Percival still held the Beast Source when he arrived in the next Encounter Zone.
This ti, the transition wasn’t as sudden. He could feel all of it. He felt the temperature change from the humid, vertical suffocations of the Mangroves to heat.
Pure, agonizing heat.
And this wasn’t the heat of the Unwelcoming Hills, this was the sudden, total absence of moisture.
One breath, Percival was inhaling swamp rot; the next, he was breathing in pulverized obsidian and liquid sulfur.
This was the Volcanic Stone Land.
The landscape was a nightmare of jagged, black volcanic glass, fractured into massive plates that groaned and shifted over a sea of subterranean fire.
Between the cracks, the ground bled. The blood were rivers, an endless number of them connected in fractures.
They were slow-moving, and bubbling, letting out steam that could scorch one’s skin in instant contact.
The viscous magma casted a hellish red light that made the rising ash look like the falling embers of a dying world.
Percival squinted through the shimring haze.
It was difficult to see anything. The air here caused its own problems. The heat was so intense that it distorted the horizon.
Nevertheless, he could make out the terrifying mountains in the far and near distance.
All of them held volcanoes inside, ready to erupt at any ti.
Percival’s ntal guess had been right. This was the next Encounter Zone. Which also ant the Beast Source was here.
He rembered very clearly that this place had its own.
Slowly, he began his stride.
He moved deeper into the waste, his greaves clicking with a sharp, tallic ring against the brittle obsidian.
He kept his eyes peeled, his Perception dialed to a razor’s edge. He knew there was danger everywhere, not just the beast threat hidden in this place.
Drrrrrrmmmm.
Percival felt the vibration on the earth beneath him. He knew what was coming next.
BOOM!
A volcanic geyser exploded a few feet beside him, a pillar of superheated steam and orange magma roaring fifty feet into the air.
He moved slightly to his left to avoid the spray of wet fire. Sweat had drenched his face, and his armor was soaked from the inside.
Percival continued.
Just a few seconds later, another geyser exploded. This continued without relent. First he would feel the ground shudder and then, the geyser of liquid fire.
He managed to use this pattern to track the micro-tremors through the soles of his boots.
Anyti he felt a spike of pressure, he would determine where it felt stronger and he would move the farthest distance from it.
However, he didn’t slow down. There was no threat yet, but Percival already had a destination.
Then, the clicking started.
Click-click. Click-click.
It was a dry, rhythmic sound—stone grinding on stone—echoing off the basalt ridges.
From the glowing fissures and the shadows of the cooling slag heaps, they erged.
The Saurian Scuttlers.
They were massive, reptilian crabs encased in shells of hardened, cooling lava. This lava on their skin had a dull, internal light, that glowed so deep one could feel the heat by staring at it.
Their bodies were heavy, armored fortresses of rock, and their pincers dripped with a thick, glowing orange liquid—Lava Poison—that hissed as it hit the obsidian.
⸢Threat: Saurian Scuttlers⸥
⸢Level: 66 - 68⸥
⸢Main Skills: Magma Control: Manipulation of liquid stone and heat⸥
⸢Lava Poisoning: Necrotic heat that lts armor and mana circuits⸥
⸢Mindless Rage: Total lack of self-preservation; controlled units⸥
Percival didn’t draw his sword to et them. He didn’t even prepare a stance.
Instead, he turned around and...
...Ran.
Percival sprinted like a man possessed, his eyes locked on the dark silhouette of the volcano mountain ahead.
Behind him, the clicking beca a loud chorus. The Scuttlers were quick to give chase, their rocky legs scraping against the glass in a frantic, mindless pursuit.
Percival was faster, yes, but these lizard crabs were not walkovers. They chased him, keeping tail and snapping their molten pincers at him.
Even worse, the geysers continued to detonate outwardly in a symphony of fire.
Percival used his Perception to anticipate the eruptions, backtracking a single, sharp step before a plu could roast him alive, then lunging forward through the dissipating steam.
He was a blur of high-speed motion, leaping over rivers of liquid fire and sliding down ridges of volcanic glass, never once slowing his pace.
Suddenly, the ground to his right disintegrated.
A Scuttler had been waiting in the ash, blindsiding him.
"Shit."
The beast erupted outward at him, its massive, pincer snapping toward his waist, intending to bisect him in a single, crushing bite.
Percival spent his mana on ⸢Grave Step⸥. He vanished into an explosion of blue, only a millisecond before the pincer slamd shut.
Then, he reappeared ten paces ahead.
But the mont his feet touched the earth, he felt the tremors again. And they were strongest on the very place he was standing.
Percival had materialized directly atop a venting crack that was about to explode into boiling orange.
"Shit. Shit."
Using the montum of his reappearance, he threw his body into a frantic, lateral roll.
It was weak, but he managed to escape the explosion by just a millisecond. The spear of fire roared into the sky where he had stood and the shockwave slamd into him.
Percival’s Constitution kept him rooted, and just as a Scuttler leaped through the lava to crash into him, he scrambled to his feet and kept running, pushing his legs to their limit.
Dozens of Scuttlers were now in pursuit, snapping at his heels.
Percival leaped over their lunging bodies, vaulted over cooling mounds of slag, and used the flat of his blade only to parry a pincer that threatened to pin him.
He never engaged. He didn’t waste a single drop of mana on a strike.
To any onlooker, he looked like a man fleeing for his life. But he knew the truth.
Unlike the Draconian Stalkers he had faced before, these Saurian Scuttlers had no intelligence. They held no malice either. No individual spark.
They were mindless beasts with nothing but volcanic rage, acting like a single, massive limb being moved by a distant thought.
Percival dove through a narrow canyon of jagged rock, sliding into the dark, gaping entrance of a giant cave tucked beneath the roots of the mountain.
The interior was a hall of fire. The walls were bedecked with glowing, red crystals. As Percival skidded to a halt at the center of the chamber, he felt a vibration beneath his feet that definitely wasn’t a geyser.
From a lake of bubbling gold at the back of the cave, the largest Saurian Scuttler Percival had ever seen erged.
It was the size of a fortress. It had an uglier shell with a scorched violet-black color that made it glow in the darkness of the cave.
As it rose higher, the cave shattered into re rocks and the Scuttler Alpha let out a shriek that rattled the very marrow in Percival’s bones.
But Percival cared less about the giant lizard crab. He wasn’t even looking at it.
His pupils were locked to the figure sitting atop the beast.
It was humanoid, made entirely of cracked, volcanic stone. Its skin was the color of cooled slag, weeping trails of liquid gold, and a long, flowing beard of white-hot embers and hardened ash trailed down its chest.
The Scuttlers were mindless and yet still had purpose.
Why?
Because this being was the intelligent beast that controlled them.
⸢Threat: Magma Elder (Lvl 80)⸥
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