The stone ground beneath Ryker’s feet cracked instantly as he leaped with absurd leg strength. His body shot into the sky like a guided missile, cutting through the swarm of smaller monsters attempting to block him. Guided with precision by his system’s holographic display, Ryker swung his heavy spear, shearing through the wings of incoming beasts and sending them plunging into the canyon like rain.The battle was brutal and exhausting. Every time the momentum of his leap faded, Ryker had to use ancient tree branches jutting from the cliff faces or the backs of other monsters as emergency stepping stones to launch himself back into the air. He was struck several time

"Enough with your cheap magic tricks, mud creature!" Balthazar roared. He stepped forward, stamping his right foot so hard that a spiderweb of small cracks rippled across the stone floor of the altar.He pointed a trembling finger at Ryker. "You think you can fool us with a shiny toy?!" Balthazar jeered. In his eyes, Ryker was just a fragile land-dweller. One solid strike from a real warrior like him, and the human would be dead.Balthazar’s eyes darted slyly toward the whispering crowd, trying to claw back his support. "Listen to me, warriors of the sky! Are we going to let a wingless creature steal our princess and our throne just because of some stupid sorcery?! I challenge you, Ryker! A one-on-one, bare-knuckle duel right here, right now!"Balthazar was entirely confident he would win. Ryker was just a small, thin-skinned land creature. With a single wingbeat capable of generating hundreds of kilograms of thrust, Balthazar believed one sweep

"Hold it right there, land crawler!" Kaelen barked, forcing his way through the crowd alongside five of the formidable Black Eagle warriors. They flared their soot-black wings, eyes flashing with the raw, violent urge to fight that ran deep in the primal races. "Balthazar might be a weak, underhanded loser. But we aren’t just going to hand over the Eagle Tribe throne to some outsider without seeing if that fancy shield of yours can weather a real storm. Come on, boys—let's see what this ground-dweller is made of!"Kaelen’s challenge instantly lit a fire under the other eagle warriors, their racial pride deeply stung. Ignoring Leonidas’s standing orders, eight elite fighters from the allied clans surged forward in unison, diving at Ryker from all angles with terrifying speed."Ryker!" Cora cried, flexing her claws to join the fray."Stay back, Cora! Your shield is still up!" Ryker commanded, his voice cutting through the noise.Ryker had no intention of killing them; the system's futur

Dawn broke over the Eagle Tribe's cliffs, heavy with suffocating tension. In the center of the council hall, the elders gathered in a frantic huddle around a rugged topographic map carved into a stone table. Ryker stood at the head, his eyes scanning the terrain as he organized the defense matrix. Aria stood rigid at his right side, her pre

[System Analysis: Enemy structural blind spot exposed at the lower base of the neck. Gravitational momentum will apply a multiplier to weapon damage output.]Using his tactical HUD, Ryker didn't just thrust his spear blind. He intentionally tilted the pitch of the iron blade to slice through the localized airflow keeping the titan’s wings aloft, neutralizing its ability to execute an emergency bank."Now, Vane! Cut me loose!" Ryker roared.Ryker launched himself from Vane’s back. His frame dropped like a meteor under the pull of gravity, both hands locking onto the haft of the Primal Dragon Hunter’s Spear. The weapon erupted with a blinding, crackling shroud of white dragon energy from the system point override."School's out, old bird!" Ryker snarled.SLASH!The heavy iron blade slammed home with surgical precision, piercing the thick armor-hide and snapping the dorsal vertebrae at the base of the titan’s neck. The localized dragon-soul disruption energy coiled inside the spear deton