Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

All of them looked at the crippled wyvern. Limping, blinded, and with a broken wing it clearly lost its mobility. But it was still a massively armored tank. How were they supposed to kill it?

Seth´s first thought was Charon´s Obol. He was sure that the hammer would be able to smash even the wyvern's skull, but he had his sneaking suspicions about the hammer, which was why he excluded it from his considerations.

As he was thinking his attention wandered to the rest of the caravan. They had been having a hard time and no leeway to consider the overall situation. The fourth wyvern had also landed and the other parties were busy holding the reptiles back while securing the caravan's retreat.

The other C-Ranks had the same problems as Mike. Their weapons were unable to effectively penetrate the thick scales and deal enough damage to kill or incapacitate them.

The escape happened slower than expected because of the problems, so their distance to the caravan had not grown as much as they had feared. The question was, what to do about the wyvern here? Should they just leave it behind and run?

Seth came to the conclusion that he had no weapon that would help him end the wyvern in one shot. At least he was not sure to get out of melee combat unscathed. This left only one solution. Turn it into a hedgehog. He shared his opinion with the party.

"let´s just go all out with ranged attacks on it until it dies." he stated before equipping his bow and aiming for the cavities that once held wyvern eyes.

The other looked at him astonished, but when his first arrows hit the creature's tongue with a spurt of blood, they understood his intention? Well not really. They thought Seth was talking about aiming at the unarmored mouth and killing it that way. While Seth´s intention was to literally just stick it with so many arrows that it will become tired of living. Hitting the tongue was actually him missing the eye.

The outcome was the same. While Bilko, Lixiss, and Puffles started battering the wyverns head with attack magic, Mike brought out a bow and Mina a crossbow. The bow was a back-up weapon for Mike so he was not the best marksman. But Mina actually used the crossbow with poisoned bolts quite regularly.

The wyvern was blind, so it could not even make out the direction of the people that peppered its head with a barrage of vicious long-range attacks. A good hit into the eye cavity by Seth massively slowed down the Wyvern's movement. Did he hit the brain? Using this chance, Lixiss prepared for a powerful spell.

After a long cast, a regular size fireball shot off her hands and entered the monster's throat. Seth already believed she had failed, when a massive explosion severed the creature's head from the inside. The long neck simply exploded in a splatter of blood. She looked at the rest of her party with a smug smile, as all of them had expressions of disappointment just a moment ago.

<Ding! -Adult Wyvern lv.47- has been killed. You have earned Experience!>

<Ding! You have leveled up! You are now lv.24!>

<Ding! Title: "Dragon Slayer(minuscule)" gained. "You have managed to subjugate a relative of the dragon race" +5% on dragon-type enemies.>

What she had used was called a compressed fireball. It looked normal at first, but it was actually the power of many fireballs combined and compressed. How many came down to the talent and skill level of the mage. After a set time the compression would be lifted and the ball would explode with power several times higher than just all of its components combined.

The sound of the explosion echoed through the whole landscape and pulled everyone's attention. Not just that of the adventurer, but also that of the wyverns. And not just the adventurers were flabbergasted seeing the bloody explosion and a messily decapitated head landing on the ground. Following by the thump of the dead body going limb and falling over.

All eyes turned to the party that had just killed a wyvern. Seeing the eyes of the adventurers, but especially those of the wyverns, he knew what would happen in a moment and started sprinting.

Not away or towards the caravan, but towards the wyvern's corpse. It was not just the greed to make sure all the loot stayed with him and his party, no~ It was also not the fear of not being able to loot it after the wyverns started their revenge! Well, maybe a little.

But the biggest reason was the two orbs floating on the corpse. A giant glowing orb emerged from the severed neck and a smaller bright silver orb emerged from the head. One was the soul of the freshly killed wyvern

<Soul(massive), Crafting Material, Rare>

The other was the loyal soul from his spear. It was most likely broken apart when the force of the explosion hit.

The Souls started gravitating towards him thanks to <Soul Capture> so he just had to concentrate and reach the corpse, looting it and getting away.

At the same time Seth started sprinting, the old wyvern also got on the move and descended from the high altitude from where it had observed until now.

Seth saw the giant silhouette dropping from the sky in the corner of his eye. But he couldn´t stop now. He was already so close, too close to turn around. He put more force into the sprint and took cover behind the wyvern corpse.

<Ding! Passive Skill: Fear Resistance lv.8 has become Fear Resistance lv.9!>

A giant pair of talons zoomed past where he had just stood.

<Ding! Skill: Soul Capture lv.3 has become Soul Capture lv.4!>

The notification almost gave him a heart attack. He had looked forward so much to the level up of <Soul Capture> but at this moment he could have gone without the jump scare.

A Whoosh. A crunch. The giant talons had dug into the corpse of the wyvern Seth was hiding behind. As if the old wyvern wanted to recover the corpse of its comrade it started to flap its wing and lifted the corpse off the ground.

"No, you don´t! "he exclaimed and slapped the wyvern corpse shouting "Loot!"

With a poof of smoke, the giant body vanished into thin air. The old wyvern suddenly lost control and shot off into the sky as the weight it had been grabbing vanished.

Seth had no time to check the booty. Instead, he made a quick getaway darting for the rest of the caravan. For the very peak of the caravan to be specific, where the A-Rank and B-Rank parties were still observing the situation.

The rest of his party had not been not just stood around watching him, they had actually already reached the caravan at this point. The situation was rapidly changing as the wyverns that had kept the other adventurers busy also took to the air. They circled and started focusing on Seth´s party.

Seth was glad that he had decided to buff his agility at least once. He dodged several dives as he caught up to his party and the caravan.

"The head! We have to get to the head of the caravan. Even if we fail the exam, at least we will survive!" Everyone nodded and put all their energy into sprinting past the rest of the line of wagons and adventurers who were still stunned. It was a good thing the wyverns were out for revenge now, or these people would have been dead.

The caravan had never stopped moving, but the party still managed to reach the front with the carriages of the examiners and proctors. The other slowed down at first but sped up again when they saw Seth actually zipping past the carriages.

Would the stronger adventurers be of help? Maybe. But was even better than help? Safety. He had decided to directly run into the gorge, where the wyverns could not enter. Who cared about the caravan at this point? Nobody! Even the lizards ignored them, they were occupied with hunting him and his party.

Mina and the rest followed Seth into the gorge. Surrounded by steep cliff walls at the bottom of this narrow chasm they let out a sigh of relief. Followed by a scare when the wyverns landed at the edge of the gorge above them and kept trying to crawl into the tight space to kill them.

Seth led the past the well-made entrance to the dwarven shelter and closer to the exit on the other side. The wyvern followed them like a pack of madmen with bloodshot eyes. Seth had only thought of their own safety when he led the party in here. But now he had a better idea.

"If we stay here, the wyvern will also stay here. While they are completely fixated on us, the caravan can get into safety. It´s the perfect excuse." he explained to Mina and the others.

The excuse really worked. While the beasts kept trying to kill them with their looks, the rest of their company was able to safely enter the checkpoint. After the last cart, not the one crushed by the wyvern, entered the cave, they also followed it into the safety of the dark cave.