Chương 416: Chapter 387: Highly Questionable Design

Congratulations, you have consumed the Elixir of Cleansing You have 23: 59 hours until you need to use the Elixir of Cleansing again"Good Lord!" Thalion exclaimed, sinking to one knee as all the pressure finally left him. Who in the world had come up with the idea of hiding the antidote inside the flesh of the beast? This had almost cost him his life. In hindsight it was obvious he had missed something — because how were all the other trialtakers supposed to survive this stage with almost no antidotes anywhere?

Thalion would definitely check later if he had already picked up a few antidotes by accident. Good thing he had taken all the corpses with him. Right now, there were more pressing matters — like the massive wyvern right in front of him. Thalion's health was almost fully healed again, and his mana pool had climbed back to sixty percent. He placed his hand on the wyvern's head and activated Acquire Form. This was a form that could make his life in this horrible stage a lot easier.

Thalion half-expected some kind of bullshit to happen — maybe the System refusing to let him take a wyvern form — but to his relief, it worked perfectly. His body shifted, swirling as he transformed into the massive creature. His form was F-grade, so he was roughly two-thirds of the E-grade wyvern's full length. The race name was also listed as Venomthorn Wyvern, which surprised him. It was a legendary creature, and usually the rarity dropped when the beast was from a higher grade.

Or at least, that was how it seemed most of the time. There was no reliable way to know for sure unless he somehow managed to upgrade Identify. All in all, it felt strange being such a huge creature. Having arms and wings as the same limbs felt weird too. As a Shadowstalker he had no problem running on all fours, but here — with this size and these wing-arms — everything felt unfamiliar. Still, this form had one huge advantage over most of his other forms: it was immune to the green mist.

The timer was still ticking, but at least breathing and moving didn't feel like death anymore. His stats far surpassed those of any of his other forms — likely explained by the wyvern's sheer size. The E-grade version probably had even higher stats. In total, Thalion now had almost three thousand Vitality, seven hundred Toughness, and one thousand eight hundred Strength. The other stats were decent but nothing special.

As for skills, the wyvern only had the poison breath of legendary rarity and a passive letting it naturally grow those nasty thorns Thalion's mind raced with ideas on how to reuse the wyvern's skills in his other forms, but he couldn't find anything good. Growing thorns would only be useful on the Crippled Eclipsari; getting hit in any of his other forms would be disastrous. The next problem was that none of his forms were good with poison. He didn't have any poison immunity.

If he used the wyvern's breath skill in another form, he might end up poisoning himself. What good was it to breathe out a giant cloud of toxic green mist if you walked straight into it every time? It would be like if the Crippled Eclipsari's own darkness hurt him. Yeah, the wyvern form was great and he'd keep it for the foreseeable future. Maybe he'd find a way to transfer parts of it to Eagly for a better evolution.

Shifted body parts always scaled to the form receiving them, but right now he didn't see any clean way to do it. Besides, Eagly was a higher rarity than the wyvern — so mixing them probably wasn't a good idea anyway. If he ever found a way to give poison a darkness affinity, he could shift it to the Crippled Eclipsari… but he had no idea if that was even possible. Was poison even considered an affinity? Thalion had no clue, and he wasn't about to experiment on himself to find out.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Still — this wyvern form would be perfect for the rest of this stage. No pain from the mist. Flight far faster and easier than slingshotting himself with tendrils. Far more comfortable overall. Now there was one thing left to do: check the collected corpses for other antidotes. After ripping apart over twenty corpses, he found twelve antidotes…

"What in the—" His words trailed off as he stared at the pile of antidotes. What idiot had designed this stage? Was this really made by the System? It couldn't be. Even an underdeveloped System had standards. Rage bubbled up in Thalion's belly. He had almost died just because he hadn't butchered every single beast he killed. At least now he didn't need to worry about running out of antidotes.

The only problem was that he would need to sacrifice at least one more before the stage was over—which meant losing ten thousand leaderboard points he otherwise would have earned. Thalion also thought back over the fight against the wyvern, because he might have gotten a few new ideas about how to become stronger and more dangerous in battle. One major path would be deeper blood manipulation, especially learning how to empower his own body.

He already used a thin film of blood to levitate, but he could also manipulate the blood inside himself to make him faster—something he had never fully explored, outside of the golden palace. Here, he had movement skills far faster than normal running—even if he empowered his muscles—so he usually relied on those and focused on other things.

Thalion had been trained to multitask in combat, so improving his blood control could become a great way to grow as strong as possible before clashing with the top of the leaderboard. He also really needed to invest more meditation, time, and understanding into his title. Without it, he might have died. But even so, something bothered him: the title pointed him in two directions, yet it didn't lead him to the antidotes already inside his amulet.

Maybe that was because of the amulet's special unlimited storage space? Thalion wasn't sure, but being able to always pick the correct path in labyrinths or dungeons would be extremely powerful. After meeting the Chosen, he didn't even feel bad about it. They were so powerful that getting a little help finding the right direction seemed only fair. Speaking of direction… Thalion still remembered where his title had pointed him earlier. With a powerful beat of his massive wings, he launched himself into the sky.

Compared to the fast and agile Eagly, he now felt like a battleship gliding through heavy waters. Sharp turns were not really the wyvern's specialty. Not that it couldn't turn—just that compared to Eagly, who could pivot on a coin, the wyvern felt like it needed half a minute to change direction. Still, overall, Thalion liked the form. The air thundered beneath his wings as he rose higher and higher. The dense clouds of green mist didn't harm him at all now, and Thalion decided to fly as high as he could.

What if there was a hidden area for those who managed to pass through the poison fog? He still wasn't even sure what the mist actually was. It poisoned you, but it also dissolved your body like acid. Usually not something you wanted to touch—but as a poison wyvern attuned to this stage, he could break through it effortlessly. Even when the mist grew thicker, it didn't matter. As Eagly, the mist dissolved his form and slowed him down. But the multi-ton wyvern had none of those problems.

He carved through the green clouds without blinking— —then, suddenly, the mist vanished. Above him stretched open blue sky, perfectly untouched by rot or poison. And not just that there was a small city sitting atop a floating rock high above. From his position, he couldn't see the entire settlement, but everything looked tightly packed together. Maybe these were survivors who had tried to escape the poisonous fog? If Thalion was lucky, they might even have more antidotes.

After all, if they lived above a permanent acid-poison cloud, they must have found a way to mass-produce antidotes… right? Greed sparked in Thalion's eyes as he climbed closer to the floating island— but before he could get near it, a red warning light flashed from the center of the island, and a loud siren began to ring. Huh? Are they alerted because of me? Thalion wondered. From their perspective, a massive wyvern approaching their home was probably extremely dangerous.

And if this happened regularly, they must have powerful defenses. If his life weren't on the line in this trial, Thalion would have kept his distance to assess their strength. But this wasn't such a situation. The first wave of defenders approached. There were two races. One was a Birdfolk – humanoid bodies, wings on their backs, heads like birds, and long talons for feet. They carried spears and arrows.

The other were Lizardfolk – scales instead of skin, long necks, snake or crocodile heads, muscular bodies, and glowing red or green eyes. They couldn't fly, but they clearly had movement skills that let them stand in the air. Thalion used Identify as they closed in. Aviari – Level 104 Aviari – Level 100 Raskari – Level 111 Raskari – Level 98 None were far above level one hundred, so this looked like a winnable fight. The only issue would be numbers.

At the edge of the floating island, a sixty-meter-long medieval skyship appeared, slowly rotating toward him. Battlelust surged in Thalion's veins. Seeing the small army waiting for him, he opened his maw and unleashed a mana-infused roar that shook the air itself as he accelerated upward, charging toward battle.