I was cruising at a decently high altitude, afraid that some huge fish might jump up and snatch me out of the air. Whenever I lost too much height, I opened up a new void portal that would take me higher up, repeating the process a few times, until the next island was close enough to examine. I’d spent maybe an hour or so gliding, which meant the islands were pretty far apart. I pitied any travelers getting this quest that didn’t have any means to travel between the islands.

I say that, but I equally had little chance to complete my second objective.

The island I was approaching was a bit smaller than the one I had arrived on, consisting of a singular flat island that had little to no greenery. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything on this island. A few alien-looking trees, some rather large boulders, and tons of sand. There weren’t even that many monsters there, and pretty much all of the ones I could see seemed to be amphibious.

As I arrived in the airspace over the island, I struggled to find a monster that would qualify as an island guardian. I briefly wondered whether all of them would be variations of Oni guardians, but it seemed less and less likely as I combed over the island from above. There was no obvious arena like the last guardian had, no noticeable point of interest that could hint at the guardian's whereabouts, and no big, convenient sign pointing it out for me.

I was starting to suspect that maybe not all islands had a guardian when I spotted some movement. Something that I mistook for one of the large boulders, started to move around sluggishly. The boulder literally unfolded itself into a vaguely humanoid shape, albeit the torso was way too large, while the arms and legs were too thick and long, seemingly not attached to the torso at all. Oh, and it didn’t have a head.

I void jumped a bit higher so that I could continue to observe the creature from a safe distance. It lumbered around the center of the island, walking a painfully slow perimeter around what I presumed to be its arena. Apparently, island guardians just sat on their asses all day and waited for a challenger. I was wondering just how long they were essentially doing nothing since it seemed like the regular monsters gave them a wide berth.

This was presumably yet another thing the system put on this world for the sole purpose of providing a challenge to the travelers, and since I had no clue how often one of my kind passed through here… It could have been sitting around here for tens, or even hundreds of years.

I was a bit too high up for my archive to work, so I waited until I descended a bit to see what I was up against.

Rock and Stone Elemental (T5)

These Elementals start their lives as a tiny fragment of magically charged ore. Depending on their environment after spawning, they start grafting materials to their body to grow. They can take all kinds of shapes and consist of all kinds of materials. The one thing they all have in common is that if you destroy their nucleus, they die. Don’t think doing so will be easy, though, since their defensive capabilities are amazing.

I eyed the elemental far below taking measured steps along the sand. It seemed extremely slow, but at this point, I knew better than to just assume anything like that. There was a very real possibility that it could move a lot faster than it was currently displaying. That, or it had some ability that allowed it to be stationary while attacking. I was reminded of my turret skill, which I hadn’t used in a long while, and wondered whether the guardian had something like it too.

After all, when I arrived it was just sitting there, unmoving. Well, nothing that couldn’t be solved with overwhelming firepower. I was still a bit salty about giant spike not having worked on the Oni Guardian, which is why I decided that it was time to spam the spell once again. The elemental was several times larger than I, easily fulfilling the activation condition of giant spike.

I once more gave myself a bit more high with a void jump and prepared an array of void javelins. I had the sneaking suspicion that my poison wouldn’t do jack shit to a mass of inorganic matter, which is why I shelved that entire line of spells right away. It didn’t take too long for the array of seventeen javelins to be ready, and I didn’t lose any time shooting them off. It took a few moments for them to arrive at their designated target due to how high up I was, which I used to cast the first giant spike of presumably many.

Three of the javelins had exploded on the tough monster, when the giant spike emerged from the ground, sandwiching it between a rock and a hard place. The void javelins kept coming, and the two forces pushed against each other to inflict even more damage. Having learned my lesson about getting complacent against the Oni Guardian, I kept a watchful eye while raining down more and more void javelins, occasionally sprinkling in a giant spike.

My vigilance paid off when I managed to barely dodge a rock projectile that was lobbed at me, which was followed by many more shortly after. I had to let up on my assault a bit in order to dodge all the projectiles, but it didn’t take long for the elemental to stop moving.

I’d absolutely peppered the poor thing with my spells, and even if it was a guardian, there was no way for it to resist an attack like that for long. Or maybe I just managed to destroy its nucleus, who knows? I only gained one level from the defeat and the attribute point was quickly assigned to my luck.

I softly landed on the collapsed monster, which by now looked like just any old assortment of rocks. A short test bite later, I concluded that I wouldn’t be able to eat it, no matter how I tried, so I just left it there. I quickly checked my double XP bonus and found that there were about four hours left before it ran out.

After some careful consideration, I decided that this sparsely populated island wasn’t worth my time and decided to just go to the next island instead. With a bit of luck, I’d find a bigger one, and I might even be able to take out the guardian there while the buff was still active. I marveled at my efficiency, astounded at the fact that I had only been on this layer for about a day, and was already almost done with my objectives. A true testament to how strong I’d managed to get with the simple acquisition of an EX-rated skill.

For now, though, I needed to restore some of my MP to get ready for the journey to the next island. I took out some monsters from my inventory and started chowing down.