Chapter 326 - 326. The Expedition Resumed
The drake spewed out its yellow toxic again. Commander Quintus managed to anticipate the drake's attack and ran away from the affected area before the yellow dust hit. His two other comrades were not so lucky.
One of them who was holding a large shield put the shield in front of him, but the shield could be seen to deteriorate rapidly. It was as if the shield went through an accelerated decomposing process. A process where the change could be visibly witnessed.
The other one suffered even worse, as he had no shield to protect himself. He was a light armor combatant who used two tomahawk axes as weapons. He was screaming in pain as the yellow dust covered his entire body. Jack could see his HP bar going down rapidly.
When everyone thought he was a goner. A thick stream of light washed down at him. It was a recovery spell cast by Laurent. The man's HP bar was locked in the middle as the healing provided by the spell balanced out the devouring effect from the yellow dust.
The yellow dust soon receded. The one with the large shield threw away his shield as it was no longer usable. Even his thick armors were full of holes. The one with the tomahawk axe fell to his knees in exhaustion. His life had been saved by Laurent spells, but his HP was only one-third left.
"Everyone move aside!" The Duke's voice resonated above them. Jack looked up and saw seven large runes rotating above.
Commander Quintus came and helped his comrade with the axe to move away. The others also backed away with haste.
The Grim Sand Drake sensed the power of the spell and looked above. Before the Duke could release his spell, the drake abruptly turned downward and burrowed into the ground with impossible speed. In an instant, the drake disappeared from everyone's view.
Did the Duke's spell scare it away? This was the thought on everyone's mind, except for Jack. He watched in dread as the red dot in his radar came closer. It was not running away, it was targeting the weak soldiers instead!
"Everyone, disperse!" Jack called out as he started running.
Everyone was startled by Jack's unforeseen command, and confused by it.
"Move! Now!" Jack bellowed when he saw them not moving.
Sensing the urgency of Jack's tone, John and the others started to run following after him. Captain Salem also gave out the command. The vanguard troops parted into two separate divisions, one going left, another going right.
Though puzzled by the command, the soldiers were disciplined enough to carry out the command with haste. They heard a sudden rumble at their back as they were making their way, and felt the faint tremor on their feet. The tremor getting stronger by the seconds. They turned back and saw the ground where they were standing some time ago, broke apart and the Grim Sand Drake burst out from underneath.
The Grim Sand Drake looked around, befuddlement on its eyes. It was expecting many of the weak humans at this place. Though it was a beast, it carried the blood of a dragon, so it had a certain amount of intelligence. It knew itself was in danger when the Duke completed his spell, and was planning to cause havoc amongst the weak soldiers. If it was within the mass of humans, the human flying above would not carelessly throw his spell at it.
Seeing the Grim Sand Drake resurfaced and the soldiers were out of danger, the Duke cast his spell at this time. An enormous prismatic construct of multiple colors fell upon the drake. The prism was large enough to cover the drake's gargantuan body and still left some spaces around.
The drake's body became sluggish, as numbers after numbers of damages appeared above it every second.
"Everyone, attack!" The Duke shouted out.
Awakened from their daze by the Duke's shout, all the range soldiers started throwing attacks at the Grim Sand Drake inside the prism. The female archer who was with commander Quintus also shot her arrows at the drake. Jack noticed that the damage the arrows inflicted was higher than the previous times.
Apart from immobilizing and damaging the drake, the prism also weakened its defense, Jack thought.
Not wanting to get left behind, Jack also rushed forward and cast his Arcane Turbulence at the drake. Other players except for the melee class joined in the attack. The Man and his underlings were gloomy again, why are they the most useless ones in this entire expedition? They thought.
Laurent cast another spell which caused the entire battlefield to be bathed by glimmering lights. Jack and the other players received notification that they had received a buff that increased their damage output.
Such a wide-scale buff spell, Jack wondered if the player's healer branches would get access to such spell.
The Grim Sand Drake's massive HP pool went down in a rapid manner. It tried to retaliate several times by spewing its deadly yellow dust at the surrounding soldiers. Everyone was terrified at first when it did that, but the yellow dust was blocked by the prism.
The Duke's spell allowed outside attacks to pass inside, but preventing the inside attacks from going out. It even prevented the drake from escaping. When it tried to ram itself on the prism wall, it was as if it had hit an extremely hard wall.
It could only ransack its surroundings in frustration.
When its HP was down to around 30%, it suddenly stopped moving about. Everyone thought it had given up, but its scale slowly turned red. Reddish smoke was exuded from its body. Its eyes glowed bright red this time. An explosion burst out from where the drake was. The prism shook heavily from the explosion.
The prism still managed to hold the force from the explosion. If it was released outside, Jack had no doubt everyone out here would have been obliterated. Yet, there were many cracks on the surface of the prism.
"Move back!" The Duke warned. He probably knew his spell could no longer hold the drake after its last outburst.
As if to make his point, the prism shattered. The multi-colored pieces of the prism fell to the ground before dissipating. Everyone looked at the Grim Sand Drake with apprehension as they took several steps back. Commander Quintus rushed forward, intend to hold the monster while everyone was retreating. The Duke started to prepare another spell.
The Grim Sand Drake gave the Duke one scorned look, before turning down and burrowing itself into the ground again.
Once the drake disappeared into the ground, Jack immediately looked at his radar. He was ready to turn tail again if he saw the red dot coming his way. This time, however, the red dot went away to where it came from originally, away from the army.
After making sure on his radar that the monster had truly fled, Jack finally exhaled a relieved breath. But he also felt a sense of pity, if they had managed to kill the drake, the players would at least receive some experience points since they and the vanguard troops delivered some damages to it as well. Not to mention NPCs did not take interest in the drops from monsters, so the items dropped by the drake should it be killed would be all up for them to take.
"Huh?" He just realized by now that everyone was looking at him. It took him a while before he realized the reason. He had been the one that had detected the monster's movement after it went into the ground, so everyone was expecting him to tell them of its position again.
"It has left," Jack told them.
The soldiers looked at each other, they were still anxious if Jack was wrong and that the drake might suddenly erupt from underneath them.
The Duke flew down next to Jack, followed by Laurent. "It's a good thing you warned everybody. Otherwise, there would have been lots of casualties," he said.
"Good work, lad," Laurent added.
Jack felt slightly abashed. He was simply taking advantage of his God-eye monocle's radar. "The troops' safety is my responsibility, too," Jack finally responded after trying to think about what was the proper thing to say in this situation.
"Very good, it was the right decision to let you bear the command of this vanguard troop," the Duke said.
Ah, he ended up with more praise, even though most he did the entire time was running away from the Drake, Jack thought.
"You praise me too much," Jack said sincerely.
The main army had almost arrived at this time. The Duke floated up and surveyed the area one more time to make sure the threat had gone. He then declared to the others, "let's resume the expedition!" Before flying back to the main army. Commander Quintus and the others also went back with him.
After they left, the vanguard troop rearranged their formation back to before they were assaulted by the drake. They look at Jack with eagerness as they shouted at the same time, "awaiting orders, sir!"