the forest.
He had never operated on the assumption that things would go cleanly. Plans existed precisely because they didn’t. He had layered this engagement from the beginning, the trap, the rope, the falling trees, the suppressive fire. He even had an exit route mapped if the situation collapsed entirely. The bolts were the next layer.
He fitted them and raised the crossbow.
The moment they loaded, the bolts began pulling mana from the surrounding air, a cold glow spreading along the shafts as the inscription embedded in each one activated.
—shu
—shuu
—shuu
The first bolt landed on the salamander’s forearm. The cold spread immediately, not gradually, crystallizing outward from the impact point and encasing the limb in a shell of ice that locked the joint in place. The second caught the shoulder. The third the knee.
The salamander’s movement became labored. Each attempt to reposition dragged against the frozen sections, slowing the responses that had been fast enough to send Vlad backward.
Vlad came back in.
He moved low, driving the spear into the salamander’s side and dragging it, opening a long wound that bled freely. The beast swung at him and missed by a margin that wouldn’t have existed ten minutes ago. Vlad stepped clear, repositioned, and drove forward again.
The two of them worked the beast down steadily. Ethan controlling the distance and the suppression, Vlad forcing contact and accumulating damage. The salamander fought the whole way, its resistance never fully breaking, but the output kept dropping and the mistakes kept coming.
Then it was time.
—woosh
Vlad’s figure dropped low and accelerated, spear gripped in both hands, the tip angled for the throat, the killing angle, the final push that would close the last requirement.
"Who dares?!!"
The voice split the air from above, sharp and immediate, and a figure came down from the canopy with a sword braced downward, dropping into the pit and striking the ground between Vlad and the salamander with enough force to throw dust in every direction.
The figure straightened up.
Blood ran from a cut on his forehead, either from the descent or something before it, and his eyes when they found Ethan carried something that had already moved past irritation into something colder.
Ethan looked at him.
He recognized the face.
Eric Algar. Son of the clan leader. The one who had summoned the lesser drake at the awakening ritual while every elder in the courtyard lost their composure with excitement.
He was here.
