The Forgotten Legacy

Upon awaking from his rest there was now only one thing left to do before the dungeon was done, that was to see what the beast was and kill it. The instructions had been clear for the dungeon, you needed to deal with all 3 leaders before killing the beast, which he had not only done but he had also killed off every single other monster in the dungeon he could find.

By his reckoning it would take a day or two to get close enough to the mountain to be able to get a sense of the beast and then a few more days to get to the exit once he had finished fighting, then adding on to that the extra days it would take to get himself to the E grade Settlement Crystal to teleport to the school, he would be cutting it pretty close to the event. Still, it was worth it in his eyes, he would have finished off every dungeon in the settlement with 6 months before the year was up.

The days passed quickly as he moved to the centre of the mountain, he was able to move uninterrupted and with nothing holding him back. When he did reach the mountain he moved slower, not wanting to disturb the beast if he could help it, not until he was ready.

At the top of the mountain he found a cave, which was easy enough to spot with his skill, inside of it he felt the beast through his echo. Creeping up slowly, not wanting to make a sound, he peered into the cave to try and get his eyes on the beast.

The beast seemed to be resting, but he recognised what it was immediately. The scales matched that of his armour, although almost white in colour. He identified it to make sure he was right.

**Adolescent Luna Wyrm – Level ???**

Holy shit, it’s an actual Wyrm.

“I can feel you staring, human.”

The moment Shaun heard the monster speak he shifted and moved as quickly as he could out from in front of the cave and back to the exit. As he moved he felt pressure build behind him and a beam of pale light followed him as he ran. He heard laughter follow him from the cave but he didn’t dare slow down.

He did not want to fight a Wyrm in a cave, he needed room to be able to move around and fight, not be stuck surrounded by walls, reduced down to minimal room to fight. The Wyrm seemed to have the same idea, as it too followed him out of the cave, although at a more leisurely pace than what Shaun went at.

He didn’t stop moving until he has a few hundred metres away from the cave entrance, only then did he turn and look back at the cave. The Wyrm had only just reached the edge of the mountain and only when it spread its wings and move into the air with one huge flap was he able to take in the full size of the beast.

The Wyrm’s body was the size of a bus, its wingspan was equal across as it was in length, if not slightly longer. Even though it had been labelled as an adolescent it was still much larger than he had expected. He felt the power emanating off of it, although he couldn’t see its level he knew, like himself, that in comparison to other monsters its level it would be labelled an elite monster.

Shaun had only a second before he would either need to flee or fight, this would be the strongest monster he had ever fought and he knew it would be no easy fight. Still, he wasn’t prepared to run in defeat, not yet at least.

He summoned as many mirror blades as he could at the same time he summoned six Zapian Eagles. His eagles wouldn’t be able to do much damage to the Wyrm, but the would be able to cause an annoyance, if not a distraction when he needed them to.

Just as the Wyrm covered half the distance to him in what felt like a blink of the eye he sent half of his swords directly towards the Wyrm at the same time he gave the order to his eagles to spread out and do what they could to the beast. At the same time the Wyrm released another breath of what felt like pure luna energy directly at the blades and him.

Not wanting to test the strength of such an attack, he shifted into the air and moved as quickly as he could to the right. The luna beam that the Wyrm had sent his way vaporised his blades and if he had been a split second slower would have taken him out as well.

Shaun resummoned the blades that had bene destroyed by the attack and sent them, as well as the others around him in a circle around the Wyrm at a speed that made it look like there was a physical circle around the Wyrm.

Shaun saw the Wyrm look at his swords with curiosity for just a moment before it let out a laugh and with another great flap of its wings released a wave of energy from its body that knocked the swords of course and nearly broke through Shaun’s connection to them.

It nearly fractured his mind to do so, but he was able to keep all the blades under his control, which to the Wyrms annoyance, allowed him to pull them all back into position, slowly tightening the circle of blades around it.

The distraction allowed three of his eagles to close in and let loose lightning attacks on the Wyrm. The beast looked at them with little more than a dismissive stare but that was all Shaun needed to send one of his blades from the circle and have it explode moments before it would hit the Wyrms body in a giant blast of fire.

The explosion wouldn’t harm the Wyrm, but it did provide him cover to shift again and appear within the middle of the explosion, unseen by the Wyrm. From the centre of the explosion he launched himself at the Wyrm and with Death’s Kiss he sent out his strongest attack against the beasts chest, hoping that the attack would be strong enough to not only hurt it, but cut through its scales and inflict his first curse upon the great beast.

The moment his sword made contact with the Wyrm he felt the resistance of the scales, even with a magma strike lasing the blade he barely felt the attack doing anything against the scales. Letting out a grunt of frustration, knowing the Wyrm would retaliate at any second, he pushed more mana into the blade and with all the strength he could muster he sliced down with Death’s Kiss, using the blades curve to allow his momentum to put further pressure on the scales.

Just as he thought his attack would fail he felt the scales under the blade crack but yet his sword didn’t puncture through to flesh. Taking advantage of his position, even though he knew that he would be leaving himself open to attack, he reversed his grip on his sword and with the smaller edge of the blade stabbed directly towards the cracked scales and felt the blade puncture through to the hilt of his sword.

Before he could retreat away from the Wyrm he felt the beats tail hit him from the side, sending him flying out of range of the Wyrm. A second later he felt the Wyrm release a luna beam in his direction and without thinking he dissolved into a blast of lightning, moving him further away from the beast and safely behind it.

Taking stock of his injury, the Wyrms tail had not managed to break through his own Wyrm armour, but the force of the blow had done more damage to his ribs and internals than any other monster before.

Rather than heal himself, not wanting to risk using mana to heal himself on an injury that wouldn’t kill him, he instead used his mind skill to block out the pain. The Wyrm turned to look at him and even though this was the first time fighting a Wyrm he knew that the beast was pissed, he could see it written on its face and from the aura leaking from its body.

Shaun knew that this fight was going to be one of attrition, each of them was able to fight the other on a mostly equal footing, but Shaun was able to dodge the attacks of the Wyrm and to attack the Wyrm he was needing to use a lot of his mana. Yet if he needed to Shaun had plenty of potions stashed away, and so far the Wyrm had shown no ability to heal itself, let alone remove the curse that Shaun had left behind with his sword.

Shaun let the Wyrm attack him twice more with its luna beam, each time he moved out of the way by shifting into either the air or lightning. After the second attack, Shaun sent three of his mirror blades at the Wyrm, exploding each one as he had the first. Rather than appear from within the explosions, as the Wyrm expected, he shifted into a bolt of lightning, landing on its back, and like the first time used Death’s Kiss to crack through the scales and then leave another curse on the beast.

The roar that the Wyrm let out this time would have been heard throughout the dungeon, and if he was to guess, this would have been a call to every other monster in the dungeon to enter the fight, probably having already gathered when he crossed into the mountain range. But there was no other monsters left, the dungeon had been clear that the leaders had to be killed for any chance of success, and fighting all of the monsters as well as the Wyrm would have been impossible for anyone unless they outranked the dungeon by at least a grade.

The fight continued like this for three more attacks, he had to summon more mirror blades, so many that he had lost count. He also ended up summoning more eagles. During this Shaun had done something he hadn’t done in so long that he was almost disappointed in himself, he had drunk not one but two mana potions to help him recover the ridiculous amount of mana he was using in this fight.

This battle was slowly falling in Shaun’s favour, the Wyrm was getting slower, its attacks not as strong and it was getting sloppy. His curse’s were doing their thing and sapping the life from the beast. The longer they fought the worse it got from the Wyrm and the easier it was for Shaun to land his attack and get away.

Twice more he had been hit by the Wyrm, once more by tail and another by claw. He had a large gash down his abdomen, his armour having been cut through with almost surgical precision by the Wyrm, but he was still a long way from succumbing to his injuries.

Just as he was about to go in for another attack, the dungeon shifted, the sun disappeared in its entirety and in its place a large moon appeared. The shift had happened in a second and he didn’t even feel it occur. Whatever the Wyrm did wasn’t some skill that needed to be built up over time but something more instinctual, as if the dungeon was reacting to the Wyrms need for more power.

Just as he adjusted to the change he saw the Wyrm drawing power form the moon and powering up an attack that was so much more powerful than the luna beam that it made the Wyrms former skill look like child’s play. The amount of mana that the Wyrm was drawing in was beyond what he thought he could avoid, he could see what the skill did but with the amount of mana drawing in he knew it would be widespread and catastrophic.

Not wanting to see what the end result would be of such a skill he decided to move in closer, drawing all of his mana back from both his swords and summons for his own counter attack on the Wyrm. He didn’t have much practice with his Mana Mastery skill or cutting the threads that weaved together when a skill formed, but he hadn’t gotten this far in his path to power by playing it safe.

As Shaun drew in closer he activated his mana skill and started taking in all of the threads that were glowing with power around the Wyrm, each on was thicker and much more powerful than those of the Harpy, but even to his untrained eye he could see three threads that stood out more than the others.

The first was connecting the Wyrm to the moon, the second connected the wyrm to a massive weaving of threads that spread out throughout the dungeon and the final one connected the Wyrm to Shaun. He hadn’t even noticed this thread until now, he had no idea how it had been placed or what the skill did, but he did know that this attack had a way to connect them, and if he failed he would not be making it out of this dungeon alive.