The Forgotten Legacy

Sand Naga, that was the monster that Shaun was currently tracking and killing in the last area of the dungeon before the boss. They were half human and half snake. The upper body of the monsters were mostly human, much like the previous two monsters, although they had two fangs, a scaled body and piercing yellow eyes. The lower half was all snake and stretched behind them for nearly 10 metres.

Unlike the Harpy they were solitary monsters, always alone, generally camouflaged within the sand, annoying as all hell to find. The Naga had the ability to not only control the sand but move through it at incredible speeds. They could dive down into the sand for protection and when they did it became beyond frustrating to bring them back up and kill them.

Shaun had disliked moving on the sand almost instantly and instead had taken to spending most of his time in the air, only moving towards the ground when he located another of the slippery beasts. They had no long ranged attacks, which meant he was safe in the air, but as soon as he got close enough to attack them they would generally bury themselves and wait till he got close to the ground so he could use his earth affinity to pull them up like weeds before they would attack.

When they were out of the sand they were easy enough to kill, taking seconds to dispatch them, but between finding them, exposing them from their domains and then killing them, this area of the dungeon was beyond frustrating to him.

Having been hunting for over a week, he knew that he wasn’t even halfway through killing the Naga, he had been thinking of ways to draw them out, and so far he had come to no sure way to do so, but after losing his temper after several hours of finding no more monsters to kill he had had enough of wasting his time.

Shaun dropped to the ground in what felt like the centre of the Naga’s area, his patience run out and wanting nothing more than to be gone from this desert. The sun was constantly baring down on him, there was no shade and the only thing for kilometres around him was sand. He was done with it.

Standing on the sand, he pushed out with his earth affinity as far as he could, stretching his perception and power as far as possible until he felt his mind starting to ache. When he figured he had covered enough area he let his power loose, using his affinity to send waves of sand blasting out from where he stood. It was his version of an earthquake, however rather than solid earth the sand all around him was sent rolling in a blast of barely controlled power.

Again and again he pushed his power through the sand, disrupting the calm desert as far as he could sense. Shaun didn’t stop until he figured that the disturbance he was causing would alert everything in the entire area to his presence, only then did he stop.

Sitting on the ground, right at the centre of what was now a giant dune, he meditated. He had used a great deal of his power in wrecking havoc through these sands, and if his plan worked, hopefully every Naga in the dungeon would have felt it and would come to see what had caused the disruption to their home.

It took some time before he finally felt a Naga enter his area of perception, but he didn’t move a muscle. One Naga was not enough, he wanted all of them here before he made his move. The Naga he felt stopped some distance away from him and seemed to just wait, if only one of these monsters came to him he was going to be pissed, at this point he just wanted to the leader to show up. If it didn’t, he didn’t know if he was going to be able to finish the dungeon before the time was up and the event would start, which should be any day now.

It took some time, but eventually more Naga appeared, surrounding him from all directions but not approaching. When the count hit a dozen and the leader still didn’t show he felt defeated. Still, he waited. Soon the number hit two dozen, then three, all waited in the sands around him.

What felt like hours passed in silence, but in reality could have only been 30 minutes, eventually he felt a Naga enter his echo, one that was more powerful than the rest. He almost jumped up and went to greet it but stayed still and continued to watch through his skill as all of the Naga started to close in on his location.

Shaun continued to hold onto his control and awareness of the sands, though only very faintly so as not to alert the Naga that they had entered into his domain of control. Slowly, they had come in close enough that they would be able to attack him in seconds, although the same could be said for his own attacks if he so chose.

All at once the Nagas heads appeared from the sands around him, followed by their torsos and then their tails. The leader of the Naga, a monster twice the size of its kin was closest to him and stared him down after rising 10 metres into the air. Neither of them said anything, they just looked at each other, both parties refusing to look away.

Slowly Shaun smiled at the Naga, “Gotcha.”. The moment he uttered the word he took full control of the entire area and with half of his remaining mana he went wave after wave of magma through the sand.

The Naga had fallen into his trap like fools. Sand was earth, magma was but earth and fire. All he needed to do was add heat and his own affinity and mana and he turned the entire area into a lava pit. The only reason his plan worked was because they all came to him, doing this for a single Naga would have been a waste of power, but killing dozens of them at once? Worth it.

Screams of pain echoed around him as the Naga were all burned alive. They couldn’t escape as there was now no sand, just magma. They would not swim through it without being consumed by the inferno, yet they couldn’t escape as their tails had already been consumed by his element.

Wanting to speed up the process he summoned as many Magma slimes as he could, they travelled through the magma easy enough and spread themselves over the Naga that were already being consumed. The leader of the Naga attempted to attack him, being the largest and closest to him it might have been able to do some damage if he let it. Instead, he summoned his blades and went on the attack, carving large gashed through the large monster until it was unable to stand the onslaught of attacks both from his blades and then magma consuming it from below.

Killing the Naga like this had been easy enough, but the downside was that he wouldn’t get one skill level from it. That was the downside to having so many affinity, it would be so easy, to just ignore ones skills and kill everything with the elements. Doing that though would lead to subpar class upgrades, which in turn would reduce one’s strength in the long run considerably.

When it came to monsters like the Naga though, he had to weigh up the pros and cons, time was not on his side and hunting Naga with his skills would not help him in finishing the dungeon on time. As the last of the screams died out and the only living things left around him was his slimes he called them back and stopped pushing his mana into the magma.

Drawing the heat back in from the area around him he turned the area from molten earth to a solid platform, allowing him to sit and relax comfortably so he could recover all of the mana he had used.

He received the notifications from the kills and dismissed them without looking through them, nothing of interest cam with these kills and with no way to improve his current stats or skills before facing the beast that ruled this dungeon he looked at his status to see just how far he had grown by killing all of the Harpy and Arachne.

Status:

Name: Shaun Clermont

Race Human I

Level: 115

Class: [Advanced] Elemental Blade Slinger – Level 124

Profession: [Advanced] Elemental Creator – Level 107

Health Points:13671/13671

Stamina:14147/14147

Mana:6124/47103

Stats: (Available Points: 0)

Strength:

1303

Dexterity:

1394

Endurance:

1415

Vitality:

1367

Intelligence:

1346

Perception:

1327

Willpower:

1406

Soul:

4710

Affinity:

Basic: Earth, Fire, Nature, Air, Water

Advanced: Lightning, Ice, Magma

Titles:

New Initiate, Apex Predator, Planetary Forerunner, Elementalist, Expert Solo Dungeoneer, King, Impossible Feat. Mana Body, Mana Mind

Heritage:

Azreal’s Legacy (Hidden)

Skills:

Class:

[Advanced] Blade Mastery (Level 124), [Advanced] Earthen Echo (Level 111), [Advanced] Enhanced Mind (Level 125 – MAX), [Advanced] Elemental Strike (Level 121), [Advanced] Stone Skin (Level 33), [Advanced] Elemental Shift (Level 103), [Advanced] Elemental Summons (Level 116), [Advanced] Mirrored Elemental Blade (Level 104)

Profession:

[Advanced] Elemental Fusion (Level 111), [Advanced] Creators Control (Level 115), [Advanced] Element Coercion (Level 98), [Advanced] Meditation (Level 125 – MAX), [Epic] Mana Mastery (Level 28), [Advanced] Runic Scribe (Level 125 – MAX), [Advanced] Elemental Storage (Level 53), [Advanced] Creators Plan (Level 101), [Advanced] Creators Domain (Level 22)

Outside of Stone skin, a skill he never used anymore, his class skills were all past 100, many very close to reaching max. His creators plan skill had also increased a lot, mostly due to how many he had created and how many were being used in the settlement. It was an easy skill to raise, and a useful one in many ways.

He wouldn’t be hitting max level in all of his skills before the event but he was more than confident in being able to do so before the year was up. With the ease he had killed the D grade monsters now he felt ready to be able to take on the beast and claim his prize.

He was curious though as to what the beast was. Ever monster in the dungeon had been half animal half humanoid, he didn’t know if that was a theme in this dungeon and if the boss would follow that or if there was something else at play. He would find out soon enough though. All he needed to do now was recover all of his mana, rest so he was at peak performance and then travel to the centre mountain which stood tall and proud within the dungeon, homing the beast that managed to subdue all three of these tribes.