So... let’s go greet this suspected Magical Beast and see what kind of conversation we can have.

Hopefully it is the talking kind rather than the fighting kind, but given the descriptions I had heard from the Amazons, I should probably prepare myself for either outcome.

***

BOOOMMMM!! 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

The sound of the initial impact was deafening, a thunderous explosion of force and energy that shook the ground beneath my feet and sent shockwaves rippling through the air in all directions.

It was a bloody fight from the very first moment.

There was no polite introduction or exchange of words, no opportunity to establish whether the creature could speak or understand any language.

The Grootslang simply attacked with overwhelming ferocity the instant it became aware of my presence in its territory.

From its long trunk, which was sided and lined with sharp thorns that dripped with some kind of venomous secretion, it shot out Power Stones at me — violet crystalline projectiles that carried immense destructive potential, and something that an ordinary beast should not know how to do.

And from its warthog-like mouth, wide and filled with rows of jagged teeth, it breathed an aggressive combustion of flames that turned the air between us into a roaring inferno of heat and light.

It did not even let me reach its cave before its hopelessly large body came at me like a flashed light, moving with a speed that seemed impossible for something of its enormous size and mass.

One moment it was coiled in the distance, watching me approach. The next moment it was directly in front of me, its trunk swinging with its mouth open, and its tail lashing.

Maybe it had been merciful to the Amazons that faced it before?

Because the fight here would have been terrible for anyone else, even for elite Amazons with years of combat experience and powerful magical abilities, due to several factors working together in the creature’s favor:

First, how fast it was, moving like lightning despite its train-like dimensions.

Second, how it could hide such a large body so effectively, using its environment and some kind of stealth ability to vanish from sight and then reappear at close range.

Third, the existence of the Power Stones as a ranged attack option that hit hard and fast.

And the worst of all, the most dangerous and unexpected factor in this entire engagement:

The Grootslang... was casting dangerous spells in tandem with its physical attacks, weaving magic and raw force together into a seamless combat style that left no gaps for counterattacks.

Simultaneously, while attacking me with Power Stones from its trunk and fire from its mouth, it was also trying to crush my body with its massive serpentine coils.

Its tail came lashing toward me like a whip made of living steel, moving faster than eyes could track.

I managed to put a leg up to block or deflect the strike, but the force of the impact was so tremendous that I was tossed several meters into the air, spinning and tumbling without control as I rose higher and higher above the battlefield.

From that view in the sky, suspended helplessly in the air with nothing to push against, I saw how hopelessly long the creature truly was.

Its body stretched out below me like a dark river winding through a savannah, coil after coil, extending so far that one might not see where it ended.

It truly was like a train given sentience, a locomotive of flesh and scale and fury.

While I was in the air, unable to do anything more than fall and wait for gravity to reclaim me, it gathered energy on its mouth — spiritual energy, that pale and ghostly glow that indicated something beyond normal magic — and blasted me with a concentrated beam of that power, aiming to eradicate me from existence before I could touch the ground again.

I teleported from the sky using [Reality Jump], disappearing from the path of the spiritual beam an instant before it would have struck me, and appeared close to the creature’s massive body, close enough to touch its scales.

I sent an Earth elemental stone at it, but it created a barrier around that part of its body, a shimmering shield of magical energy that absorbed the impact of the Earth stone and dispersed its power harmlessly.

Then it shot another spiritual energy blast at the small me, aiming to finish the fight with a single decisive strike.

I gathered all the elemental stones I could create in that moment, summoning them without raising a hand to direct the process.

All of them swirling around me in a chaotic vortex of elemental power.

I began mixing and manipulating them rapidly, combining their energies and balancing their forces until they formed a single multicolored glowing ray that I shot back at the Grootslang with all the force I could muster.

PEEEEEEEWWWWWWW!!

The sound of the collision was unlike anything I had ever heard — a high-pitched whine that escalated into a roar and then into a scream, as if reality itself were protesting the violence being done to its fabric.

The two energies collided in the space between me and the beast, meeting at a single point of perfect opposition, and the resulting explosion devoured everything in that intervening space.

A deep canyon formed underneath the point of impact, carved into the earth by the sheer force of the clashing powers.

The residual power from the collision tore through the ground in a deep long line that went miles and miles away from normal human sight, creating a scar across the landscape that would definitely remain for centuries.

Basically, the entire area here had been burned and wrecked terribly.

The ground was scorched, the grasses were ashes, the trees were splinters, and the very air tasted of smoke and something else I could not name.

The barrier I had set over the area before engaging the creature — a precaution I took without thinking about it much — was the only reason the Amazons had not come checking out the bursts of power happening here.

Without that barrier, the explosions and energy releases would have been visible and audible from Verdant Spire.

The serpent moved back slightly, coiling its massive body into a defensive posture, and stopped attacking.

It simply turned to watch me with those small but steady eyes, cautious and waiting to see what I would do next, studying me as intently as I was studying it.

Smart.

The creature was smart. It recognized that I was not an easy opponent, that I could match its power and survive its attacks, now it was reassessing its strategy accordingly rather than continuing to fight blindly.

{Notice: That creature is a variant of a Supreme Dragon. But none of its kind exist anywhere else in the world.}

[Ah, so it is even a unique monster. That explains why it’s so much stronger and versatile than the Amazons’ descriptions had suggested. They had only seen a fraction of its true capabilities during their encounter with it.]