Jake’s first time traveling to Skyggen had taken quite a few days of constant travel. After the Ell’Hakan incident, he made the trip again a lot faster. Now that he had reached well into mid-tier C-grade, he was practically zooming across the landscape, the entire trip only taking a few hours at most, and that was partly due to Jake checking things out on his way.

Of course, Jake didn’t count his one planned stop in the travel time. The giant mountain was still among the largest Jake had seen on Earth, towering extremely far into the sky, so far that it easily entered the layers of the sky C-grades could occupy. One had to remember that C-grades and even D-grades, to some extent, were still restricted from entering the area designated as human lands. Jake was pretty damn certain this restriction would disappear with the arrival of the Prima Guardian, but for now, it was still in place.

Flying up the mountain, Jake rapidly felt the temperature drop. When he was there last, it was already cold as hell, but now it was even worse. While it maybe wasn’t quite needed yet, Jake covered his body in a faint layer of arcane mana to defend himself from the environment.

If it was this cold when I was here last, I wouldn’t even have made it to the wyvern, Jake mentally noted.

Continuing upwards, elementals began to appear in great numbers. None of them were strong enough to pose any kind of threat, but he still Identified them.

[Ice Elemental – lvl 264]

[Snow Elemental – lvl 259]

Now, this did pose the great question of what the difference between a snow and an ice elemental was, outside of their difference in appearance. The snow elementals looked like badly built snowmen more than anything, while the ice elementals were partly see-through and a lot more angular. In fact, the main difference between the two was that one looked spiky and hard, while the other one looked round and soft.

Ignoring them just as they ignored Jake, he soon was close to the peak of the mountain. Jake was looking forward to seeing if the wyvern was still there and had purposefully held back on using Pulse to not spoil himself, but when he got closer and heard sounds of fighting, he couldn’t help himself.

What he saw was a battle in the sky above the peak, with the expected wyvern in the midst of it. Jake had expected it to maybe be fighting ice elementals or monsters, which was why the opponents surprised him. It was a large group of humans, forty people in total. What’s more, he saw many of them use a kind of familiar magic he hadn’t seen since Yalsten, making him quickly realize who they were. They weren’t humans but vampires.

Members of the Noboru clan? Jake quickly assumed. He knew the Sword Saint had the divine artifact of Sanguine given after the defeat of the Monarch of Blood, allowing him to turn others into vampires using it. He knew that some had chosen this Path, and from the looks of it, they were doing pretty well for themselves.

Jake kept watch as he decided to activate his stealth skill to get closer without them noticing him. Flying into the air, he soon saw the fight that was honestly quite intense. Concentrated blue beams of frost shot through the sky as layers upon layers of magic barriers tried to block the attacks. At the same time, over a dozen vampires attacked the wyvern from all sides, five of them carrying large chains as they tried to immobilize the wyvern.

Using Identify, he first focused on the wyvern.

[Northpeak Wyvern – lvl 271 – Greater Blessing of the Everfrost Dragon God]

Back when Jake first encountered the wyvern, it hadn’t quite been in mid-tier C-grade yet, while now it most-certainly was. It had definitely grown significantly stronger, and it had even snagged itself a Blessing. Or maybe it always had the Blessing; he really had no way of knowing as his Identify didn’t allow him to see Blessings back then.

As for the vampires, Jake was also quite impressed when he saw their levels after just checking out a few.

[Vampire – lvl 255]

[Vampire – lvl 259]

[Vampire – lvl 253]

All of them were between level 250 and 260, as far as he could tell. This did raise some questions of how the hell they had leveled so fast without Nevermore… or, wait, had they leveled without Nevermore? Jake was one of the first people to enter in this generation and also one of the first to go out as far as he knew, but maybe it was possible they had gone anyway? If not for their entire allotted time, but just some of it.

Either way, they were all pretty damn strong, as he saw them fight the wyvern. Individually, none of them stood a chance, but fighting against forty opponents could be very difficult, especially for larger creatures who had more surface area to protect. For Jake, fighting more people wasn’t as big of a problem as someone like the wyvern.

Not to say that the vampires were winning, as Jake really couldn’t tell who had the edge. After a minute or so of back and forth, he believed there was a turning of the tides when the wyvern unleashed its breath, hitting a party of five that had tried to flank it.

The five of them were blasted back as healers and mages moved to help them. Jake was about to shake his head, as he assumed they must have taken too serious damage to continue fighting, but to his surprise, the five of them had come out of it with only severe frostbite and one of them losing an arm.

Vampires have high resistance to frost magic by default, Jake suddenly remembered. They were weak to fire while more resistant to frost magic. Of course, as stereotypes would dictate, the sun affinity was also incredibly powerful against them. It wasn’t as if they got weaker while in natural sunlight, but they did get stronger when there was no sun at all due to some passive skills from their race. This also resulted in their high resistance to all forms of frost magic.

The vampires had chosen their prey well from a matchup perspective. They were resistant to the wyvern’s attacks, while their primarily blood magic and physical attacks worked fine against the budding dragon.

Jake seriously considered what to do as he observed the battle continue. He had come to this mountain to have a reunion with the Northpeak Wyvern, but it was already preoccupied. Jake also didn’t want to just barge in and interrupt that fight, as that was just rude. After thinking for a while, Jake just lifted his legs and sat with his legs crossed in mid-air as he decided to watch how the battle would unfold and then talk with the eventual winner. Not to attack them or anything, as that would also be boring, but just to talk as he was curious about both parties.

Focusing on the battle, it was clear the vampires had great coordination. With forty of them total, they had enough members to fill every role, with several healers and mages focusing solely on defense. A few mages also worked their offensive magic, and Jake even saw an archer in the group, along with two people wielding what looked like rifles.

The attacks rained down on the wyvern, few of them doing any damage as a layer of frost covered the large flying creature’s body. Its eyes were glowing blue as it repeatedly unleashed magic, making the ground itself tremble as ice spikes shot up from below.

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Choosing to have the entire battle in the air was an interesting decision by both parties. It allowed the vampires to attack from all sides, including below, while the wyvern got more space to dodge and unleash its magic. It was also clear that the wyvern had better maneuverability and experience fighting in the air compared to all the vampires.

Jake had his eyes on one party within the vampire raid team more than any other. It was led by a middle-aged man wielding an axe and a shield, while his party members broke the holy trinity entirely by being two women and two men who wielded different light weapons, including shortswords and daggers, with no healer or ranged attackers in sight.

These five were an absolute menace and stood for the vast majority of the damage done. The leader was the highest-leveled person in the entire raid, and he proved that by repeatedly blocking the claws of the wyvern and creating openings for his party members to attack, as they left several lacerations on the wyvern, cutting through the ice and drawing blood.

From afar, Jake heard the man also yell several things, though it made little sense to him. He just yelled out numbers and what Jake assumed to be code words that all the other raid members reacted to, and-

Oops, the first death.

A mage had been too slow to react, as the wyvern dodged out of the way of a blow and, with a beat of its wing, sent a slicing blue wind toward him, cutting him in two with a web of cutting cold winds following, freezing and turning his body into thirty or so frozen icecubes.

Despite the death, the raid group didn’t lose their cool, and a warrior even managed to use the opening to plunge a spear into the other wing of the wyvern. The five with chains also made their move but were rebuffed as the wyvern blasted away the raid leader.

A rogue who believed she hadn’t been spotted tried to attack using the perceived opening as the wyvern snapped its head around and chomped down. It ate the woman whole, and a second later, an explosion of blood erupted within the wyvern’s mouth, as she seemed to have blown herself up.

Her death explosion allowed the warriors with chains to finally get their chance as the wyvern’s feet were wrapped up, disrupting the flight of the wyvern. Right as it was clear the wyvern was temporarily halted, a ritual spell was unleashed as eight mages combined their power, making a curtain of red light descend from above.

This curtain cut through the sky, the wyvern unable to dodge as it was struck, a massive flesh wound getting inflicted on its side, nearly cutting off one of its wings and going more than two meters into its mid-section, clearly doing a lot of internal damage.

“Good attack,” Jake muttered to himself. “But they should have gone for the head.”

The wyvern exploded with power as it roared loudly, releasing a freezing wave of energy that pushed all the melee fighters away. With its maws open, energy gathered as it unleashed a breath. A proper one this time around. The one Jake had been hit with back then had just been a casual one, and so were the earlier ones in this fight… but this breath was made with the clear intent to kill.

For a second, the world flashed a whitish blue as the breath destroyed all the barriers that tried to block it and hit the eight mages who had cast the ritual spell. They didn’t even have a chance to fight back as their bodies froze and were blasted apart, as no amount of natural vampiric frost resistance was going to save them from this one.

Yelling loudly, the raid leader unleashed a large attack himself, as his party members also unleashed a coordinated assault, but the wyvern’s entire body was practically burning with power as they were all blasted away.

A blue wind began to revolve around the creature as a blizzard appeared in the sky, enveloping all the vampires. Without any warning, the wyvern flew to the side to flank the group, going for the backline.

“Good decision to try and split the group to ruin their coordination,” Jake approved.

The only reason the vampire raid could even hold on was due to their numerical advantage and teamwork, so if the wyvern could address that, this fight would turn into a one-sided slaughter. The vampire side also clearly knew this, as they moved to group up and take a defensive position, as the wyvern was clearly consuming a lot of mana with the summoned blizzard.

A barrage of large ice shards fell upon the grouped-up vampires as the wyvern flew over them. The harsh, cold winds of the blizzard also bore down on the vampires, who quickly summoned a large red barrier around them all to ward off attacks.

Interestingly enough, the barrier did not seem to block out blood magic at all, as the archer shot arrows made of blood toward the wyvern, with the two gun-wielding vampires also going fully on the offensive. While their attacks didn’t do much damage, the three of them targeted one of the wyvern’s wings, ripping holes in the thin flesh between the arms and body.

The mages who weren’t focused on the barrier also tried to attack, as Jake saw faint cracks begin to form on the barrier from the constant attacks of the wyvern. However, before it broke, the vampires made their move again. Over a dozen warriors were buffed up by some of the healers as they flew out, leaving reddish afterimages, all going for the wyvern at once.

Two of them were cut apart by cold winds before they even reached the creature, while a third was ripped in four by a claw. A fourth managed to stab the wyvern before his head was bitten off, while the remaining eight all landed their own attacks.

Several large cuts lined the wyvern as two warriors went together and wrapped a chain around the wyvern’s neck. The creature struggled as it did its best to shake off the eight warriors who were upon it while also dealing with range attacks and making sure those in the barrier of blood couldn’t relax.

The situation was looking bleak for the wyvern, as Jake saw a faint smile on the raid leader’s face, as the man still stood within the barrier, seemingly channeling some kind of buffing skill to those around him. The wyvern began tumbling toward the ground as another chain was wrapped around its wings, disrupting its flight.

As it tumbled toward the ground, it fell past the barrier of blood hiding all the less durable fighters… which was when the wyvern’s eyes suddenly opened wide. Jake felt the mana in the air spike to unprecedented levels as from deep within the wyvern, he felt energy well up as it was all unleashed.

For a moment, the world turned white. Pure cold washed over everyone, including Jake who was quite a distance away, as even the mountain below was hit. When the light faded, Jake saw eight frozen statues falling down, as the barrier of blood had been torn open, deep freezing ten of the vampires within, while the rest didn’t look that good either.

Jake saw the raid leader make a quick decision as he took out an item and crushed it. A sphere surrounded the leader and all the remaining vampires as Jake felt space magic at work, and in a flash, the surviving vampires were whisked away as they made their retreat.

“A good decision,” Jake commented, as it was pretty sure the wyvern had won this fight. He couldn’t exactly blame them either, as he closely inspected the tired wyvern. “Damn, it already has a budding dragon’s heart.”

Dragons were known for their hearts, which were pretty much unrivaled organs when it came to magic. This wyvern had a budding dragon’s heart in that it had mutated slightly to more closely resemble one – a pretty common occurrence for wyverns with the potential to become dragons and likely even a required prerequisite for the evolution.

The white flash was the Northpeak Wyvern unleashing all the mana stored in the heart in one devastating attack. It had definitely been saving that one for a crucial moment.

Jake kept watching as the tired wyvern quickly flew down and caught all the falling statues of frozen vampires. With telekinesis, it carried them back toward the cave atop the mountain; Jake very curious about what it was doing with the bodies… wait…

“Not dead yet?” Jake muttered. The vampires were frozen solid, with even their souls frozen as far as Jake could tell, but they weren’t fully dead.

Flying closer, Jake wondered what the wyvern was planning to do with the frozen vampires as he decided to check out the cave. However, when he reached the cave, he saw that a set of powerful magic barriers protected it, and while his stealth skill was good, he wasn’t confident in getting through them without alerting the wyvern to his presence… so he stopped hiding as he dispelled his stealth skill and forced himself through the barrier.

Instantly, he felt the attention of the wyvern on him, but it didn’t make any moves. It just stayed deep within the cave as Jake heard its voice echo throughout.

“A mantis stalking a cicada is unaware of an oriole behind… have you come to finish me in my weakened state?”

Yeah, Jake wasn’t entirely certain what the hell that cicada thing was about, and he didn’t even know what an oriole was, but he made an educated guess the wyvern was shit-talking him for sitting back and waiting for his chance to strike.

“Relax,” Jake said in a loud tone. “I’m just here for our reunion.”

“Reunion?” the wyvern said, clearly confused, having likely fully expected Jake to be there with the intent to finish it off. This also explained the wyvern’s strategic position to blast the one opening to its main cavern with a breath the second Jake showed up, leaving him with no space to dodge.

“You really don’t remember me,” Jake said, more to himself than the wyvern. “Guess I’ll have to remind you and have a civil discussion about how rude it is to just blast people away with a breath when they come to talk.”