Déon hadn't prepared for this eventuality. He wanted to flee, but it was already too late—the hydra was right in front of him. Déon was violently thrown against a tree and, with great difficulty, tried to quickly regain his balance. A few of the hydra's shots had hit him. His skin had begun to melt.
He hastily used healing potions before his condition could worsen.
In the seconds that followed, the sight before him left him speechless. The hydra had melted the arrows embedded in its eyes before starting to regenerate them. Nowhere had he read that its eyes contained acid.
Soon, the hydra was as good as new. It had melted all the weapons in its eyes and regenerated. Déon was back to square one.
He stood facing the hydra but without any kind of plan—not because he was confident, but because he simply didn't have the time to think under this unbearable pressure. The moment called for improvisation. The hydra's three heads hissed, spitting poison in Déon's direction.
This time, Déon charged at it while dodging its shots. He regretted not having a power or attribute better suited for combat. According to legend, to kill a hydra you either had to cut off all its heads at once, or cut them off one by one while cauterizing the stumps so they couldn't regenerate.
But there was a final method—so difficult that people rarely spoke of it. Hydras had a regenerative core hidden somewhere in their bodies. This was the main reason they could endlessly regenerate. If he could find it and destroy it, the hydra would become nothing more than a common snake.
Finding it was extremely difficult since its location shifted randomly, but for Déon it was the only alternative. He couldn't pierce the hydra's scales even with his bow. And cutting off its heads was impossible—their regeneration speed was no small matter.
Finding where the regenerative core was lodged and destroying it was the only thing he could do. He had no other way; if he wanted to survive, he had to find it.
Maximizing his innate skill, Déon could feel even the slightest changes in his surroundings. He focused on dodging the blows that would be fatal, while enduring the ones he deemed necessary.
Even though he was pushed back, Déon hadn't yet made any mistakes in judgment. The footwork techniques he had trained in while practicing the Forgotten Truth technique were saving his life.
Focusing even more on the hydra's movements and its morphology, Déon began to hear a faint shifting sound inside the hydra's belly. It was like a marble moving from one place to another every five minutes.
Once certain of the core's position, Déon quickly created distance from the hydra by leaping onto a tree branch. Seeing him pull away, the hydra didn't let it slide—it coiled up like a spring before launching itself toward the branch Déon was on.
Déon, however, was already prepared. This time, he aimed for the hydra's belly—the only area without scales. Very quickly, he released two arrows in succession at the hydra.
Fwish
The arrows hit their mark, but the penetration wasn't deep. He didn't have time to prepare a third. The hydra, now right on top of Déon, spat poison directly in his face.
The moment Déon took the hit full-on, his face began to corrode. Fear, anxiety—a mixture of all these emotions triggered a surge of adrenaline in him.
Screaming in pain, Déon grabbed the arrow in his hand and drove it deep into the hydra's guts. The core was pierced. Both Déon and the beast fell from the tree, crashing to the ground.
There were more urgent matters to handle. Déon hurriedly pulled out every healing potion he had left from his dimensional ring.
The hydra wasn't dead, but the damage it had suffered was so severe that it couldn't move.
Ding!
[ Your Endurance increases by +5 ]
[ Your Strength increases by +3 ]
[ Your Agility increases by +2 ]
[ The sum of your stats exceeds the threshold of your experience. Stat points have been created. Level up to assign them. ]
[ A new energy awakens within the user's body. The Aura stat has been created. ]
"Ahhh, shut up, damn it!" he shouted, lying a few meters away from the hydra.
Déon could feel it—his body was different from usual. He felt an energy completely different from mana. Without anyone telling him, he already knew it was aura.
Aura was the reward of warriors who had surpassed their limits. Training alone wasn't enough to awaken it. According to stories, it could only be awakened in life-or-death situations.
But now wasn't the time to admire it—he had to finish off the hydra. Taking his bow, he performed the second move of his archer technique, Kamikaze.
Boom!
He had just blown off the hydra's three heads. Though no one had asked him to, he collected the hydra's blood before storing its corpse in his ring.
He wanted to open his status window to see what it looked like now, but suddenly an overwhelming fatigue washed over him. As the adrenaline wore off, he felt the pain from his injuries even more acutely. Even with the healing potions he had used, Déon wasn't fully healed. The hydra's poison was still eating away at him. Slowly dragging his aching body, he went to hide in a cave to avoid potential predators, for he was now deep in the forest.
…
In that same forest, not far from Déon, a girl was being chased by a fire salamander.
"Hmmm, I guess it's still too soon for me," she thought before losing the salamander and slipping into a cave.
Déon was still suffering from the hydra's poison when his senses alerted him to the presence of someone nearby. Quickly, by controlling his breathing, he blended into the environment with the goal of assessing the person before revealing himself.
A few minutes later, he caught sight of a girl's silhouette. She was sweating and breathing heavily. She was fairly tall, wielded a sword, and wore leather armor that left her arms and pale thighs exposed to the air.
From where Déon was hiding, he couldn't see the girl's face, but she didn't seem like a threat. Coming out of hiding, he approached her, hoping to obtain healing potions.
"Hey, do you have any healing potions? I'd like—"
"Sylphide!!!" she shouted, startled by the sudden voice behind her.
Déon didn't have time to finish his sentence before being blown back by a gust of wind.
Alexia, startled by something whispering in her ear, had hastily summoned her wind spirit. She was on high alert. It was the first time she had ventured this far, and no one knew what kinds of creatures could be found in the heart of the forest.
Turning around, she saw the young man she had just blasted away, looking badly injured.
"Are you okay?" Alexia asked, clearly concerned yet still cautious.
Getting back up after crashing against the cave wall, Déon nodded to the girl in response.
"Do you have any healing potions to spare? I'll pay you back."
"Yes, here," she said, approaching him warily.
Seeing her face up close, Déon felt like he knew her. He took the potions from her hands and used them immediately.
As the potion took effect, Déon was thinking. He wondered where this sense of familiarity came from. Then he remembered…
"Alexia…" he murmured, looking her straight in the eyes.
Now that Déon's face—damaged by the poison—had healed, Alexia finally recognized him. They hadn't had any contact since childhood, but she knew who he was.
Later, she had learned that he had no talent for magic and spent all his days shut away, but that wasn't something that concerned her. In fact, she didn't care.
What troubled her most was what he was doing here, deep in the forest.