Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 1074 - 189: The Sudden Assault by the Cranial-boring Bird

Chapter 1074: Chapter 189: The Sudden Assault by the Cranial-boring Bird

"Aoooo~~~~," a massive roar thundered through the mountains and forests, as the roar of the tiger reverberated endlessly among the mountains. The sudden wind, accompanied by the roar of the tiger, rushed at them, whipping up disheveled leaves as it swept over the treetops.

"Prepare for battle," Pannis said, his face as calm as a rippleless lake. Even as the roar of the tiger exerted a formidable pressure and the gusts raised by the roar made his clothes flutter wildly, his composure was not affected in the slightest. Pannis slowly drew his one-handed sword, his gaze fixed on the northeast direction — the source of the roar.

It had been five days since they left the camp on the cliffs. Within those days, the team had crossed more than ten territories of magical beasts, experiencing nearly sixty battles of medium scale or larger. Every night, the girls would fall asleep from extreme exhaustion, both mentally and physically. Although the Demigods claimed they did not offer special treatment, they considerately relieved the girls from the duty of night watches. Despite this, the girls still felt that their bodies and wills had reached their limits. Even on the last day, they often doubted whether they would lose consciousness and collapse in the next moment. However, whenever the girls felt they could not hold on any longer, they would discover that some hidden potential had been squeezed out of them, and they managed to endure once more.

It was only during these five days that the girls truly understood the meaning of the Forest of Death, one of the most dangerous places in the Yarran World for a reason. Prior to this part of the journey, the girls thought they had already seen the dangers of the Forest of Death — mysterious creatures that were unpredictable, and powerful magical beasts nearly impossible to combat. They believed they had seen the true face of the Forest of Death. But now, they realized that was just a beautiful and safe guise. What lay beneath that guise was the true ferocity of the forest.

Indeed, the true ferocity, the ferocity of death. Throughout these days, various hidden dangers still lingered around the girls — lethal plants, hard-to-detect insects, ubiquitous natural traps. Everything seemed to reflect the malevolence of the forest, as if determined to doom every invader. Despite the constant reminders from Pannis and Flare, the girls still had to use a lot of energy to observe their surroundings. After all, the two of them could not foresee everything. Amid the lurking malevolence, there were situations they could not account for. For instance, on the second day, Catherine had faced the greatest crisis since entering the forest, nearly becoming another victim of the Forest of Death.

At that time, the team was passing through a nest of crystal-eating ants, giant ants as long as a thumb living near open-air, unstable Crystal veins which had no value for mining but provided the best food source for these ants. They seemed closer to being Elemental Creatures, not needing traditional food intake but merely absorbing the weak energy contained within the gnawed crystals to survive. However, these crystal-eating ants were like a nightmare for those passing by. They did not attack creatures actively but would fiercely retaliate if assaulted. A pair of jaws that could even crush crystals could tear through the bodies of most magical beasts, and a sufficient number could strip a giant beast down to white bones in a minute. When facing powerful adversaries, the Crystal Energy stored inside them would explode as when Crystal fusion fails, resulting in a violent explosion that sent both themselves and their enemies into death.

Seeing them, the girls recalled the giant cockroaches they had seen in the Underground World of Dragonscar, which also absorbed crystals as sustenance. The threats posed by both creatures seemed similar at a glance but upon careful distinction, were entirely different. The giant cockroaches would self-detonate, but only their abdomens would burst open, and their primary attacks relied on toxins. But the crystal-eating ants were different; they truly exploded. Although smaller in size, the compressed Crystal Energy within each ant was nearly equivalent to a crystal of a thousand Tael. The simultaneous explosion of hundreds or thousands of crystal-eating ants in a chain reaction could match the force of a minor earthquake. A Demigod could withstand the blast with a Shield or evade by retreating into their realm, but if a Legendary-rank professional were at the center of the explosion, there would be no chance of survival.

The team encountered a swarm of more than a hundred thousand giant ants, covering a few kilometers around them. Passing through required everyone’s utmost focus. Accidentally stepping on one could lead to catastrophic consequences. Pannis and Flare were especially vigilant about everyone’s footsteps. Their sensory abilities were pushed to the max, wary that an ant might just tunnel out of the earth as they stepped down, an accident that had occurred before. The two were not particularly worried about outside threats, as no animal would be present in the crystal-eating ants’ habitat. Creatures daring to intrude were often either shredded or blown to bits.

However, everyone had overlooked one problem — the threat from the sky. The crystal-eating ants dominated the ground, but birds in the sky seemed like creatures from another world, without any interaction with one another. And among the birds, sometimes there lurked deadly predators.

The dense forest was never short of birds. When the team was passing through the ants’ nest, there were still a plethora of birds in the canopy above. Even with Pannis’s perceptiveness, he could not identify each bird species among the thousands, only making a rough judgment that there were no large predators. And it was a small bird known as a Skull-piercing Bird that attacked Catherine.

Some scholars have studied and believe that the perforating bird is highly similar to the woodpecker commonly seen in the outside world and should belong to the same origin of close relatives. However, the difference lies in that woodpeckers peck through tree trunks to eat insects, whereas perforating birds peck through skulls to suckle on brain matter.

By consulting the Magical Beast Handbook, it can be found that the perforating bird is unequivocally categorized at the Demigod magical beasts level, with a danger rating of A-. In reality, their bodies are as fragile as most magical beasts of this rank. What is terrifying though, is their speed and strength. When hunting, they dive from high trees at speeds even faster than sound, and with inertia and their own strength, they easily pierce through their prey’s toughest skull with sharp beaks that have penetrating power, to suck on the fresh brain matter inside.

This time, Catherine was its prey. Just as Catherine took her last step and had barely left the nest of the crystal-eating ants, letting her taut nerves relax slightly, the perforating bird seized the best moment to launch its attack. The short-distance dive, faster than the speed of sound, left no time for anyone to react. Most people didn’t even know what had happened, and even Pannis could only manage to raise his hand in time, his constricting pupils reflecting the image of the perforating bird already pouncing above Catherine’s head.

In the most dangerous moment, Catherine’s long-term intensive fundamental training finally paid off; many movements were already etched into her soul. Just as the perforating bird was about to hit her, the knight girl instinctively contracted her body and turned her head at the same time. This was one of the methods to dodge an attack found in basic movements. It’s likely only someone as skilled as her could snatch away that tiny bit of time in the face of the perforating bird’s assault.

It was this tiny bit of time that ultimately allowed her to survive. The sharp beak of the perforating bird first sliced off her right ear. As half of her ear flew off, the beak left a rolling scar on the girl’s cheek, through which the tooth bed and white teeth could be seen. The beak continued downward, cutting open her right neck. Although the carotid artery was severed, blood hadn’t had time to spray out due to the sheer speed. Finally, the beak pierced through the girl’s clavicle and into her right lung. It was not until then that several wounds nearly simultaneously spurted fresh blood, especially the wound on the right neck which squirted blood two or three meters far, resembling a fountain. Throughout the whole process, Catherine’s legendary-rank body, which couldn’t be harmed even with sharp blades by ordinary people, was torn like paper, completely unable to affect the perforating bird’s attack in any way.

As the perforating bird realized its attack missed and quickly pulled out its beak to escape back to the sky, Pannis’s aid arrived too. An Aggression-formed blade shot from his fingertips like an arrow, piercing the attacker’s body and causing the just-spread wings of the perforating bird to totter on Catherine’s shoulder before collapsing onto the ground.

The sudden appearance of mortal danger had the teeth of several girls still within the range of the crystal-eating ants nearly shattering, but the girls’ experience played its biggest role at this time. If, due to the attack on Catherine, they panicked and rushed to her side to treat her wound right away, they would have stepped on the crystal-eating ants, causing a chain explosion, and the end result would be no one surviving. However, the girls did not do so. Even though their eyes were bloodshot with fright and anxiety, the girls still forced themselves to look down to the ground and carefully observed before stepping down with the foot that they hadn’t yet set down.

Only after standing firmly on the ground and ensuring that they would not threaten the nearby crystal-eating ants, did the girls take any other action. Freya and Vivian both didn’t move, while Ava, behind Lina, gave a powerful push, allowing Lina’s powerful Triclops body to burst with great strength, launching her straight into the air. She flew over the bending Freya and Vivian, over the last stretch above the nest of the crystal-eating ants, and landed beside Catherine.

Even while still in mid-air, Lina began to reach out her hand. After landing, she reached back and caught the red potion bottle that Vivian had sent wobbling over with mana threads. The priestess girl dashed to Catherine’s side in one step, without uttering a word, and poured the red potion directly onto Catherine’s most severe wound on her neck. The potion’s sting caused the knight girl’s torn facial muscles to twitch violently, and amidst these twitches, the silver Shield of Earth’s Praise also landed on the wound.