Blind Box World - SSS-Rank Eye of Truth

Chapter 60: Reversal

The Harpy Queen landed before the three of them, her metal-black wings folding behind her back.

She looked at Ethan and Laira, contempt mixed with smugness showing in her razor-sharp eyes. Clearly, she too had realized that the terrifying woman in black was no longer here.

She opened her mouth, letting out a string of shrill sounds. But this time, perhaps because she knew the others couldn’t understand, she forced her throat, unaccustomed to pronouncing human speech, to say each word laboriously.

"Here... there’s no one... to protect you anymore."

Her voice was raw and warped, but the threat in it was clear enough to be unmistakable.

She slowly advanced one step, her claws scraping across the black stone floor, producing a spine-chilling screech.

"That dragon... I’ll eat your flesh. As for the other two..." Her eyes flicked over Ethan and Lěng Ruò Yān, full of cruelty. "...will be the appetizers."

Hearing this, Lěng Ruò Yān’s legs had begun to tremble. She stepped back, her three puppets instinctively shielding her.

But Ethan and Laira still stood in place.

In fact, Ethan even crossed his arms, looking at the Harpy Queen with an extremely leisurely expression.

"Are you done talking?" he asked.

The Harpy Queen stopped short. She hadn’t expected that the prey before her, after being threatened like that, could be so calm.

Ethan didn’t give her any more time to think.

He blinked faintly.

[Eye of Truth.]

In the blink of an eye, the world before him faded into two colors, black and white, and on the Harpy Queen’s body, countless red points flared up all at once.

The base of the left wing, where the main energy channel ran through. The hollow of the throat, where the protective scales were thinnest. A point deep in the ribcage, where her energy core was beating. And a long streak down along the spine, where the body’s structure was weakest.

Outside, when this Harpy Queen was still a true Gold-tier Awakened, Ethan’s eye had been utterly unable to see through her. But now, when she had been dragged down to Gold Tier 9 by the ruin’s law, every one of her weak points was laid bare before his eyes, clear down to the last detail.

Only an instant.

Beside him, Laira blinked faintly along too.

Through the Resonance skill, all the weak points Ethan saw were immediately transmitted straight into her mind, without need of a word, without need of a signaling gesture. In Laira’s head, the Harpy Queen was no longer a fearsome opponent, but merely a target with all its fatal spots already marked out.

Ethan closed his eyes, a slight pain passing through behind his eyeball.

Laira quirked her lips into a smile.

"My turn now."

The Harpy Queen sensed the danger.

The instinct of a longtime hunter told her that the prey before her was not simple at all. She let out a roar, her black wings suddenly spreading, countless feathers sharp as blades shooting toward the three of them.

But Laira was faster still.

She flicked her hand, and a wall of deep red flame blazed up before the three of them, incinerating the whole barrage of feathers in an instant. Immediately after, she didn’t stop at all, her whole body turning into a streak of red, hurtling straight at the Harpy Queen.

The Harpy Queen swung her claws up to meet the attack. Outside, this very swipe had once torn open Laira’s shoulder. But this time, Laira didn’t even bother to dodge that swipe.

Because she already knew in advance where its weak point lay.

She twisted her body to one side, evading the claws by a hair’s breadth, then her flaming hand grabbed straight at the base of the Harpy Queen’s left wing, precisely at the red point Ethan had shown her.

Fwsh!

The deep red flame blazed up, burning straight into the main energy channel at the base of the wing.

The Harpy Queen let out a piteous shriek. One entire wing immediately lost its strength, drooping, unable to beat anymore.

With a single blow, the Harpy Queen who had once forced all three of them to flee for their lives had lost half her combat ability.

Lěng Ruò Yān stood behind, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide, forgetting even to run.

She couldn’t believe what she was witnessing.

This Harpy Queen, the thing that only half an hour ago had been chasing them to kill them as they fled for their lives, the thing that even she had been so frightened of her legs turned to jelly, was now being suppressed by that dragon to the point of having no way to fight back.

And the thing that horrified her most wasn’t Laira’s power.

It was the precision.

That dragon struck without any hesitation, every single move landing straight on the opponent’s most fatal spot, as if she had memorized the Harpy Queen’s entire body beforehand. Even the most seasoned assassin couldn’t possibly strike so precisely in an actual battle.

Unless... someone was telling her.

Lěng Ruò Yān’s gaze unconsciously shifted to Ethan.

She recalled his blink right before Laira struck. The blink that at first she had dismissed as meaningless.

These two clearly hadn’t exchanged a single word with each other. The dragon hadn’t even bothered to turn her head to look at him. And yet she knew exactly where to strike.

A chill ran down Lěng Ruò Yān’s spine.

’This human... what ability does he actually have?’

On the battlefield, the Harpy Queen had completely fallen into the losing position.

She resisted frantically, using her remaining wing to fan out blades of sharp wind, using her claws and beak to attack madly. Had this been outside, these wild flailing attacks alone from a true Gold-tier would have been enough to take all three of their lives.

But in here, every single one of her blows was seen through by Laira.

She swung her claws, and Laira already knew the trajectory in advance, lightly dodging past.

She lunged with open beak, and Laira already knew the weak point in advance, the flame in her hand meeting straight at the hollow of her throat.

Blow after blow, the Harpy Queen fought weaker and weaker, more and more wounds on her body, while Laira came away almost unscathed.

This was the gap in information.

In a battle, when one side can see through all the opponent’s weak points, and the other side is completely in the dark, then even if the two sides are of the same tier, the outcome has already been decided from the very start.

Let alone that Laira was a Mythical rank Crimson Dragon, whose quality of power already far surpassed those of the same tier.

"Finish it, Laira." Ethan spoke up, his voice level.

Laira answered with a smile.

She sprang off her feet, her whole body shooting up high, the deep red flame in both hands coiling into a brilliant sphere. The Harpy Queen lifted her head to look up, and in her razor-sharp eyes, for the first time, fear appeared.

She wanted to flee. But one wing was already crippled, and she could no longer take to the air.

The sphere of fire came crashing down, aimed straight at the last red point, which was also the most fatal: the energy core in her ribcage.

Boom!

A great blast rang out, the deep red flame engulfing the Harpy Queen’s entire body.

When the flame dissolved, the monster that had once forced the three of them to flee for their lives was nothing but a charred black corpse, lying motionless on the stone floor.

The whole space sank into silence.

Lěng Ruò Yān stood frozen in place, looking at the Harpy Queen’s corpse, unable to get out a word for a long while.

It wasn’t until a good while later that she managed to stammer out a sentence.

"You... you two..." She swallowed dryly. "You were this strong all along, and yet outside you ran away?"

"Outside was different." Ethan withdrew his eye, explaining leisurely. "Outside, this Harpy Queen was much stronger than the Gold level, and Laira was wounded in the wing besides. We couldn’t win, so of course we had to run."

He looked toward the Harpy Queen’s corpse, the corner of his mouth lifting.

"But in here, the law drags everyone down to Gold Tier 9. So the situation has completely reversed."

Hearing this, an extremely complicated feeling rose in Lěng Ruò Yān’s chest.

She suddenly realized that this Awakened she had always been guarding against, always taken for an enemy, turned out to be far more fearsome than she had imagined. Not fearsome in his power, but in his mind. He knew when to run, and knew when to fight. He wasn’t reckless at all, every one of his decisions carefully calculated.

And it was precisely at this moment that she truly understood one thing.

That night, when she aimed seven puppets at him, when she sent a puppet to reach its claws into where he slept, when she aggressively declared she would be the first to finish him...

This person could have killed her at any moment.

And yet he had only tapped his dragon on the head once, then told her to stop.

Thinking of this, cold sweat once again broke out down Lěng Ruò Yān’s spine.

’Lucky... lucky he isn’t a bad person.’

Ethan paid no attention to Lěng Ruò Yān’s complicated expression. He stepped over beside the Harpy Queen’s corpse and crouched down to examine it.

This was a Gold-tier Awakened, and even sealed, there had to be something valuable on her body.

Sure enough, the moment he drew near, the eye on his forehead reacted. Deep in the Harpy Queen’s ribcage, where the energy core had just been shattered, a small crystal was quietly giving off light.

Ethan reached out and picked it up.

It was an energy crystal, but its quality was far higher than all the ones he had ever collected in the Anomalous Coordinate. Just holding it in his hand, he could feel the pure and abundant current of energy inside.

"A Platinum-tier monster’s crystal," Laira stepped over, looking at the crystal in his hand, and nodded. "Enough for us to cultivate for a good long while."

Ethan gripped the crystal tight in his palm, his gaze gradually lighting up.

If every single monster in this ruin, after being sealed down to Gold Tier 9, could be brought down by them in the way they just had...

If every single monster carried a high-quality crystal like this on its body...

Then this place that Lěng Ruò Yān took for a death trap was, to him, precisely a gold mine.

Ethan lifted his head, looking toward the faint purple halo in the distance, where Laira’s Solar Flame Seal was still faintly resonating.

The corner of his mouth slowly lifted.

"Let’s go," he said. "We’ll go take a look at what exactly the thing inside that halo is."