HP: The Arcane Thief

Chapter 190: Axel vs Monster Army

As Axel and Akiko flew up to implement their grand plan, the firing momentarily stagnated due to sudden intervention of two alleged civilians who were rushing into the danger.

"What?!"

"What are they doing?!"

"Hey! Stop!"

"The couple riding the bike! By royal authority, I command you to stop and return!"

The commander repeatedly tried shouting out to Axel and Akiko, but the two completely ignored his words, as if not listening to him at all. The captain gritted his teeth. As if the situation wasn't bad enough, these two idiots have now come into the middle of firing range, completely disrupting their attempts.

When the Neptunite reached the front of the hoard, the dragons tried torching the two in their flames. These weren't any ordinary flames, either. They were draconic flames, enhanced several times due to the Dragon's having been awakened by Kraken.

Fortunately, the couple flew high at the last moment, saving them from the tragedy. But then, the boy had the brilliant idea of jumping off the Neptunite, onto the back of the biggest dragon.

"Captain, what do we do?"

The Captain clenched his fists. "Continue the attack! A lot more people will die if we don't stop as many creatures as possible."

"Um,,, Captain, isn't he Axel Hunt?" One of the soldiers couldn't help voicing out after getting a close up look in his scope.

"What?!" The captain's head jerked in the direction of the soldier who had spoken.

He

Meanwhile, as he land on the Dragon's back, a searing sound was produced when Axel's shoes touched the blue markings on the Dragon.

Axel didn't waste any time and got into action right away.

[Riding]

He quickly made his way over to the neck of the dragon.

[Occlumency: Max Concentration]

[Magic Hands]

[Trap Setting]

Axel's fingers began moving at blurring speeds, weaving the thread while he ran up the length of the dragon's spine. Once he reached the top of it's neck, Axel launched the thread forward, repeatedly looping it around the dragon.

'Alright, here goes nothing.' With that, Axel pulled.

*ROAR*

The dragon let out a loud roar of anger as it's head tilted upwards. With the head completely trapped in threads, Axel flexed his fingers to the side, the dragon's head tilted to that side, then he snapped his fingers the other way. This went on for several seconds while the dragon tried it best to shake Axel while twisted its neck.

[Learnt the Skill: [Dragon Riding]

"Bingo!"

Soon, Axel was able to control the Dragon's movements.

His fingers pulled on the strings again, and the dragon's jaw was forced open this time.

[Lightning Style: Electric charge]

*ROOAARRR*

When Axel sent out the high voltage electric charge into the dragon's face, a column of flames was shot out if its mouth as involuntarily as its facial muscles convulsed.

"Sweet!"

Axel grinned. He now had the dragon under his control.

How did he do this?

First of all, As soon as he had landed on the Dragon, he had activated the skill: [Riding]. It was skill that not only applied to riding brooms and Neptunite, but also other things. Dragons are technically creatures that can skill be ridden. As soon as he started, the further knowledge in the skill was unlocked, and Axel quickly found out the correct method.

Then, [trap setting]. This was one of the first skills he had unlocked from the system.

It gave him knowledge related to all kinds of traps. And the most basic category is the rope trap, which gave him a lot of knowledge related to weaving and knots.

Then, with [Magic Hands], he boosted the specs of his hands to a degree that would make them a relics on their own. With high dexterity and concentration, he wove the threads around the dragon, making highly sophisticated reigns.

It took time in adjusting, but Axel had roughly gotten the gist of it.

And that is how, Axel took control over a dragon mid flight within a matter of seconds. Other than him, no one else can do it. No one else has the gut to jump on a dragon, the knowhow, or the dexterity to bind the threads while the dragon is still moving and resisting. And, even if they did all this, it would still all be for nothing. Their fingers would be cut off clean as soon as the dragon pulled its head. Even Axel can only do it because his fingers are currently coated in magic due to the skill [Magic hands]

But, Axel was not done yet. Now, it was time for phase two.

Axel harshly pulled on the reigns, turning the dragon to one direction. They got dangerously close to bumping into the dragon flying adjacent to them.

Then, Axel quickly looped the thread around the head of the second dragon, thus also taking him under control.

'Two down.'

But, Axel still wasn't done yet.

He pulled on the reigns of the both the dragons and directed them towards the third dragon. His casting technique got better, and he was able to wrap the threads with a considerable distance.

Now, Axel had three dragons under his control. In order to increase the durability of the thread, he had to overlap them several times, and he had to do it for three separate dragons. Overall, that's a lot of strings to string along.

Furthermore, all the threads were coated in his water affinity magic to make it resistant to the dragon fire, and an even better conductor of electricity.

In short, his mind and his fingers were under a lot of strain and his extreme dexterity was showing its effects.

But, he was far from done.

Axel wove more and more strings. Within the next few seconds, Axel casted thread all over the place, taking control over the rest of the dragons.

By the time they reached the exit of the Biopark, Axel had over 31 huge dragons under his control, all straining against the strings and his hands were moving at speed that would be difficult to follow even if show several times slower.

One saving grace was that he didn't have to handle them individually. He could pull all the strings to one side and all the dragons would follow that direction.

But…

"They're going to snap off." His fingers, even when coated with dense magic, getting more and more bloody.

And his work was still far from over. Even though the dragons were already under his control, the problem was still not solved yet.

Axel looked back. Thousands of winged creatures were following him. There were griffins, hippogriffs, winged chimeras, and many more. All the creatures had been enhanced, with their bodies bulked up to an enormous degree and blue markings glowing on their skins.

Even without the Dragons protecting them from the front, these creatures are still capable of breaking through the blockage to reach into the city.

That's where the phase 3 of his plan comes in.

Axel pulled on the reins and made the dragons turn around. Making the strings loose, he formed a single hand seal.

[Lightning Style: Thunder Stream]

A tremendous amount of electricity was discharge from his hands, which spread through all the threads.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Axel's eardrums almost ruptured from the sheer intensity of the roars that the dragons produced. And of course, high intensity flames dyed the sky sky blue, washing over the incoming hoard of flying creatures.

'Fuck yeah!'

Axel laughed. This was the phase three of his plan: Multiple muzzle draconic flame thrower!

He was glad that it worked, because this did not work, he would have had to go with phase four: The Web of Death, trapping all the creatures and electrocuting him all with all the amount of Lightning he and Akiko could get.

Even when the strain on his fingers increased, Axel made the dragons fly forward in the direction of the coming creatures and once again passed on the electric shocks, making the dragons involuntarily blow out flames again.

Meanwhile, the people who were watching from below were left completely flabbergasted.

What… in the ever drowning fuck?

They couldn't believe that what they were seeing was true and no a part of made up movie. When they had seen Axel jumping onto the dragon's back, they had expressed their exasperation over his foolish act, cursing him for throwing away his life and making the situation more difficult for them.

But now the boy had gotten himself the most powerful cremation device, which he was using to burn away all the flying creatures. Since the dragons were juiced up with blue markings, he didn't even need to worry about running out of fuel any time soon.

"This is… SO AWESOME!!!"

"HolyShit!"

"Tell me someone is recording this!"

The sight of one person riding a dragon, leading an army of other fire-breathing dragons against a huge hoard of monsters created an impact scene straight out of the legends.

The Soldiers who were already prepared themselves for a bad outcome had their hearts fished out of dispair as they realised that the guy they had dismissed as an suicidal maniac was now single-handedly turning the tides of the hopeless situation.

"Hey, look over there!"

"What's that?"

"Fire?!"

"Why is it black?"

That's right. While everyone's attention was focused in the air, black flames had spread on the ground, reaching quite high.

It spread widely in a way that caused the creatures to detour around it, delaying them considerably.

It was only then did they see Akiko zooming around in her Neptunite, controlling the flames.

*Thump**Thump**Thump**Thump*….

Akiko had to repeatedly move her Neptunite to dodge, as burning monsters literally rained down from the sky.

These creatures were heavy, and falling from such height gave them a tremendous amount of momentum. Also… the area they fell soon overlapped with the area of ground-monster hoard.

So…

A lot of crushed monster-meat double-patties were created.

After Axel annihilating most of the sky hoard, he brought his Dragon army to the ground, in order to finish the job. The smell of burnt meat filled the air as Axel led his flame breathing monstrosities in circles.

Some monsters, especially those who were XXXXX threat level, were either flame resistant or had thick skin, so they took extra work. In the face of firepower of over 30 enhanced fire breathing dragons, there was little even those powerful creatures could do.

The stragglers or escapees were handled by the military, thank gods they weren't completely useless.

Akiko looked at the scene with silent awe. She had no words to describe her current feelings. Upon seeing the situation, she had already given up on trying to search for ways in which they could have a complete victory.

Even when taking all of her and Axel's abilities into consideration and even adding a considerable amount of Atlantis's forces, and even with the chance arrival of Kurai sensei, she had felt that the situation would be difficult to handle.

But what did Axel do? Not only did he single-handedly subdued almost all of the sky hoard (the most dangerous), and subdue most of the ground hoard on his own, but he also managed to hide his water affinity, his super agility, his phenomenal combat abilities, and so on, only revealing abilities that people can't even comprehend.

Akiko looked up at the sky. Her lips curved upwards as she saw Axel riding the biggest dragon while controlling the rest. She shook her head. There is a limit to how cool one can be. Axel has already crossed it several times over.

….

A.N.: Ah, happy new year, everyone. What are your resolutions? Mine is starting an original book in continuation with ArcaneThief and make it much better than other books on the platform. Let's see how it works out.

Next: Finished

Next next: Emergency Meeting

Next... next: Higher ups' Surprise

Come read /Snollygoster