Almost imdiately, the snakes funneled in. Without even needing to coordinate or speak, the mbers of the snakes were already in the room.
Boots scraped stone. Leather creaked. tal clinked against tal in sharp, disciplined bursts. The air inside the cave, already thick with dust and reptile musk, seed to compress as bodies poured through the threshold.
No shouted commands. No frantic pointing. They moved like they had rehearsed this in their sleep.
Formation snapped into place around the basilisk in seconds, angles covered, flanks claid, distances asured by instinct rather than words. It was clean. Too clean.
Arrows shot forward, aiming to blind the creature and rob him of his sight.
Three bowstrings thrumd at different pitches, the vibrations layering over one another. The arrows sliced through the stale air, their fletching whispering past Kael’s ear as he hugged the edge of the room. They went straight for the eyes, no warning shots, no testing.
Blind the basilisk, and you buy breathing room. Blind it, and you make every strike safer. It was a clean plan, logical, and Kael would have respected it if he weren’t standing among people who would gladly sell his skin for a few cores.
A sharp tink echoed in the cavern. The impact made a dull clack that echoed wrong in the cave, and the arrow shaft snapped a fraction, wobbling before falling uselessly.
Kael watched the bounce and felt the tiniest satisfaction and the smallest dread at the sa ti. Satisfaction because it ant the Snakes were not holding so miraculous answer. Dread because it ant the basilisk had defenses beyond brute scale, and it was learning the rhythm of these raids fast.
Since with the heightened senses of a beast in combat, all it needed to do was close its lids. Not the large scaly ones, but a filmic mbrane that closed on top of the eyes. Allowing sight, but protecting the eyes.
The rest of the Snakes didn’t feel too disturbed by the fact that their arrow was stopped and simply charged in.
No hesitation. No surprise. Either they expected it, or they didn’t care.
The mont Kael heard the shift in footsteps and the change in breathing behind the slope, he knew the five minutes were up in practice even if they were still ticking on paper.
The Snakes moved like they had rehearsed this in their heads all night. No shouting, no panicked scrambling. Their silhouettes, which had appeared now, were organized, disciplined, and positioned well for their roles. Spearn at the front, midranged fighters with swords behind them, and three archers spread out for support.
Steel bit into scale. Sparks jumped. The sound wasn’t flesh-tearing; it was like striking reinforced hide. Still, small slivers chipped free. The basilisk’s muscles rippled under each impact, tail lashing in a violent arc that forced two Snakes to dive and roll across the stone.
The basilisk did not panic. It did not flinch. It simply reacted like sothing that had survived long enough to develop tricks no climber wanted to learn firsthand.
The rest of the snakes were unfazed by the creature’s tantrum; they were ready for it, expecting it even.
They did not hesitate. That was the key difference between them and the Sun Clan.
The Sun Clan had walked in with courage and a lot of noise. The Snakes walked in like predators.
Stone edges scraped, and the tal bit where it could, and sparks jumped when steel t scale. It was ugly work. No clean cuts, no heroic strikes. Just n trying to carve pain into a monster that did not respect their effort.
Every ti a weapon found a seam between plates, the basilisk jerked and hissed, tail snapping like a whip, feet grinding stone. The sound of it filled the cave, a constant wet grind of mass and rage.
"Back away, everyone," The boss said.
His voice cut through the chaos with authority sharpened by experience. He stood near the slope with the Sun Clan, posture steady, eyes calculating.
Though he wanted to personally hop in the line of fire of one of the arrows to ’nerf’ the enemy team due to the contract with the tower. The boss was still too healthy to try sothing like this.
Kael heard the order and recognized the restraint behind it. The boss’s eyes were watching the archers. Watching their lines. asuring the distance between an accidental graze and an intentional interception. It would have been easy to force a ranged mistake, to step into an arrow ant for the basilisk and then smile while the Tower punished Petrov’s side.
Kael knew that look. The weighing of options. The greedy temptation of sabotage.
But the boss didn’t move. Not yet. He was greedy, not suicidal. And this was the stage where one bad gamble could end the raid before it even began.
It would imdiately cause the Snakes to lose, and that would also an that the Sun Clan by themselves wouldn’t be able to kill the boss.
This was news both clans knew. So they didn’t risk it this early on.
Everyone was pretending to focus only on the monster. No one was.
It was the cold logic that made alliances possible for five minutes at a ti. Neither side wanted fairness. They wanted an advantage.
But both understood that if one side collapsed too early, the basilisk would simply eat the remaining side, and the hidden piece would remain a legend inside a beast’s stomach.
Kael imdiately went into [Presence], hiding from sight, which broke the aggro on him.
The world dimd at the edges as the skill settled over him like a second skin. The oppressive gaze of the basilisk slid off him, redirected toward fresher threats. His heartbeat steadied by a fraction. Not safe, just temporarily irrelevant.
He didn’t vanish because he was afraid of the Snakes. Or a possible assault from his own ’team’
He vanished because he knew how the basilisk’s mind worked now.
He had felt its obsession. It would chase him through spear points and arrows just to get one bite, and that obsession was a weapon that could be turned against everyone in the room. Let the Snakes take the heat. Let them taste what rage looked like when it wasn’t aid at him.
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