Boiling Beast Bloodline
Chapter 200 - 11_1

Chapter 200: Chapter 11_1

In the days that followed, neither the Lich maid nor the silver-eyed captain truly understood what had happened that night. Bauman herself was at a loss as to why she sang, or what song she had sung, but she did not care. As soon as she felt slightly better, she insisted on rising from her sickbed and returning to her maid duties in their team, ignoring the pleas of others to rest.

After a failed escape attempt, although Baojia appeared to treat her no different than before, Bauman felt that she had lost another chance to flee. The captain’s routine night patrols not only started at the girl’s tent, but now also ended there. While this development brought Bauman a sense of disappointment and a perverse kind of satisfaction, it gradually weakened her resolve to leave. If she couldn’t escape, then let it be. She fell into a kind of resigned acceptance.

The other women in the adventure team were no fools. Baojia’s special care for the Lich girl was no secret, and her reasons were reasonable enough that no one would openly criticize it. However, in response, there were frequent occasions when female team members fell ill or were lightly injured due to exhaustion from missions or long journeys. The Zorro Adventure Team seemed to have become weaker overnight, but this coquettish behavior was somewhat restrained, preventing a situation where everyone was incapacitated. It seemed more like a rotation system, which was gradually accepted by everyone.

Bauman continued to faithfully fulfill her logistic duties. She remained a clumsy lich who had not yet mastered basic necromantic spells, entirely unaware that she had inadvertently acquired other strange abilities. She was also confused about what happened before she fainted, but lacking necessary knowledge, no amount of pondering could help her understand. Growing up abandoned in the Demon World, she had no way of knowing something as advanced as the Beamon War Song.

Baojia was very clear that not every individual capable of singing the Beamon War Song was a priest. From the silver-eyed’s perspective, even if the Lich girl had unintentionally awakened this ability, it had very limited practical significance. Whether for attacking or supporting, based on the performance that night, the effect was extremely limited. And Bauman could hardly distinguish between friend and foe. Like any skill, mastering it required extensive repetitive practice. Given the Lich girl’s frail and sickly constitution, she probably couldn’t even sing a complete war song, so there was no significance in practicing.

That being said, Baojia himself could be considered an exception among the silver-eyed. He established a mental connection with his nightmare at a very early stage, but hesitated to summon it. Even under these circumstances, his mental power was astonishingly strong. If it weren’t for his choice of unusual weapon, he certainly would have been prime material for training to be a Winged Knight. If things continued this way, no knight group would recruit a silver-eyed who had no mount and didn’t use a long sword, even if there were many negotiations for him, but only after summoning his nightmare.

However, Baojia himself was not concerned about this. His adventure team, although mostly comprised of women, was not lacking in strength, but still resembled a women’s music band more than anything else. Baojia himself was quite skilled at the violin, to the extent that orchestras in the Demon World had considered hiring him as their first violinist. He even seriously considered these invitations, but eventually gave up in the face of opposition from his dwindling noble family.

Bauman had a chance to observe the adventure team in battle once or twice, usually when they were dealing with larger mutated magical creatures.

Baojia, in his lack of armor, struggled against opponents skilled in hand-to-hand combat, even in his Zorro suit. The adventuring team was skilled at handling magical creatures or those with mental abilities due to their natural advantage as residents of the demon world. However, when facing physically superior and larger magical creatures, they found themselves at a disadvantage. Even the female knights in full crystal armor could only hold out for a few minutes longer than Baojia. Summoning the help of minions like the Ghouls had little effect; magical creatures that could withstand their masters’ magic and attacks basically ignored these beings, so they seldom played any effective role in restraining them.

Once, the Zorro Adventure Team accepted a mission to eliminate a creature lurking in a large lake near a town, only to discover that the enemy was a mutated Moria leech.

This mission was indeed a bit tricky.

The enemy was an aquatic creature, and whilst they could possibly lure it out of the water with shell coins, it still held a significant geographical advantage. The adventure team was only equipped for land combat and lacked the personnel and equipment for aerial or aquatic combat. Baojia had considered using the Ghoul minions and detestable knights to drag the enemy onto the shore, but the mutated Moria leech was over twenty meters long from head to tentacles. The detestable ones could lift a harpsichord on dry land, but there was little hope of them hauling a thousand Moka heavy live magical creature out of the water. After losing one or two detestable minions, Baojia reluctantly abandoned this plan.

The Zorro team didn’t have many members, and as mentioned before, due to the absence of male witches, the female witches could only use negative supportive Arcane, which resulted in a weak overall magical attack power for the entire team.

On Moria the leech’s end, it wielded twenty tentacles in battle against the silver-pupils on shore and in the shallow waters, showing no signs of weakness. Even when some tentacles were severed, they could simply be replaced and regenerate quickly. Because the pool was large and the shore was almost a straight line, the members of Team Zorro could only attack in a horizontal line and were unable to surround their opponent. This left Moria the leech ample opportunity to use its Ice System Arcane magic for a broad attack.

A few female Hell Shooters originally had considerable power. However, due to their cooperation with Baojia, the act of launching their spears seemed somewhat timid, making their efficiency significantly less than when they practiced alone. As such, these long-range attacks didn’t provide much assistance.

Thus, the adventure team ended up staying by the pond for several days, engaged in a drawn-out tug of war with Moria the leech. Although the beasts had no real chance to pull Baojia into the water, Zorro’s team was likewise unable to coax the turtle-like creature out. Its dozens of barbed tentacles were tenacious and, once grabbed, they became instantly slippery, even managing to escape numerous times by elongating and slimming down. If escape became impossible, Moria the leech could simply "cut its losses," abandoning the tentacle from halfway or even its root.

Abandoned tentacles didn’t lose activity immediately — instead, they instinctively clung to the nearest object, continuing to constrict and compress. A female Silver-eye Knight got caught in this, although Baojia managed to pull her back to shore in time and within the shortest period, cut half the tentacle into slices to liberate the silver-eye woman from the python-like cocoon. Yet, the crystal armor she wore was practically useless now, and from the several wounds left by the tentacle suckers, fresh blood kept seeping out.

It’s well known that leeches excrete a substance that stops blood from clotting; this made the wounds inflicted by Moria difficult to heal and could make victims lose so much blood that they fall unconscious. While the wounds could be treated, the blood could not be replenished so easily. So, the Zorro team had one less fighter who could hold back the beasts. The adventure team had no choice but to temporarily retreat for several days, only returning to the water’s edge to continue the stalemate with Moria the leech after they took the injured female knight to a nearby town to have her wounds treated and recover.

Baojia’s combat skills were spectacular; with just the swing of her bow, she could cover a three to five-meter radius around her body. Any tentacle that dared to invade this space would invariably be sliced into ribbons. However, this technique lacked offensive power. With the leech’s ten-meter-long tentacles barely grazing her, they learned their lesson after being sliced a few times by Baojia at the beginning. They adjusted their distance, staying just outside her attack range. As soon as Baojia slowed down, the leech would immediately feint. Though the sides didn’t touch, the danger was inescapable.

Given that the pool was located in a shady area and blocks of ice often floated on the surface, during the battle, the leech would lift chunks of ice roughly the size of grinding discs and lob them at Baojia. Combined with the Ice System magic shot from the beast’s eyes, the Silver-pupils always started the fight huddled together, but often became divided as the battle unfolded. As a result, they could not restrain the beast, nor could they buy the Lich a chance to summon a large creature for a decisive blow.

Thus, the task continued to be delayed indefinitely.

Compared to the exhausted combatants who returned after battling the mutated leech every day, Bauman was actually in a state of rest for these few days. The climate near the pool was quite pleasing, and she didn’t have much work anyway. When everyone was busy, they wouldn’t have time to bother her. However, ever since the female Silver-eye got injured, Bauman couldn’t sit still in the camp.

Often while doing ordinary chores, her mind would wander, and she seemed to see the blood-soaked figure of Baojia. This anxiety she felt could not be quelled. Whether working or resting, as soon as her focus lapsed, Bauman couldn’t stop her mind from drifting into worrying thoughts. Even though every member of the adventure team heightened their vigilance afterwards and could mostly return safely with barely any injuries, Bauman could not keep calm until she saw their return.

Recently, Baojia often appeared deep in thought due to the slow progress of the mission. Even when she returned to camp, her concern for Bauman remained consistent, but she was clearly distracted. That likely contributed to Bauman’s nervousness.

As the deadline of the mission approached, Team Zorro still couldn’t devise a good strategy — until that incident happened.