Age of Adepts

Chapter 39

When the Giant Alligator King fully opened its mouth, it was even taller than an adult human. Frightening looking teeth were messily distributed on both upper and lower jaw, all of which looked like razor-sharp daggers.

With its incredible jaw strength, perhaps this unprepared Apprentice would have his body immediately ripped in half.

But something dramatic happened. The human Apprentice turned around, throwing the Ghost Nanny in his hand into the Giant Alligator King’s mouth. After that, twisting and turning in a strange manner, he escaped the frightening bite of the Giant Alligator King at lightning speed.

The skinny and tough body of Ghost Nanny was instantly bitten in half, pungent, sticky, black blood flowing down from the sharp teeth.

The Giant Alligator King let out a disgusted roar.

As a demon itself, it was never picky about food. However, it would say no to these neighbors without any hesitation. Even from the point of view of a demon, these Ghost Nannies really stunk. Only when food had really run out would it consider eating one or two of these Ghost Nannies.

Giant Alligator King spat the broken body out of its mouth. In the next second, it caught sight of the figure of a fleeing human. It could tell this human Apprentice couldn’t run very fast, as he was staggering his way while stumbled over puddles.

It let out a joyful roar, moved its gigantic body, and crashing forward toward its target, like a small mountain.

Due to the terrain of this area, the Giant Alligator King actually moved faster than that human Apprentice, so it quickly reached ‘his’ back.

Though it kept catching up, the bizarre human would always dodge out of the way of its giant mouth miraculously. This made it even more furious, and it became more and more reckless as this continued to happen.

Finally, in one successful attempt, the Giant Alligator King crushed the human’s arm with one ferocious bite. But, strangely, it didn’t taste any blood or flesh in its mouth. In fact, it felt like it had just devoured a mouthful of clay. Also, after the Apprentice’s robe was ripped apart, revealed that the being in front of it was not a human Apprentice, but a strange humanoid Clay Creature.

The Giant Alligator King immediately realized it had been fooled. Raging, it leaped onto the unfortunate being who had lured it here, preparing to rip it into a thousand pieces.

Since it’s true identity was exposed, it was no longer necessary for the Clay Golem to continued its charade.

Tearing off the troublesome robe, the Clay Golem finally could show all of its power. It started to fight this clumsy Giant Alligator King in an orderly manner.

After all, the Giant Alligator King was an aquatic demon, which meant it could move like a fish in muddy swamp water. But when it came land movement, its gigantic body was far too clumsy. With its body fully covered with hard scales, it kept pushing around like a frantic war machine, sending grass flying all over the place, breaking trees, and leaving a deep trail on the ground.

But its attacks were overly focused on its head and tail.

Most of its offensive abilities could strike out in a fan-shaped region around the front of its head. Within this area, its ferocious bite could easily tear apart an enemy. Also, whenever it used its long tail to attack, it would break the enemy’s bones.

But, the region between its front and rear limbs was its offensive weak spot, which neither its head nor tail could reach. If an enemy hid within that area, it would have to slowly move its gigantic body to position an enemy where it could strike out at them.

And this damn Clay Golem had obviously found its weakness, as it sprinted straight into that region and kept crazily attacking its body.

Using its heavy and powerful fists, the Clay Golem kept punching on the hard scales that lined the Giant Alligator King’s ribs. Besides from attacking it physically, the Clay Golem also used Mud Spear to support its offensive. But all these were useless. Having its body fully covered with thick and tough scales, the Giant Alligator King didn’t even care about these ineffective strikes. It just kept turning its body, restlessly trying to chase away this nasty enemy who dared to fight so close to it.

But the Clay Golem always kept pace with Giant Alligator King, making sure it couldn’t be attacked.

The thick and tough scale were a defensive mechanism for the Giant Alligator King, but it also limited its range of activity to its mouth. The enemy was so close, but he just couldn’t do anything to it.

Although the Clay Golem had dominated from an advantage position, Greem, who was remotely controlling from this distance, didn’t felt happy at all.

This wouldn’t work!

Without breaking past the enemy’s scales, there was no way Clay Golem could cause sufficient damage to it. If this situation went on, the battle would end in a draw, as neither party could do anything to the other. The Giant Alligator King was blinded by its anger now, which is why it kept fighting with the Clay Golem. Once it regained its rational and returned back to the familiar swamp water, there was no way Clay Golem could fight it.

Fortunately, before Greem came here, he had performed a thorough analysis on the strengths and weaknesses of the Giant Alligator, so he had an idea on how to beat it. After received his command, Clay Golem stopped wasting its energy on attacked the opponent’s body with its fist, and started releasing ‘Spikes’ underneath the Giant Alligator King’s body.

Most parts of Giant Alligator’s body were covered with a thick layer of scales, which were excellent against physical attacks. But, there was a part where these scales didn’t cover: its abdomen.

Not only did these spikes do physical damage, but they also did Earth Elementium damage. As Giant Alligator was an Earth Elementium demon, it had a significant resistance toward Earth Elementium damage, so it took no damage from that part of the spike attack.

But even so, the pure physical damage still brought pain to Giant Alligator King, causing it to continually let out pained snorts.

Throughout the entire Magic Swamp, no demon could penetrate its thick scales and attack its weak spot, and this had made it the overlord of this vast swampy land. But today, the nasty golem had really upset this king.

Only after feeling pain did the Giant Alligator King recalled that he had a similar innate ability. Thus, with a furious roar, a thick Earth Elementium immediately started gathering around its body.

“Quagmire Spell!”

Greem clenched his fists tightly as he watched the innate ability of this Giant Alligator King. When he confirmed it was the ‘Quagmire Spell’, he couldn’t hold back his excitement and immediately let out a loud cry.

Excellent! The Giant Alligator King was dead meat now!

To be honest, if this Giant Alligator King had the innate ability of Earth Elemental offensive spells, or those supplementary spells that could bring additional defense, Greem would call back the Clay Golem and leave immediately. But since it was the Quagmire spell, the success rate for today’s battle had shot up to 70%.

As expected, as Greem was jumping for joy, a really funny scene occurred on the battlefield.

Within 50 meters of the Giant Alligator King, the ground had transformed into a thick deep muddy pit, which acted like quicksand. If other creatures fought with it, perhaps they would be caught unprepared and trapped by the quicksand. It was a type of restraining spell that covered a large area. This, together with its frightening physical capabilities, had brought the Giant Alligator King the dominate position in this land.

Unfortunately for it, the Clay Golem was an Earth Elemental!

Though other creatures would be trapped by it, the Clay Golem was standing on this constantly moving quagmire like it was flat ground, nothing really happened. It seemed the heavy and solid body of the Clay Golem had suddenly lost all its weight, as it stood easily on the quicksand, showing no signs of sinking.

Therefore, on top of this slow moving quicksand, an intense, yet strange battle of a mouse playing with a cat erupted between two creatures of the Earth.

The Clay Golem had given up on attacking with Mud Spear, which caused no real damage, and kept releasing Spikes underneath its opponent’s body. On average, it could cast this once every 11 seconds. After all, Spike was an AOE spell. Although the Clay Golem couldn’t see the exact soft spot of the Giant Alligator King’s abdomen, nor how effective this attack was, as long as the attack was focused under the Giant Alligator King, it would be enough to hurt it.

After fifteen minutes of this intense battle, it was obvious that the Giant Alligator King couldn’t hold much longer, as its movement was slower than before.

Not only was it unable to hit the enemy, it also kept feeling a sharp pain on its abdomen. This depressing battle had made it really angry. As a demon with basic intelligence, it realized that if the situation went on like this, it would really be killed by this fellow.

Thus, the Giant Alligator King decided not to bother with this Clay Golem anymore. It turned its body and started moving toward a pond in the distance.

However, this had been within Greem’s expectations. When it started turning its body, it realized that another human was blocking its way back. Also, the human was holding a strange looking object, which resembled a spider.

Relying on its sensitive sense of smell, Giant Alligator King sensed real blood and flesh from this obstacle. It couldn’t hold its anger and let out a furious roar. Facing with the real culprit of today’s evil plot, it ferociously leaped forward, planning to knock this enemy away and returned to its home territory.

In next second, a white spider web covered its head, sticking onto its short and thick front legs. At the same time, a flaming hot Fire Arrow was shot out, quickly nailing into the upper part of its long, narrow mouth. That’s where its head was located, and also the part nearest to its eyes.

Giant Alligator King closed its eyes, and a layer of tiny scales was seen to be on its eyelids as well. It felt a severe pain on its forehead as a raging fire exploded on its face.

As its front legs were tangled by spider webs, and both of its eyes were forced closed by the fire so it couldn’t see a thing, it had to slow down. Therefore, the Clay Golem, who had been following along beside it, started to increase the frequency of its attacks.

In order to win this battle, Greem nearly went bankrupt.

These one-time usage spider web items were not cheap. Whenever he used one, his heart would bleed. But in order to prevent the Giant Alligator King from running away, he had no alternative but to kept using them to trap its legs.

The Giant Alligator King had an overpowering Strength. According to Greem’s preliminary estimation, it had at least 14 Strength. With this incredible power, each spider web could only trap it for six to seven seconds. If not because Greem also kept attacking its eyeballs with Fire Arrow, causing it to be unable to find its way back, perhaps it would forcefully push through these obstacles and run back to its nest.

Hence, with a careful and accurate planning, after nearly seven to eight minutes of the restless attacks, the Giant Alligator King’s abdomen was finally punctured by the Clay Golem’s Spike spell.