Chapter 348: Carboniferous Period 20
“So this is the culprit behind the attacks.”
Perry Yates said calmly, looking at the spot where the attack had just landed.
‘Based on the force of that last attack, this card is between four and five stars. Its aura is inconsistent, too. Feels like it’s cut from the same cloth as the Merman King.’
‘If that’s the case, this will be much easier.’
Perry Yates snapped her fingers. The light blue barrier turned red, and the surrounding temperature began to rise noticeably. The snow on the ground started to melt. On the once-empty snowfield, numerous charred but still-standing trees appeared. The air filled with the scent of a scorching fire.
As Perry Yates and Sage Bishop ventured deeper, the barrier’s range continued to expand.
As the snow melted, the bodies of those who had died here began to emerge from the slush.
Just as the young player had said, some of them had frozen to death, while others had been killed by the sudden Wind Blades.
With every corpse she found, Perry Yates would go over to inspect it. Before long, she had accumulated a thick stack of cards.
Beyond that, the most common sight was the carcasses of various insects.
Perry Yates had no interest in the insect carcasses.
“Some of these insects are edible. Are you sure you don’t want any?” Sage Bishop asked again.
Perry Yates shook her head. “No.”
‘Plenty of cultures had a custom of eating insects, and some bugs were indeed rich in protein, like silkworm pupae or kudzu bugs.’
‘But with no shortage of food, Perry really didn’t want to try anything unknown. Since Sage Bishop was interested in the bugs, she could have them.’
‘Besides, the barrier was huge now, so it wasn’t a problem if Sage Bishop didn’t stick right by her side.’
Meanwhile, outside the barrier, its continued expansion melted more and more snow. The territory of some creature living on the snowfield was rapidly shrinking.
To reclaim their territory, they began to attack the Flame Barrier with even greater frenzy.
What they failed to notice, however, was that with each increasingly frequent attack, the surface temperature of the Flame Barrier rose in turn.
A few hours passed. By now, the Flame Barrier had melted all the surrounding snow. Perry Yates had reached the end of the seemingly endless snowfield, where she once again saw the Six-petaled Frost Flower formed from ice and snow.
Perry Yates approached the Six-petaled Frost Flower. This time, it wasn’t an illusion.
The moment her hand touched its surface, the Six-petaled Frost Flower transformed into a card.
The front of the card depicted the Six-petaled Frost Flower, and its attributes were Moon and Snow.
‘The Snow attribute is an attribute that falls between the Water and Ice attributes. It’s a bit tougher than Water, yet a bit more pliable than Ice. But…’
“‘It’s white?'”
Perry Yates stared at the card in her hand. She looked at the front, then the back, then front and back again, examining it meticulously. Ultimately, she had to admit that it was, indeed, a White Card.
As Perry Yates took the card in hand, the ground began to tremble slightly.
Then, with a soft POP, the surrounding illusion vanished completely, like a popped bubble.
Perry Yates swapped the Flame Barrier for the Cold Moon Guardian. The barrier’s range began to contract, pulling Sage Bishop—who had strayed a short distance away—back to her side.
With the Illusion Realm gone, their surroundings reverted to a forest. However, the Wind Blade that had been relentlessly attacking them didn’t disappear; it had emerged from the illusion into the real world.
Just then, a fierce gust of wind tore through the air above them.
Protected by the barrier, Perry Yates and Sage Bishop were unaffected. The towering trees around them, however, were either ripped from the ground, roots and all, or snapped in half by the gale.
With the trees no longer blocking the way, sunlight finally poured down unimpeded, instantly brightening the once dark and damp forest.
This newfound brightness didn’t last long, however, as the sunlight was once again obscured.
“That’s a huge… bird!”
Sage Bishop shouted, pointing at the sky.
‘This is the Carboniferous Period, the age of giant insects and beasts. Fish had only just started crawling onto land, the ancestors of dinosaurs were still small lizards, and the ancestors of birds were dinosaurs. Theoretically, birds shouldn’t even exist in this era.’
‘But this was a survival game world, so anything was possible. Besides, the bird above them was clearly no ordinary bird.’
The bird in the sky banked, its sharp eyes instantly locking onto the two of them on the ground.
The giant bird’s body then shot upward, and what happened next was astounding.
The bird had been covered in white feathers tipped with light cyan. But with a piercing Scream, every single one of those feathers detached from its body and shot outwards.
Perry Yates: “…”
Sage Bishop: “…”
The scene was incredibly tense. After detaching, the feathers began to spin rapidly, flying toward her position with the whistle of the wind.
But none of that was as shocking to Perry Yates as the sight of the featherless chicken still flying in the sky.
‘Wait, don’t birds need feathers to fly? This thing is completely bald, so why is it still up there?’
Perry Yates paid no mind to the feathers hurtling toward her. They were so dense that dodging was impossible unless she could teleport out of the area instantly.
“Besides, she didn’t think the feathers could breach her defenses anyway. Rather than waste energy on a pointless evasion, she might as well…”
Perry Yates raised her Spiritual Ability Gun and unleashed a volley of shots at the featherless chicken in the sky.
‘As another five-star card, the Spiritual Ability Gun’s attack power was in no way inferior to a Skill. The only real difference was their card classification.’
So, when she saw the shots from the Spiritual Ability Gun hit and pierce the featherless chicken’s body, Perry Yates wasn’t surprised in the least. She even seized the opportunity to fire off several dozen more rounds.
Perry Yates was still firing long after the last of the feathers had fallen.
Sage Bishop just watched as Perry Yates kept shooting the featherless chicken in the sky, nearly turning it into a sieve.
Weirdly, the featherless chicken in the sky didn’t even try to dodge the attacks. It just hung there, taking the hits.
Finally, as one of Perry’s shots pierced the featherless chicken’s eye, it let out a wretched cry. Immediately after, countless cracks spiderwebbed across its body.
More and more cracks appeared until, with one final, wretched cry, the featherless chicken’s body shattered completely.