Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] Chapter 188: Book 3: Chapter 40: Blizzard

Read chapter 188 of Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] by TTReynolds on NovelPedia.

Book 3: Chapter 40: Blizzard Chapter 40: Blizzard The statues didn’t make it easy. The third and fourth statues were marked by blood and ice, as each one was shadowed by another chimera waiting to pounce and attack the team. Their previous battle tactic held, Holly ripped the storm wide open with her air aether and then the squad bombarded the beast with fire, and stone, and light until nothing remained but frozen meat and blackened fur. It worked, at least for now. But every time Alex wiped his knuckles clean of blood, he couldn’t stop his brain from chewing on the thought: What if these things had picked up tricks from the forest chimeras? Or the Lake chimeras? If they had both the cloaking and aether mimicry? These hidden objectives might be way more important than I first thought. He pictured invisible snow-leopards darting through the storm, reflecting and absorbing all of their attempts to disable its cloaking by mimicking their aether signature, or an icy kinetic redirection layer over its fur, absorbing all of their attacks. His stomach turned at the thought. Nope. He shoved the thought down and locked it in a box. The idea of a single chimera species having all of those abilities… well, thinking about it didn’t help. By the time they reached the fifth statue, the storm had picked up in intensity. It was louder, hungrier, and much colder. Alex had learned to trust his strange sixth sense, and how it felt about those changes. Right now, they were telling him the storm’s change meant trouble, serious trouble. Sure enough, the next time they made it to a statue objective it wasn’t one chimera waiting for them. It was two. The icy-bastards worked in tandem to attack the team, staggering their assaults. One lunged from the whiteout, its claws flashing just long enough to draw attention, then vanished back into the storm while the other flickered in from the opposite side. When Holly blew the blizzard open, the pair split up, one stayed in the open while the other slipped just outside the cleared zone, circling like a shark waiting for blood to hit the water. When they tried to send spells at the chimera that was exposed, the one still lurking in the blizzard used its ice manipulation ability to provide protective barriers for its partner. Each was covering for the other, never giving the squad a clean opening to strike. The rhythm of the fight, a losing rhythm at the current rate, set Alex’s teeth on edge. Smart little shits. What the fuck do we do? It took longer than he liked to admit for him see the answer. He didn’t love the idea that he came up with. But he didn’t see another option at the moment. It took a few leaps in the snow for him to arrive next to Holly. “Cover me,” he yelled to her. Before she could argue, he broke formation and pushed a wide swath through the snow until he dropped to his belly and dragged himself under the powder. The cold bit into his skin, seeping through armor and cloth robes until his body screamed at him. He forced his breathing shallow, masking his aether flow and letting the tundra swallow him whole. When Holly’s voice pierced over the wind, surely boosted by her air aether—“Now”—Alex burst upward. Snow exploded around him as he cast [Wind Lance] in rapid fire. Small rounds of compressed aether chewed through the closest chimera’s flank before it could blink away. The beast shrieked, faltering just long enough for Garret and Lance to pile on, their blades cutting it down into a bloody carcass while the rest of the squad turned on the second beast. It had worked perfectly. Alex's plan had been to mimic the ice chimeras tactics. This time, it was he who hid in the snow and waited to pounce at the right time to catch them off guard. And he had done it well. Alex stood shaking snow from his armor, the frost clinging to his eyebrows and nose. Obby hissed in the back of his head, smug as ever: “ Congratulations, Meatboy. You’ve evolved. A snow-burrower. Trapdoor-Spiderman. Proud of you.” Alex