An hour passed as I continued to battle my foe in the skies. My opponent was very powerful and had an advantage in the sky. It moved as fast as a bolt of lightning. If it wasn't for my latest ability, [High-Speed Flight], I may not have survived this engagement. Over the course of the fight, I got an understanding of just how much combat this beast has experienced to become what it is now. It used several attacks, including creating a series of mini tornadoes to disrupt my balance. With low experience with my wings, getting adjusted to fighting in the air with such an opponent was quite difficult. I can't even begin to count how many times my body has been ripped apart by its beak or how many times it's huge nails covered with paralysis toxins stung into my flesh and organs.
By this time, my whole body has been stained with blood, and many body fluids have been drained and lost. Even the Eagle's feathers were as sharp as blades, so even a successful dodge would not entail that I escaped without damage. There were no rules in this fight, however. Whenever I wasn't able to dodge an attack, I would use my metal arm as a shield from its claws. If it wasn't for this, I would have taken over another thousand strikes more than I already have. Apparently, there is even an effect from its saliva that inhibits recovery speeds. Whenever I was bitten, I would have to suppress the bleeding by tightening the muscles around the injury until I managed to purge the toxins. The subspecies' escorts were easily dispatched within the first ten minutes of the fight, though I had paid a heavy price for placing special attention to evening the numbers.
Fortunately, with [Severe Pain Tolerance] and [Desensitizing] even the most grievous of my wounds did not hurt, however, the fact that these injuries existed at all still needed to be remembered and dealt with. All of the martial arts that I have mastered were almost useless in the air, and all of my magical abilities were too difficult to manage due to a heavy level of my focus being spent on dodging and keeping myself in the air.
However, it is not like I was the only one taking damage. As I had said earlier, all five of the other Falaise Eagles had been taken care of early on in the fight. As for the subspecies, I had managed to cut off one of its legs with my halberd and punctured several holes in its body with the tip of my weapon. The feathers of the Jade Eagle are stained with blood in several places. I certainly am not losing out in my ability to fight regardless of the terrain.
Still, being unfamiliar with the sky had become my shackles and prevented a greater majority of my abilities from being usable. Some of my resistances were useless if I wanted to remain in the air, and others, I couldn't use because I could not keep near the Jade Eagle for longer than a fraction of a second at a time. Even though this battle has raged on for over an hour, neither of us has shown even the slightest drop in speed.
As the battle intensified, my halberd was knocked from my hands towards the cliff. Luckily, it landed and stuck in to the road, so it was easily retrievable. Though in my current situation, recovering it in the middle of the fight was highly unlikely.
Whether the Jade Eagle saw the loss of my weapon as an opportunity or not, it took a deep breath and slightly withdrew, putting a large amount of distance between us. In an instant, my chest had been struck with the Jade Eagle's beak, spinning around like a raging storm.
The Jade Eagle had created a giant gust of wind and had shot straight through my body with an impossible to see level of speed that was almost unreal. Its speed must come from it's [Divine Protection]. Its body was covered with damage and scratches, so this ability must have been a last resort. At that moment, I coughed up a lot of blood, and even with all of my abilities, the pain was severe. With where it went through, my spine has probably been severed, and many of my organs are probably heavily damaged as well. This is really bad. Screams rose out from Redhead, Dhammi-chan and the rest of the party. Even Ogakichi-kun was shouting out with a worried look on his face.
With this, the Jade Eagle was convinced of its victory and went to begin feeding.
In this moment, the abilities that I use will decide the who win the battle. With the Jade Eagle's guard down, this could be my chance to finish this in one go. My body is several times stronger than that of a normal Ogre, so this blow was not enough to kill me, though the damage was severe. In this fraction of a second, I thought of the reward that could be gained by slaying this bird and decided to go at it with every last bit of strength that I had in earnest.
In less than a tenth of a tenth of a second, I activated many abilities that I hadn't used thus far in the previous battles because I had wanted to enjoy the fight on equal grounds.
My right metal arm was dripping with blood, but secretly, I was using it to store and produce more blood with an ability that I had shared with it using [Synthesis] called [Fluid Restoration]. Using the blood I had been producing, I instantly recovered all of the blood lost during the entire fight. Coupling this ability with [High-Speed Playback] and [High Speed Healing], my entire body was recovered in an instant. Using my Metal Arm, I cut off its other leg, fully removing a great level of its danger to myself.
Following up, I used [Exoskeleton Equip], which turned my flesh into something resembling a beetle. To further strengthen my shell, I added [Black Ogre's Constitution] in addition to [Stout Dragon Scale Mail] to greatly increase my defense. In response, the shell turned black, and scale-like plates developed over the exoskeleton. With this, my body was nearly impossible to penetrate with anything the Jade Eagle was capable of.
In the split second it took to form my armor, I spun a thick version of my Golden Thread around the eagle's wings and used my ability that controls gravity to greatly increase the gravity around the eagle. It put up a great amount of resistance and managed to cut some of my threads, but after I enhanced my golden thread with resistances to physical damage, there was nothing more it could do.
The Jade Eagle plummeted towards the ground. Even at the speed it fell, the crater it left was pretty small. A normal creature would have been splattered on the ground after the impact it received, but it appears it sacrificed two of its wings to lessen the impact. Even with that, it is still pretty amazing it wasn't dead.
After I collected my halberd, I finally ended the Jade Eagle's suffering. I collected a jewel from the center of its head and several vials-full of liquid coming out of its body. After collecting the jewel and the liquid, I began carefully removing all of its parts, slowly stripping the skin as to not damage even the slightest follicle. When I got to the heart, I noticed a jade-colored stone with a cobblestone-like texture.
I used my [Item Appraisal] on it and discovered that the item was called [Lord's Spirit Stone of a Falaise Eagle].
I instantly thought to share this discovery with the others and showed my latest find to everyone, who in an instant, realized that it was the same type of stone on those who Ranked-up into a "Lord" class.
When i looked into it further, it seems that this class of item is indeed from the [Spirit Stone] category where it is [Legendary] level of rarity.
These objects are apparently present within boss-level monsters. Even among powerful monsters, these items are incredibly rare. The more powerful the monster, the larger the stone they carry within them.
Having said that, coupled with the fact that facing a boss that possesses a spirit stone is no easy task in and of itself, many famous monsters throughout this world's history have been said to carry these types of spirit stones called [Lord Stones]. In the past, it has taken entire armies to challenge monsters that had grown powerful enough to obtain a Lord Stone. Sometimes, it has been said that these armies that gathered to fight the monsters were annihilated.
Therefore, something as rare as a Lord Stone could sell for enough money to buy a small country. However, the only people with enough money to purchase such a thing are monarchs of large nations or famous merchants that hold monopolies over the trade of several nations. These stones are used in the fabrication of unmatched magical items of with amazing war potential.