Green Wyvern Lord (Part 2)
Soaring high into the sky, the Green Wyvern Lord thrashed with frantic desperation, doing everything in its power to dislodge the parasite clinging to its back. Yet Sanghyuk had endured this dance countless times in his past life. He weathered the beast's violent frenzy with effortless poise.
When the monster plummeted belly-up down a sheer cliff face to scrape its spine against the rock, Sanghyuk swiftly swung around to its underbelly, slipping free of danger. Whenever it convulsed and rolled in midair to shake him loose, he flattened himself against its scales, anchoring his center of gravity with iron resolve.
Through it all, Sanghyuk never ceased his assault. Drawing a dagger prepared specifically for this moment, he gouged into the wyvern's hide at every opening, steadily chipping away at its life force. Whittling down its health pool during the first phase would pay massive dividends once the second phase began.
Fifteen minutes came and went. Sanghyuk remained glued to the Green Wyvern Lord's back like a cicada to bark.
Thoroughly spent after a quarter of an hour of rabid thrashing, the wyvern finally glided down toward the earth, utterly depleted. Mechanically, the monster was simply scripted to transition between states, but the result was the same: drained of half its health and stamina, the beast collapsed onto its secluded nest.
Because of Sanghyuk's relentless chip damage, its remaining health had plunged even further, hovering near the forty percent threshold.
The beast had landed, yet Sanghyuk showed no intention of dismounting. In the early days of his past life, raid teams had naturally leaped down the moment the beast touched ground, organizing their battle lines to fight it on terra firma.
As time passed, however, a vastly superior strategy had emerged: fighting mounted upon the wyvern's back through the ground phase just as they had in the air. Of course, that strategy came with one glaring obstacle.
Skitter, skitter, skitter!
Wyvern parasites the size of an adult palm, crawling in the bedding of the nest, swarmed up the Green Wyvern Lord's flanks. Hundreds of them surged upward at a glance—a writhing sea of insectoid monsters cursed with blood-drain abilities.
This was the problem.
Individually, each bug was negligible. But several hundred swarming as one was an entirely different nightmare. An infestation of that scale was just as lethal as the Wyvern Lord itself. Fortunately, the parasites were strictly territorial: they only operated directly upon the wyvern's flesh.
For that very reason, ordinary players invariably chose to dismount and face the boss on open ground once Phase Two commenced.
'Until someone uncovered their fatal weakness, that is. That was when the meta changed.'
Sanghyuk watched the tide of vermin crawl up the beast's flank and raised his right hand.
Anticipating this moment from the beginning, he had arrived fully prepared to deal with them. His countermeasure was simple.
Card Synthesis — Ice Floor
Crack, shatter!
Sanghyuk tossed a synthesized card directly beneath his boots. Instantly, a circular sheet of frost four meters across expanded beneath him. And, just as he expected, the parasites recoiled, unable to set a single claw upon the frozen surface.
Crafted by fusing a lowest-grade Ice Spirit Card, an Essence of Ice, and two throwaway material cards, this was no zero-cost card. It carried a Cost requirement of 1.
As a rule, higher card costs yielded greater potency.
Sanghyuk's current maximum Cost pool was 50. In practical terms, were he to equip nothing but Ice Floor cards, he could carry fifty of them in his deck.
Synthesizing cards required assembling ingredient cards and focusing one's mind, making card creation an inherently time-consuming process. The higher the cost, the longer the craft took. Most importantly, the system outright prohibited card creation while in active combat. In that regard, maximum Cost was a paramount metric for any card master.
In exchange for deploying spells without draining vital pools like mana or stamina, players bore the strict burden of card capacity and preparation.
Naturally, as Sanghyuk progressed, his maximum Cost would expand, and specialized gear could raise the ceiling even further. There was no reason to fret over an early-game cap.
Besides, Sanghyuk had brought ten Ice Floor cards along—more than enough for the job. Each sheet persisted for five minutes, and during those five minutes, the parasites could never breach the frosty barrier.
'Cold! That's your fatal flaw!'
With the swarm kept at bay, Sanghyuk yanked hard on the Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Bone Whip coiled around the wyvern's throat, making his intention unmistakably clear: he was not budging an inch.
This left the Green Wyvern Lord in utter misery. To unleash its true combat repertoire, it needed its rider on the ground. Instead, Sanghyuk exploited every shortcut in the book, tormenting the beast from the safest, most lethal vantage possible.
No matter how formidable a named field boss might be, having every single weakness identified and ruthlessly punished left it helpless.
Perched upon the wyvern's back, Sanghyuk drove strike after strike into its flesh until its health bar finally plummeted below ten percent. The moment it reached the critical threshold, the Green Wyvern Lord convulsed violently, spewing a virulent miasma of toxic blood from every pore.
Hssssssss!
The monster was venting the entirety of its poisonous blood supply—a literal self-destruct mechanism.
Phase Three had begun.
The solution to Phase Three was delightfully straightforward: run. Run like your life depended on it, with every ounce of frantic speed you could muster.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
The instant the beast shivered to trigger the transition, Sanghyuk had already abandoned its back, sprinting across the rocky ledge at full tilt. The blast radius encompassed the entire nest; escaping the perimeter was the only way to survive.
Rumble—BOOM!
The Green Wyvern Lord detonated in a cataclysmic rupture, showering the cavern in a torrent of lethal, corrosive blood.
"Haaap!"
Sanghyuk vaulted off the lip of the nest at the very instant of the blast. Leaping into empty air meant plummeting straight to his death, poison or no poison.
Snap, rattle!
Having zero intention of committing suicide, Sanghyuk twisted mid-fall and lashed the Ten-Thousand-Year Golden Bone Whip upward toward the lip of the ledge.
Whirrr—clack!
Possessing an adhesive grip firmer than a spider's silk, the whip coiled securely around a jagged stone outcrop jutting from the nest's ceiling.
ROOOOOAAAR!
Dangling beneath the rim of the nest, Sanghyuk watched the curtain of toxic blood splatter and hiss against the stone above his head. In his past life, raid teams relied on high-tier barrier mages to shield them from the fallout. With no mages at his side, raw acrobatics and terrain exploitation had to suffice.
You have defeated the conditional field named boss, Green Wyvern Lord.
As the first to hunt a wyvern-type named monster, you have accomplished a feat unmatched by any Dimensional Traveler. This accomplishment shall be etched into history as your eternal achievement.
You have acquired the Unique title: [First Wyvern Lord Hunter].
Due to the First Kill Bonus, you have obtained all 42 drop items available from the Green Wyvern Lord.
Congratulations! Your accumulated Karma has surpassed the threshold. You have leveled up!
As a completion reward for defeating the Green Wyvern Lord, the field buff 'Wyvern's Majesty' has been granted.
You have completed the Rare Quest: 'Wyvern Lord's Wrath'. Reward acquired: Emerald Ring.
"Yes!"
Hanging against the precipice, Sanghyuk pumped his fist in quiet triumph.
Truth be told, even with all his experience, soloing the Green Wyvern Lord had been a high-stakes gamble. The monster was balanced for an elite five-man party of level 44 combatants. Attempting it alone meant that a single misstep would have ended in immediate failure.
Once the lingering venom dispersed into the wind, Sanghyuk carefully hauled himself back onto the ledge. The hidden nest existed only while the Green Wyvern Lord walked the earth; within an hour, the entire zone would vanish until the next respawn.
Without bothering to inspect the loot, he swept every single drop into his Spatial Expansion Bag, grabbed the hanging vines, and rappelled swiftly to the valley floor below.
Once his boots touched solid ground, he opened his status interface to examine his new title.
'Oho. Reptiles? That's going to be ridiculously useful.'
A staggering variety of monsters fell under the reptilian taxonomy. Wyverns were obvious candidates, but so were dragons—the absolute pinnacle of monstrous terror. From that perspective alone, the title offered immense long-term value.
'I'll inspect the loot later. Time to hunt.'
The special field buff, Wyvern's Majesty, lasted sixteen hours. The Green Wyvern Lord operated on a forty-eight-hour respawn timer, meaning Sanghyuk needed to squeeze every drop of value from the buff while it remained active.
Reaping double the rewards with every kill, Sanghyuk tore through the peaks at a blistering pace that ordinary players could never fathom.
Aside from a single one-hour breather midway through, Sanghyuk hunted uninterrupted for the full sixteen hours of the buff's duration. The second it expired, he returned to Falcon City and logged out immediately.
After sleeping off the exhaustion, he re-entered the world of New World.
He had gone to bed thoroughly wiped out, leaving his bags completely unsorted. His first order of business was organizing the mountain of loot piled inside his Spatial Expansion Bag.
As he sifted through the hoard, his hand brushed against something unexpected.
"Wait... what is this?"
Resting in his palm was an elongated crimson crystal.
It was no ordinary item.
'Blood Knowledge? Why is this here...? Ah! Did the Wyvern Lord drop it?'
Blood Knowledge. Broadly speaking, it fell under the umbrella of Ancient Knowledge. Yet unlike typical disciplines, it engraved an innate power into the soul via ancestral bloodlines.
Inheriting a bloodline carried an entirely different weight than etching ordinary Ancient Knowledge into one's soul. If Ancient Knowledge functioned like a character class, Blood Knowledge was akin to rewriting one's race.
'I hunted so many Green Wyvern Lords in my past life, and not once did I see this drop...'
Sanghyuk re-examined the item description, nodding slowly.
'Wyvern Blood... To think I'd get my hands on it now of all times.'
Sanghyuk stared down at the crimson crystal in disbelief. At that precise moment, the Wyvern Blood resonated with his empty Soul Hole.
The prompt hovered before his eyes. Without a flicker of hesitation, Sanghyuk shook his head and spoke aloud.
"Reject."
His answer was crisp, resolute, and unwavering. Not a trace of regret showed in his eyes as he looked down at the crimson crystal in his hand.