After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World novel Chapter 2117

Chapter 2117: Pathway

Intelligent monsters were far more troublesome than normal monsters of the same level. In some cases, they could be said to be twice as troublesome.

For example, when they had terrain advantage.

CAWWWW!

It grabbed her again, and she was afraid of getting injured by its talons, so she twisted her body to be grabbed in a harmless way. Otherwise, she could’ve been punctured by those talons.

After finding out it was an intelligent beast, Althea became clear on what it was doing since it wasn’t eating her (yet) and was just taking her around the sky and making her dizzy.

It was playing with its food.

Intelligent monsters had killed countless intelligent creatures in its lifetime, developing its intelligence as it consumed more. For some reason, they had developed some sort of sadistic streak. This was a general consensus among experts, and no intelligent monster was an exeption.

This was something Alterran scholars had been studying, and some of their knowledge was even researched from the local monster experts.

According to the studies, it was like the intelligent monsters were fond of ’seasoning’ their targets by making them suffer.

Perhaps stressed-out humans let out specific chemicals that they liked? Like adrenaline, cortisol, or whatever.

In any case, as twisted as it was, it gave Althea more chances to escape.

CAWWWW!

The damned bird knew to avoid the downdrafts and take advantage of the invisible rotating winds to lift itself up.

If she hadn’t known for a fact that monsters couldn’t be elementalists, she might’ve thought this thing was a wind user.

Althea pushed down the rising bile in her stomach and looked around, her eyes fixed on the granite mountain in front of her. Soon, she saw something like a saddle or a col amidst the mass.

It was a few hundred meters high above ground, so it technically wasn’t considered a mountain pass, but it was at least an opening or a ’weak spot’ for anyone wanting to go to the other side.

She was about to throw a flare to signal to her husband that this was the direction to enter, but the wind changed again, so she had to abandon this plan.

She hit the monster with the flare instead; maybe traces of it could be found by her husband.

CAWWW!

It wouldn’t hurt a level 35 monster, but it certainly annoyed it. She had been against a number of avians in her lifetime, and a lot of their weaknesses (other than the eyes) were similar to those of the terran birds.

For example, their wings were the most vulnerable part of their bodies. The wing joints were even more delicate. It was also relatively easy to target, considering her current position.

Although it had a high level, being hit by the flare on its weakness was still a bit painful, like being stung by a bee, so the bird had a reflexive action against her.

And this reflexive action was to literally toss her away.

She was thrown into the gap, and she found herself falling down to slam against the sharp spikes of rock. Althea instinctively took out a fabric from her space, hoping to soften her fall.

The winds in the gaps were wild, and she found herself shot up, and then she was pushed to the other side. It was dizzying; she was amazed she was still conscious.

Fortunately, she still had some weight, and by taking the fabric back to her space at the right time and height, she fell down on the col’s surface with minimal injuries.

CAWWWW!!!

How could the bird allow her to escape? She was the most delicious prey it had encountered so far!

Elementalists were particularly delicious to monsters, and this was clearer among intelligent beasts. Now that Althea, a rare delicious prey, had appeared, it could even risk its life to get a bite of her.

It was also why it played around with her for so long. It was instinctively trying to make her even more ’delicious’ to eat.

CAWWWWW!!

Fortunately, the saddle was not too wide so it couldn’t fly inside. The monster furled its wings and used its legs to grab Althea, much like how a chicken would peck at worms.

Althea-the-worm was also flexible. She expertly avoided the monster’s pecks, taking advantage of the jagged surface to create hiding spaces for herself. Using her not-too-strong earth vibration skills, she would even find nice earth pockets and cause its beak to get stuck occasionally.

This long-winded approach gave Althea some breathing room, but it also caused the monster to go berserk.

CAAAAWWWW!!!

Peck!

PECK!

CAWWWW!

Althea’s face scrunched in annoyance and also pain, but her mind was clear. As she rolled down, her body hit the uneven—sometimes sharp—ground, she was already figuring out her survival plan.

Whoosh!

A few seconds later, her entire body felt weightless. She had rolled off the ’cliff’ and began to freefall.

Althea used the same fabric from before to make use of the uplift of the windside. Such a tall, homogeneous mountain had strong incoming winds, and she took advantage of that.

She did not have time to appreciate the thick forest below, just focused on softening her fall somehow.

She snapped open a broad sheet of cloth from her space. She wrapped her arms around it, with the vines as reinforcement. The wind seized it instantly. Instead of plummeting, she lurched upwards as the cliff’s rising air filled the fabric.

The wind wasn’t enough to magically make her float all the way up, but it wasn’t something a human like her could easily control.

Rip!

Althea’s eyes twitched as she heard the familiar sound of fabric tearing. Immediately after that, she quickly sank. The tearing sound intensified, with the tear widening, and she fell down directly.

She got her vines to hold it together somehow, and it recovered a bit, just enough to keep her from free-falling.

The violet updraft tore at her arms, making her wince, but she held on.

She wasn’t flying so much as she was getting carried, drifting and climbing whenever the wind surged, then sinking again when it weakened.

She was also in complete control of the unpredictable winds, and her strength was focused on keeping the fabric from tearing completely. She could not even muster the strength to control the direction she went.

A sudden gust of wind came out of nowhere, changing her direction so quickly she couldn’t even react.

BAM!

Crack!

Althea’s eyes twitched in pain, and she silently wondered which bone just broke.

A thousand roller coasters couldn’t be as thrilling as this!