CHAPTER 36: TRUE MIGHT OF THE TRAIL BLAZER SKILL

All ten of them drew their bows, releasing arrows with such power that dust rose in their wake. When they struck a raptor, the impact launched the beast backward as if hit by a speeding truck, tossing its bleeding corpse recklessly across the desert, some even crashing into the rock formations.

Rosalind couldn’t believe her eyes as the raptors lost twenty in an instant, all of them launched backward by the force of the arrows. The sight alone made her dread being on the receiving end of those Bow Knights.

Her eyes narrowed when she noticed Ballista, whose armour had turned crimson and was now crackling with lightning, the energy gathering on his arrow. He mounted the bow on the sand, aiming for the alpha raptor which had already gained on them. The lightning grew fiercer, and wherever it struck the sand, the sand turned into liquid glass!

The moment Ballista released the arrow, it sounded like a massive explosion. A gale burst outward, blasting sand into Godfrey’s face as the arrow screeched like a golden meteor. It left a trail of liquid glass as it struck the alpha raptor’s head, blowing it into blood mist. Yet the beast kept roaring forward, leaving an endless trail of ruins in the rock formations.

All the hair on Rosalind’s body stood up, a chill running down her spine, while Godfrey felt his mana reserves drop sharply! He gave Ballista an incredulous look. Was he trying to say he went easy on Mountain? Because it felt like the Bow Knight-Captain was making a statement here.

Looking at the trail of glass on the golden sand, leading up to the ruins left by the Trail Blazer, Godfrey had to accept that Ballista, in Black-Out State, was a formidable long-ranged summon. He tilted his head at the other Bow Knights who marched undeterred under the sun, inspecting their kills with flickering eyes.

According to the information on the walls of Ballista’s chambers, the beast that granted him his Black-Out State powers was something called an Orcish Esper, a strange and rare kind of orc bred from childhood to be able to summon their warriors. It made one man equivalent to an army.

In other words, these Bow Knights moving about weren’t made from nothingness but were actual knights that came from somewhere!

"The others have no idea about this. Who didn’t inform Alistair about this and only said he is a golem summoner? Are they trying to set us up?!" Panicked, Rosalind quickly rode away, careful not to be spotted.

***

At the camp, Julia was walking by, inspecting the students’ kill space, but most of them had nothing.

"Isolde has killed twenty raptors, Snow has killed ten, and Cecil has six." She turned to Godfrey’s name and saw six dead raptors. "I guess he’s not doing too badly—!"

Her eyes widened as bodies began to drop until a heap of dead raptors, with a headless alpha raptor, an elite-tier beast, landed at the top. The sight made her gasp loudly, and she quickly covered her mouth with her palm. But Edwin rushed out, only to see the giant heap.

"Godfrey... did this?"

Julia nodded. "He has a total kill of forty-four raptors."

***

Unaware of the shock he had given Edwin and Julia, Godfrey continued his journey through the desert with Ballista by his side. The Trail Blazer his summon had executed nearly wiped out fifty percent of his mana reserves, so in order to ration what he had left, Ballista had to deactivate Black-Out State, thus sending his squad of Bow Knights away.

Currently walking through the formation, Godfrey marveled at the number of nature-formed rock pillars Ballista’s arrow had brought down. A great number of them had become debris.

He brought out his digital map and studied it. "The Ivory Carcass has a lone elite-tier beast. That should be our next place," he said, looking at the bone ribs, each hundreds of meters long, on the map.

Whatever beast had left such a carcass after its death, he didn’t want to know. After walking, drinking water, resting, and walking for hours, the heat of the sun had waned by the time he saw the towering bone ribs jutting out of the golden sand and stretching across the horizon. In the midst of the yellow rocks, which looked pitifully small compared to the size of those ribs, he approached.

With squinted eyes and slightly shortened breaths, Godfrey moved toward the carcass with Ballista silently following behind, the soft metallic clinks of his armour an accustomed sound to Godfrey’s ears.

"I bet Isolde is soaring the skies on her dragon," he pouted. "I wish I had a beast summon."

Ballista hurried to his front with wide strides and went down on one knee, his back facing Godfrey as if telling him to get on.

In all honesty, Godfrey would have, no one would see him, so it wasn’t that embarrassing, but after staying for hours under the sun, Ballista’s armour was scalding! He just didn’t understand how the Bow Knight endured such heat, and even now, after trekking such a distance, still breathed calmly.

"I can manage," he said, walking past Ballista.

When they arrived at the giant carcass, Godfrey spotted the remains of other smaller beasts. Some had become feeble bones, others were still fresh. Knowing this, Ballista turned invisible and walked away from Godfrey until the faint sound of his armour couldn’t be heard anymore.

Not too far in, a Desert Stone Lioness, a huge big cat with small flat stones the size of pebbles on her back, left the raptor it fed on and fixed its gaze on Godfrey, who had just walked into her line of sight.

Both of them looked at each other for a split second before the lioness left her kill, pouncing toward a better-looking one. On the other hand, Godfrey took the challenge head-on.

He still hadn’t forgotten why he wanted strength: to make the authorities stop treating his mother like their slave. He hated the leash they held around her neck. He couldn’t stand the sight of his father’s statue being brought down. If he was strong, they wouldn’t have dared to touch it, at least not if they wanted to curry favor with him.

He wanted to become a Valedictorian. What was wrong with being the best?

With all this in mind, he slid as the lioness jumped, attempting to pin him to the ground, but his movement countered her strike. He stabbed his combat dagger at her underbelly, but instead of the friction aiding him in gutting her open, the combat dagger snapped!

His eyes widened, lightning bursting out of his body at the renewed assessment of the beast. The lioness turned, its claws gleaming like gold as they headed for his chest, but he leaped back. The beast leaped after him only for an arrow to dart into its open mouth, piercing deep into its throat!

Ballista appeared about twenty meters behind Godfrey. He had made a wide turn around the Desert Lioness, appearing where neither Godfrey nor the lioness expected.

Godfrey collapsed on the sand. That fight hadn’t lasted two minutes, but even a single mistake or delay would have cost him his life. Even the sand didn’t feel so hot with the burst of victory pumping in his heart.

A wide smile graced his face. A minute later, he sat, eating biscuits from his bag with a can of water beside him under the shadow of a giant rib.

While eating, his eyes were on the digital map. Of the zones marked on it, the most prominent one, marked crimson, was that of a ruined fortress: the place where the undead were.

....

A/N: I’ll upload the second Chapter in a couple of hours. I need to eat.

Don’t forget to comment, and drop powerstones! I believe we can hit 200 powerstones by the end of this week!