Galaxy Fall: All My Skills Are Maxed-Chapter 167: The Anaconda’s Maw
[Monsters Zone - Wilderness.]
[Anaconda Path.]
"Halt!"
Yakima raised one hand, pulling hard on the reins and stopping the group. The sudden command echoed off the sheer rock faces. She jumped down from her heavily armored horse, her boots hitting the dusty earth with a heavy thud, and stared intensely at the narrow, foreboding path before them. The ambient energy in the air felt stagnant, almost artificially still.
"Something isn’t right here." She said, her veteran instincts screaming at her. She looked over her shoulder at the reinforced Carriage, specifically focusing on the lady sitting cross-legged on the roof of it, her eyes closed in quiet meditation.
Mirabella slowly opened her eyes, revealing their calm, ocean-blue depths, while Princess Delphine nervously shifted the heavy velvet curtain of the carriage window, both of them staring down at Yakima.
"I know." Mirabella nodded her head lightly, her expression unreadable as she fixed her gaze into the shadowy distance.
The Anaconda path was a notorious geographical nightmare within the Monster Zone. It was a narrow, claustrophobic gorge where only ten men could walk side-by-side at most. Not only that, it wasn’t straight, but violently curved like a slithering snake, severely limiting any line of sight. The jagged, obsidian-like hills blocking the sides were all a staggering 200 meters tall, forming sheer, unscalable walls. No matter how someone looked from their current location, they would never see the ending of the path. It was the perfect, inescapable kill-box.
"How many hours to cross?" Delphine asked, her voice tight with anxiety, staring at Yakima’s tense posture.
"My princess, with our current speed, it will take three hours at most... But." She looked over her shoulder back at the ominous path before them, calculating the tactical disadvantage:
"We were attacked yesterday, and I am sure the enemy already know we are coming. What I am saying is, this place is very suitable for an ambush, and this time, they won’t be reckless." She said, pacing slightly. She moved her gaze from the dusty ground, then stopped on Hitachi, relying on his special bloodline.
"Young master Hitachi, can’t you sense any things amidst?" She asked.
Hitachi moved his glowing, multicolor celestial eyes all over the place, scanning the gorge for spirit energy signatures, traps, or illusions, but eventually sighed and shook his head:
"I sense nothing." He answered, his brow furrowed in frustration.
Yakima nodded grimly, and turned to face the pathway again. She closed her eyes, channeling her spirit energy, and the moment she reopened them, they were glowing pure white. With the piercing help of her Soul Eyes, she shot her enhanced gaze forward, her vision blurring past the rocky curves until she reached the very exit of the path.
"Strange, I also can’t sense anything..." She muttered in genuine surprise. Her visual stats were incredibly high; slipping past her detection meant the enemy possessed an unbelievable tier of stealth.
’Did the enemy think those things who attacked us yesterday will succeed? So they didn’t prepare any backup plan?’ She thought in mild confusion, though her gut told her that a Cult wouldn’t be so foolish.
Up on the carriage, Mirabella stared quietly at Yakima’s back, then at the winding path. She didn’t have eye-based bloodline skills, but she had something far better: a companion.
’Adira, use my eyesight and see if there is something ahead of us.’ She ordered internally, establishing a telepathic link with her fairy.
After a few tense seconds, Adira’s crystalline voice sounded directly in her mind, analyzing the data beyond physical visual spectrums:
’Master, there is an Array placed in the path before you, covering hundreds of meters away... With its strength, only a Lv500 rune master can set it.’
Mirabella slowly nodded her head to herself, and sighed softly, caught in a dilemma of power-scaling and rewards. She didn’t know if she should reveal this information.
’If I tell these guys, they’ll surely try to follow another path, and I will miss killing a Lv500 enemy, such a kill will surely increase my military badge.’ She thought, doing the brutal math of experience points and Empire ranking. A Lv500 kill was a goldmine. She moved her calculating gaze down onto Hitachi, Rose, Aurelia, Austin, and finally at Princess Delphine inside the carriage.
’Gosh...’ She grumbled inwardly. As much as she wanted to increase her rank, leading her teammates into a deadly trap without their knowledge was practically leading them to their deaths. At least this way, they’d know what the scaling was and could brace their defense stats for it. She decided to speak up.
"There is an array formation before us, probably placed by a Lv500 rune master, that’s why both of you can’t detect anything." She revealed casually, staring flatly at Yakima.
"A Lv500 rune master?!!" Yakima was horrified, taking a step back. She was only Lv300; in the harsh reality of their world, a two-hundred-level gap wasn’t just a disadvantage, it was an impassable chasm of raw power.
She and Hitachi immediately looked at one another in shock, then up at Mirabella, both utterly confused. The renowned Soul and Celestial eyes couldn’t even detect a ripple of energy, and Mirabella didn’t have any special bloodline which gave her a visual or sensory eye skill. So how did she bypass a Lv500 cloaking array?
"Stop looking at me, what should we do?" Mirabella asked, ignoring their stunned expressions and lowering her cold gaze at Yakima, forcing the Guild Leader to make a tactical choice.
Yakima thought frantically for a moment, staring at the suffocating path before them. ’Damn it! The moment we enter that formation, we’ll be at the mercy of that Lv500. And we can’t turn around.’ She thought, her mind racing through their quest parameters.
"What about we turn around, and take another route?" Delphine suggested from the window, staring at Yakima’s rigid back.
"It’s not a good idea, we have own week to complete this mission, and we left on the second day, meaning, we only have five days... That’s going and coming. If we past this monster zone, we will arrive at Ragon city before nighttime." Yakima sighed heavily, slapping her forehead in sheer frustration at the tight deadline.
"This is troublesome, we don’t know how long it will take us to settle everything in Ragon. We are moving with time." She turned fully to face the anxious group.
"If we are late, these five won’t make it to the glory flag competition, and taking another route will take us two more days. It seems even if we know there is an ambush, we will just walk inside and fight our way through." She said, her voice resolute but laced with dread. She wasn’t even sure if their combined stats could face a Lv500 fighter, but... She looked back up at the roof of the carriage. With Mirabella...
’We might win.’ She thought, staking their survival entirely on the anomaly of the Sun family.
