Awakening the Divine Spark

"What in the world is that?" Xiao Lian asked, more annoyed than anything else.

"Tundra or something?" Lee scratched his head, similarly lost.

It wasn’t cold enough for the place to be called tundra, but it certainly looked like one.

In front of them was vast barren land, void of trees, but covered in brown, almost dark red moss. There were batches of grass and a shrub near rocks here and there, but the surreal feeling Lee got was understandable.

After the picturesque beach and the green forest, they were about to step in a completely different world.

And the first inhabitants happily greeted them. A pack of brown colored dreadtalons attacked the moment both stepped over the treeline.

They were smaller, probably two and a half feet tall, but much quicker, and maybe even stronger compared to their forest relatives. The dozen beasts rushed over like ghosts, without making the slightest sound. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

Only when both Lee and Xiao Lian cleaved the first ones that jumped at them in halves, they began to screech in loud chorus. It was almost as if they tried to affect the abilities of the two humans with a sound attack, and in a way it actually worked.

Purely instinctively Lee raised the left hand to his ear, at the same time slightly obstructing his vision to the left. Two of the beasts immediately used the chance and jumped at him, but while he did manage to behead one, the other sunk his teeth in his shoulder.

Ignoring the pain, Lee stabbed the dreadtalon biting him and rolled away, creating distance from few more that came at the same time, but it was too early to relax.

Xiao Lian saw him being in a tough spot, but couldn’t do anything about it. Four beasts kept pestering him while nimbly evading his slashes, and it was the first encounter they couldn’t clean up the beasts in one sweep.

Fortunately the two humans quickly focused and repositioned themselves. Standing back to back turned out to be the most effective strategy they could think of on the fly, but it turned out to be enough. The beasts jumped one after another, only to lifelessly fall at the feet of the two humans right after.

The last one remaining tried to escape, but Lee already expected it and a quick dash rewarded him with another set of contribution points in the form of the dreadtalon claws.

His shoulder was bleeding, but what mostly hurt was his pride. He was annoyed with himself for being too clumsy and if he hadn’t sat in the library for a year, this would’ve never happened. On the other hand, he only needed a bit of practice, and was certain it wasn’t as hard to make up for the lost time.

***

If the sun didn’t come up in the morning and set in the evening, Lee would’ve lost the sense of direction pretty soon. While they continued towards west for the next ten days, nothing in the scenery changed. The brown lands seemed endless, but contrary to Ashland weren’t gray, thus less depressing.

The frequent attacks of dreadtalon packs began to feel more similar with every following fight. While it became slightly dull, the fact that there were so many of them worked as a decent exercise.

Besides looting the raptor claws, they didn’t increase their contribution points by much. Both Lee and Xiao Lian managed to find only a single Ironwood root and began to loose hope in getting rich through herb gathering.

On the eleventh day they met Senior Sister He Zhenzhu. Apparently she was checking up on everyone from her group of fifty, but judging from her tired voice, the disciples were getting more and more spread out. She wasn’t complaining, though.

What made Lee wary was that it didn’t seem like the seniors could actually come to their help in case of emergency. Even if he managed to use the signal flare, it was highly likely that the senior sister would only arrive to pick up his corpse in case anything happened that carried actual deadly danger.

He Zhenshu was working hard, though. After making sure both boys were alright and telling them to be careful, she left to check on other outer disciples. And maybe because her appearance brought them luck, or it was just a coincidence, but it was when she left when finally something exciting happened.

Soon after He Zhenzhu’s departure they noticed a larger rock formation in the distance. It was slightly off from the direction they were going to, more to the north, but they decided to check it out nevertheless.

The rocks were of dark, almost black color. Most weren’t too big, not taller than Lee and they nimbly began to climb up.

It looked as if long time ago there was a tall cliff in the middle of nowhere, but with time passing by it crumbled into a large pile of rocks.

"Got one!" Xiao Lian happily cheered, but the next moment barely evaded teeth of a two feet tall black dreadtalon.

His first reaction was to squat in order to inspect the peculiar baby beast, but Lee’s warning shout allowed him to avoid two more jumping at him. Wondering how they arrived at a dreadtalon’s nest, both performed genocide on the rocks, killing at least fifteen small ones.

But the problem was that not only these were much more agile than any dreadtalon they had encountered so far, they were not weaker compared to the brown or green ones.

And they were fast.

Like grasshoppers they jumped around the rocks, retreating and attacking, while both Lee and Xiao Lian were basically rooted where they stood.

If in the forest or on the ground below the rocks they could evade by jumping and rolling, if they attempted it here they would break all their bones in the process in addition to getting bruised from head to toe.

Fortunately they had their swords.

Loudly praising Han Li’s craftsmanship, they killed most of the raptors while the rest crawled in few gaps between rocks and hid. Turns out these weren’t hatchlings or juvenile raptors. These were full grown dreadtalons, except a different sub-species.

Despite their smaller size, they turned out to be much more clever and dangerous compared to any others the two had killed so far.

"What exactly did you get?" When everything was over, Lee asked.

He was slightly out of breath after going through the strange game of cat and mouse while switching roles back and forth with the small beasts.

"The Purple spirit root!" Xiao Lian excitedly said, and began to look for it again.

A moment later his mood turned sour, because it he realized that during the earlier fight he had stepped on it and destroyed the plant. Fortunately, after thoroughly searching the rock formation, they found a large recess in a taller rock wall where two more Purple spirit roots were hidden.

"Do you think the Golden ones can be somewhere around here?" Xiao Lian asked.

He wasn’t the only one who dreamed to find five hundred contribution points lying around like the girl did on the beach right after stepping out from the rift.

"I don’t think so. We know those things grow in the beach sand." Lee said, "But this is already good. I think you know what I want to do next."

From then on their boring days in the tundra-like region were over. The two began to run from place to place, looking for taller rock formations.

Fighting the black raptor packs was annoying, but their main task was to scare them enough so they would crawl in somewhere and hide. Afterwards the rocks were theirs along with the Purple spirit roots.

Obviously they didn’t find one on every rock lying around. But there was no day when they spend the night empty handed.

In five days they made up for the what they had spent while preparing for the event.