Chapter 5: Chapter 4: Hunting for beasts

[In the forest]

Currently Darganth was flying over the treetops. Two days ago, he started hunting in this forest and today was the first time he found beasts that weren't known for their speed. While it was only a small group of apes, with the most powerful one being at the second order, he still attacked. Flying down at the moment one of them climbed high enough to be in reach for him without first having to stop to weave through the trees, he killed his prey with a single claw swipe.

Surprised by this sudden attack, the other apes weren't able to react. Using his opponents surprise, Darganth bit off the head of the nearest monkey. Readying himself to jump on the only second order ape, he noticed that they have started to react to his attack and stopped himself from jumping. While the surrounding apes and even their leader had no way to harm him, he wanted to ensure that non of his preys escaped.

When the apes noticed this short moment of hesitation they thought it to be fear. With a loud shout, the leader started charging towards Darganth, with the rest following closely behind. Seeing this reaction, Darganth started to gather mana in front of him. While he could not rely on his breath until his mana heart starts forming, he could still replicate its effect with magic.

Waiting for the leader to be close enough, he ducked below the punch and used the spikes on his back to cut into the apes side. While the spikes edges are only moderatly sharp, at least to a his claws and teeth, it was enough to cut through the skin and boned of the ape. Once his head was past the leader, Darganth cast the spell he had prepared.

In front of his head, a wave of flames manifested itself, washing over every ape besides the leader. Making sure that non of them was still alive, he turned back towards the leader. To his surprise, the damage he inflicted was larger than anticipated, with the ape already having received enough wounds that he would die if no healing magic was cast.

Waiting for a reaction, Darganth watched as his last prey tried to launch one last attack, just to collapse due to blood loss. Walking towards the corps, he found the reason for the apes collapse. While his attack made him loose much blood, there were traces of another recent fight with small pieces of ice still stuck in its back, small trickles of blood flowing out of the wounds. Realizing these to be the work of either a beast with elemental affinity or a mage, a rarity on the beast continent, he made the decision to try and find the attacker in the hopes of gaining even more power from them.

After eating the hearts of the apes, Darganth started to search for the ice user that attacked the apes. Because it would be hard to find a mage due to most being able to minimize their mana signature, he hoped it to be the work of an ice elemental beast. Starting to fly ever growing circles around the place where he encountered the apes, his senses picked up a group of beastmen moving through the forest.

Flying towards them, he started circling above them until they reached a spot where he could look through the treetops. On the ground below was a group of seven, covered in wounds. While unlikely that they were responsible as none of them looked like a mage, he still decided to listen to their conversation.

Casting a light magic spell to bend the light around him into an illusion that turns himself invisible, he flew down to them. Trailing them for around ten minutes, he noticed their wounds to be worse than he initially saw, with one of them having even lost an arm. While not noticeable, Darganth saw the traces of petrification directly above the cut. This combined with the poison two of the group were afflicted with made it likely that they were attacked by the basilisk the White Fang Clan had talked about. Realising that the basilisk was closer than he had thought, Darganth made a mental note to himself to watch out for it.

Following them for a bit longer, Darganth left once more only after nearly an hour. During this entire time none of the beastmen spoke, leaving him with no new information. Despite this slight setback, he once again went hunting, until he noticed a few hundred beasts being present near the mountain he where his cave is.

While the amount of beasts and monsters living at the foot of the mountain was larger than this, this number was distributed among different species. Flying back there to find out what caused this gathering, Darganth found that these presences were from bear-type beasts that were new there. Landing in front of his cave, he watched this new group clash with a small group of wolves.

When he saw one of the third order bears use ice shards to kill one of the wolves, he knew for certain that they were the group the apes came into conflict with. While their white fur with traces of blue indicated them to be beasts with an ice elemental affinity, it wasn't certain. This also sealed the fate of the wolves, as beast species with innate elements were normally stronger than those without.

While watching the fight, Darganth made plans to take out as many of the bears as possible. The first step to do this was to identify the peak first rank beasts among them, and at least get a rough estimate of the amount of advanced first rank beasts. The early first rank beasts held little significance, as they couldn't use their ice to any meaningful degree.

The advanced beasts were only a problem during close quarters combat, due to them lacking the power necessary to use their ice over distances. But the problem the third order bears presented was more than enough to warrant a cautious approach. Were there only early and advanced beasts among them they would have been easy picking for Darganth, who could simply attack from the air.

Thinking about the best way to attack them, he noticed the group making their way towards the mountain. Initially hoping that they would try to take over one of the caves, making them easy targets due to the narrow cave limiting their numbers, they instead made their way up the mountain. Once they reached about a quarter up the mountain, they split in multiple groups, with one of them continuing towards Darganth's cave. After twenty minutes, this group reached the area that Darganth's dragons fear encompassed, this area being affected by more than just a slight pressure like the foot of the mountain.

Despite the dragons fear here being intimidating for even a second rank beast, the bears continued onwards, emboldened by their numbers. Seeing this, Darganth took to the sky and started circling around the group, searching for a good target for his first strike. Intruding on a dragons territory was akin to insulting their pride, provoking the dragons wrath and nearly always resulting in the offenders death.

Despite the third order bears attacks, Darganth dived down, driving his claws through the neck of a second order bear. While his target had tried to save himself by forming an ice armor on his back, it was far too weak. The surrounding ice-bears quickly tried to avenge their fallen comrade, but with them being only at the first order, their attacks were easily parried. Whenever one of them left themselves too open after attacking, Darganth would retaliate.

Meanwhile the third order bears were constantly trying to hit Darganth, creating large masses of ice above him. Whenever one of those fell, Darganth would dodge by closing in on the nearest bear. Due to their line of sight being blocked, the attack would either fall onto an empty space, or hit the bear Darganth moved towards due to its larger size. While they were nearly a hundred when they made their way up here, even lead by two third order bears, the group started to loose their moral.

Backing away a few meters, they brought distance between themselves and Darganth, who was now surrounded by about twenty dead. Standing in the center of the circle his enemies formed, he waited for their next action. After a few seconds, the two at the peak first rank among them stepped forwards, forming icicles around them.

Copying this, but with metal, Darganth waited for them to strike. When the two launched their attack a few seconds later, he used the metal shards he had formed to strike the few projectiles that were flying towards his head, letting the rest shatter when they hit his scales. His projectiles in return dug into the flesh of his opponents, one even hitting one of the bears eyes. Howling in pain, his comrade charged at Darganth in fury, with the now one-eyed following close behind.

Creating a new set of projectiles, this time poison arrows, Darganth fired them towards the charging beasts. While they tried to intercept them with a new set of icicles, the arrows simply burst open upon hitting the ice and letting splashes of poison fly in the bears faces. Using their distraction from this, Darganth closed the distance, catching them of guard and using the momentum of their charge to his advantage.

The first of the two was hit by a claw to the right front leg, incapacitating it and making the bear fall. The second one managed to still lift his claw to attack, but Darganth tore open his throat. While the first was trying stand up again, Darganth cut through his neck, decapitating him.

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Faced with their two most powerful members dead, the remaining ice-bears started fleeing. Emptying his mana, Darganth fired a swarm of flaming spears their way, managing to half their numbers with most of those being hit and dying being at the first order. Ignoring the ones that escaped, Darganth started digging through the corpses around him, eating their hearts and letting their mana empower himself.

While he used a large part of the mana to refill his own mana pool, he still managed to bring his mana quality to the level that is expected of a second order aura user.

Now with full mana pool once more, Darganth flew towards the other groups. Finding the next group of ice bears was easy, with the presence of their mana being like a giant sign, giving their position to him. Wanting to catch as many of them in small groups before they found out something is wrong and regrouped, he attacked them with the intend of ending this battle as fast as possible.

Before they could even spot him, he teleported directly above this groups only third order member, killing him as fast as possible. While teleporting cost him quite a large portion of his mana, due to there being only one third order bear there was little risk. While the surrounding bears were stunned due to their surprise, Darganth started rampaging through their ranks while using wind aura to increase his speed and agility as much as possible.

Jumping from one target to the next, he became like a torrent of death for the group of bears. While they could have put up much more of a fight, the sudden nature of Darganth's attack lead to chaos among them and shortly thereafter a panicked flight. After about ten minutes of this slaughter, he had managed to kill another fifty bears, who served as further increase to his power.

By now his mana quantity had also reached high enough for him to qualify as a second order magician, while he was only a bit away from reaching the third order in aura. Despite the ease he had in this fight, he knew that this was still not enough. While he wasn't sure how many of them were second order beasts, once the bears regrouped they could pose a threat to him.

While thinking about this he flew once more, hoping to find some more before the groups managed to form up again. It didn't take long for him to find out that it was unlikely that there were still larger groups remaining, when he noticed that they formed a group of nearly a thousand by now, with all third order bears, besides those he had killed, being present.

Spending the next two hours picking off stragglers, most of whom had escaped one of his previous attacks, he managed to kill another fifteen of them. His rage over them daring to step into his territory without his approval had dispersed long ago, the power he could gain from them the only reason he still bothered with them. While watching them, he noticed a small goup consisting of most of the third order and some of the second order bears splitting from the rest of the group.

Walking towards him, they started firing ice projectiles towards him already from a long distance. Noticing the rest to be fleeing, Darganth made the decision to focus on those that presented themselves to him, instead of hunting after the rest. Flying towards a nearby hill with a few beats of his wings, he used the height advantage and cover it provided to reduce the angles projectiles had to reach him.

To conserve his mana, he refrained from using magic to return fire, he instead waited for his opponents to close in on him. While he was still hit occasionally, despite his advantageous position and constant dodging, the most these attacks did was scratch or knock loose some scales. While by no means as fast as Vampires or Trolls, a dragons regeneration was quite strong, with scales regrowing in just a few hours for high tier dragon species.

Once the bears were close enough, Daranth used his wings to reach one of them in the blink of an eye. Slashing down with his claws, the bear he chose as target blocked by jumping back after erecting an ice wall to slow the attack. Missing, Darganth changed his focus on another target, circumventing the ice blocking his path.

The bear he now attacked tried to jump away, but was still hit at the ribs. While not lethal the claw marks would take a while to heal and reduce his battle efficiency. The bears at the third order tried to hit Daranth with projectiles, but the packed nature of the current fight made this impossible without risking injuries to their comrades. This lead to only one salvo being fired, before they also started fighting in melee.

During the following ten minutes, the same pattern played on repeat, with the bears besieging Darganth, until he manages to find an opening and kill one or two of them. During most of this time he had a crazy smile on his face, enjoying his first real battle in this life.

During this time most of the second order bears have died by now, but this increased freedom allows the third order beasts to start using ice projectiles about a minute ago. This lead to Darganth being pressed into a corner, with even the first wounds forming on his body. While the wounds weren't that bad, he started to get annoyed. While he had expected a fight, something he quite enjoyed, by now he was forced to simply endure more and more attacks made out of ice.

With the fun in this fight being lost, he no longer saw a reason to continue and decided to retaliate with magic. Using time magic he stopped the time one the current salvo of ice shards and used space magic to reverse both the projectile and its momentum before letting them go once more. Seeing their own attacks first stop and then fly towards them, his opponents were too stunned to react in time.

While most of them had likely fought a large number of battles, both space and time magic were extremely rare, to the extend that the amount of beasts who had control over them was miniscule, with even fewer species specializing in them beyond the basics.

This was because in contrast to the other elements, an affinity above zero was not enough to use either space or time magic. Instead they both require an affinity of above twenty, high for most species as humans for example had an average affinity of ten, with one or two outliers somewhere between fifteen and twenty. While there are always exceptions, most species followed a similar pattern, with most affinities being at a species average and a few outliers. Of course the probybility for which element is such an outlier differed, but few species consistantly have either of the two elements as outlier.

Additionally both elements are lower than the average affinity for most species, with humans rarely having an affinity above five in either. While some races with innately high affinities have all the ability to use both, the increased power difference between each point between stronger affinities makes it less viable for them, despite them being more powerful than other elements at the same affinity.

This rarity was what stunned the bears, leaving them at the mercy of their own attacks. Watching from afar, Darganth noticed that about half of the third order bears survived this attack, but didn't continue his attack. Seeing him not attacking, these still living bears turned around and ran into the forest.

Waiting for them to be far enough away, Darganth let out a sigh. Using both a time stop and an advanced space application in the form of vector control left him with nearly no remaining mana. While he could have won the fight, he didn't want to take such a risk.

This was another reason why space and time magic wasn't used much, as even if someone has an affinity high enough, among lower ranks these two elements require far too much mana to be used consistently. Most started using them frequently only at the third rank, partially because by then the increase in affinity for all elements that comes with a higher magic rank would make them usable to most, even if only outside of combat.

Even for Darganth it would have been impossible to use these elements in his current state, if not for the perfect affinity he has with both despite most of his affinities dropping. Not that it worried him, as most living beings were born with lower affinities and they would grow until a certain age. For dragons, this was actually quite long, with the affinities of most high tier species growing until they turned fifty. Additionally the forming of his mana heart would boost his affinities by a lot at once.

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