Book 5: Chapter 49 — Death’s Descent
Unfortunately, they still had to deal with a very angry mother basilisk on their way out. Noah had killed enough of its children to incite its vengeful wrath, and its ability to paralyze him was significantly stronger than the average monster's.
He ended up sitting out the entire fight as a statue while Tony acted on his behalf and Zax fought the thing head to head. It was a truly spectacular battle, which Noah appreciated being able to observe, but would have appreciated participating in even more.
He had no particular interest in being a bystander in his own life or death, and the reminder that he'd sort of accidentally brute-forced his way into an Ascendant-level region left him irritated.
Freeing him from the paralysis required cooperation between Zax and Tony and nearly an hour longer than the battle itself, not including the two other groups of monsters eager to snack on the basilisk's corpse who needed to be fought off while he was indisposed.
"I think I hate basilisks," he said as soon as he could speak again, shaking off the stiffness from his limbs. "Who thought that was a good idea?" The only good part about the encounter was the hour of straining to reclaim movement gave him 'transformation resistance' which seemed to be an entirely new category he hadn't encountered until now.
"They were originally an artificially cross-bred combination of Nightmare Wyrm and Stone Drake, but evolved past their shared ancestry and became a race in their own right six hundred or so years later," Zax recited. "They are feared by most societies, but revered and raised domestically by the Stonebound clan of Deep Celestians. I have had a few friends with basilisks for companions, though it is still quite uncommon."
"Every time I start to think I'm getting a handle on what this place has to offer, something new shows up."
"Erandir is a world with countless peoples and societies. Even I do not know the half of it, even without taking into account the years of history I missed out on while bound and out of contact with it." Zax motioned to the basilisk's body. "You might want to store that unless you want to fight it again."
"Right, leaving something dead lying around in this much ambient death mana will make it a zombie real quick." Noah scooped the basilisk up into his storage and nodded. "How much farther? Should we rest before continuing, or press on?" Not that he felt tired. If anything he felt so overflowing with energy he didn't know what to do with himself.