Path of Dragons 17 - Chapter 10 - Worthy Prey (Patreon)

For once, Elijah remembered to check his phone.

It was so odd, given that there had once been a time that he’d clung to his phone like it was his only lifeline in a raging storm.  Like he was a child and it was a comforting stuffed animal with nostalgic value.  Going without was so inconceivable that he had never really considered it.

And he wasn’t the worst offender when it came to phone dependence.  Still, back then, he had been a child of his age, and the people who could do without that constant connection were few and far between.

Breaking that addiction hadn’t been as difficult as he might have expected.  After all, the world had just ended, and after a few days, he’d stopped missing it.  After a couple of months, he didn’t even think about it.

Now?  Decades later?  The idea of constantly checking his phone was patently ridiculous. 

That had gotten him in trouble with Imal, which probably should have forced him to change his habits.  And it had, to a certain degree.  Instead of going a decade without looking at it, he’d only gone a week or so.  That was progress.

Unfortunately, some things had happened in that time.  The first few messages he’d gotten from Imal were a little alarming, and if they hadn’t been dated so long ago, he probably would have abandoned his hunt and flown back to the Vengeance as quickly as he could. 

Or just teleported.

But as he read the progression, he was relieved to discover that she and the rest of the expedition had dealt with the problem.  Still, the fact that those three deities had decided to attack – to try to kill – Imal and her group was a sign that things had escalated a little more quickly than he’d expected.

War was always coming.

Elijah knew that.  But he’d hoped to have a little more time to prepare, for his people to gain levels, and now, for his alliance with the orcs to take shape.  He had always known conflict was inevitable, but the longer he could delay it, the better off his people would be. 

It seemed it would happen sooner rather than later, though.

Thankfully, Imal and the rest of the group had made it back to the Vengeance, where the combination of Earth’s strongest, the ship’s defenses, and Illska had put the enemy dragons down.  The way Imal described it made it sound like a one-sided battle, at least once they got back to the Vengeance. 

After reading that string of messages, Elijah landed on a small landmass and responded.  The first step was to issue an apology, then congratulations. Once that was out of the way, he explained what he’d been doing and what he hoped to accomplish.  Putting it all down in words made it seem even less likely than when the idea had lived only in his mind, but Elijah felt confident that he could make it work.

If not, then he and the rest of his people would become mired in a three-sided war.  In the event that couldn’t be avoided, he intended to pull everyone back and give up on his quest to colonize Orveth Kaal.

He didn’t want to.

But Elijah wasn’t so proud that he couldn’t admit when something was a lost cause.  Or that he would put his own desires above the survival of his people.  He was often self-interested, but that was more of a personal failing tied to his tendency to hyper-focus on whatever he deemed important at the time. That originated, at least in part, from all the time he’d spent alone, and it was more of a survival mechanism than a conscious choice.

However, Elijah would’ve been lying to himself if he didn’t admit that he’d always been like that.  Even going back to his youth, he had hosted an obsessive personality. 

He was aware of it, though.  And that was the first step toward correcting the issue.  Hopefully, Imal would bear with him while he worked on it.  And maybe she’d even forgive him if he never fully overcame it.

Either way, it seemed that the immediate danger had passed.  Illska and the rest of the Vyrin expedition had increased their presence in the patrols, while the rest of Earth’s representatives had vowed to become warier. 

So, there was no reason for Elijah to rush back.

With that in mind, he stowed his phone and resumed his hunt.  After taking on the Shape of Withering, he took off and tapped into the form’s instincts.  The creature upon which it had been based was not the same kind of hunter as something like the draconid or the scourgedrake, but it was more than capable of using its heightened senses to search for prey.

The problem was that Elijah wasn’t looking for typical prey animals.  Instead, he was tasked with finding the biggest and most dangerous predator he could reasonably kill.  Otherwise, he would fail to gain the respect of the orcs, and what’s more, he would feel more than a little guilty about hunting what amounted to a defenseless animal.

It wouldn’t be.

Every creature in Orveth Kaal could defend itself.  Even the herbivores were mighty creatures with enough power to trample whole cities back on Earth.  Yet, Elijah’s feelings – valid or not – remained at the forefront of his mind.

Besides, he wanted to double-dip when it came to purpose.  To do that, he needed a very specific type of creature. 

His search widened a little with every passing circuit, and it wasn’t long before he left the inner reaches of Orveth Kaal behind.  The corrosive atmosphere became comfortably benign – at least to him – and he began to see evidence of mass migration. 

That was normal for the ancestral world’s cyclical pattern. 

Abandoned territories and dens were the most common sight, but Elijah also found plenty of empty nests.  Some were sized to accommodate creatures as large as aircraft carriers, while others were no bigger than what he might expect back on Earth. 

Then, he caught the scent of something interesting.  It wafted through the air, barely discernible even to Elijah’s sensitive nose.  However, it also triggered something in his instincts that practically demanded he check it out.  For once, he was more than willing to give in to his primal urges, and he shifted his trajectory in the appropriate direction.

Gradually, the smell grew stronger until it became nearly overwhelming.  It was only when he saw a landmass on the horizon that he realized why his instincts had reacted so strongly.

The place was swarming with insects.

The air, the land, and he suspected subterranean caves were all infested with the creatures.  As he drew closer, Elijah recognized that they looked a lot like termites, though their evolution had clearly diverged from the Earth-bound creatures. 

Most obviously, they were far larger.  At least orc-sized, with proportions to match their insectile bodies – and that was just the flyers.  The ones on the ground were far larger.  Maybe as big as cars, though it was difficult to tell from a distance. 

One thing that seemed consistent was the fact that they had built their nests underground.  Huge mounds of earth, each one looking like mountain-sized tree stumps, hosted the openings, and Elijah sensed that the entire landmass was honeycombed with a maze of tunnels. 

Most of the surrounding land was entirely barren, with large swaths of the native trees having been consumed by the massive termites.  Oddly, the life cycle of said trees seemed incredibly accelerated, and Elijah could see them growing by the minute. 

Maybe that was why the termites had built their nest there.

Every now and again, the flyers would swoop down to destroy an animal that ventured too close, making their role in the colony as clear as possible.

Elijah wasn’t worried about that.  Instead, he was focused on something related but entirely different.  Termites had queens, and most of the time, those queens were many times larger than the rest of the colony.  Sometimes hundreds of times bigger than any other individual.  And their bodies were known to be composed of up to thirty percent fat.

Which was perfect.

Was that assessment affected by the reality that Elijah had never really liked termites?  Or by the fact that his instincts screamed at him to kill as many of them as possible? That came from the shape itself, which suggested that venomwing stalkers had evolved to hunt similar creatures. 

They were also close enough to vespirans that some of his draconic disdain carried over.

Either way, it seemed that he’d discovered his prey.

Now, he just needed to destroy an entire colony of monstrous termites.  And as it turned out, he had the ideal tools to engage such a task.  It fit together so perfectly that Elijah felt certain that termites – or something close enough that it didn’t matter – were the natural prey of the venomwing stalker.

Elijah used Ride the Wind to gain some altitude, and once he was far above the highest termites, he let loose with Cloud of Decay.  At first, the gaseous toxin dissipated into the air, harmless and rendered mostly inert.  However, as Elijah continuously used the ability, the vaporous cloud began to accumulate. 

It wasn’t so different from what he’d done just after attaining the evolution.  Back then, he’d spent months blanketing an entire fleet of orcish ships with Cloud of Decay.  It hadn’t been enough to kill them all, but it definitely made the following battle much easier.

To his surprise, the flying termites were even more grossly affected than the orcs had been.  It only took Elijah a few minutes to recognize that they were incredibly fragile creatures, built on mobility and lethal attacks.

In that way, they differed from Earth’s termites, whose flyers – called alates – were reproductive assets.  Future kings and queens, as opposed to the mostly sterile workers and soldiers.  However, Orveth Kaal’s versions were appropriately deadly, with obviously venomous stingers that reminded Elijah more of hornets than termites.

And that just made killing them all the more satisfying.

Perhaps he still hadn’t gotten over his experiences fighting vespirans.

Whatever the case, Elijah’s fumigation was incredibly effective, and it wasn’t long before the flyers began to fall from the sky, their wings having disintegrated as their bodies were wracked with painful seizures.  The impact of hitting the ground wasn’t enough to finish them off, but the ongoing affliction made quick work of them.

Still, it was a big landmass, and there were a lot of flying termites.

So, even if his chosen tool was extraordinarily effective, it took quite a while to take them out.  The one bright spot was that the mass extermination resulted in two entire levels.  Until that moment, Elijah hadn’t even realized how hamstrung his leveling speed had become.  So far, his time in Orveth Kaal had been characterized by killing orcs – almost exclusively.  Because of that, he was deep into the well of diminishing returns, and each kill resulted in far less experience than it should have.

But killing termites broke that cycle, providing a surge that didn’t dissipate until three days later, when he brushed against renewed diminishing returns.  Still, getting to four-sixty-one was a nice and unexpected bonus.

Especially considering that it gave him yet another ability. 

Maybe he’d gain one every ten levels until he reached deity.  That would certainly give him quite a boost.  Still, he only took a moment to look at the notification before he refocused on the task at hand.

Despite wanting to choose immediately, the fact was that he recognized just how quickly termites could breed.  And he didn’t want to spend weeks fighting reinforcements.  So, he continued his task, slaughtering flyers until, at last, the skies had cleared.

Elijah hadn’t gained any other levels, but he’d made some progress towards four-sixty-two.  That would have to suffice.

In any case, he no longer had the willpower to ignore the evolution opportunity.  So, despite his previous resolution to finish the job before giving it any attention, he retreated to another landmass a safe distance away, then found an isolated cave.  Only then did Elijah really study his next evolution opportunity:

Elijah studied the options, unsure of which route to choose.