Chapter 139: Hit And Run

The instant the basilisk’s golden eye locked onto him, Kael stopped thinking about “raid” and started thinking about “survive the next second.”

He felt the chain between his gauntlets tug as his stance tightened, and he forced internal energy through the runes with a controlled push, the kind he used when he didn’t want the output to surprise him.

The gauntlet warmed in sequence, heat traveling along the forearm like a contained furnace, and for a heartbeat, the fluorescent moss glow got bullied aside by raw orange light.

Kael unleashed the gathered energy through his gauntlet, and the cave lit up for a moment.

The fireball shot like a cannonball and slammed directly into the snout of the beast.

It did not drift lazily the way his old shots used to. Heft gave it bite, and the impact carried that bite with ugly honesty.

The projectile hit the basilisk’s snout with a concussive thud that shook dust loose from the ceiling. Smoke and sparks burst outward, and the smell of scorched scale and wet cave air mixed into something nauseating. The basilisk’s head snapped back, not because the flame hurt, but because the weight did.

The flaring of flames and the impact made the creature retreat for a step.

A single step from something that massive felt like the cave itself shifting.

Claws scraped stone and left fresh gouges over older marks. The raid group behind Kael collectively sucked in breath they didn’t need, bodies tightening as if the basilisk had moved closer instead of away. Even the moss trembled slightly from the vibration.

“Holy crap! That was awesome!” someone said as the smoke from the flames covered the beast.

The voice came out too loud, too excited, the kind of excitement that was really panic, wearing a grin. Kael didn’t turn to look at who said it. He kept his eyes on the smoke cloud, watching for movement, watching for the sudden shape of a lunging head.

“Did you get him?” another one asked Kael.

Kael heard boots shifting, a weapon clinking, someone leaning forward as if the basilisk would politely stay hidden until they finished asking questions.

“Fucker, you know as well to never say shit like that,” Kael sighed as he realized that would never work.

The sigh wasn’t calm. It was irritated survival. He hated how people treated fights like stories, like there was a neat moment where the monster stayed down, and the camera panned for applause. Monsters didn’t do applause. They did sudden violence.

[The Basilisk resisted [Burn] effect]

’Figured as much,’ Kael thought, after all, he is using leather made from this very creature. Leather that was highly resistant to flames. And he only had flames to fight with right now.

The system line was almost insulting in how unsurprising it was. Kael could feel the truth of it in his own gear.

The basilisk leather jacket on his body didn’t even get warm from the residual heat in the cave. If his armor shrugged off fire like it was weather, why would the basilisk itself care about a little flame? Fire was his language right now, and he was trying to curse a creature that was born fluent.

The physical impact of Heft still made the creature stagger, but it won’t be enough to kill it.

He felt the blue internal energy bar in his vision dip from that single shot, not by much compared to his earlier misfires, but enough to remind him that ranged blasts were expensive. He could punch more than he could shoot. Punching meant less waste. Shooting meant burning energy to travel through the air.

Jaws of death emerged from the letting smoke as the creature bounded toward Kael.

The basilisk didn’t come slowly. It surged, body uncoiling, head low, shoulders rolling like a siege engine coming to life. Smoke peeled off its scales in ribbons as it pushed through.

The mouth movement was sickening. Not just open and close, but side-to-side, like it was testing angles, calculating how to take a body whole. The tail dragged behind with lethal patience, sweeping near the walls, smashing loose stone with casual strength. Every swing promised the same lesson Kael had already seen once. One clean hit and someone turned into paste.

The jaws, though, were moving from side to side; their main focus was still Kael. And Kael recognized it; she was planning on getting revenge on the killer of her children.

He felt it in the way the creature did not even glance at the clustered raid behind him. It wasn’t choosing targets randomly. It had a priority, and Kael’s armor was a walking insult. The smell of basilisk leather on him was a signature, a confession he couldn’t hide even if he wanted to.

“[Presence],” Kael muttered as his body fused with the world for a brief second.

The cave dulled instantly. Colors washed toward gray, the moss glow became distant, and even the stench in his nose flattened as if reality itself had been muffled. His body felt less like a body and more like a concept trying not to exist. The internal energy bar ticked down in the background, a quiet drain that made his jaw tighten.

This was the only plan Kael had; it wasn’t to escape, no, it was to distract. And distractions worked perfectly here.

Finding that Kael had simply ceased to exist made the Basilisk stop its early charge to try to locate it.

The basilisk’s head snapped left, then right, nostrils flaring.

Its claws dug into the stone to halt its momentum, and the sudden stop made its tail whip harder, slamming into a wall and knocking dust down like a curtain. It didn’t understand where its prey went. It only understood that its prey had been there, and now was not.

“NOW!” The boss said as he too jumped in for the opportunity to attack.

The shout carried command more than excitement. The boss had been waiting for this moment, the moment the basilisk’s focus broke.

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