RETURN OF THE SHADOW

He had previously visited the pet shop at the White Heart City when he took Rudra around to show him the different things. Rudra had also brought an eagle as a pet which could help him scouting. He had also thought about getting a pet since then, but without decent attack skill books for the pets getting a pet was considered a waste.

Now, it was a different scenario as the pet would enable him to work even during the night which would give him an advantage over the competition. He used to be at a better level than the one on the first place of the leader board and he realized that he couldn't always maintain this advantage without some cards up his sleeve. So, a pet firefly became a necessity to him.

He went to the managing NPC of the pet shop and requested if there were any pets that were luminescent to which the NPC simply laughed. Then, he requested for equipment to catch insects. He was shown different kinds of pooters, nets, malaise traps and the like.

For fireflies, he didn't need most of these. Traps could only be used with a lure, but the fireflies found at the Welog town were a specific kind called Fireglows by the system which only eat the dead skin off the salamandrids. They live in a symbiotic relationship with the salamandrids, which makes it so hard to catch them. One would have to risk catching them only when the salamandrids are at rest and at this time they had to quickly grab them, or they will fly away.

"I will take a couple of nets and a pooter and ten bottles to keep them," said Shadow looking at all the equipment shown by the NPC. "Can I meet with the resident tamer of this store?" he asked. "I need some help to tame a few insects."

"You want tame insects?" asked the NPC to which Shadow nodded.

"Insects aren't very useful unless they are tamed in very large numbers. Only few people in the world specialize in such things. Don't waste your time. Most of the insects brought here would be used to set traps for animals and are one time uses. We only capture and sell them. Most even die after an attack, we don't have anyone who can tame a large number of them to attack," said the NPC as he sold the equipment to Shadow. "I suggest you also stick to capturing insects and not taming them. They can be very efficient in traps."

"No, I don't need a large number. I just need a few to be domesticated and move around the place. Just like a simple pet. Don't need them to attack or anything," said Balthazar.

"I will get the tamer for you, if you want," said the NPC shaking his head. "But it will cost you 5 gold for a consultation."

"Five gold?" asked Balthazar surprised. That was far too much for a simple consultation. He didn't even ask to tame anything.

"Yes, I am willing to do it only because you are the First citizen of the city. Else most tamers wouldn't even indulge such discussions. You do have specimen available, right?" asked the manager.

"No. I don't have one on hand," replied Shadow.

"Can't have a consultation with a tamer without a specimen. They are always trying to tame one beast or the other. What you are asking is quite a weird request for a tamer. I can't let you in for a consultation without even a specimen," said the NPC shaking his head as he pointed to the door.

"I can come for the consultation later?" asked Shadow. "At night."

"As long as you have a specimen, I can introduce you to a tamer for a consultation. But you must make the meeting count. After that, subsequent consultations will depend on her," said the NPC.

Shadow went out and went to the adventurers association to get a weapons cache to increase his bag space. After that, he used the teleportation portal to get back to the Welog town. He quickly went towards the direction of the mountains. He had less than an hour to reach the place and find a fireglow or at least to kill a salamandrids to get a firestone.

The small town was surrounded by woods and it would take at least 30 minutes at his best speed to reach the boundary of the habitat of the salamandrids. It was already started to get dark and he had to hurry the only good thing was that volcano area doesn't get completely dark due to the burning lava and volcano.

The salamandrids, larians, cinder wolfs, firehawks and most of the beasts that live near the volcano glow even in night. That would be a bit more beneficial to work at the night at that place but the fact was that it was very dangerous to hunt at night apart from the glowing ones, there would also be other beasts that don't glow and give away their position. He also thought of capturing cinder wolf and firehawks later, but he couldn't use them for scouting as the glowing beasts would give away their position. He could only use them as attackers.

As he made his way through the woods, he came into contact with a few beasts. He didn't move in stealth as he needed to move at his best speed else it would be hard to reach his goal in time. His chances would improve if he reached his destination faster.

There were wolves, leopards, tigers and other beasts in the forest. He ran away from the ones he could escape from and made quick attack and used of fireworks and explosives to kill or distract them so that he could reach his destination. Due to this he had only 15 minutes by the time that he finally reached, but he also managed to get to level 16 as he had killed high level beasts in the forest. He hadn't yet allocated the previous attribute points that he got from going to level 15 and that left him a total of 16 free attribute points.

He put two attribute points in each of the attributes again. Though his focus was on agility, he wanted to maintain a decent balance among the rest of the attributes. He put the remaining four points into agility. He had to focus on agility due to his fighting style and profession. Even though balance was considered necessary, he couldn't let his agility below other players and monsters. His performance always depended on his high speed.

Character: Shadow Tyrant (Human)

Affiliated Village: Black Rock Village.

Affiliated City: White Hear City (Capital)

Title: Kade's apprentice, First Citizen of White Heart City, Dwarf's friend.

Job: Assassin

Level: 16

Exp: 110/14000

HP: 7500/7500; MP: 3100/3100; SP: 3800/3800

Physical Attack: 198;

Defense: 98; Attack Speed: 120; Movement Speed: 126; Willpower: 66 ; Balance: 72; Focus/Search: 95; Reflect Damage: 6; Magic Resist: 37; Luck: *; Charm: *;

Attributes: Strength 93, Agility 88, Endurance 62, Intelligence 56, Vitality 58, Perception 53.

No Special Racial Attributes or weakness.

Free Attributes Points: 0;

After allocating his attribute points he went into stealth. He was already in the habitat of the salamandrids which were creatures like a crocodile with longer feet. They stay on the ground most of the time and crawl at high speeds unless in a fight when they tend to jump a few meters to land on their prey.

He had to be in stealth to avoid monsters. His priority was to find salamandrids and fireglow insects. The area was close to volcanoes and the heat made the surroundings different from that of a forest. The trees were sparse, but there was shrubbery all around the place which he could use to hide. The problem was that many of them hard thorns and were prickly, which would pull him out of stealth if he wasn't careful enough.

The place was hotter at night than the White Heart City was during the day. He had started to perspire, and he felt it hard to maintain stealth. It was even costing his stamina to deplete faster. He always used heat resistance potions in such areas, but now in his hurry, he had completely forgotten about it.

He moved slowly avoiding any beast he could see. There were cinder wolfs and ash panthers roaming around occasionally. It was twilight already and most of the monsters were going back to their lairs and congregating in groups for the night other than a few which tend to stay away for longer periods of time.

Luckily for Shadow, salamandrids and fireglows tend to stay out in the night. Salamandrids stay in holes like lizards mostly in hot areas at most of the day and come out at twilight. With fireglows hovering on their back while feeding on their dead skin, twilight was the best time to search for the salamandrids and Shadow had about 20 minutes before darkness completely sets in.

[Salamandrid] (Common monster)

Level 18;

HP: 8500/8500;

[Fireglow] (Common insect)

Level 15;

HP: 5000/5000;

Soon, he found one salamandrid crawling by a tree with a few fireglows. It was like a shining 2-meter-long target that was moving. He slowly went behind it and moved toward the fireglows and took out his net to try and capture it. The fireglows had low health but moved very fast and in an erratic fashion. So, it was very hard to catch them without a net. The fireglows weren't insects which actually had fire but released a light which looked like fire. Else, the net would have burned on contact.

He had to be careful with the net. The place was very dangerous, and the ground could suddenly have cracks and spew out fire. That could easily burn the net. The net could even be burned by the flames of the salamandrid. So, he needed to be very careful as the fireglows just hover over the salamandrid and it was a daunting task to capture them without touching the salamandrid.

He carefully crouched behind salamandrid and waited for the appropriate time before using the net to capture a fireglow. The minute he caught the fireglow in the net, the salamandrid had noticed him and swiped its hind claw at him and tried to strike him with its tail.

He quickly evaded as he ran to the side going to its blind spot, before putting the fireglow in the bottle. He then put the net back, before pulling out his weapons. Salamandrid are usually quiet and crawl around slowly, but one they notice anything around it they become vicious attackers which roar and attract the attention of the other beasts. The stronger ones might come closer to them while the weaker ones run away.

The salamandrids cause fire damage whenever anything touches them at any place other than the head and this is the worst thing about it. It restricts players from fighting it without fire damage. It also keeps jumping on the players, trying to pin them under it and kill them.

This behaviour of the salamandrids made them a headache to kill even for people at level 18. Players usually tend to form group when handling them. The good thing was that the same behavior which frighted most was also its weakness. Their weak spot is the belly and underside which could be cut easier than its back and legs as it had no thick scales underside like it had on its back and limbs.

Still it would cause a lot of damage when the salamandrid jumped on a player. One had to make a quick slash while evading. It would be a very risk attempt, but he had the experience. As the salamandrid jump towards him, he ran towards it, so that he could get beneath it while it was in the air and swung the void dragon's talons over his head with all his might making half a meter long cut on its belly.

The wieght of the beast caused the blades to go about 5 inches deep into its flesh causing it more damage than a simple attack. There were immediate notifications of it causing bleed and cripple effect on the beast. The beast lost 10% of its health and had a bleed effect of 50 HP per second.

The beast roared in pain as it fell behind him. He quickly turned around and continued to attack the salamandrid. With its underside having a big cut, it could no longer jump. Even it movement reduced as it lay down and on the ground and began to growl at Shadow.

Shadow had known that the wound would only heal in some time and it was his best chance to injure the salamandrid as much as possible. Once, it was crippled and had slower movement, he had better options for attacking. The back of the beast was the largest area but had the hardest scales and densest flames making it the worst point to attack. The tail was the same as the back and the limbs were better.

The head wasn't on flames and like all other beasts was the weakest point. The eyes and snout were the weakest points. All beasts protect their head, but currently the salamandrid was crippled and couldn't move it fore arms fast enough to block his attacks. Shadow took his chance to quickly attack its eyes and snout managing to blind it in one eye after the other and even injured its snout making it much easier for him to continue his attacks or get away.

He initially thought of getting away from the salamandrid as he already had the fireglow, but then he remembered that he also needed to gather firestones. As the salamandrid was currently blinded, he had a thought of trying to do the same thing as Robert and he did with Boredrevers. He had always kept fruits, bread and meat with him in his bag. They could be used to feed it. The only difference was that instead of using poison he thought of using a dynamite as a whole.

He quickly pulled out a dynamite and some meat rolling the dynamite in the meat. He lit the thing and threw attacked the beast to make it roar while throwing the dynamite in its mouth. The beast immediately closed its jaws trying to bite it and swallowed it as he had expected. A moment later, a muffled explosion sounded as the salamandrid puked out blood and flesh while it tipped over on its belly and the cut that he had previously made opened up much larger with the beasts heart and lungs burnt and hanging out of it.

The salamandrid made small whimpering sounds as more of its blood poured out of its wound and throat. Notifications indicating that the salamandrid had received 4000 HP damage and got a bleed effect of 300 HP per second. He checked the notifications and continued to attack at the overturned beast at a rapid pace to increase the rate of damage. The firestones would also be found in their stomach, so he began to focus his attack to enlarge the cut and get deeper into the stomach.

Within 10 seconds, the salamandrid stopped whimpering and died. It was one of the fastest kill of a salamandrid that he had ever done, but he didn't really want to repeat this method again. Most of the parts of the salamandrid which could be foraged were wasted.