Chương 96: Weakling

Meno cautiously started toward the nearest bare tree. A thin lightning bolt struck in front of him almost immediately. He jumped back on instinct, but pale light was already spreading through the ground in branching tendrils, circling outward under his boots. The glow crawled fast, turning the stone around him into a trap pattern. Meno had seen enough boss mechanics to know the follow-up mattered more than the warning.

He jumped, kicked with both legs, and Splitwing blasted him out of the radius just as the ground erupted along every tendril line. Blue-white energy ripped upward where he had been. Meno landed, and for half a second, relief actually seemed reasonable. Then the eruption thinned into strands, turned midair, and converged on him like a swarm of homing arrows.

"Oh, come on." Dodging upward would be a mistake. The tendrils covered too much air, so Meno kicked off the ground, let himself drop forward instead, and kicked behind himself at the last instant before he stomach-planted on the glowing stone. He shot forward while still colliding with the ground, armor scraping over the warm stone as the lightning swarm slammed down where he had been. The impact scattered sparks across his back and left a heated-metal smell in his nose. Meno slid to a stop and pushed himself up.

"Now, that is annoying." homing lightning zone hates you bad weather"That is not normal lightning," Meno said.

"It had intent. Like magic." He summoned the Gravecrown Gravewurm, and the huge worm pushed itself out of the ground with its usual lack of elegance. Meno climbed on before Naraltan decided walking counted as arrogance, then turned south along the shoreline with the cliff to one side and the strange blue expanse to the other. An hour passed, and he almost got electrocuted multiple times. The Gravewurm's High Jump stat saved him more than once.

If he put enough distance between himself and the impact point, the lightning tendrils stopped chasing. The first few strikes nearly took his head off, but after a while, he learned the warning pulse in the ground before the bolt hit. The shoreline kept going. Meno had no idea where the edge ended. Naraltan was huge, far larger than the main continent zones, and he could not tell if this was a proper continent with multiple zones or one enormous unfinished stretch of glowing stone.

So far, everything looked the same: bare trees, blue ground, black clouds, silent lightning. No monsters. In an hour, he encountered exactly zero enemies. No birds. No wolves. No lightning deer. No level one hundred chosen warriors waiting to delete him for stepping on sacred dirt.

"Maybe the area is unfinished," Meno said. cope walk inland find apple empty zone AI loading"Yes, I need to go deeper inland." The trees were bare too: no fruit, no flowers, no leaves, nothing. If apples existed, they were rare, tied to some special event, or guarded by systems he had not found yet. There was no way the entire new continent was just a blue glowing platform with scattered dead trees and an annoying lightning hazard. There had to be more. He was also risking getting lost.

His map remained empty because the zone had not revealed itself properly. Maybe he had not explored enough. Maybe Naraltan was not supposed to have a normal map. Meno turned the Gravewurm inland. After a few minutes, he stopped by a tree and dismounted. The trunk looked like wood from a distance, but when he touched it, the surface felt smooth and hard, more like ceramic. Warm, too, but not alive in any normal tree way. Meno tapped it with one knuckle and got a dull, unpleasant note.

"Strange." hit it do it tree loot apple inside bad idea Meno drew Vervenzal's Verdict. The sword was Indestructible, making it the correct tool for testing. He chopped the tree once, and the tree shrieked. The sound tore across Naraltan so loudly that Meno clapped both hands over his ears and staggered back. The trunk vibrated, its bare branches rattling against the silent sky, and the note drilled into his skull until he turned and ran from it like the tree had cast a status effect.

MY EARS TREE SCREAM WHY jump scare ban tree mute zone Meno kept moving until the sound faded behind him.

"That must have alerted everything nearby." He looked around, but nothing came. Just the glowing expanse and the tree still faintly trembling in the distance. Meno climbed back onto the Gravewurm, and a minute later, he saw something rushing toward him from far away. It moved too fast to be wandering wildlife, and its path was too direct. It did not behave like a normal monster. For one confused second, Meno wondered if another player had somehow reached Naraltan already.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Impossible. He could run with the mount, but then he would learn nothing, so Meno dismissed the Gravewurm and prepared himself on foot. As the figure got closer, he inspected it. [Zezvero — Level 101 — Smovo Champion — Archer] It was the first time Meno had seen a level displayed for something that was not a player. Smovo had to be the race, while Archer was vague enough to be useless.

The system clearly refused to reveal the full class name. The closer Zezvero came, the stranger he looked: a six-foot biped with a steel-colored body, one massive arm, and a head made of shifting black smoke. He wore full scaled mail armor, and the largest crossbow Meno had seen in Veyrath sat on his huge arm. This was an NPC. quest? level 101 npc one arm bow? Zezvero stopped at long range, probably not by accident, and Meno prepared to dodge as the smoke-headed champion lifted the crossbow.

"You!" Zezvero shouted.

"You think I would fall for such tricks?" His voice was deep, hollow, and metallic, buzzing through the smoke where his head should have been. Meno had no clue what he meant, but the raised crossbow translated well enough. Was this a quest prompt? If so, unlucky. Meno still had no desire to do quests, especially from a level one hundred NPC built like a weapon rack.

"Sorry," Meno said.

"Too busy right now. Can't do your quest."

"Quest?" Zezvero shouted, the smoke twisting violently.

"How did you trick the gods? Level fifty-nine Swing Master with level thirty Fluxforge Smith, like wasted offspring, here on Naraltan." WASTED OFFSPRING he inspected you level 30 smith lol profession shame roasted by smoke Meno stared. Unbelievable. This thing could inspect him.

"Yeah," Meno said.

"I hate professions. Boring and annoying. Takes too much time. Then I got blocked by the trainer due to low Karma, and after that it became pointless." Zezvero lowered the crossbow a fraction.

"Have they exiled you here for your crimes?" Meno considered that.

"You could say that." Before Zezvero could respond, a thick lightning bolt struck a nearby tree, and both of them dove to the ground on reflex. Meno looked back fast, expecting tendrils across the stone, but no spreading trap followed this time. The tree lit up blue instead, light pulsing through the smooth trunk and gathering along one branch until something pear-shaped formed there, dangling from the bare wood.

"Essencefruit!" Zezvero shouted, the smoke twisting sharply. Meno did not wait. He jumped, and False Wings fired him toward the branch. Zezvero activated an ability and blurred forward, reaching the fruit before Meno could. The Smovo Champion yanked it from the branch, landed in a sliding retreat as the speed effect faded, and raised his crossbow immediately, aiming at Meno. Meno considered attacking for half a second, but another figure emerged from invisibility behind Zezvero and stunned him.

[Chululu — Level 115 — Lonachi Champion — Rogue] Meno took two steps back. Chululu was about six feet tall, female, pink-skinned, and marked with red horizontal stripes. Chain-like black hair hung behind her head, and her pink irises watched the stunned archer with sharp delight. She had fangs, no visible ears, and thin pink eyebrows that wrapped back along her skull. Her glowing red nails warped the air around her hands.

Leather armor covered only what it felt like covering, leaving her stomach bare front and back. The muscle there looked ridiculous, a hard athletic stack Meno mentally counted as twelve abs. In her hands were two nasty daggers that seemed to drink the blue light around them. what is a lonachi 115 rogue mommy abs patch looks wild Chululu took the essencefruit from Zezvero, but the stun expired almost immediately.

Zezvero activated a pushback skill, blasting himself away from the rogue, then fired a flaming bolt from the huge crossbow. Chululu shadowstepped straight to him. Trap. Lightning snapped around her body and paralyzed her in place. Zezvero snatched the essencefruit back, triggered his blur movement again, and dashed into the distance instead of fighting. Chululu broke free a second later, glanced at Meno, dismissed him completely, and threw one dagger after Zezvero.

She teleported to the dagger mid-flight, activated her own sprint skill, and both champions vanished across the glowing plain. Meno stood there.

"Okay. What just happened?" smart monsters only NPC war zone no trash mobs you are level 59 lol"Yeah," Meno said.

"Seems like no usual XP bag monsters." That was bad. The champions ignored normal aggro, fought for essencefruit, and left. If that was the zone loop, XP might not come from killing monsters at all. It might come from fruit, duels, faction footholds, or some special progression system the AI had invented.

"This is not good. How am I supposed to get XP here?" eat apple kill champion swim home you deserve this"The essencefruits must give XP. There is no other way. These things can just run away." Meno looked back toward the coastline.

"Should I try to swim back to the mainland?" swim arc Bloodwake fish farm Jagged Sea mobs become shark"Wait," Meno said.

"Maybe I can farm fish along the shore with Bloodwake. The Jagged Sea creatures might be lower level." The more he thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. Climbing back up the cliff would not be impossible with False Wings, and he could follow the shore until he found a proper landing spot for ships. There had to be one somewhere. Or a city. Or a town. So far, Naraltan felt more like a battleground than a leveling zone.

Meno summoned the Gravewurm again, rode back to the edge, and jumped off the cliff into the water. He spent the next hour diving. He swam along the shoreline, checked deeper shelves, searched between rock shadows, and found no fish, monsters, plants, hidden caves, or conveniently bite-sized XP. Bloodwake made underwater movement simple, but it did not create targets. There was no life close to the shore, which meant he would have to swim farther into the Jagged Sea. That was a bummer.

When Meno surfaced near the cliff and looked up, something was fishing from the top with a long bone rod. Meno used False Wings to climb back onto the platform and approached carefully. [Fiku — Level 120 — Harku Champion — Necromancer] Fiku was a short, three-foot hawk-headed humanoid with a compact bronze-brown body, feathered neck, broad muscle, and hooked talon feet. His robe was far too fancy for fishing. Meno walked into speaking range with his sword in hand, but Fiku did not look at him.

"What do you want, weakling? Do not bother me." WEAKLING level 121 btw Meno bullied tiny necro birdman Meno's frustration rose with every new piece of evidence that Naraltan was a mess, and the latest was a wingless bird necromancer insulting him while fishing in an apparently empty sea.

"What are you fishing for?" Meno asked.

"I saw no fish."

"No bait, no fish," Fiku said.

"Kuku. Your disrespect is noted." Fiku flashed green, and an undead version of the pink, red-striped Lonachi woman appeared next to him. Meno immediately jumped off the cliff. He kicked with both legs, throwing himself farther from the rock wall before dropping into the sea. Water closed over him hard. Meno surfaced and looked back to find the undead Lonachi at the cliff edge, staring down at the water. It did not follow, and after a few seconds, it returned to Fiku and disappeared in green smoke.

Fiku kept fishing, no longer interested. Meno floated in the dark water and looked up at Naraltan's glowing cliff.

"Hey, AI," he said.

"Can I select a new zone? Maybe Daxolon? Hello?" No response. denied Naraltan prison should have picked fridge weakling zone ship soon maybe Meno sighed as something cold wrapped around his leg beneath the surface. Then it yanked him underwater.