Chapter 388 Mach Speed
"What do we do Dave?" Flanker asked, he had just came back with a group of undead from a dungeon raid, with a dungeon core in hand. The dungeons inside the Qin territory were of course of low level, not to threaten the people living inside it. The dungeon would be usually combed thanks to the Qin army and provide safety for everyone inside the territory. With Dave manipulating such sites, it was bound to cause a lot of trouble for the Kingdom.
"We need to take down the riders," Dave said as he glanced up. Two Wyverns flew around the camp. They had spotted the undead, but for some reason, they remained flying above arrow range and kept watch on the group.
"In case you didn't notice, we can't, and the only undead able of flight was the Tengu and he already left with Mercy." Flanker said.
"How did you know that?" Dave said in a smile.
"Uh, we're in a party man, we share intel. Anyway how are you planning on dealing with those?" Flanker asked.
"I'll do it myself." Dave grinned once again.
He looked up, then inspected his skill panel. [Demonic Ascension] had been off cooldown for a while now, he could use it to get to the skies.
Dave used the skill, and almost immediately, red lightning crackled around him. Dirt and small pebbles flew up all around Dave, defying gravity thanks to the monstrous demonic energy roaring around Dave.
His back sprouted two raven wings, quite similar to the tengu's, but much wider, broader and stronger. His helmet shuddered, two horns emerged out of his forehead giving him an alien look. Finally, his muscles pumped with power and grew a fraction larger, enough to bend the armor he wore in several places as the growth of muscles was too much for the armor to bear.
His hands sprouted claws the sharpness of blades and the blue hue of his eyes under the visors of his helmet changed to a deep crimson.
Dave spoke a few words with a deep voice, "I'll be back." He looked up and flapped his wings once, closing the gap between him and the riders in matter of seconds.
The Wyvern riders didn't expect Dave to charge straight toward them. But they were veterans, and the moment of hesitation soon passed as the two Wyvern Riders split up, each leading its own winged lizard away from the other, in hope to cause Dave to chase only one while leaving the other to report the movement of the Undead army.
Dave growled under his breath, he needed to take down one of them as soon as possible and hope he had enough time to chase the second one. He didn't hesitate in choosing a rider to chase and kept hot on his tail.
Dave's occasional flap of wings caused gusts of wind to howl, propelling him forward in an impossible speed. The wyvern couldn't hope to match the winged demon in acceleration, it was a battle mount with a purpose of gathering intel and give aerial support whenever it could.
The wyvern was fast on its own, but weighed with the rider and the saddle, the beast was in less than optimal situation to contend with Dave's bursts of propulsion through the air.
Dave caught on to the Wyvern in seconds, he slashed with his claws at the rider only to discover that the man on the wyvern was wearing the blue and green armor of the Elite Forces of the Qin army.
Dave instinctively forced his hand away from the rider's head and moved away, thanks to his instinctive reaction, he noticed that the rider was not at all afraid of the chasing demon. He had drawn a slender sword and had swung it where Dave's wing was at, only a fraction of a second before.
If Dave had committed to the attack, the rider would have probably been hit, destabilized and thrown off his mount, but Dave would have paid for his overextension by losing the ability of flight, and at the same time being able to turn and chase the second rider who still continued unperturbed with his flight deeper toward the east.
Dave had to take another approach, the Elite Rider knew what it was doing, and it certainly had more experience in Arial combat.
"Alright, let's see how you'll manage these," Dave grumbled under his breath and then snapped his fingers.
Dozens upon dozens of infernal fireballs shaped like dragon skulls raced ahead of Dave like a meteor shower.
The rider turned his neck in time to see the barrage of fire balls coming toward him at breath taking speed. He hesitated for only a second before he pulled on the reins of his Wyvern, forcing the creature to wince and move up into the clouds. The skulls were relentless in their chase and followed after the Wyvern Rider as it flew up, Dave kept his pace after the skulls and followed the wyvern in the sky.
The rider was pretty nimble and experience as Dave had judged, he easily evaded the first fireballs and let them hurl in front of him as for the rest, he slashed his sword in the air, causing gales of wind to throw them off course, only for the skulls to change pace and fly back toward him.
The rider tugged on the wyvern's leach again and forced it to fly down, escaping the majority of the fireballs but one that struck the mount in the left wing.
The creature screeched in pain, the attack wasn't enough to cause it massive damage but it was enough to destabilize it and cause it to fall down in a whirling spin.
The Elite rider pulled on the leech of the mount even harder while whistling to the mount, the whistles, judged Dave were some sort of commands that the wyvern understood and began to balance itself.
Dave smiled and began waving his hand frantically, causing the fireballs to chase back the rider, only this time, Dave was the one guiding the missiles to a purpose.
The rider dodged a few skulls, but more came from his right flank forcing him to take the left. Dave kept the assault, until one of the skulls began waning and simply puffed to nothingness.
Dave understood that he didn't have much time, but he still had enough fireballs to pull off his plan.
Dave forced more of the fireballs to chase the rider, kept him moving left and then finally when Dave decided it was good enough, he sent the rest of the fireballs hurling toward the rider with unrelenting force.
The rider grunted and whistled some more, causing the wyvern to shrike louder and flap its wings even harder and faster.
Dave kept pace with the wyvern, a wide grin on his face. It was only after a minute of chase and after all of Dave's fireballs had extinguished, that the rider noticed what the demon flying behind him had done.
There was a small dot in the horizon, it was the second wyvern. Dave had led the Elite solider toward his ally in an effort to catch the two of them at once.
Realizing his mistake, the rider tried to pull the reins and move to another direction, Afterall the demon didn't have anymore of the fireballs.
However, what the rider didn't realize that Dave's plan wasn't as simple as guiding the wyvern to the other one. But he was actually attuning himself to the flight, speed of the wyvern and the reflexes and habits of the rider. He was learning from the Elite warrior and now Dave decided to go for the kill.
As Dave predicted in his mind, the rider would try to change direction, this would obviously slow him down. It was in Dave's calculations.
Dave flapped his wings as strong as he could, causing the air to thump in torment from the power of the raven wings on his back. The demonic undead flew like a bullet in the air, with enough speed to cause the rider to falter, he had realized far too late that he didn't have enough time to draw his sword and assault Dave, due to him forcing the wyvern to move out of trajectory. The rider was a sitting duck and he and Dave knew it.
Dave's claws struck twice, in an X shape, as he bolted toward and away from the wyvern. Only a second later, did Dave hear the loud screech of the wyvern and the hiss of a muffled screech from the rider. Turning his head, Dave saw the rider plummeting to the far ground, and the wyvern failing against gravity as his wing was torn.
Dave had struck the wyvern's wing and the strap that held the saddle to the mount. Causing the wyvern to lose balance, and without the saddle, the rider was easily thrown off.
Dave grinned as he moved ahead in blinding speed. The whole course of action took nothing less than two minutes, but Dave only had one more minute before he would lose the demonic ascension form, also, his [Spectral Dragon Skulls] skill was still on cooldown but what was worse, that If he wanted to catch up to the rider, judging form the distance between the two, it would take him the most of a minute to barely reach him.
Dave grunted and willed his wings to propel him forward as fast as they could.
He was far from the assistance of his troops, and he was making even more distance as he flew away from the safety of the undead arm. but if the second wyvern manages to send message of Dave's undead, it would thwart his plans. He had to risk it.
Dave continued chasing the wyvern, calculating the seconds it took to reach him. When the rider noticed Dave, he pulled out a long black bow, nocked an arrow and loosened it at Dave.
Dave veered away from the arrow and wanted to scream in frustration, not only would the arrows slow him down, if hit it would help the rider to escape the chase completely.
Dave had to keep going, he only had less than ten seconds before his skill was out of order, and if he wasn't down on the ground by then, Dave was going to experience skydiving without a parachute.
Dave grumbled under his breath and kept moving, when he saw the second arrow being nocked, Dave gritted his teeth and used [Stampede] he didn't know if it would function, but it was the only skill in his arsenal that would both add speed to his movement, and ignore crowd control effects. The mere stagger from the arrow in the Elite Warrior's hand would cause Dave to falter and lose balance. And help the warrior gain more distance.
However, what Dave didn't account for was by using [Stamped], his acceleration reached an extreme and he darted ahead with enough speed that he broke the sound barrier. The sudden acceleration caused Dave's heart to plummet to his belly as the distance between him and the rider was closed so fast that Dave had only a fraction of a second to use one skill before the two of them crashed into each other.
A white light shone from around Dave's demonic form, then there was a loud crash and tearing of bones and sinew.
Dave had used [Bastion] a second before the crash. He believed that his speed would slow down thanks to the impact, he thought that the wyvern would soften his impact. However, the reality of things was that thanks to Dave's impossible speed, the wyvern was no better than a silk thread trying to stop a rampaging elephant.
It was all it took for him to blast through the wyvern, spraying its limbs everywhere and raining a downpour of blood and flesh.
Dave's madden acceleration continued for a while until he noticed that he was gazing at the rapidly approaching ground.
Dave was falling head first toward the ground due to the time up on [Demonic Ascension], however he was still fast enough to feel dizzy as he fell toward a large patch of ground. Dave screamed loud enough to make little girls feel embarrassed, A Loud crash echoed and Dave felt his ears buzzing. A notification appeared in front of him.
-1,541,999 HP
***
Passive [Unyielding] activated!
You are immune from Death for 5 seconds.
You only have 1% of your HP Left.
Some of your armor received minor damage.
Please tend to your breastplate.
****
Dave dug himself from the ground, he had created a small human shaped crater in the rocks.
He pulled himself up, sat down and drew a healing potion from his bag. Dave held the potion to his mouth and began drinking.
As the red liquid funneled toward his mouth, Dave began to notice shapes beyond the red bottle of health. There was an enormous wall that looked like it spread from one side of the world to the other, and was high enough that it covered Dave and a lot more ground behind him in thick shade.
Dave looked up, and noticed several men pointing the tips of nocked arrows toward him.
His eyes wandered a bit as his mouth slowly spread wide open, there was an enormous flag flapping wildly in the wind. The symbol on the flag was easily dug out from Dave's memory, he had seen it before in the map he got from the Library of Nora.
Dave apparently, in his Mach-Speed stunt, had managed to cross all the way from the borders of the Qin Kingdom, to actually fall right outside the walls of its capital.
"Fuck me!"