For The Greater Good-World 1: A Corrupted Cove || World//Zero ||

33. Kingslayer!

For a moment, Alec thought he was going to die. Just in the seconds it took for him to reach the bottom, feeling as if the entire world was pushing him down, his life flashed quickly before his eyes. He felt as if he was falling for hours, even though that wasn't exactly the case. Either way, he tensed up, and braced himself for impact.

The first thing he felt since he fell was his body colliding right into the sand, and the golden particles swooped up like a cloud, covering him completely. Strangely enough, despite what he thought, the ground was fairly soft, like landing on a pile of cushions. He thought that he would feel something snap or break, but thankfully he didn't. Sitting up, he wiped off the sand from his hands before wiping his eyes, opening them to see that he was now at the bottom of the cliff. He saw the shoreline to his right, the blue tide with small white waves pulling in and out of the sand. To his left was just palm trees and lavish greenery.

He heard the warm chuckling of the paladin as he crouched down to assist the boy up out of the sand. "See, that wasn't so bad," he mused.

Alec sneezed before awkwardly cleaning out his nose as Cal got the rest of the sand off of him. When he was brushing off his satchel, Alec suddenly remembered his pet and opened it, rummaging through it. His gold coins, his pet food...When he felt his hand brush over something soft, Alec's heart skipped a beat. He wrapped his hand around it and pulled it out, and was relieved to see that the fox kit was okay and unharmed.

"Good thinking, Alec," Cal complimented. "Once your pet gets bigger, then you don't have to worry about them getting hurt."

Alec thanked him and set the fox kit down. He shook his head free of sand before unsheathing his sword. Already up ahead he could see more crabs waiting for him, sitting along the beach by the wired cages at the shore. They didn't seem to notice the paladin and the swordmaster, though, as they didn't attack immediately. Still, Alec drew a line in the sand with his sword as he did a dash toward him.

The first group of crabs noticed him first, and didn't waste any time making their way over to him. Among the group, there was a crabbage, and like it did in the first dungeon, it shook its shell and charged heads of cabbages flew out and exploded upon impact with the ground. Alec attempted to slay that one first, and dashed through the other approaching crabs toward it. He swung his blade and hit the side of its shell, causing a high clunking noise. The crabbage didn't move or back away, however, and continued to shake its shell. Alec let out a noise of surprise as he dodged the falling cabbages, before nearly bumping right into an approaching electric crab's attack. He awkwardly stumbled over it and rolled over in the sand, quickly getting back up.

"There's too many of them!" he told Cal.

"Take them off one at a time!" his mentor responded, though he held his sword out just in case.

Alec looked at the group of crabs and stepped back. He could handle four, but six all at the same time?

"Use your pet!"

Alec looked down at his fox kit, who was backing away along beside him. It seemed to do whatever he did, but even when he attacked the crabs, the fox didn't so much as lay a scratch on them.

When the first crab leading the group came closer, Alec swiped his sword against it, and after a few tries, he successfully slayed it. He felt embarrassed but shouted demands to his fox kit to attack, or at least do something.

"Call it by name, Alec!" Cal said.

"It doesn't have one yet!"

Alec continued to hit at the hard shells of the crabs, moving away from their claws and their elemental abilities. The fox kit hopped on top of one of the crabs, aggravating it, and it swung its claw at it. Threatened, the fox bristled its tail and bit at its eye, resulting in it tumbling onto the sand. Alec finished that one off and gave a faint "Finally" before continuing to battle the crabs. Once that group was done, including the familiar green crabbage, there was still the second group to deal with. They were all electric crabs.