Chapter 17: Pyromania

After the battle, the pair was collecting blood and absorbing it as much they could in as little time possible. The reason for that was that Jack knew the fallen bird lord would return and the fact that from their latest fights, they had gotten some much higher quality blood than with these mere danger leveled beasts.

Jack was aware that he was almost at the 3 start awakened level. Thus, he tried gaining something with the creatures, but it felt as if the low-levelled energy the danger beasts could provide was only a drop in the ocean.

When he was done, Jack went to Laura and asked:

''Hey, ready to move on? I don't want to spend too long in here. This place gives me the creeps.''

She nodded, and they left the monster corpses behind, resuming their ascent in the great tower.

Jack kept the lighter on in one hand, despite his mistake in the previous fight, for Laura's vision was too good of a scouting tool to give up on. After all, it didn't matter if the beasts saw him if she could catch a glimpse of them first.

The deeper they went in, the more refined the crude steps and cave looked, as if someone had actively transformed it in civilized territory, just to abandon it afterwards.

After a few hours of slow and cautious climbing, they reached another plateau, this time no beasts could be seen, so they took a few moments to analyze their surroundings since neither wanted to be surrounded.

''What an odd place.'' Laura thought as she analyzed what looked like some stone murals. In them, she could see the forms of what looked like some kind of humanoid species, bowing down to great waves approaching the stone pillars. ''Does this mean that a sentient species used to inhabit this dungeon? If so, what happened to them?''

Jack was also in a bad mood, as he had no memories of these beings in Silva's memories. Thanks to this, he guessed that they were much older than even the centuries old guardian of nature.

In the center of the level ground, a weird altar could be seen, it was entirely black and had waves carved all around it, it was even somewhat in the shape of a wave too.

''Why does a species which lived in an endless sky worship ancient waves? Was this dungeon portal an oceanic environment in old times?'' He thought.

Jack was curious about the weird temple like area, but refrained from thinking too hard on it.

''Not like this is going to help us survive in any way... I hope.''

They moved on and went to the stairs on the back of the room and up they went. The pair had no time or reason to explore the dangerous ruins and decipher the mysteries of this old civilization.

The walking up the stairs was getting tiring and monotonous, they were in there for hours and were already almost missing the deadly mushroom forest.

Finally, they reached another open area in between staircases, but this time it was much larger and much more dangerous as birds were littered around everywhere. This time, there were almost twenty of them, some of which were more advanced and were easily seven or eight-starred juvenile danger-leveled monsters. After noticing their presence, Jack immediately turned the lighter out and began to observe with the faint lights that seeped from cracks in one of the sides of the great area. "This must be part of the pillar wall."

In the end, the presence of so many beasts did not surprise him anymore, what did so was what this specif room had as a purpose. Lined on all walls and on a great area of the floor, were eggs, many eggs of many different sizes. This room was a hatchery and a weird one at that, as one would expect all eggs from the same species to be more or less the same size, but these had a wild variation of it. The smallest could fit in Jack's pocket, while the largest ones loomed over two meters tall.

''This confirms it, this place is the fallen bird's nest. And I sure as hell hope it doesn't come back to it often. But that changes nothing, at this point we might as well go deeper in as returning would take too long, and we might just meet the great monster on our way back ''

He also wondered how they were going to pass this area, for there were many monsters, and fighting while quite literally stepping on eggs didn't seem favorable.

The best plan Jack could think of would be to try and sneak past them or kill them one by one while using the eggs as cover. But in case things went wrong he did think of another plan, but it was a risky one as even the pair would be in danger.

For once, Laura really enjoyed the setting, especially now that she could see thanks to the light pouring through the crevices in the walls and her more cunning fighting technique. She looked at Jack and both nodded, understanding that this fight wasn't one to fight directly or play around.

They sneaked from cover to cover as silently as they could and soon were just upon the first of the creatures in the maze of eggs.

It hadn't noticed them, so they were able to get pretty close as it was facing the other way, the moment the other looked away Jack immediately slit its throat and hold its beak shut for it not to alert the other.

This is itself was proof of how much stronger he already was, as it is a feat of strength he wouldn't be capable of before his arrival in the forest.

He crouched backwards while pulling it back to hide the body, and when the other bird in the area looked back again, its kin was gone.

Finding it suspicious and feeling a slight smell of blood, the bird went to investigate, only to be greeted by an arrow in its eye.

It died instantly and silently.

They kept on at it until only half of the dangerous birds were left. Only seven weaklings and three stronger ones were still breathing.

This was when things began getting dicey, it was increasingly hard to hide the corpses of the birds as the patterns of the monster's patrols changed and moved around. Soon they would be found out and the frenzied fight would begin.

The pair was in an area where rows of eggs made a corridor of sorts with a few left turns and intersections.

Jack silently signaled it was time to move on and go all out if necessary.

Laura readied her bow while he sneaked closer to the first target, one of the stronger birds.

It was already big enough to occupy the entire small corridor they were in and behind it, a couple of weaklings stood by.

The ground was mushy and humid now, which had made it harder for him to get to it unnoticed, but he kept on going with no hesitation.

When he was closer to it, he sprang into motion, confident that Laura would take down the smaller one, consequently, he sought to strike as hard as he could to sever the beast's combat prowess.

When close enough, he signaled to go and sprang into action, jumping upward and landing on the monster back while impaling each wing to the floor with his blades.

As the beast was about to scream for help, he let go off his blades and used brute force to step ahead and seal shut the creature's beak.

But something went wrong as the other smaller beast hadn't been hit by an arrow like he expected, but instead turned around and began squealing in terror.

''Shit Laura, what happened?'' he unintentionally cursed and turned around to see the deaf girl was nowhere to be seen and in her place was another of the six-star bird monster, just looking at him.

Jack then stepped away from the impaled monster's beak.

''No use trying to keep its mouth shut anymore.'' he thought, going for his blades to finish the pinned down monster.

The moment he grabbed them, the bird was already loudly signaling for its companions to join in.

Instead of removing the impaling, he just went with it and used all of his strength to cut off both of its wings.

Next he jumped up and towards the weakest of the three foes. Which he managed to kill in a single piercing movement to the head while defending the beak of the angry wingless beast attacking him.

Concurrently, he defended and shouted, hoping nothing serious had happened to Laura.

''Laura! If you are hearing this, initiate that plan before more of them are attracted to me!''

Previously, when they were about to initiate their sneak attack, Laura, in the last moment, saw with her wide field of view that one of the stronger beasts was approaching. But it was too late to warn Jack, he was already far away and fully focused on the task at hand, also it's not like she could just shout him to abort the mission.

Therefore, she did what she thought best, she hid as to not reveal both of their locations and waited for the opportunity to strike from the darkness and was about to do so before hearing his shout to initiate their plan B.

''Is he a freaking pyromaniac or what?!'' Was her thought when she first heard of it, but now she understood that them killing all the opponents undetected was wishful thinking. She made sure no one was even remotely glancing her way before pulling out the lighter, especially since neither of them had any training in stealth.

Thus, she began lighting the weird protein like webs the embraced the eggs of the birds in hot, merciless fire. Then she went to another far from danger egg, and repeated the process.

Meanwhile, Jack now had to deal with 2 much more powerful beasts at once, and it was not easy as the uninjured one opened its wings and began flying above its injured counterpart. Despite a bit clumsy and hitting the walls and ceiling sometimes, the beasts were awfully coordinated and Jack had to fight beaks and talons coming from the front and above with only his two trusty swords.

The birds completely blocked his way of re-encountering Laura, and just a few minutes after a mad fight began, more of the weaker birds began showing up. However, the hero was in no way bothered, as he could smell and see the faint smoke flowing by the cave's ceiling.

''Finally! I guess that means she's okay and proceeding with the plan.'' He thought while taking some distance and raising some torn fabric up to his face as a mask.

''Now let's see who runs out of air first, you fuckers!'' He shouted and dashed to the wounded beast in an instant.

The flying one tried to intercept, but Jack used his nature affinity to collect water from the damp ground and bind the creature with it, giving him just enough time to finish the wounded one off.

It tried repelling its attacker with a flurry of mad gashes and beak pierces, but it was useless; the loss of blood made it slow, slower than Jack.

Jack parried all the attacks and went straight for the throat with his left blade, finally decapitating the monster, now there were only two stronger ones left and six weaklings.

Somewhere else in the great hall, Laura was starting one of her last fires. ''This should be enough to kill most of the birds making their way to Jack.''

As she returned to him and the last fire-starting spot, she noticed many smaller birds flailing and dying in the flames.

But what called her attention the most were the roars of another of the six-star coming from straight ahead.

She soon saw it burning and thrashing around, trying to put out the fires that were burning its feathers and skin, but in the process it only managed to burn brighter.

''This is an opportunity, and I doubt Jack will have the leeway to fight another strong one, especially one as dastardly and dangerous to close combat as the one aflame in front of me.'' So she redigged her bow once more and shot at it.

Simultaneously, Jack was fighting two smaller birds, one of which quickly caught fire and was out of the fight. He dodged the aerial attacks from the strongest one,it seemed to be at least a 7 star, while focusing on attacking the other small one.

He dashed backwards, purposefully giving the weakling an opening, before, its beak could even fully pierce his flesh, he had already cut it in half.

"Now it's just you and me, big guy!"

While waiting for another attack to come, Jack noticed it was beating its wings extra fast to not just accelerate but also to try and blow away some of the smoke that had accumulated on the upper part of the cave, poisoning it.

And that was its demise, for it was exactly what Jack was waiting for. Instead of waiting for the blow to come like he had been doing before, Jack jumped and activated his skill, only for it to be a dud this time.

But he didn't mind because he had the initiative, and Jack used it to open a deep gash in the beast's stomach, the intestines quickly spilling out and interfering with its flight.

Overwhelmed by the smoke, the beast finally dropped down, only to be greeted by the human who was throwing a flurry of attacks.

It was surprising the beast was even alive but its higher rank gave it superior resistances, however nothing could prepare it for the next blow as Jack activated his skill once more, this time being a hit.

The moment his blade made contact with the bird's blocking wings, a strange pushing sensation was felt in his hands.

Jack followed his instincts and let go of the blade that shot out of his hand like an arrow out of the bow and went straight through the bird's entire body, then stuck to the wall behind it.

They both killed their respective targets at the same time, ending the suddenly escalated combat.