Chapter 141: Time

He kept his feet light, ready to step back, ready to vanish again.

The basilisk’s muscles tensed.

The jaw angled.

The tail shifted behind like it was preparing to sweep.

Kael’s mind measured angles the way it always did now. If it bit, where did he go If it swept, where did he brace. If the raid broke, how did he escape without getting trampled by panicked allies.

The climbers used the time when the beast was focused on Kael to do a few good hits and run away from the retaliating tail.

They were clumsy but learning. Jab, retreat. Slash, retreat. One man got greedy and lingered too long, and the tail’s near miss made him stumble backward with a pale face, suddenly remembering he wasn’t immortal. Another managed to wedge a spear point between plates again and twisted, drawing a thicker line of blood that made the basilisk hiss.

Having a good aggro draw was imperative for a successful raid, but Kael wasn’t a tank, and he would soon drop dead if he took one clean hit.

He could feel their reliance on him. They attacked harder when the basilisk stared at him. They backed off when the basilisk turned away. Kael was the anchor point of this entire mess, and the irony of that made him want to spit.

Anchor rune, anchor role, anchored fate.

The hope of victory was there. But there was also that worry that one mistake will end many lives.

Kael didn’t need to imagine it. He’d already seen what one tail swipe did to a human body. One mistake here didn’t just end you. It ended with you in a way that made the rest hesitate, and hesitation was contagious.

’Presence,’ Kael muttered as he once again disappeared, waiting in ambush while the climbers took turns bleeding the creature.

The basilisk’s head snapped, confused for a split second, and the raid surged in again. Kael shifted along the flank, keeping low, watching for the creature’s blind spots. Presence dulled his own senses, but the mini-map and his memory of the cavern carried him.

“Keep it up!” The boss said as he also joined the fight.

The boss sounded pleased, like this was going according to plan rather than barely controlled chaos.

He stepped in, struck, stepped out, trying to look heroic. Kael didn’t care about the performance. Performance didn’t crack scales. Repetition did.

The Basilisk was thankfully simple enough that she didn’t care much about the creature attacking it. She was too focused and too enraged at the being that wore her children’s leather.

That was her main goal of revenge and rage. She needed to find him first, once she had him between her teeth, then maybe she could fill up with the rest of these pests.

But he was too flimsy and too slimy to catch.

That was the only reason this raid wasn’t already dead. The basilisk was emotional. It was biased. It wanted him. It wanted revenge more than it wanted efficiency. Kael hated being the target, but he would use that hate to keep the rest alive long enough to serve as distraction.

Kael appeared once again, on the same side and struck again with his punch, making the creature break and howl, this time clearly in pain, as Kael noticed something.

The howl wasn’t just anger now. It had strain in it. The scales where he hit had tiny fractures. Hairline cracks spreading outward from the impact point. They were still scales, still armored, but they weren’t unbreakable.

Before the basilisk was able to turn its head to Kael, he sent his left hand to follow up after the first blow. Another rattling blow landed cleanly into the basilisk’s side.

The second punch landed with less finesse but more desperation. The internal energy bar dipped again, and Kael felt a dull throb in his shoulder joint, warning him that his own body still had limits even if the Tower gave him tools. He was in pain, but so was she.

However, Kael missed one important factor.

Spite is a far more motivating factor than pain.

The basilisk shot a tail swing at Kael, who noticed it at the neck of time.

The tail came like a wall, faster than something that big had any right to be. Kael saw it and understood instantly that there was no clean dodge. The cavern didn’t give him room. The raid behind him didn’t give him room. The tail was going to hit something, and that something was him.

Finding no way to dodge or roll under the thick tail, he simply held both hands up in a boxer-like guard.

He braced, elbows tight, gauntlets raised, chain taut between them. It was a stupid defense against a creature built to swat men into paste, but stupid was better than nothing.

The impact drove through his arms into his chest like a hammer strike. His feet left the ground, the world rotated, and for a breath the moss-lit cavern became a spinning smear. He managed to land because his stats and his stance saved him, boots skidding, knees bending, body absorbing shock. Even then, pain flared hot along his forearms and into his elbows.

Even he was surprised by what just happened. But his arms still sent him signals of pain.

The gauntlets held. The leather lining held. His bones complained anyway, because metal didn’t stop force from traveling. It only spread it.

Though armored with hardened steel and cushioned with thick leather, he was still made of bone and flesh; taking another hit like that would likely break him.

He flexed his fingers quickly, checking for numbness. They responded. Good. He didn’t have time for broken hands. If his hands failed, he died. Simple math.

“TIME!” The boss howled.

The shout cut through the clash and the hissing and the panicked breathing. It wasn’t just a word. It was a signal, a reminder of the contract and the rotation, and also a reminder that this fight wasn’t only against the basilisk. It was against everyone watching the clock and waiting to exploit the next opening.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep