Chapter 63 - 63. Death area
Noah reached his usual observation spot and looked toward the pack.
The snakes were doing their typical efforts in resisting the hunger to avoid any increase in their strength, yet their will to live wouldn't allow them to simply starve to death.
Everything looked the same as the other days, so Noah decided that it was time to move.
He could not increase his power any more than that, it was better to move before something unexpected happened.
Noah entered Assea's body and slowly slithered toward the mass of snakes.
The beasts in the pack were a bit surprised to find a new specimen joining them, no one would force himself to undergo their kind of life.
Nevertheless, they did nothing and just watched for a moment as the black ethereal snake entered the coiled crowd.
Noah sank inside the sea of bodies and began to move using his mental energy as a compass to not lose his way.
He had to reach the wall at the end of the valley and he would rather avoid bumping in the King's body in the process.
His advance was slow as he preferred to maintain the same pace of the specimens around him.
Noah's trip across the sea of snakes had begun.
He didn't dare to be on the surface but the presence of the King disturbed his orientation so he had to systematically emerge to understand his position.
Sometimes he would feel a sharp pain due to Assea's sensations as the other snakes around it took small bites of its insubstantial skin.
However, he simply ignored it, he had already considered this situation while formulating his plan.
Every time he was bitten, he would sink deeper into the pack to heal his companion.
Repeating this cycle, he was slowly getting closer to his target.
He was completely immersed in snake's bodies and the King radiated a constant pressure that made him nervous.
Noah felt like suffocating inside the pack but Assea's protection managed to make him keep going.
It took him half a day to crawl across the thousands of beasts and he felt extremely tired due to the constant stress he had to endure.
However, the scene that he saw on the other side was disheartening.
There were no snakes on the back of the King's body, or rather there could not be.
The cavity radiating light was right in front of him but he could not go for it recklessly.
The King had its head pointed in the hole's direction and every time he breathed, pieces of terrain would crumble and the ground would corrode.
Even in its sleep, its breath could kill any weaklings!
Noah saw a rank 2 Two-headed snake slip from the pack and ending in the area in front of the King's head.
Its body was shredded into pieces as soon as the King breathed out!
A conical area of death started from the King's head and ended at the entrance of the passage in the wall.
'Now I know why no beast is escaping, they simply can't.'
The last dilemma that bothered him when he created the plan was solved.
'With its strength, it should be able to subdue snakes more powerful than rank 4. Does it immediately eat them because they might manage to escape?'
The constant pressure it radiated forced the snakes to stay in the pack and its breath closed their only way out.
'The real question is: can I survive till I reach the cavity?'
If Noah entered the area of death from its closest point to the passage the distance would be around one hundred meters.
With his speed and the rate at which the King exhaled, he would need to survive two to three attacks.
'I don't have any other option, I will first replenish my mental energy and then go in.'
The "Breath" in his body was not a problem since he completed the sixth cycle and since the density of "Breath" in this area was the highest of the valley.
However, the mental energy he had to use to move to the other side of the pack was plenty and he needed to refill it before crossing the last hurdle.
'Luckily I only need to give an order and Assea will do that autonomously until I have "Breath" to support its actions.'
One of the strong points of the Body-inscription spell was that the user had to spend only a bit of mental energy when commanding the blood companion, the rest of the time it will just act on its own following the order.
That meant that, apart from the initial expenditure and the pressure from sharing its senses, the mental energy's cost was extremely low.
In a place where the "Breath" was so concentrated the blood companion could work almost endlessly with just a bit of mental energy.
Of course, this was also due to Noah's body-nourishing technique as it absorbed "Breath" on its own without Noah's need to meditate.
Noah chose to rest in the pack of snakes.
He fell asleep inside Assea's body while it quietly moved at the edges of the empty conical area.
The pressure from the King was still there so it took longer for the water level inside Noah's mental sphere to rise till it occupied half of it.
When he woke up, he was met with the familiar scene of snake's bodies coiled on each other.
'Life or death is all in those one hundred meters.'
Assea moved toward the edge of the pack, in the closest place to the cavity.
Noah cut off any useless thoughts from his mind, focusing only on moving forward and enduring any pain that assaulted him.
He stared at the King's head waiting for the moment it exhaled to have the best timing possible.
As the breath smashed on the wall and dissipated, Noah jumped at full speed toward the cavity.
The snakes in the pack saw a black snake moving in the area of death toward the hope that they had long abandoned.