Hunting for cores (5)

Colliding against the lizard's heavy armor, sparks of lightening exploded at the points of impact between the arrows and the bone plates covering the beast. The electricity strands and sparks just splashed off the armor as if declaring their helplessness against such defensive might.

"This…"

All the faces immediately changed.

The inscribed arrows did not even scratch the plates; they only served to make the beast angrier.

HOWL!!!!

BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!!

As if expressing his anger, the beast started bounding at the ground with his sledgehammer-like tail, causing slight tremors of shock wave to spread out. And even making the very air vibrates.

Clenching his teeth, Gregory's facial muscle twitched, as his anger rose.

He couldn't forget the fact that he had lost an entire arm to one of these beasts. And he wanted to kill one of them himself.

Pulling out one of the inscribed javelins from the quiver on his back, he activated the inscription, and assumed the throwing posture.

Bzzzzzt!

Occasional sounds of electricity were emitted off the inscription, as arcs of lightening danced about, at the javelins pointy head, signaling the activation of the inscription.

Retreating back for an appropriate distance, Gregory rotated his life energy to its max output, causing a throbbing power to circulate, boosting up his physical capabilities to a great extent.

With his muscles bulging up like balloons, Gregory exploded with strength, and dashed forth to gain momentum.

AGHHHH!!

Gathering the momentum, Gregory twisting his body in a manner that allows him to transfer his running momentum into the spear, then, he threw the javelin with so much power that would have earned him a world record.

RIP!!

The javelin was shot out with so much force, that it did not just sail throw the wind, but it had practically tore its way through it with a highly concentrated, penetrative power that was enough to go through a light armored vehicle with no problem.

In almost no time, the javelin traversed the distance to the beast and arrived at him.

Having seen Gregory launch out the strongest ranged attack in the entire compound, everyone held their breath with nervousness, and their hearts tightened.

If this attack did not work, then…!

Howl!!!

Seeing the streaking attack came at him, the beast let out a howl of challenge, and then met the attack head on… with his forehead.

BANG!!

The moment the javelin came in contact with creature's helmet like exoskeleton, the lightening energy stored in it exploded, causing a splash of lightening sparks to bounce off the creature's armored head. As for the javelin… unable to penetrate not even a millimeter in, it immediately shattered into many pieces, bouncing off about, not inflicting any damage at all.

HOWLL!!!!

Blocking the attack, the beast let out a victorious cry, and bounded on the ground in triumph.

Gregory's expression at the moment was shocked dumb, and he just stood frozen, not believing the outcome.

It wasn't only him, but the rest too had a similar looks on their faces.

Not speaking of killing the beast, the strongest ranged attack they had did not even injure the beast, or even leave a scratch for that matter.

How could they not be shocked?

This wasn't just the javelin, but there was the inscription as well.

So far, and through many test outs, they learned that the inscription not only adds a paralyzing effect to the spears, but it also increases the penetrative power as well.

As for why they were sure of this. It was because in the last few weeks, they used metal bars as javelins, and it actually managed to kill the buffalo beasts.

Now it had to be said that before, no javelin other than the ones made of beast bones were able to even injure the buffalos, not to mention killing them.

However, and using these inscriptions on metal bars, Gregory actually managed to kill the buffalos with his throws! This taught them that these inscriptions weren't as simple as they had thought them to be.

Now however…

Snapping back to reality, Gregory gritted his teeth, and gave up on trying killing this beast alone.

As Gregory started considering calling for help, the beast started limping to the rocky area…

Having seen this development, the silent Brian started shouting out: "Attack now! Attack before the beast escapes to the rocky area!"

As everyone started feeling frantic, the beast stopped before he gets into the well protected area of boulders, then…

The beast did something that shocked everyone.

The beast did not escape or anything… after all, these enemies had yet to even land a single injury on him. But instead, he moved to a place that was filled with rocks that were protruding off the ground, and then, he swung his sledgehammer-like tail at a particularly large one among them.

BANG!!!!

Under the massive physical force that smashed at it, the rock was immediately uprooted from the ground, and then was crushed to variant sized rock shrapnel that flew at the stupefied crowd.

It was as if a large sized shotgun opened fire at them!

Countless rock shells rained at them, smashing at many of them and landing direct hits.

Gregory was Lv.2 warrior. So, the defensive power of his life energy protected him from the rock shrapnel shower. And the same went for Brian.

However, when it came to the other warriors… many of them received direct hits, and suffered variant injuries.

The lucky ones got hit with rocks that were small enough for their life energy to nullify the damage.

As for few others, they got the short end of the stick, as large rock shreds smashed right at them, and inflicted many wounds that ranged from mid to heavy.

Luckily, no one died, which was mainly thanks to their life energy protection helping them to withstand the damage.

If warriors with ignition percents below 50% had come here, then there'd be many dead people around here by now, luckily, this was not the case.

Ramie, lance, Neil, and the other two warriors, stood in the distance. So, they got enough time to throw themselves to the ground and avoid the rock shower. Thus, none of them was injured at all.

Turning to check on the rest behind him, Gregory had a very dark expression right now.

This beast was a normal beast and not a magical one. More ever, he was crippled. As such, they did not expect any ranged attacks in this battle. But now…!

This move was beyond expectations, which lead to this outcome.

It wasn't only Gregory who had an ugly expression, but so was Brian.

They could see that one of the warriors with ignition percent of 94% was sitting on the ground, dazed, as he stared at his shattered leg.

This warrior was a youth, yet to even reach 20s of his age, and he had absorbed only few cores to reach this percent, which meant that he had a talent enough to push him into becoming Lv.2 without a problem.

Now however… he was sitting on the ground while staring at his shattered leg. Evidently, he was in a state of shock, not willing to believe that he had just turned into a cripple

With his high ignition percent of life energy, his defensive power was enough to absorb most of the damage. Unfortunately for him, the rock shrapnel that came at him was big enough to produce a crushing force beyond his defensive capabilities. As such, the power of the impact was enough to completely shatter his leg bones' beyond repair.

Had he have a lower life energy ignition percent, then, the rock might have completely torn off his leg.

However, in the end, the result was still the same, and he'd become cripple anyway.

"Watch out! The beast is going to do it again!"

Suddenly, Brian's warning cry made everyone throw themselves on the ground, and put their hands on their head for protection.

BANG!!!

The beast smashed yet another rock at them, showering the area with rock shrapnel.

BANG!!!

BANG!!!

BANG!!!

The beast gave them no rest, and kept on using this type of attack again, again, and again.

Apparently, after seeing the effect, the beast was not going to stop before he completely annihilates the attackers.

Dismay clouded every ones features. It was as if they were soldiers in battlefield, being suppressed with enemy's fire, and unable to even lift their heads up.

On the ground, Gregory's entire face was convulsing with anger.

The beast was crippled, and was like a sitting target for their attacks yet… he still pushed them to this sorry state.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

The beast did not stop, or slow down, and maintained his bombardment on the area.

"Arghhh!"

Suddenly, one of the warriors was hit on his shoulder with a relatively large piece of shrapnel.

Evidently, it was large enough to severely injure him despite his life energy protection.

"This cannot continue any further…" Gregory realized that even staying down won't protect them from the rock bombardment. And if this was to continue, then their numbers would continually dwindle down, and with time, everyone would be injured to the point that none of them would be able to resist the beast once he comes to kill them.

Making up his mind, he shouted: "BRIAN! Plan B, NOW!!!"

Following which, Gregory stood up, and dashed to one side, while Brian dashed at the opposite.

In few moments, Gregory ran to the left side of the beast, and Brian ran toward the right side. Then, Gregory started throwing his javelins at the beast from the far left side, while Brian started throwing arrows from the right far side.

They did so to force the beast to stop his rock bombardment on the rest

It worked, as the beast realized that these two opponents were the most dangerous ones among the group. As such, he started throwing rocks at them in his baseball manner of attacks.

With their level 2 life energy, these attacks only caused numbing sensation or minor injuries, and nothing more, as their life energy was thicker and purer than the first level warriors.

Standing in the far left side of the beast, Gregory's javelins finally ran out, and from the looks of it, so did Brian's arrows.

However, the beast was still as vigorous as ever, and not even one scratch was inflicted on him.

Even though Gregory and Brian attacked every singles part of the beast that they could hit from this range, the result was still as disappointing as ever.

The two leaders now realized how foolish they were for thinking that weapons that were made from tier-1 beasts bones could be actually used to kill tier-2 beast specialized in defense.

Even though the inscription increased the penetrative power of these weapons… but the target was a beast specialized in defense. As such, they realized that this thought of theirs was too farfetched right from the beginning, and unrealistic.

Feeling bitter in his heart, Gregory finally submitted to reality. The second tier-2 core was definitely not going to be his, which meant that for a while, he would have to lower his head to Brian.

'Well… as long as the compound becomes safer for my people, I'll lower my head for him… Even if he took the third core and didn't give it to me.'

He could see a fire of ambition in Brian's eyes, and he couldn't help to think that after he takes this core and becomes stronger than him, he might not stick to his promise, and takes the following cores all for himself, to ensure his dominance over the compound.

However, if this would ensure a safer environment for the people in the compound, then he decided that he wouldn't mind to lower his head at all.

After a heavy sigh, Gregory shouted out: "RAMIEEE!!!!!" Then, he held his bone spear, and charged at the beast.

Having heard the shout, Brian's eyes gleamed, then, he charged at the beast from his direction.

Right now, both of the leaders dashed at the beast from two different directions.

The beast immediately let out a war cry, and he lifted his tail up, and prepared to squash the two attacking foes into a mush.

Reaching certain distance away from the beast, Brian shouted atop his lungs: "GLAAAAARE!!!!"

This was the signal!

At once, the beast's pupils dilated into two large moons, and the luster of life faded at once from his eyes, as he fell in a strange trance.

AHHHHH!!!

ARGHHH!!!!!

The two leaders traversed the distance to the beast in no time, and stabbed at the creature's hidden neck with all of their might.

Squash!

Squash!

With great difficulty, the two bone spears cut their way through the creature's neck, penetrating all the way to the other side.

The neck was not covered with thick, rigid armored bone plates like the other parts, making it the ideal spot to stab the creature. However, it was very short, and hidden between the head and the torso. As such, and considering the beast vigilance about it, it was hard to impossible for them to land a hit from a long range at such hidden area.

Now however, and considering the motionless state, the beast was a sitting duck, albeit for only a short while of time. As such, they drove their spears with their utmost strength into the neck, and caused a massive splatter of blood to gush at them, staining them red.

Having accomplished their goal, they immediately retreated backward, widening the distance, to avoid the beasts' retaliation.

Three second…

Four seconds…

Five seconds…

Six seconds…

Seven seconds…

Eight seconds…

However, the beast did not unleash his fury, and did not go rampant; he didn't make any sound at all…

Seconds afterward, the beast just released his muscles, and fell to the ground… motionless.

Just like that… they killed their first tier-2 beast…

…