Chapter 247: New Research Trait: Sensory Overload

Chapter 247: Chapter 247: New Research Trait: Sensory Overload

While giving chase, Nieve was surprised to find that many of the surrounding Demons seemed to be possessed.

They were all converging on the same spot.

And they were all subconsciously ignoring her presence.

At first, a couple of Demons would occasionally stop to glance at her, but once she stopped her continuous killing streak to run, the Ring of Iron Blood around her vanished.

The Demons didn’t even spare her a second look.

This unusual scene even gave Nieve a strange idea for an experiment.

She ran up beside a Ghoul that was sprinting alongside her.

Raising her sword hilt, she curiously thought about bopping it on the head to see if the monster would retaliate.

Before she could bring it down,

the ground ahead dropped away into a fault.

She watched as the Ghoul beside her dove straight down.

It was immediately caught by a pair of large hands from below. With a crisp snap of bone, its neck was cleanly and decisively broken.

Gone.

’So strong!’

Nieve watched the skilled monster-killing technique, her mouth gaping open in an "O" of astonishment.

Standing on a high rock, she got a clear view of the battlefield below.

Lance was still fighting desperately in a sea of Demons, but his room to dodge was being steadily compressed by the ever-growing number of Demons.

But what really caught Nieve’s eye

was the dense layer of dropped materials from the Demons covering the ground.

In a single glance, she could see at least several dozen scattered Magic Energy Crystals glinting with a faint light.

Nearby were also piles of scattered Sound Wing Beast Hide Membranes, Slime acid sacs, and venomous mandibles dropped from Centipedes...

Amidst those messy piles of materials,

she even saw some rare materials emitting a pure glow, like the Essence of Ether, a specialty of the Underground City.

’To have dropped so much stuff...’

’He must have killed at least a few hundred Demons down in this pit,’ she estimated.

Watching Lance, who was completely surrounded by the Demon Tide and clearly unable to kill them all,

Nieve frowned prettily, a thoughtful expression on her face.

Then,

she decisively leaped down from the rock.

Lance had actually already spotted Nieve’s arrival out of the corner of his eye.

His original tactic was to directly activate his Dragon Form.

He would go all out at once, crushing this densest wave of Demons before him.

Then, he would immediately leave the combat zone and reset his status by reviving.

As long as the Silver Crown above his head disappeared, the subsequent Demons would no longer be drawn to him in an endless stream.

He could then deal with the remaining scattered Demons in batches.

But now,

with an outsider suddenly appearing at the edge of the battlefield, it was inconvenient for him to just openly revive.

While he was hesitating,

he saw Nieve leap down without a moment’s hesitation.

He knew the girl was definitely trying to help him out of kindness.

"Watch out!"

He had just opened his mouth to warn Nieve about the density of the monsters around them.

And then,

he witnessed a scene that made his jaw drop.

An Iron-Crocodile Centipede over a meter long was lunging at him with its venomous mandibles open.

Nieve had just landed from above.

Facing the ferocious poisonous insect,

she simply lowered her head and delivered a solid headbutt, smashing it fiercely onto the Centipede’s head.

With a dull THUD, the Centipede’s iron-armored head was shattered by the girl’s forehead.

Lance sucked in a sharp breath.

Before he could recover from this savage entrance,

a familiar, translucent, ice-blue shield instantly spread out from Nieve, firmly enveloping the two of them.

Having lost their target, the Demons outside began to furiously tear, bite, and hammer at the thin barrier.

The sound of the attacks, a constant CLATTER and BANG, was endless.

But the entire shield, emitting a stable fluctuation of Magic Power, didn’t move an inch.

"Looks like this shield can hold for 30 seconds."

Lance breathed a sigh of relief and said to Nieve,

"Thank you. As long as we hold out for thirty seconds, I can exit my Crown Buff state, and these monsters will stop coming."

Nieve stood beside him, observing the frequency and intensity of the Demons’ attacks outside.

’Frost Shelter was, after all, my best One Ring Spell.’

’After stacking it with my Profession and casting Specialties,’

’it would be a dream for these Level 1 Demons to break the shield in a short amount of time.’

The crisis was temporarily averted.

But Lance’s expression turned strange.

He looked at Nieve beside him, and through her drooping, ice-blue hair,

he could faintly see a large red patch right in the center of her fair forehead from that wild headbutt just now.

"Um, are you okay?" Lance couldn’t help but ask, pointing at her forehead.

"Snow Ladies have no sense of pain."

Nieve turned her head and deadpanned, educating him on her species’ basic knowledge.

This was also why many Snow Ladies often came across as stoic and aloof in normal interactions.

Their neural perception is naturally dull, so their response to many external stimuli is very weak.

"If you don’t believe me, feel it."

Nieve generously leaned her face toward him.

’Wait, how am I supposed to feel whether or not you’re in pain? That’s a subjective feeling!’

Lance didn’t even have a chance to voice the complaint in his mind.

Nieve had already taken his right hand and pressed it firmly against her red forehead.

The sensation was surprisingly pleasant and cool to the touch.

’No wonder that Cat Girl loves to snuggle up to her...’

Moreover, the movement of his fingers happened to brush aside the hair on the side of her face.

Lance vaguely saw that Nieve’s ears, hidden in her hair, seemed to have the pointed shape of an Elf’s.

At that moment,

the panel suddenly popped up on its own.

After killing several hundred Demons today, Lance hadn’t even had time to check the Research Progress updates for each Demon.

[Target "Sub-human Species·Snow Lady" detected to possess "Sub-human Species·Elf" bloodline.]

[Profound research experience with "Sub-human Species·Half-Elf" detected. Cross-species Research Progress migration has occurred.]

[Sub-human Species·Snow Lady Research Progress has surged by +40 points.]

[Congratulations! You have successfully unlocked the Research Trait: Sensory Overload.]

HISS!

Lance inwardly sucked in a cold breath.

’Why is this damn system handing out rewards at a time like this?’

He was given no chance to react and pull his hand away.

Nieve, who just a second ago had been looking completely harmless, suddenly went rigid.

Her eyes instantly shot wide open.

Then,

her beautiful eyes quickly turned red, and large, crystalline tears welled up, swirling in her sockets.

"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, meow!"

The intense shock of pain instantly broke through Nieve’s defenses; she was in so much pain that she even cried out her companion Cat Girl’s usual verbal tic.

This was the first time in her life she had ever truly felt what pain was.

But her brain understood what this physiological reaction was in an instant.

Her delicate little face immediately crumpled in pain like a pitiful steamed bun.

When it rains, it pours.

And at that very moment, as Nieve was distracted by the intense pain,

the once-indestructible protective shield instantly lost its supply of Ethereal Magic Power.

Fine cracks began to appear on its surface, accompanied by a CRACKLING, shattering sound.

Finally, with a loud BANG, it exploded into a sky full of ice shards.

The Demons outside roared and lunged forward again.

"Damn it!"

The instant the shield shattered, Lance made his decision.

This was no time to worry about revealing his trump card.

Force activate [Dragon Form]!

Dark Gold Vertical Pupils appeared as ferocious Power flooded back into his body.

Lance strode forward and landed a powerful [Dragon Leaping Tail] kick squarely on the abdomen of the Blind-Eyed Crystal Lizard blocking his path.

The tremendous force of the impact sent the monster flying backward, forcibly carving a bloody path through the dense encirclement.

Lance hoisted the still-sobbing Nieve, who was clutching her forehead, onto his shoulder.

Using the gap that had been blasted open, he charged out like a crazed rhinoceros.

Behind him,

the several hundred red-eyed Demons let out earth-shattering roars and gave chase frantically.

As soon as he successfully broke out of the core of the Demon encirclement, Lance immediately deactivated his Dragon Form state.

Carrying a person, he ran for his life, sprinting madly through the labyrinthine mine tunnels.

「Not long after.」

Not far from them, several small parties of Adventurers were cautiously scouting the path.

They all watched, dumbfounded, as

a man in tattered Inner Armor appeared, carrying a wailing woman on his shoulder.

And in the tunnel behind them, hundreds of Demons of all types chased after them relentlessly, thundering along like a freight train.

But the man’s speed was astonishingly fast. They didn’t even get a clear look at his face before the pair ducked into a fork in another tunnel.

What the Adventurers found most absurd was,

that the menacing army of Demons, even after seeing them—living, breathing people—as it passed,

completely ignored them as if blind, doggedly chasing after the man in front.

A neat row of question marks seemed to pop up above the heads of all the onlookers.