Chapter 40: Wyvern’s Heart

He pushed himself to his feet.

Blood dripping from a dozen cuts. His mana was running low and his body screamed with pain from every part.

He was still alive. He’s been sure he would die from any attack so maybe this was a secondary one.

He didn’t want to think about what a primary attack would do to his body.

He raised his sword, weakly steadying it in front of him as the wyvern roared and charged at him again.

He had an idea.

He steadied himself, letting the wyvern charge at him.

He couldn’t face this thing with brute force. He had to use his head.

This time, Emeric didn’t dodge.

He waited, letting it charge at him. At the last second, he dropped and slid beneath its jaws, driving his blade upward into the soft flesh of its throat.

The wyvern screamed, thrashing from the pain, throwing Emeric off it a little bit. It whipped around with its tail and caught him across the ribs, sending him tumbling across the clearing.

He hit a rock. Hard. And he could tell that something cracked. He didn’t know what but he knew that he had to finish this or he wouldn’t be able to get Isolde the cure.

He forced himself up.

The wyvern was bleeding now. A deep gash in its throat. But it wasn’t dead. It was angry.

Guess they both were.

It turned; its eyes locked onto him. And it charged again.

Emeric turned, running towards the ravine.

He’d spotted it earlier—a deep crevice in the earth, too wide to jump, too steep to climb. He led the wyvern toward it, dodging its strikes, using the trees as cover.

The wyvern followed, thrashing as it chased after him.

A spine caught him in the shoulder. He stumbled. Almost fell. But he kept running.

The poison was spreading but he couldn’t stop now.

The ravine was ahead. Twenty feet. Ten.

He could hear the wyvern behind him, roaring from frustration.

At the edge of the ravine, he stopped.

The wyvern charged.

At the last second, Emeric activated lightning, moving as fast as his ability could carry him.

In the blink of an eye, he was opposite the edge, on a tree..

The wyvern’s momentum carried it forward. Its claws scrambled for balance. Its tail whipped wildly, thrashing to hold on, but it was too late.

It tumbled over the edge.

Emeric heard it crash into the rocks below. Heard its roar of pain and rage.

He crawled to the edge and looked down.

The wyvern was impaled on a spire of rock. Its body twitched but its eyes were still open.

It was dying.

Emeric climbed down.

The wyvern was still alive when he reached it.

It lay on the rocks, impaled, bleeding. Its eyes tracked him as he approached. There was no fear in them. Only rage and pain.

Emeric climbed onto its chest. The scales were slick with blood. The heart was beneath them—he could feel it pulsing. It was the softer parts of the body. A weak point that rarely got exposed as it would mean getting a wyvern to go belly up.

I’m sorry.

For a moment, Emeric saw something in its eyes. Maybe fear? He wasn’t sure. It was too late.

He drove his sword down with a precise motion, targeting the organs that connected the heart to the body.

He severed it in one plunging motion.

The wyvern shuddered and its eyes went dark.

Then it was still.

Emeric stood over it, breathing hard, covered in blood.

He was alive.

He reached for his knife by his side and began the work of cutting out its heart.

---

Emeric didn’t return to camp immediately.

He was too wounded and exhausted. He found a small cave at the base of the ravine, and dragged himself inside. He bandaged his wounds with strips torn from his tunic. Somewhere between getting shelter and blacking out from the poison, the system had given him a poison resistance skill. But the poison had worked its way through his body already.

He was burning up. A fever, he suspected.

His body was trying to fight the poison that had already burrowed deep into his body.

He had dragged the wyvern’s full form to the front of the cave. He didn’t remember any part of it.

The wyvern’s heart sat beside him in a leather pouch. He could feel it pulsing faintly. This thing had such a will to live.

I’m sorry. My wife needs to live.

He was one step closer to saving her.

He blacked out again.

When he woke, the moon was high in the sky.

His body had healed a good amount but he could still feel the pain from several of his wounds.

His regen skill had tried to keep up.

He had to find a way up this ravine and back to the cave where his other kills were.

He packed his gear. Picked up the leather pouch with the wyvern’s heart.

He didn’t remember dragging this thing with him but now that he was fully conscious, it weighed too much for him to drag it for long distances without getting tired.

A system notification flashed in front of him.

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

[NEW FEATURE UNLOCKED: INVENTORY]

[DESCRIPTION: You may now store non-living objects and defeated creatures in a hyperspace inventory. Space is limited and will expand as your Tier increases.]

[CURRENT CAPACITY: 20 slots]

[ITEMS STORED: 0/20]

[SYSTEM NOTE: LIVING CREATURES CANNOT BE STORED.]

Well, that just made things easier.

He placed his hands over the wyvern and uses the system feature.

[STORE THORNBACK WYVERN IN INVENTORY?]

He willed it to be and the entire carcass varnished before his eyes.

[ITEMS STORED: 1/20]

Then he began to find a way back to the first cave.

He must have walked for what felt like hours but he finally arrived at the cave.

He’d had to go the long way round, just to find a way up the ravine before commencing on the walk back to where he had been assigned at the start of the hunt.