An intense emerald heat flowed from him into Lisa, numbing the pain of her wounds and infusing her with a vitality that made the fox’s white fur crackle with blue-green flames.
While healing Lisa, Lohan used his tentacles to expel smaller clones that scattered across the battlefield, not to attack, but to serve as anchors of perception.
Fortunately, now that his [Partial Division] was at Level 11, he could create far more than just 4 clones at a time.
Controlling these clones should have been much more difficult, but the Mental Connection Trait and the [Pack Instinct Lv 10] evolution were helping even more with that!
And seeing the level of this evolution, Lohan didn’t hesitate to spend 104 biomass to buy another level of it!
As soon as he invested that biomass, Lohan felt a pulse run through his core, as if a new network of invisible nerves were expanding outward from his blue gelatin.
[Pack Instinct Lv 10 → Lv 11]
[After 10 minor evolutions, Pack Instinct is undergoing a qualitative evolution...]
[New trait obtained: Collective Synaptic Synchrony!]
[Collective Synaptic Synchrony: The sensory processing of all linked members is unified in real time. When a clone detects a threat, the motor reflex is instantly transmitted to the entire linked group, allowing for coordinated dodges and counterattacks without the delay of individual processing.]
Reading that description, if Lohan had eyes, they would be shining with excitement right now!
The change he felt was immediate.
Previously, Lohan had to consciously switch his attention between the four bodies, even while using parallel processing, which created a slight "delay" in perception, but now the battlefield had literally become a single consciousness.
Through the eight clones scattered like small blue puddles across the clearing, he saw the Level 11 Explosive Rabbit from eight different angles at the same time.
The elite rabbit, enraged by the death of its subordinates, pounded its metallic paws on the ground at such a high frequency that the sound resembled a turbine igniting.
It launched itself into a gray blur, aiming for Lisa’s unprotected flank at a speed the fox’s eyes could barely keep up with.
However, in the millisecond the monster’s hind leg muscle contracted, one of Lohan’s clones, positioned behind a root, picked up the vibration. Thanks to the new Synaptic Synchrony, the reflex didn’t need to pass through Lohan’s central core to be processed, but Lohan transmitted it directly through their mental Link to Lisa’s nervous system!
Lisa was confused by this strange sensation, but in the heat of battle, she didn’t care about its origin, and driven by the emerald vitality Lohan was injecting into her, she tilted her body at an impossible angle even before the rabbit reached the peak of its charge.
The explosive kick passed inches from her white fur, striking only the air and creating a shockwave that pulverized the undergrowth.
"Halon! I felt... I saw his move before it happened!" Lisa transmitted through the mental link, her voice filled with surprise and shock, but quickly turning to hope for a possible victory!
Lohan didn’t miss the opportunity.
As Lisa dodged, he coordinated three of his clones to leap simultaneously, the small gelatinous masses becoming extremely adhesive and clinging to the joints of the elite rabbit’s hind legs the moment it landed.
The monster attempted another explosive leap to break free, but Lohan’s added weight and viscosity, though unable to fully contain the strength and mass of that Level 11 rabbit, acted as temporary restraints, sabotaging the beast’s precision of movement.
"Now, Lisa! His attack pattern has been broken; we have to take advantage of this opportunity!" Lohan vibrated, projecting a dense cloud of gray smoke from his membrane to further disorient the enemy.
The opaque gray cloud engulfed the Level 11 Explosive Rabbit, turning the battlefield into a scene of zero visibility for the monster’s biological eyes.
Lohan spared no expense in spending Biomass and Mana to create this smoke, constantly consuming the rabbit corpses he carried within himself, utilizing the Hemolymphatic Tissue to regenerate as quickly as possible, while also nourishing and healing Lisa.
However, unlike how it appeared to the rabbit, to Lisa the smoke was nothing more than a transparent mist; she "saw" the enemy’s thermal silhouette through the information Lohan mentally transmitted to her from the eyes of the clones clinging to the beast’s legs.
The rabbit, feeling cornered, let out a metallic screech, and its hind legs began to glow with a pulsating crimson light as they vibrated at high speed, the Mana pressure around it becoming so dense that it began to disperse Lohan’s smoke through sheer kinetic force.
Realizing the monster was about to perform an area-of-effect move, Lohan didn’t hesitate.
"Lisa, I think he’s going to try another vacuum attack to clear the area again! Don’t back down, I’ll anchor you!" Lohan transmitted through the mental link, as he opened the floodgates once more of his Natural Energy Core, which he had just replenished by digesting the corpses of the previous rabbits.
Another intense emerald heat flowed from the Slime into the fox’s body, closing the micro-cracks in her ribs and injecting the addictive sensation of infinite vitality into her.
At the same time, Lohan spread his biomass across the ground and activated his Gravitational Anchoring, the ability he gained when [Body Density Lv 16] surpassed level 11, with the bluish mass beneath Lisa’s paws suddenly becoming heavy and rigid as lead, firmly pinning her to the ground against the suction that was beginning to form.
[Traits: Gravitational Anchoring - Upon activating this trait, the user’s internal density increases slightly, making it difficult to be moved by external forces, kinetic impacts, or lower-level repulsion magic.]
-- BOOOOM! --
The rabbit slammed its paws into the air with such force that it created another Vacuum Detonation.
The smoke was swept away and the undergrowth was torn up by the roots, but Lisa remained motionless, protected by Lohan’s increased density.
Taking advantage of the monster’s millisecond of exhaustion after the blow, Lisa dashed forward.
Using the Spectral Step powered by the Natural Energy that Lohan was injecting into her, she appeared above the rabbit’s head like a multicolored flash of lightning, a blend of her own white, the red hues of her Spiritual Energy, Lohan’s bluish color mingling with the black of his scales, and finally the greenish tint of his Natural Energy.
Lohan acted in perfect sync.
He retracted the three clones that were on the monster’s legs, instantly converting them into translucent, extremely sticky biological threads that wrapped around the beast’s neck and metallic ears, straining to the limit to lock its head in a vulnerable position, but the rabbit’s superior strength wouldn’t cooperate.
"Now, Halon! I’m going to aim for the center of its exposed chest!" Lisa roared mentally.