"Did you see it too?" Sylvester asked Sir Dolorem since the man had a great reaction time too.

And the man nodded nervously, and finally, a hint of fear appeared in his emotions. "We're not prepared for this…not even if all of us were Archpriests."

"It can bloody fly!" Gabriel was stunned as well.

Sylvester only saw it briefly but remembered it vividly, the giant wings behind the back of the tall creature. "And this time, it's also humanoid!"

"Can we retreat now?" Gabriel gulped.

Sylvester and Sir Dolorem looked at each other's faces and shook heads simultaneously. There was no point in returning now, as the whole town would die out before they could make any arrangement to either move them or bring help.

But, the question was about how they would fight it? And even more important was the fact that Sylvester realized Bishop Lazark was likely alive even now. "The zombies are still alive, so I believe the Bishop is fine. Still, the only way to find him is to get rid of all the mist."

Sir Dolorem agreed with that. "How are we going to fight it? It can fly."

While chanting a hymn under his breath, Sylvester thought about how to deal with this matter. The enemy had the high ground, better speed, and visibility, but what did they have? Light.

"The first goal is to clear the air. We needed better visibility. And since I can also at least step into the air, I am better suited to fight it while you all can support me. But first, you need to create a circle around yourself by placing the light crystals and Solarium crystals together." Sylvester plotted as he had already prepared himself to fight the Bloodling all by himself.

They didn't waste time and started to fortify themselves. Thankfully, the zombies were still well and kept the snakes away. Those that got too close died this time because the light crystals were being reinforced by the solarium crystals, making them powerful enough.

After making the encirclement around themselves, Sylvester prepared himself by placing some Solarium crystals around his body to be activated whenever needed. As for Light Crystals, he didn't need them.

"Alright, I will go into the sky now… and try to engage the thing at least. Throw the IED bombs I made whenever you get an opportunity." He instructed them as the head of the mission.

"How will you fight it?" Gabriel asked in worry.

Sylvester shrugged. "All these years, I've never gone all out… I mean, I went all out for defense, but never for the offense. So let's try that today."

He used Light Magic to make hardened tiles in the air to get to a certain height. After reaching ten meters, he stopped and looked around. 'Alright, here goes everything!"

He took a long breath and spread out his arms. Then, he used the basic spell Sir Dolorem taught him years ago… the first magic he had ever learned—Whirling Storm.

Woosh!

He channeled the Air element with the Solarium in his body and made it come out of his palms—violently circulating—like a tornado. As he was going all out, he didn't hold back anything this time.

Shhh…!

The air current ranged like no tomorrow. The mist all around started getting sucked into the tornado and thrown into the sky, clearing up the surrounding, at least. The tornados could easily be ranged in Category-5 as they appeared giant and scary to normal eyes, but he ensured to steer them correctly and never made them touch the ground near Sir Dolorem and Gabriel.

"Two won't be enough."

In a show of massive magic, he went ahead to make three more tornadoes and sent them out like his little pets. The five behemoths of air, now mixed with mist, started sweeping the area clear and making it clearer to see… At a look, the darkened barren land seemed like a dead sea.

"Ah! It's coming!" Sylvester suddenly felt the scent of death rising in his mind. So he prepared himself by making both his palms shine in the light, as strong as he could—which made him impossible to be seen with naked eyes.

He was like a sun in the mountains, ready to lift off all the deadly dark curtains. He kept his spear ready and chants going, the enemy was creeping closer by milliseconds, and he felt it all.

"Ha! Another faint?" Sylvester didn't budge this time and correctly predicted the creature would come from the east instead of the west as he felt before.

"Take this!" Sylvester imbued as much magic of light as he could in his magical spear, making the tip of it shine like a shooting star. Then, with explosive strength he could muster, he threw it in the direction.

Woosh!

Bam!

"Wraaaah!"

Sylvester secretly felt joy as the spear hit the thing. But he didn't act dumb and quickly pulled the spear back with the ribbon tied to it.

"Hsss…!"

But it appeared that the effect of the spear was not that much as he felt a presence behind himself. The senses of death and rage in his mind were going berserk—telling him to run or there will be nothing left.

Without wasting a moment, he jumped blindly, created a light tile under his feet, and looked back. And there it was, for the first time, he saw the whole creature clearly—menacingly staring at him with its shining red eyes. It had two pairs of eyes and a fifth vertical eye in the middle of the forehead.

Sylvester truly felt goosebumps all over his body as the creature's full extent became apparent, and its body made him frown. The head appeared to have spiky tentacles sprouting out of it, there were giant ten feet wide wings on the back that were constantly spewing the toxic purple mist, the arms seemed to be made of dozens of tentacles, and the torso appeared to be humanoid. However, the torso didn't seem to be covered in skin. Instead, it had something moving at all times.

Sylvester focused on it and soon felt his scalp tingle. 'T-They're… the torso is made of intertwined snakes… all of it!'

He realized the nature of those snakes finally and why killing them was hurting this thing too. 'This Bloodling is either the creator of those snakes, or all the snakes combined made this one giant Bloodling.'

But, at another look, the bloodling didn't have humanoid legs. Instead, there was a large and long tail similar to a snake, with patches of green on it. The whole creature was at least nine or ten feet tall, dwarfing Sylvester.

[A/N: Check this para comment for the image.]

Woosh!

Sylvester used his spear to stop the blades of air the creature sent his way. But, he was far too underpowered physically and was thrown away.

Thankfully, with his mastery over the light element, he never really fell and made a tile for himself to stay up. He then noticed the spot he had likely hit before. There was nothing since the moving snakes on the thing's torso replaced the injury.

'Is the head the only spot to hit it?' Sylvester wondered.

Deciding to do everything possible, he started using all elements to his heart's content, and since fire and light were Bloodling's bane, he went overboard.

He turned the original raging tornados of air into fire tornados and sent them all towards the Bloodling. However, the latter was calmly hovering in mid-air and didn't try to kill Sylvester.

'Come on. I'm standing right here.' Sylvester was waiting for any movement.

But… he noticed its head turning and looking down towards Sir Dolorem and Gabriel. It became clear the creature wished to deal with them first, as his light was likely more harmful to it. 'Fuck, this thing can think!'

"You can't run!"

Boom!

Sylvester openly used Earth elements this time, a move called Earth Drops that bombarded the enemy with chunks of earth of varying sizes, but Sylvester also used fire to turn the earth balls into more deadly blows.

Bam! Bam!

"Come here. I'm the real hunt!" Sylvester tried to get its attention.

Boom!

"Wraaa!" the bloodling cried in pain as all of a sudden Gabriel and Sir Dolorem started throwing IED bombs too, and they were devastating to the snakes on the creature's torso.

The bloodling, annoyed, made its arm tentacles release thousands of little snakes towards Sir Dolorem and Gabriel. But, the snakes quickly died as the two men were under the protection of light and Solarium crystals.

Sylvester had planned well for this fight, and all the Bloodling needed to do was fight him, which it appeared to realize as soon as it started flying towards him.

Sylvester used hardened light this time and made two meters long and five inches thick spears with highly sharp tips—dozens of them. Then, he released them all in one go and started moving towards the Bloodling.

There was no way it could dodge all the light spears as there were too many. Sylvester was positive that he could land a good blow on its head as long as it was slightly distracted.

But, sadly, Bloodlings were all different, and they could all have unique abilities—crazier than any can imagine.

Sylvester stopped running towards the Bloodling as he noticed it was throwing one snake from the gaps in the spears. Once the snake had crossed the coming attack, the Bloodling disappeared.

"Fuck! What was that?" Sylvester cursed seeing this.

And he was not prepared for what was to come next.

Woosh!

Out of nowhere, the Bloodling appeared right in front of him and slammed its huge snake tail on his stomach, hard enough to make him gasp and throw up some water from his stomach… followed by a spray of blood.

"Argh!"

Boom!

Sylvester, shocked and out of breath from the substantial impact on his stomach, was thrown away faster than one could see—an event he couldn't foresee.

What did the Bloodling use? Was it magic? Was it space magic? How did it vanish and reappear? How strong was this thing? Sylvester was finally questioning if he could even defeat it, as from the start, he could only inflict scratches on it while he was being slammed around.

He was thrown so far and fast that he soon disappeared into the purple mist in the distance, even his halo vanished, and the tornadoes of fire and air went berserk.

Sir Dolorem and Gabriel, who saw it all, were distraught and wanted to chase after Sylvester, but they had a bigger problem as the new target of the creature was them.

"Quick! Use all the remaining Solarium crystals! Only they can stop it!" Sir Dolorem shouted.

So the two immediately reinforced the light crystals around them with more Solarium particles, instantly turning up the intensity of the light magic.

Bam!

The Bloodling landed on the ground and tried to hit the two with its tail, then used blades of air from its wings and little snakes. But nothing went through the light shield.

"How long can we hold on? If the crystals run out of power, it's the end." Gabriel asked as he saw they had only a few more light crystals left.

___________________

Where Monke's Golden Ticket to Apeland?

GT = 1 Bonus chapter.

Super Gift = 1 Bonus chapter.

APE TOGETHER STRONG!