Chapter 440: The Vultures Descend

After the short battle the porcupine only seemed to shake its body to dislodge any loose quills before it continued to march on through the clearing as if it was going on a stroll and hadn't just killed an entire pack of deadly predators even if they were weakened and driven stupid from hunger. "Well there goes a good amount of experience." Vince said with a shrug. "I don't mind though. I don't think my illusions would have helped all that much if that porcupine had strolled over and started unleashing its quills all over the place."

"We're just going to have to avoid fighting those things. I wouldn't want to anyways, I couldn't even get close to it if I tried." Aurora said with a frown. Joshua noticed Amy seemed to be nodding in agreement to that statement as she seemed annoyed by the fact there was a creature that she couldn't easily attack with her style of combat. The only way the two martial artist could do any real damage to the porcupine would be by punching it in the face, but judging by its size Joshua doubted that would be a viable solution to taking the creature down.

"Well let's just ignore the porcupines for now. The only viable way I can see us taking them down is either flipping them over in some way while preventing them from getting back up or continuously bombarding them with spells which would attract a lot of attention from other beast in the area." Joshua said as he watched the creature leave the area and all of the dead coyote bodies behind.

"That's if it isn't spell resistant somehow." Laura said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Who knows with defensive creatures like that."

While they were all watching the porcupine leave the area Aito seemed to take notice of something else that was going on that hadn't caught the attention of the rest of the group just yet. "Heads up everyone. We've got trouble coming our way. Three vultures are heading down towards the dead coyote bodies."

Joshua looked up and could see the large birds descending in their direction. At the moment their group was just too close to the fight for the birds to ignore their presence. The large quill that had slammed into the ground in front of them had messed up Vince's illusion for a moment, but that was all the vultures needed to zone in on them since one of the coyote bodies was near them.

"It doesn't look like they're just coming down for a buffet either." Jayce said as he pulled out his shield and sword and stepped in front of the back line so that he could shield them in case any of the vultures decided to target them first.

"Lilly you can go ahead and bring out your beast companions. This fight is going to be unavoidable. They already know are location and a large area illusion won't stop them from smelling where we are now that they know we're here." Joshua said getting a nod from her as she quickly brought out her big three in Tank, Titus, and Cinder who all let out challenging shouts towards the descending birds that squawked back. The vultures seemed surprised by the sudden appearance of the three large beast, but they didn't stop their attack since they had been waiting on the dead bodies of the pack of coyotes for days now.

Although the vultures had the level advantage against Lilly's beast companions they weren't push overs that could just get taken down easily. Especially when Lilly brought out Flutter to empower everyone in the group's stats even more. She followed that up by synchronizing with flutter and improving that boost. Joshua was preparing to charge in and help Lilly's beast companion right after the first clash when the attention would be taken away from the rest of the group.

The first vulture charged down and aimed its large claws directly at Titus since he was the tallest of the beast that stood in its way. All of the vultures seemed like they were going to try to avoid Tank since his shell made it hard for them to take him out, but grouping up against Titus and taking him down would put them in the best position. That's why a second vulture was following the first one that decided to go on the attack and was going directly for Titus, but none of the vultures realized that it wouldn't be just a physical confrontation.

Tank started the battle off by absorbing the moisture from the air and shooting out a large torrent directly at the first vulture that was descending towards there group. The closer the target was the more damage the blast of water would do and Tank planned on hitting the beast as hard as he could. He didn't aim for the vultures head or chest, but instead aimed for one of its massive wings. The greatest advantage these vultures had were their ability to fly in the sky. Even if they had some other tricks up their sleeves they wouldn't be nearly as advantageous as their ability to fly.

The vulture tried to twist out of the way of the torrent of water, but because of its larger size its wing was still hit near the edge sending the giant bird twisting off course away from all of the three giant beast that it was trying to attack in the first place. The second vulture decided to quicken its decent so that Tank wouldn't be able to shoot another blast before it would be able to attack Titus. This time around Cinder was the one to go on the attack. Although she was the smallest of all the beast in the current battle she had her own advantage that would let her take on far bigger creatures than expected.

Cinder shifted to her flame form and created several large spears made out of fire that she sent directly in the path of the incoming vultures. The vulture was surprisingly agile enough to dodge most of the flame spears while continuing to dive towards Titus. The only issue was the fact that the heavily feathered creatures was getting a bit close to some of those flame spears causing some of its feathers to catch a flame. The sudden burning sensation caused it to go off course as the last flame spear slammed into its shoulder blade forcing it to crash on the ground and roll around in an attempt to put out the flames.

The last vulture seeing the direction the battle was going decided to stay high up in the air as it sent down a wave off larger feathers that were coated in mana to sharpen them as they flew down like blades ready to slam in to Titus, Cinder, and Tank. Titus slammed his fist into the ground while shooting out spores from his fur causing vines to shoot up out of the ground and protect them from the incoming attack. The vines blocked any of the feathers that would have hit them while the rest slammed into the ground with enough force to embed themselves almost halfway into the ground. Considering each of the feathers was about twice the length of Joshua's height that was saying something.

After the first barrage of attacks from the vultures and the clear sign that they were focused on trying to take down Lilly's beast companions Joshua decided it was time for the rest of the group to get involved with the fight. The battlefield had been set before them and at the moment there were really only two of the vultures that the group could go after. The vulture that had rained down feathers on the entire area was too high in the sky for most of the group to even try to attack. It would be better for them to group together and take down one of the vultures at a time instead of separating their efforts in an attempt to take on each of the vultures at the same time.

Since the vulture in the air wasn't the one the group should go after then Joshua had to decide between the two that had been taken down to the ground. The one that Tank had shot out of the air with a torrent of water wasn't really hurt much and was on its way to getting up already. The only reason it hadn't launched itself back in the air just yet was because some of the vines that Titus had created were grabbing at its feet to keep from getting a clean leap off the ground. The beast was enraged and turned its anger towards Titus, Tank, and Cinder as it shot another barrage of feathers in their direction.

The last vulture was still rolling on the ground trying to put out the flames that Cinder had hit it with. From what Joshua could see fire based attacks seemed to be the best way to hurt these large creatures. There feathers were extremely tough when surrounded by mana, but they seemed extremely flammable based off of the fact that the vulture was having so much trouble in putting them out at the moment. Seeing the current situation Joshua had made his decision on who to target first.

"Go all out on taking down the vulture that's on fire. It's grounded and in a bad position to protect itself. Any mages with fire based spells should focus fire on it now." Joshua shouted as he rushed in the direction of the giant vulture. The beast had finally risen up from the ground with some of its feathers still smoldering as it turned its anger on Cinder. Before it could let out a screech and fly into the air once more it found itself in great pain as Joshua leaped into the air and blinked in front of the large creatures head. Joshua stabbed his aura coved scale blade directly into one of its eyes while sending out an aura blast from it causing a large explosion big enough to destroy the eye entirely and partially blind the beast.

The vulture shrieked in pain as it shook its head so hard that it sent Joshua flying off its body after the explosion. Before the beast could direct its focus on Joshua a barrage fire spells slammed into its body causing it to be knocked over as several parts of its body were caught on fire. The vulture started panicking from all of the pain and turned its head in the general direction of where all of the attacks had come from before opening its mouth wide and sending a torrent of black fog that swept over the ground and seemed to kill all of the grass that it touched.

Joshua used an aura blast from his feet to launch himself out of the way of the fog just in time, but it was still heading in the direction of the group rather quickly. This is where Madalyn dashed to the front of the group and spewed out a large cloud of green poison that clashed with the black cloud and brought it to a halt. The two poisons seemed to eat away at each other for a moment as the clouds mixed. Joshua was certain that if any of them were caught in the middle of that clash, outside of maybe himself with his aura and Madalyn with her affinities for poisons, they would die within seconds.

While Madalyn held off the poisons Laura, Ariel, and Julia all kept bombarding the giant bird with several more balls of fire that were eating away at it. Julia was even controlling the flames to wrap around the vultures body as it burned away all of its feathers and started scorching through its skin. As the Vulture finally seemed on the verge of collapse an arrow shot by Natalie twisted in the air before slamming into the vulture's only good eye and causing it to scream as it cut off its poisoned fog. The giant bird stumbled for a bit before finally collapsing from the burns all over its body. A surge of experience soon followed after the creature's death and Joshua felt like he was one more beast away from leveling up.