"Lisa, stay alert, I’m sensing a grotesque smell up ahead... much more intense than the previous snakes we encountered," he said immediately.
With the recent two-level evolution in [Chemosensory Aptitude Lv 7], Lohan felt much more comfortable identifying the smell of enemies and perceiving their level of power.
Sure, he still couldn’t clearly tell an enemy’s power by smell, but after facing so many Shadow Snakes, it was shocking to smell something four times more intense than the smell of the most powerful snake they had encountered so far.
Lisa slowed down, her muscles tensed beneath her white fur as she crept through the shadows of the narrow crevice.
The environment they had arrived at was very different from the previous cave pockets, with the walls of this place polished smooth by what seemed like decades of friction, gleaming with a thick layer of corrosive mud.
Lohan activated [Thermographic Perception Lv 4] and looked around, trying to understand what was hidden in this darkness.
The world was bathed in cold blue tones, but just ahead, a colossal mass of pulsating heat filled the corridor.
It was a Shadow Serpent unlike anything they had ever seen! Its body was like a black cylinder nearly six meters long, with scales that looked like obsidian plates.
Just the power it exuded as it breathed made Lohan’s core vibrate in constant alertness to danger.
However, something was wrong with the beast’s posture.
The central part of its body had a grotesque, deformed bulge, stretching its scales to the limit. The serpent could barely coil itself, moving with a heavy, exhausting slowness.
"It just ate something big, Lisa." Lohan observed, describing the image he saw to Lisa.
"Maybe it ate a deer or even another elite monster. At this point, I believe its digestion is at its peak."
Lisa hesitated, staring at the creature that clearly surpassed them in level. "The risk is high, Halon. If it manages to react despite its weight, one blow from that tail seems like it could crush us against these walls."
Lohan, however, focused on the opportunity.
With his [Chemosensory Aptitude], he realized that the acidic smell did not come only from the glands, but exuded heavily from the snake’s breath. To digest prey of that size, the monster’s stomach must be flooded with the pure acid they so desperately needed.
"If we kill this snake, Lisa, we’ll get more acid than from ten ordinary snakes. And with its belly full, it won’t have the agility to escape my [Magic Weaving]." Lohan argued, feeling an internal euphoria at the fun it would be to fight that creature.
Ever since they started fighting together, Lohan had felt how much fun it was to kill monsters.
Without the disadvantage of being terribly slow, he was just taking full advantage of the advantages he had, and that was much cooler than spending all day digesting grass!
Lisa took a deep breath, analyzing Halon’s words and also feeling a little greedy for the amount of Digestive Acid inside that snake.
From what she had observed, her combat power in one-on-one combat was already superior to any creature of the same level because of her Legendary Race and Rare Class, added to Halon’s assistance behind her, their power at this point was unmatched by anything they had encountered so far.
So little by little, the fun Halon felt in battle was also infecting her, who was loving the feeling of destroying these monsters.
Confirming that the Serpent, although strong, would probably be at a disadvantage because it was in the process of digestion, she accepted that the advantage was now theirs and decided to continue the battle with Halon.
"Lisa, let’s close off the exits. If she can’t move fast, let’s make sure she can’t move at all," Lohan suggested mentally, already mobilizing [Magic Weaving].
The strategy was not very complex. Lisa would use her superior speed to circle the beast, distracting it with flashes of [Spirit Fire], while Lohan would shoot reinforced threads to anchor the snake’s belly bulge to the rocky ground.
If they could fix that point of gravity, the creature would be at the mercy of their attacks, being kited to death.
However, the moment Lisa took her first step out of the shadows, the air in the cave seemed to freeze.
The Shadow Serpent, which until then had seemed focused solely on internal digestion, raised its triangular head with a speed that defied the laws of physics for a creature of that size.
Its eyes, vertical slits of toxic yellow, fixed on the fox and the slime.
Before any attack was launched, a wave of Murderous Intent flooded the crevice, so dense and heavy that Lohan felt his membrane vibrate violently and his core waver.
"Shit... I miscalculated," Lohan’s thought came like a snap of dread. ’It’s obvious that more powerful monsters would have ways to hide their scent, especially predators like this one!’
With [Chemosensory Aptitude Lv 7], he realized too late that the acid wasn’t just digesting the prey, but seemed to be metabolizing into raw mana, overwhelming the snake’s system.
The snake didn’t seem exhausted, but rather appeared to be in a state of chemical frenzy.
The snake hissed, letting out a much deeper sound than the snakes they had faced before, which reverberated off the polished walls of the crevice, and its tail, which looked like a massive obsidian whip, lashed out at them.
Lisa reacted instinctively, activating her Dash to the side, but the shockwave from the tail’s impact against the rock wall was so powerful that fist-sized shards of rock were thrown in all directions.
"Halon, use your webs! Now!" Lisa shouted mentally, her voice losing its usual coolness for the first time.
Lohan did just that, burning 40 units of biomass at once, casting the thickest strands of [Magic Weaving] he had made so far, imbued with blue mana.
The threads hit the creature’s back and attached themselves to the walls, but the snake’s strength was enormous. With a single twist of its muscular body, the mana fibers, which should have been unbreakable for low-level monsters, stretched to their limit, emitting a high-pitched sound of tension.
The creature ignored the threads and advanced, opening its jaws at an impossible angle. Instead of a bite, it expelled a jet of black, acidic vapor.
"Dodge!" Lohan shouted, taking advantage of his ability to see in the darkness, while desperately trying to shoot more threads to deflect the monster’s head.
Lisa trusted Halon’s shout and leaped, her paws sliding on the corrosive mud, but the space was too narrow.
The serpent’s tail came in a horizontal arc, anticipating the fox’s evasive movement.
With no angle to escape and Lohan’s web being torn like silk by the brute force of the beast, they found themselves trapped between the acid jet and the crushing blow.
Lohan saw the threads of his web breaking one by one, and for the first time since he was reincarnated, the feeling that death was inches away overwhelmed the euphoria of battle.
"Think, Lohan! If the web won’t hold... what will hold this thing?!"
Looking at it desperately, suddenly an idea came to his mind.