Chapter 97: The Dragon-Devouring Vajra Eagle!

Su did not understand what Wang Chen was saying, but he obediently took out his gear from the beast-hide pouch and armed himself.

While he was making his preparations, Wang Chen explained, "Do you see that shadow? I suspect the Gale Bird is hiding behind it."

Lightning flickered in Wang Chen's palm. "Lightning Barrier!"

Three barriers of crackling thunderlight hovered quietly around Wang Chen.

"In a moment, I’ll draw it down. Then you use your Wind Hunt method. I’ll coordinate with you," Wang Chen said.

With a flash of his fingers, he produced a bottle of Refreshing Mind Elixir, broke the seal, and drank it down in one gulp.

Then lightning flashed again in his hand, and three silent barriers of thunder rose to guard Su as well.

Su was astonished. The Wind Hunter tribe had no such elemental protection, and he even reached out a finger to touch the barrier.

Fortunately, the barrier would not discharge into the one it protected, or else it would have given him a proper lesson in being electrocuted.

Seeing this, Wang Chen inwardly sighed that he really was still just a child.

And yet this child was about to become the comrade fighting back-to-back with him. He suspected that two of the five stars on the job-change quest had been added solely by Su’s presence.

Wang Chen barked at Su in a low voice, and the latter immediately composed himself.

Wang Chen raised his head, staring at the shadow behind the clouds, then gripped the Flame Python Blade and cleaved out a wave of fire.

The crescent-shaped blaze slashed toward the clouds. Scorching heat tore through the mist and vapor with effortless ease, like a hot knife through butter.

With a sharp, piercing cry, the creature behind the clouds revealed its true form.

It was a ferocious beast shaped like a bird of prey, with a hooked beak and a body covered in brilliant golden down. It was enormous, the size of a small house.

Beating its wings, it astonishingly slipped nimbly aside from the fiery wave and remained suspended behind the clouds.

The biting wind at the summit must have come from its wingbeats.

A violet glimmer flashed in Wang Chen’s eyes, and information about the beast surfaced in his mind.

[Dragon-Eating Golden Griffon, Lv. 30]

[Skill One: Adamantine Break. The Dragon-Eating Golden Griffon feeds on dragons. To shatter the dragons' tough scales and innate magic, its beak and claws have evolved to become exceptionally sharp, able to break through magical protection and armor.]

[Skill Two: Gale Tempest. Using its sky-darkening wing feathers, it fans up violent winds into razor blades, which carry a freezing effect. The skill is even stronger at high altitude.]

[Skill Three: Adamantine Skyfall Strike. Once the Dragon-Eating Golden Griffon clamps onto its prey and carries it high into the air, it will plummet together with it. During the fall, the griffon speeds itself with beating wings, using the tremendous momentum to peck at its prey with its beak.]

[Skill Four: Elemental Devouring Peck. After breaking an elemental defense, the griffon will hold the elemental fragments in its beak and brew a strike imbued with that element.]

The information flashed through Wang Chen’s mind in an instant. This beast is a little troublesome, he thought.

He had not expected the so-called Gale Bird to actually be a Dragon-Eating Golden Griffon, a golden-rank overlord beast, with one skill after another sounding terrifying.

Especially that Adamantine Break—almost pure disregard for defense. Right now, Wang Chen felt as though he were an egg before this beast.

Frowning, he was calculating his next move when he inadvertently caught sight of something strange.

On the inner side of the griffon’s wing feathers, many arrow shafts were lodged and stuck there.

Wang Chen froze. A moment later, his expression tightened as he realized something.

At that moment, the Dragon-Eating Golden Griffon spread its wings, and its colossal body pressed down on them like a black cloud blotting out the sky.

Wang Chen immediately shoved Su aside, narrowly avoiding that gale-like pounce.

Missing its prey, the Dragon-Eating Golden Griffon raked its claws across the ground with a sound like clashing metal.

After seeing the Griffon’s true form, Su was already shaken by a third from the overwhelming pressure it gave off. The young man finally understood that Wind Hunt was not some leisurely, elegant game of prey and pursuit.

It was a wager with one’s life on the line!

And this charge, dark as a city beneath stormclouds, utterly shattered what little courage remained in him.

"Wang Chen, big brother, we... we..." Su’s teeth chattered.

Wang Chen completed the rest of the sentence for him. "We run!" And he immediately acted on it, turning and fleeing.

Su froze for an instant, then hurried after Wang Chen.

"Wang Chen, big brother, if we just run like this, won’t it make us look spineless?" Su shouted while running.

Without looking back, Wang Chen replied, "We can think about backbone after we’re alive. If you’re dead, you’ve got no backbone left—only ashes!"

He was not some reckless brute who only knew how to charge headlong. If he could kill the beast with strategy, then he would much rather avoid a direct clash!

Most importantly, Su was still with him. Against this overlord-class beast, Wang Chen might be able to protect himself, but if he failed to keep Su safe, who knew whether the job-change quest would be affected?

But the Dragon-Eating Golden Griffon seemed unwilling to let them go. It cried out, whipped its wings, turned in midair, and dove again.

Its talons had already curved into the angle of a pounce. It was treating Wang Chen and the other as two rabbits fleeing in panic.

Two legs were, of course, no match for wings. In the blink of an eye, the pair was overtaken.

Yet this time the Dragon-Eating Golden Griffon did not attack Wang Chen. Perhaps the Wind Hunter tribe had already drawn its hatred to the limit. Instead, it viciously seized Su’s back.

The three lightning barriers all burst in a blaze and shattered outright. The griffon’s other sharp claw passed through the chaotic currents and left a ghastly bloodied rake mark across Su’s back.

Su was also flung away by the tremendous momentum.

Wang Chen seized the perfect moment. As the Griffon beat its wings and prepared to rise again to gather strength for another strike, he abruptly stopped, turned around, and launched his counterattack.

A dark blue light shot from Wang Chen’s eyes and swept over the griffon’s.

The Dragon-Eating Golden Griffon, its eyes covered by that light, was suddenly robbed of sight.

Panic seized it. It lost all sense of balance, its wingbeats becoming chaotic and disordered. Its massive body crashed down, striking the ground and leaving a shallow pit while sending up a cloud of dust.

Taking advantage of the opening, Wang Chen grabbed Su by the back collar and hauled the Wind Hunter youth, who was half-stunned from the fall, back to his feet before fleeing once more.

"Wang Chen, big brother, this isn’t the way toward the cliff!" Su shouted.

"We can’t climb down the mountain now. If the Gale Bird chases us while we’re climbing, won’t we just be at its mercy?" Wang Chen replied.

"Then where are we supposed to run?" Su asked in distress.

The summit was more or less barren, with hardly any place to hide.

"Let’s take it one step at a time," Wang Chen said.

So the two of them ran behind a slab of rocky hill and temporarily hid among the holes and fissures in the stone.

"Has the Gale Bird followed us?" As soon as he squeezed into the crack, Su hurriedly poked his head out to look. His breathing, rough from fear, still had not fully settled.

"Not for the moment. The effect of Blind the Eye lasts ten minutes," Wang Chen explained. "And I can keep casting it regardless of cooldown."

"But that spell won’t keep working like this for long," Wang Chen said. "The reason the Gale Bird grew so panicked and lost its combat power after being blinded is that birds of prey like it rely heavily on vision to hunt."

"Like a musician suddenly losing hearing, or a chef losing taste, it would be thrown completely off balance."