Mountain of the Immortals

The dragon’s immense wings produced a deafening thump, and whenever Typhon flapped them he rose a few hundred feet at once. It was hard to gauge his size from such a distance but he definitely looked like he could smash any building in our settlement just by stepping on it. Never before had I seen a beast as massive and frightening.

Typhon was always described in stories as the king of monsters, the progenitor and father of all the mythical beasts in the Greek world. Some stories had him spewing different types of damage-dealing breath from his mouth, from fire and ice to acid and pure force. Other stories told of the dragon being banished to another realm by a powerful wizard only to kill the entire pantheon there and then return to devour his nemesis.

I didn’t know how much truth there was in any of these stories, but seeing his stats and the XP reward we’d get upon his defeat, I knew it was possible to kill him. After all, Cronus was able to beat him into submission and have him do his bidding. If we couldn’t kill Typhon, we’d stand absolutely no chance against my father, regardless of how long it had been since he’d last fought.

“This is the moment of truth,” I said in the guild chat. “It’s all been easygoing so far. This is where we prove ourselves.”

I clenched my fist around my spear, slightly bent my knees, and checked my Divinity Points.

* * *

Divinity Level: 6 (Minimum 2)

Followers: 24,993 / 25,000

Divinity Points: 6/6

* * *

My follower count had stopped decreasing at least—not because Cronus had ceased stealing my followers but because my name was being spread via the merchants that visited the now bustling town of Dion. I’d finally started gaining supporters each day. Not enough to level up yet, but I was getting close to it.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to level up my divinity level before my father struck, though it was definitely a good choice to not have spent any of my DP yet today—I’d also managed to finally time the DP regeneration with the time the daily DP cost of my God’s Watchtower was accounted for.

“Here goes nothing,” Artemis growled, and cast her self-buffs before fully tensing her bowstring and releasing a charged arrow.

The missile flew directly toward the dragon, but I wasn’t sure it would actually strike him because of the large distance between us. I was happy to see how wrong I was when the arrow exploded on the dragon’s chest, causing him to momentarily lose his momentum and elicit a beastly roar that could probably be heard all the way in Mykonos.

“That ought to hurt.” I rushed along the walls, closing the distance between me and the dragon. “My turn.”

The massive beast landed on the wall, the rock giving way underneath it’s weight. Some of Typhons heads snapped at me but I was able to avoid them for the most part. Having the opportunity to look at him up close, there were a couple of things I was able to understand about him and the way he fought.

Not all of his heads were the same and they definitely didn’t fight in the same way. Some of them had massive, rectangular jaws with protruding fangs, while others were leaner with multiple lines of sword-like teeth. The latter ones moved a lot faster and their attacks more closely resembled those of a snake than a mammal predator.

And it looked like every head had a mind of its own. Granted, they had learned how to fight as one unit over the thousands of years in which they’d shared a body but I could clearly see each of them had different tactics.

Some of them stayed back, observing the battlefield and waiting for the most opportune chance to strike, while others rushed in and simply accepted getting hit as they were trying to attack. It was obvious that the ones charging to attack me now were the weakest or less strategic ones.

I charged my spear with lightning and slashed at the first one that got close to me, managing to open a deep wound that ran from its nostrils all the way up to its eye. The head was quick enough to close its almost metallic-looking eyelid to avoid more extensive damage to the eye.

But my goal wasn’t to pierce it. Only to bring it close enough for my spear to pour all of its electric charge into the fluid of its eyeball. Despite being fast enough to cover it, all the creature managed to do was trap the electric current inside the lid, frying the eyeball and causing the head to fling away in pain.

That was my first small victory against the beast, but looking at the bigger picture, this probably wasn’t the way to go about killing a one-hundred-headed dragon. Where only one head had been moments before, now were three raging open maws. It was at that moment that I realized two more important things about the king of monsters.

The heads might have been able to think and act on their own, but they definitely felt the pain inflicted on the others. Which made me wonder just how much angrier they would get if I completely decapitated one of them. The second observation was made rather late, and it was about the nature of the breath weapon the dragon used.

All three of the heads hissed and a stream of gas hit me a split second before something clicked deep within their throats. The gas ignited and I felt my whole existence go up in flames, even though I tried to dodge out of their line of fire.

Thankfully, Artemis had seen the precarious position I’d put myself in and, after activating her own version of the Vandalier aura, fired an arrow that struck the neck of one of the three heads that were barbequing me. The arrow dug deep, seemingly into the sack where the flammable gas was stored and it exploded, partially severing the neck.

If there was somebody who knew about monster anatomy and how to best fight them, it was the goddess of hunting. Her shot was expertly aimed and delivered to cause exactly the effect it had. About a fifth of my HP had been seared off when the flame-breathing stopped and the dragon’s heads reeled back in agony.

Another thing I noticed was that there seemed to be a psychological factor playing into the amount of pain that affected each head. Those that were closest to the one whose neck had exploded seemed like they were suffering a lot more than others, and the few staying back and watching the battle rather than getting involved just yet didn’t seem to be bothered at all.

I ran away from Typhon and communicated everything I’d found out about the monster in the guild chat. Every small bit of knowledge that might bring us closer to defeating him was important, no matter how impossible it looked at the moment.

Once I was out of the dragon’s reach, I felt him flap his enormous wings and take to the air while Aphrodite momentarily came out of her hiding spot to cast a few healing spells on me. The pink light washed over my body, softening the charred skin, mending the wounds, and relieving me of the terrible pain.

“Let’s see if this works,” Artemis said in the guild chat, and stopped firing arrows at random heads, instead focusing on one of the three that had only been watching so far.

The arrow flashed with the familiar glow of her powerful stunning shot as it traveled toward the rightmost of the three heads, and then landed right between its eyes. The head didn’t fall to the ground but was frozen in place instead, its eyes moving quickly from side to side as it was trying to shake off the stunning effect. What was more interesting, however, was that the beast’s knees trembled too, as if the attack on this head had caused Typhon to lose control of his body momentarily. It made sense to me that at least one of the heads would be responsible for moving the body, since I doubted it possessed a brain of its own.

There was a small window between the moment that one brain lost control of the body and another claimed it. There were only so many things one could do in that small window of time, but still it was another bit of useful knowledge. As I’d heard Artemis say before, knowing the way a monster fought was the most important part of the hunt.

Enraged by this latest attack, Typhon turned his attention toward Artemis now. But she was an experienced fighter and despite the beast’s superior flying speed, she knew exactly how to move in order to get her hits in on him while avoiding his heads. Even more importantly, she knew where to lure the dragon.

As soon as the gargantuan beast entered the sphere of the defense system, the earth trembled and the thunder coil emerged from it. The huge metallic structure reflected the light of the sun, which was well on its way to the west by now, and clicked into place before a loud buzz permeated the valley. The coils around the tower shined brightly and the pitch increased in frequency before a deafening zap reached out for the dragon and almost blinded the rest of us.

Typhon screamed in agony as at least a dozen of his heads flailed wildly, covered in flames. Smoke rose from a large singed patch on its back. There was no way to know the amount of damage the coil had caused him but it was obvious it’d had a significant effect. The only downside of it for us was that there was a sizable cooldown on the coil’s attacks, since it needed to recharge, which meant that this one would probably out of use for the rest of the battle. I could only hope we’d live to see it used against a different enemy sometime in the future.

Now even more furious at the way she’d tricked him into the trap, Typhon fixated on Artemis and charged at her with even greater ferociousness. For all the intelligence that the king of dragons possessed, he was still a beast. He didn’t even stop to consider that what had just struck him might not be the only one. And, of course, it wasn’t.

This time, I thought I heard the cry of pain a split second before the lightning bolt hit the monster’s body. It might have been a level sixty-one raid boss, but the coil structures had been designed to take down the likes of armored creatures, airships and other vehicles, so it was only natural they’d be able to cause significant damage to even a beast like Typhon. As much as I would have liked to have Typhon surrounded by tens of coils like the two that had dealt him so much damage, the fact was that these were the only ones we had available. And with their attacks now recharging, they were useless for now.

Not that he knew that, of course.