The Fadecrest Sparrow was notorious for the practically impossible feat of landing a hit on it without also having a contract of the space attribute.
Rather, even for individuals with the space attribute, there was no guarantee that they’d be able to land a strong blow on it.
Experience tales at
It has the annoying tendency to phase in and out of reality whenever an attack approaches it. Therefore all attacks, no matter the attribute, won’t be able to land on it. Only an attack strong enough to destroy the area of space it had taken refuge in would be capable of harming it. However, space-attribute creatures strong enough to do so were typically only those in the higher levels.
Not to mention its ability to phase in and out of space makes most defensive measures against it useless. How can Aegis block it from attacking Kain when it can just phase through him at any point?
And when it comes to actually attacking it, how can Bea have a split infiltrate a creature that isn’t in the same space as it? How can the Vespirae land a hit on something that isn’t materially there?
Although its offensive abilities are not the strongest among space-attribute yellow-grade creatures, its means of avoiding harm are definitely within the top 3.
‘God, this will be a headache…’ Kain thought disgruntledly as the identity of his opponent in the second trial revealed itself.
He also felt pretty wronged. Yes, technically this opponent targeted his weaknesses, but it wasn’t like it was due to a gap in his current usage of his contracts’ abilities like in the first trial. This opponent was almost impossible to kill for pretty much anyone without a space-attribute contract.
On the bright side, in the wild a Fadecrest Sparrow would simply use its formidable abilities to run away, and it would be practically impossible to prevent it from doing so.
Another fortunate thing was that it looked like this trial only had one of them.
However, this sparrow generated by the relic seemed to be incapable of doing that and would keep coming back to attack Kain.
Not having to worry about having to confine it to prevent its escape was a relief, but Kain was still without any ideas on how to actually cause damage to it.
The brief moment when it phases back into the same space as Kain and the others to attack rarely occurred, and based on how quickly it phased out when Kain blocked its last attack, he could tell that if they tried to counterattack it when it appeared, it would likely be able to disappear before any of their attacks actually hit it.
It would be able to sense of any of the attacks from his contracts, and even the most covert Bea could be detected if on guard since the threads, while hard to notice, were not invisible.
After a long time, this was the first time that Kain was missing his mist tactic.
Unfortunately, although Bea can produce over a hundred splits still, it wasn’t enough to cover a whole area in mist and have each tiny droplet able to possess a split.
In exchange for greater mobility and the ability to infiltrate the body with a touch, Bea had to sacrifice the number of splits she could produce (since her previous skill rapid proliferation occurred in water) and she also lost her affinity for water.
Therefore, if Kain were to try and use the mist tactic again, he’d have to concentrate all of the splits in the area just around his body due to their lower number, but then it may not even attack him since it’d probably sense something wrong with the mist since Bea could no longer seamlessly integrate into water.
However, considering that Kain rarely felt the effects of this decrease from thousands of splits to over a hundred in combat since he rarely faced more than a few enemies at once—he considered the trade-off more than fair.
‘The mist tactic would be the most suitable method right now though…however after losing her water-affinity, Bea could be more easily detected in the mist. However, how exactly is she detected? Is it her mental-attribute energy being released? The presence of spiritual power in general? A combination of all three?’
Despite his contracts currently or previously having skills that mention something along the lines of ‘prevent detection by spiritual creatures up to one grade higher,’ Kain always just took the skill description for granted and never dug into it too deeply.
However, he could better figure out how spiritual creatures detect one another, maybe he could develop tactics to better conceal Bea in the future even with the lost water-attribute.
‘Bea, forget the threads and cover all of our bodies in the splits. Once it makes contact with any of us, the split should be able to infiltrate. However, try to restrain any of the mental-attribute energy and spiritual power you may be unconsciously releasing. Maybe we can lure it into attacking.’
However, even after close to an hour passed, it still wasn’t launching any attacks on Kain and the others.
Kain could sense Bea’s splits due to his contract with her. However, none of his opponents in the re-rankings seemed to be able to detect Bea when there were no threads to see.
Kain understood that the sparrow was likely much more sensitive than the average spiritual creature, but was Bea really that noticeable?
‘It has the space attribute, is it really sensitive enough to space to able to detect Bea?’
Kain decided to cover all of his bases. First, he had Bea remove all of the splits from the surface of Kain and the others.
He then took out his trusty 2-star spear that he hadn’t used in a while to generate a mist that covered the whole clearing.
It was hard to get a 2-star spear with 3 sigils even with a lot of money. And after the business took off and he became quite famous as a planner, Kain wasn’t exactly in need of money. Therefore, he was planning to save some of his best equipment to be used by his younger siblings if it suits them and they awaken an affinity in the future.
Kain released the mist because the fine water droplets everywhere in the clearing will make it more difficult to detect Bea on the off chance that the sparrow, which was sensitive to space, was actually able to detect the microscopic space that Bea and her splits took up.
Additionally, to conceal the little bit of lifeforce that Bea may be leaking out, Kain had Eve and Queen release their combination skill Life Breeze so that life-attribute energy emanated from everywhere in the mist.
Finally, since Bea’s splits hidden in the mist couldn’t fill every single droplet like previously, Kain had Bea place her splits just in the mist closest to Kain and the others.
Thankfully, after Bea evolved, the sparrow only has to make brief contact with just one water droplet containing a split in order to be infiltrated and the split doesn’t need to be inhaled or ingested in some way.
Fortunately, all these strategies combined seemed to be able to fully conceal Bea’s presence and the sparrow reappeared.
Unfortunately, when it did reappear, its sharp talons were only a hairsbreadth away from Kain’s neck.