The raid's difficulty was through the roof, and how could we deal with that?
As the raid leader, I had to manage the aggro ping-pong among the team members flawlessly.
But, as my martial arts were still unrefined, I couldn’t participate in the damage dealing while giving orders. I decided to stay out of the damage phase and watch, ready to give signals at the right moment.
A slight mistake here could immediately lead to death.
"Wow, I thought the raid leader just played around in my past life, but it’s the toughest job!"
I was fully focused, shouting out the aggro sequence calls while wearing down the creature's energy.
Then it was Seol’s turn.
“Seol, get out of there!”
Seol, who had gone in after Hwa-eun, needed to back out, and the next person in line was a top-tier warrior from the Beast Palace.
The moment I told Seol to retreat...
"Ugh!"
Seol stepped on a stone that had sprung up awkwardly, losing balance for a moment.
Seol, who had been jumping back, wobbled, delaying the time to escape.
"Damn it! You have to watch the ground in every raid!"
Seol, who forgot the basic rule of watching the ground, almost made a fatal mistake.
Though she quickly regained her balance due to her high skill, her brief lapse in judgment proved critical.
The Beast God twisted its body, and the rocky creature quickly wrapped around Seol, squeezing her waist like a tightened cable tie.
As it spun its body, Seol let out a pained scream.
“Gyaaaah!”
“Seol!”
“Elder!”
“Seol unnie!”
Shouts filled the air.
The creature raised its head right over Seol’s head, its mouth opening wide.
Seol was in a life-threatening position.
Saliva dripped from its open mouth onto Seol’s head.
It seemed the creature's scales were tougher than expected, and the impact barely fazed it.
“Seol!”
Without thinking, I grabbed the bag that Yo-hwa had made and jumped toward the creature’s head from the rocks.
The bag was tear-resistant, so I thought it might help protect Seol from being bitten.
“Got it!”
Though I hung on with the bag, I couldn't hold on much longer and eventually crashed to the ground.
“Ugh!”
But as soon as the bag was over the creature's head, something strange happened.
The bag Yo-hwa made was semi-transparent and thin enough to see through. As the creature thrusted its head wildly, I realized something was off—it seemed completely disoriented, as though it couldn’t see anything.
Suddenly, the creature tossed Seol aside and shot straight up.
“Are you alright, Seol?”
"Unnie!"
While checking on Seol, the creature shook the bag off its head and quickly retreated across the valley.
"My body aches, but I’m fine. What about you? You took a hard fall."
“Cough. I’m fine too.”
Although my shoulder hurt, it wasn’t too serious.
The bag that fell from the sky was now over my head.
We had failed the raid for the 21st time.
***
“Earlier, we almost lost. Are you alright, Elder Seol?”
“I’m fine, Elder. Long saved me. Thank you, Long.”
“It’s nothing. We’re family.”
“My, Long, you’ve made me emotional several times today. Saving my life and everything... Yes, we are family.”
“I’m grateful, but it’s not appropriate for family to cling together like this.”
“But we are family, right?”
Back at the camp, after I pried Seol off me, we talked.
Although we failed the 21st raid, the atmosphere wasn’t bad.
Isn’t it true that camaraderie builds after repeated failures?
“Long, you saved the Elder from almost getting hurt.”
“Long?”
“Long saved the Elder when she slipped on a rock and almost got caught by the creature.”
“Oh, of course, it’s Long.”
Moreover, after I saved Seol, the warriors from the Beast Palace seemed to like me more than before.
Gathered around the campfire, eating roasted boar, we started analyzing the reason for the failure of the 21st raid.
It’s a tradition to discuss failure and how to improve for the next time after a raid fails.
"Today, it was smooth to distract the creature to another place."
"Still, we have to be careful of the ground now."
“Right, Hwa-eun. That creature made the stones rise, which made using martial arts harder.”
As everyone continued discussing, I became lost in my thoughts.
In my hands were roasted boar meat in one and the bag Yo-hwa made in the other.
When I thought back on how the creature reacted when it wore the bag on its head, I couldn’t shake the mystery from my mind.
I placed the boar meat back on the hot rock and began to experiment by placing the bag over my head.
The view was slightly blurry, but still visible.
‘What’s going on here?’
The creature had no reason to panic when wearing the bag, but I decided to investigate what made its behavior strange.
‘I definitely felt like it couldn’t see...’
Snakes have three primary ways of perceiving the world.
First, sound.
It’s known that snakes can’t hear, but that’s half true and half false.
They can’t hear in the traditional sense, but they can sense sound through vibrations in the air, detecting sound waves with their bodies.
The second way is through smell.
A snake’s split tongue helps them detect scents in the air, sending particles to a specialized organ called the Jacobsen’s organ.
The third is vision, but snakes don’t see very well.
They can barely make out things that are close, which is why they have a special ability to detect infrared radiation.
They can sense the heat from living creatures, like in the sci-fi horror movies.
‘Wait... could it be this?’
Just as I thought about the infrared vision of snakes, a memory from my past life flashed in my mind.
"Long, what do you think? Long?"
“Long, what’s wrong?”
Realizing I was lost in thought, Seol and Hwa-eun shook me out of it. I quickly ran to the nearby tree where Yo-hwa was hanging upside down.
“Yo-hwa, come down!”
Yo-hwa tilted her head, hanging from the web.
I grabbed her as she landed upside down on Hwa-eun’s face.
“Can you wrap me in the web?”
“Long, why all of a sudden?”
Yo-hwa, Seol, and Hwa-eun all gave me puzzled looks as I made my request.
***
“Do you really think this will work?”
“That’s why we’re heading to check it now.”
“This is the first time in my life that I’ve been in such a situation.”
In the dead of night, Mandok Shingun and I were using light-footed movements to ascend the valley in search of the Flying Sky Serpent.
He looked down at himself, shaking his head.
The reason Mandok Shingun had such a look on his face was that both he and I were now wrapped in thick webs from head to toe, resembling a white human-shaped mannequin.
I had asked Yo-hwa to cover me in her webs, and though I was coated, we needed one more person to test the effectiveness. The strongest person among us, Grandfather, had no choice but to be wrapped in the webs as well.
As I accompanied the grumbling Mandok Shingun, we quickly reached the rocky peak that jutted out at the top of the valley.
There, lying on the stone, was the Flying Sky Serpent.
[It’s there!]
[Yes, I see it. Let’s go.]
We swiftly moved toward the rock where the serpent lay.
As we got within its detection range, the serpent lifted its head and stared in our direction.
[Did it notice us?]
From the results of the 21st raid, we knew that the serpent could detect us from up to about 30 meters.
Mandok Shingun whispered in a flustered voice, but the serpent tilted its head, then buried its face back into its body.
We approached cautiously, and every time we did, it occasionally lifted its head, but even when we got as close as ten meters, it failed to detect us.
We made eye contact several times, but the creature remained unaware.
[It really can’t see us!]
Mandok Shingun sent a message with surprise.
I motioned for him to pull back, then grabbed a stone from the ground and threw it at the serpent’s head.
With the basic skills of the Tang Clan’s secret techniques mastered, a target at this distance was a guaranteed hit.
But what did it matter?
The creature was as blind as a bat.
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It kept looking around, completely failing to spot us, and after a few more moments, it tilted its head and laid back down.
Mandok Shingun, frustrated, picked up another stone and hurled it at the serpent’s head.
The sound of stones hitting the serpent’s head and its enraged cry echoed through the valley late at night.
After enduring a few more stone throws, the serpent finally couldn’t take it anymore and flew off to another location.
As the serpent vanished, Mandok Shingun burst out laughing.
“Hahaha! That was satisfying! You bastard!”
It seemed he was enjoying toying with the Flying Sky Serpent. After laughing heartily, he turned to me and asked, “So, what was this all about?”
“The Flying Sky Serpent, like many snakes, has poor vision. It can sense the heat from animals and humans, but I think Yo-hwa’s webs are blocking that sense.”
“Really? How did you figure that out?”
“When Seol was in danger, I put a bag over the serpent’s head, and it tried to flee in panic. I thought about how it acted then, and it reminded me of something from a movie about aliens—how they used mud to block infrared vision. I figured Yo-hwa’s webs might have a similar effect.”
“Asbestos blocks infrared equipment, so I suppose this is something like that.”
“So, how do we catch it now?”
I smiled and answered, “After wrapping all the warriors in webs, we’ll follow it around, not letting it eat, drink, or sleep. Let’s see how long it can hold out.”
“You mean stalking it until it can’t take it anymore? Excellent idea. Hahaha!”
***
We had covered all the warriors in Yo-hwa’s webs and followed the serpent every step of the way.
It couldn’t escape us.
Every time it tried to hunt, we threw stones to chase it off. When it tried to drink, we threw stones to stop it. When it tried to sleep, we threw stones to keep it awake. Even the strongest creature must eat, drink, and rest.
Finally, the serpent, battered by stones like hail, managed to drink a few sips of water before collapsing by the river, appearing as if it fainted from exhaustion.
Approaching cautiously, I poked it gently, but it didn’t respond.
I leaned in and tapped its head, laughing.
“Hahaha!”
The Flying Sky Serpent was now mine.