Chapter 48 Vultures

After much trekking through the blazing sun and sand we finally made it to where the Aethon had found the realm protector.

Though the vultures were not there anymore I could still see some stragglers that had not moved yet.

It seemed as though they were resting, at least the ones I had observed. Their eyes were closed, wings tucked in and beak nestled in their body.

If I was going to fight them I wasn't going to fight them asleep, I wouldn't gain anything from that. It would just be a meaningless slaughter.

"Tama, wake them please"

Nodding at my order Tama, with a wave of her hand, wakes the vultures up.

Suddenly a low keening sound vibrates in my ear, it was uncomfortable but not unbearable. Though that didn't apply to the vultures as they were violently waking up letting out pained chirps.

Tama made both herself and Alif invisible allowing for me to take the vultures on alone so the only thing the vultures could associate with the violent sound was me.

They were pissed. I could see it in both their eyes and soul. Though that anger soon calmed as they sensed my presence.

Even though I have been trying to suppress my presence like Tama seems to do unconsciously I couldn't completely replicate it so instead of appearing as having no power I instead appeared as a low tier 7.

Previously when I was tier 7/1 I could suppress my presence to 8/4 but now that I was 7/5 I could only suppress it to the beginning of tier 7.

The vultures warily looked at me as if deciding whether they wanted to attack me or not.

However I gave them no chance to contemplate as I dashed at them the moment I saw the last one wake up.

Reinforced spear in hand I dashed at the one closest to me.

In response the vulture flapped its wings taking off into the sky. It wasn't fast enough though because by the time it was in the air I was already below it and with a leap I was at its feet.

Slashing to the right I cut off one of its legs though I didn't have anything to leap off again to go for the kill. I braced myself for landing and with a small bang I was back on the ground.

Though with my reinforced legs I didn't feel the impact there were no doubt small fractures along the bones.

Seeing as the vulture was only staring warily at me I took the time to heal my legs back up to perfect health. While I was doing that I was also trying to formulate a plan on how to kill that vulture.

My first thought was to just throw my spear at it but that would be useless. Not only would I miss seeing as I had never done that before, I would have just thrown my only weapon.

It was then that I remembered the cracks of air that appeared when I put all my strength into my slashes. If I could weaponize that I could use it as a ranged attack.

There was no better time than now to test that out, so with that thought in mind I reinforced my arms and torso to maximize my strength then slashed with all my strength, making sure the vulture would be in the path of the slash if it was successful.

*CRACK*

The air cracked with a deafening sound and I could definitely see the air being displaced but nothing else happened.

Frowning, I tried again.

*CRACK*

Another failure.

*CRACK*

*CRACK*

*CRACK*

Failure, failure, failure. No matter how hard I tried I could not get it to work. Sometimes there would be a small slash but it would only travel a couple feet then fizzle out. It didn't even go the direction I wanted it to.

Seeing as this was a fruitless endeavor for now I tried to just jump again. The vultures who were carefully watching me try and figure out the slash were unprepared for my leap. The times I had failed had led them to believe I was going to try again but instead I leaped surprising them.

*SLASH*

Blood spurted out of the vulture nearest to me. It had thought that it was high enough in the air but it had not, leading to its death.

I used the dead body to leap again this time at the one that I had previously injured.

This time I did not slash but instead pierced the skull of the vulture, killing it, then again I leaped off of the body intending to kill the next one.

Though by the time I had killed the second one they had been given enough time to get over the shock of their dead companion and flew even higher into the sky.

I could not reach them even with the help of the corpses in the sky to give me platforms to jump off of.

Again I was falling back down to the desert. This time I wanted to try something. Using the pressure that falling gave me I tried to maneuver my aether into a solid platform that I could use to break my fall.

…

'It worked!' I thought, the glowing green platform below me was the result of my idea. Though my legs were still fractured. I first needed to fix that so I brought my hands to my legs and healed them with my aether.

After I had finished healing my legs another system message appeared.

[Congratulations, you have advanced to tier/level 7/6]

After I had fully read the message I again focused on the vultures.

With the platform that I could now make it would be childs play to kill them.

I leapt off the platform straight into the sky. When I was no longer gaining height I focused and created a platform below me.

Though what was unexpected was that over an eight of my reserves were taken by just creating that one platform. For context reinforcing my body and spear only ever took up fractions of my reserves, so for this action to take up that much was shocking.