Ivan sat down on the ledge while panting heavily. Even with his strong body, climbing the wall had taken out more of his power than he would ever have guessed. Hindered by his lack of technique he was often only able to proceed by using pure power, something that put extreme strain on his body."Wow, this is truly a great way to work out and train.", he told himself. Sadly he didn"t gain anything besides the experience in climbing as well as a bit of a better understanding of how to move his body and exert his strength. Especially the last point was something useful.
He then looked up and sighed. There was even more wall waiting for him to climb up. Once again he was tempted to just call Vlada to carry him up. But he was stopped by his fear of griffins. While they wouldn"t attack targets at the ground in a pack, this completely changed when the target was in the air. They were extremely territorial and would hunt down anything that ventured into their skies.
Having taken a break he once again got ready to climb on.
After he had finally ascended the wall he found himself on a plateau. In the distance, the mountains continued up even further, but for now, it was relatively flat. Of course, the terrain was extremely rocky and it wasn"t rare to find some ravines crossing the plateau. But it was a breeze to continue on here as compared to the wall he had just had to climb up.
While he was making his way over the plateau, suddenly a rock seemed to move towards him. Not sure if it was only his imagination it increased his wariness. Some of the monsters living here were well versed in hiding themself.
The event just a few seconds later proved his carefulness to be prudent, as the rock he had thought just moved was thrown aside as a giant lizard shot out of the hole it had covered.
The lizard had a granite colored exterior, made up of scales as large as his hands. Its mouth was adorned with large teeth, which would seemingly crush anything that would come between them.
Before Ivan could continue his observation he was forced to roll aside as the heavy body of the reptile went through the s.p.a.ce his own one had just occupied.
Contrary to what its size could make one believe it was very fast. Not only was it fast but its tail was also extremely flexible and strong.
Ivan had just rolled aside to doge its mouth and body when the tail crashed towards him. Because of his recent hurried evasion, he didn"t have a good stand and was unable to evade once again. And don"t even mention blocking the tail attack. Not only was his position unsuited to do so, but the power behind the hit was also too much.
Thus the attack managed to hit him squarely on the chest. He had instinctively turned towards the attacker and thus he was now hit at such a sensible location. He had the feeling that someone had tried to smash in his chest and his body flew back. Rolling in order to absorb some of the force of the hit he hurriedly got back onto his feet, only to be greeted with the wide mouth of the lizard in front of him.
Using every ounce of available strength he threw himself backward in an attempt to dodge the closing jaws of the attacker.
He could feel the wind produced by the snapping together of the jaws on his face but he had still managed to escape the seemingly fatal attack.
"Fu...", he couldn"t even curse at the moment as he was once again hit by the reptile. Just that it was its snout this time. It seemed that after missing its bite it had decided to ram its face into him.
Once again he was flying to the air and once again did the foe rushed towards the spot he would land on.
This continued for, in his opinion way too long, until finally, he couldn"t hold on anymore. Since it was impossible for him to get into any position that would allow him to counterattack, with all the flying around. Not to mention the heavy bruises and most likely broken bones, which also seriously hampered any chance of mounting a counterattack. Anyway, he decided to call Vlada for help.
She too was unable to contest against the lizard but at least she was able to catch him out of the air and carry him away.
Flying low, she carried him with her claws towards the direction they had come from. By keeping this low above the ground, with not even five meters between him and her they didn"t instantly come to the griffins, which circled above, attention.
With the lizard chasing after them Ivan had to be carried until they nearly reached the wall, he had just climbed up before the lizard let go and returned to its resting place.
Vlada deposited Ivan on the ground, keeping an eye out for any other foe that could appear, be it griffin or lizard.
"d.a.m.n. I didn"t expect it to be this hard to fight those lizards. Just wait I"m going to come back and get my revenge.", Ivan cursed while starting to take care of his injuries.
Before he hadn"t had the time but now he could take out some pills he had refined, which would increase the speed at which he would heal. Luckily the damage wasn"t as bad as he had feared since no bones were broken.
"Was this d.a.m.n monster weaker than it seemed?", he wondered. Considering the impact he had felt he should have some broken bones, so he found it weird that he didn"t seem to have any. "No that can"t be. If it was weaker then I shouldn"t have flown through the air like this. Not to mention that I felt the impact firsthand."
Just thinking back to the way he had been tossed through the air by that beast he couldn"t help but feel anger bubbling inside him. To any observer, it must have appeared as if that beast had just toyed with him. Luckily there hadn"t been any observer or he would have to feel so ashamed of his recent performance.
After taking care of his injuries he wasn"t yet fit to go fight again but at least it didn"t hurt that much anymore.
He then decided to stay here and use that d.a.m.ned beast for his training. Thinking about the fight just now, he found many mistakes he had made and also many things he had to improve on.
The biggest problem had been that the lizard had been able to ambush him, closely followed by his incapability of turning the tide in the fight. And his use of magic had been atrocious since it had been nearly inexistent.
This fight had also made him question if it was a good idea to continue on. Instead, it just might be better to give up on his goal of finding a new battle pet and instead focus on training his own survival abilities by fighting against that lizard.
He wasn"t sure what the best course of action was and thus he decided that for now he would stay here and recuperate. Tomorrow all his injuries should have been healed fully, thanks to the pills he had taken. Then he would decide if he wanted to continue or if he took the time to learn more while fighting against that lizard.
The question was what he should do until then? Putting up the tent he had brought with him wouldn"t take much time and there was still a lot left until the sun would set. Anything strenuous was out of the picture with his current status but he could still train his mana. What he wanted to do was to improve his mana manipulation.
He had only worked on it because of the need for it with pill refining but he had remembered Jacky"s offer and he was now tempted to improve his skill so far that she would teach him about spatial magic. The method he selected for this was what Celine had taught them back in the dungeon.
He would start practicing forming thin mana strings and then try to use them to make all kinds of forms and patterns. This should help him to train his fine control over mana. It could also improve his concentration ability and who knows, maybe there are even more benefits to doing this.