Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army

Chapter 350: Stormbirds

The Stormbird made its nest inside snow clouds, the heaviest and most tangible clouds, since these clouds were maintained by Tartarus, it was possible to nest in them since they would never disappear, the Stormbird would weave ice and lighting to create a very light webbing that can float inside the cloud, not too heavy so it would not fall with the precipitation, nor too light so it will not float on the cloud visible to harm, the nests were spread out so that it may be able to support the weight of the eggs, the hatchlings would be born able to fly and fend for themselves almost immediately.

Unlike other adventurers who would destroy all the eggs when there was a chance, Yunan sent the ones that did not have any formed fetus for his wives home to try and cook, as for those that had Stormbirds in the midst of forming, he broke on his own and consumed, it has been a very long time since Yunan added to his arsenal of monster traits, this time he was seeking the ability to turn into a cloud, he was driven to that point because it was near impossible to gather the remains of adult Stormbirds after they dissipate when they die.

After Yunan gained his ability, he started sending all the eggs home, Catelyn was in love with them and as all spoiled children she had the best ones, the rest that she did not eat was then given to the rest of the family or the fermentation pits. Cloud wine and cloud fruit were something miraculous, they had an enormous ability to help recover lost limbs and flesh, the process was not possible without magic to boost the growth of the lost body parts, but things as small as fingers or toes would be regrown naturally by the end of a week.

The genie did not even need to advertise this one for it to be sold out from the shelves, ever since the beauty salve, anything that was put on sale with the trademark of the trade post, was to be bought first and then questioned later.

The ability for regrowth was not new to Yunan, he had some great number of methods to regenerate both naturally and magically, but this new ability that he gained inadvertently was really impressive, of he lost any limb or something like it, he would need to only consume enough nutrition to replace it, turn his body into a cloud and them wait for a few moments before becoming as good as new, it also helped that he could play with his daughter using limbs made of clouds and not worry about anything getting lost, or him being too rough with his little angel.

The Stormbirds were not easy to deal with, mana syphon would turn them to their original form instead of killing them, that gives them a big boost in speed and agility, they would use their wings as blades and dive in on Yunan to slice him apart, their wings were able to scratch the new Dragonification even though it was unable to pierce it or destroy it, the Stormbirds original form was a pale falcon made of ice, their cloud form had great ability to escape from being hit while their ice form had great ability to pierce, slice and deal damage.

Basically there was no trouble free way to eliminate these monsters, the fastest way Yunan found was to use wind and heat magic, creating a hot air draft made the cloud form dissipate forcing the Stormbirds to use their original form and then struggle with the hot wind, as falcons, the Stormbirds had the ability to sense and find the rising hot air drafts to fly higher and faster, but since Yunan was using this natural phenomenon as a weapon, the falcons would instinctively allow the wind to take them away, most of the time the winds just pushed them into a trap where Yunan's tentacles grabbed them and crushed them to death.

The Stormbirds were rather small for monster bird pray, they had a wingspan of 6 meters and 2 meter long bodies, these things were so fluffy Yunan wanted to tame one as a ride for his daughter, alas, even newly hatched, the Stormbirds were aggressive and unresponsive to treats and taming, Yunan had to stop his trials with disappointment, and went out ahead to fight the boss after only 4 months, devouring so many Stormbirds eggs helped him gain the points faster along with the abilities he desired.

The boss was only twice as big as the ordinary Stormbird, it was capable of using ice, wind and lightning magic, making it a bit harder to deal with, its arena was also a foggy stretch of sky where it could play hide and seek indefinitely, after a bit of thinking Yunan just blew away all the fog and started using his immolation spell to heat up the surroundings so that the fog wouldn't gather again, he then used mage light and fireball to create floating fireballs that further raised the temperature of the arena, this caused a very turbulent weather and eventually the arena was surrounded by a hurricane while the two were battling making the wind element stronger and a bit harder to control. The boss fell eventually to needles full of lava that literally melted it from the inside out, the lava needles were another merged spell, ice needles to break the ice body and the inside was filled with lava that would be spread inside the body upon impact.

To Yunan's happiness the boss arena was filled with treasure chests, he would later on ask about the floor in the guild and would be told that only those who had the wish to train their aerial combat were recommended to enter the floor, the rest were told to just skip it to the 66th because it was possible to gain the difference in the stats through party strategy. Among the items Yunan found was a larger egg of Stormbird and a manual on hatching eggs to be mounts.

Yunan immediately consulted the Black Fate. The response was. "Storm birds can not awaken naturally, they must be raised in a certain way from before they hatch, once an awakened Stormbird hatches, it will follow a master just like Dragons and Phoenixes, except that it would follow the orders of the one that hatched it, it is the most loyal mount you can find in the Dungeon and they can keep growing stronger if you feed them higher level ingredients".