Death… And Me

Chapter 4302: Perception

Rean obviously checked that out. ’At the end of the day, the Three-Eyed Ravens that attacked the Besgol Region were all adults. If I were to guess, I would say that their young are likely Godly Beasts. Of course, that’s just speculation based on what I found. I might be wrong.’

Sister Orb had another idea, though. [You just need the Third Eye, don’t you? Since twenty-two of them attacked Besgol in the last hundred years, couldn’t someone in Besgol already have the Third Eye stored somewhere? What if we bought... or stole it?]

The twins’ group went silent. Indeed, was there a reason to find a Three-Eyed Raven? The quest said nothing related to that.

Rean quickly used his RC. ’Let me check.’

’I’ll help,’ Celis joined in, too. He was definitely the most interested in that quest.

Kentucky and Roan had nothing better to do, so they also jumped into the network.

[Patch me through one of your minds,] Sister Orb said. [That should allow me to see the contents of the Ring Communicator since it communicates directly to your soul.]

Kentucky immediately accepted. ’Then use mine. Looking for these things is boring.’

Sister Orb didn’t have that immense processing power she had before, but she was still much better at looking for this kind of thing. Eventually, she got the answer. [Forget it...]

Rean and the others stopped. ’Did you find anything?’

[Yes. I didn’t look for the Third Eye of the Raven. Instead, I looked into the number of times it was killed when it was present during an assault. Of the twenty-two times they came, twenty of them, the Ravens managed to escape.]

’What about the other two?’ Roan inquired.

[They were killed, but their bodies were destroyed in the process. They were both Godly Predators. Forget the eye, not even a feather from their bodies remained.]

’Wow... the experts from Besgol really went all out to make sure the Ravens were gotten rid of,’ Rean commented.

[They had to,] Sister Orb immediately sent them the information she found as well.

As one might imagine, the problem with the Three-Eyed Raven was the Third Eye’s ability, which the network called Heavenly Rejection. It reacted against perception itself.

Cultivators rely heavily on their Celestial Senses, especially as their cultivations go up. The Heavenly Rejection used that against the cultivators themselves. It was as if the cultivators opened a path to their souls, which the Heavenly Rejection used to trigger a backlash.

Simply put, locking on the Three-Eyed Raven would already cause damage before you even had the chance to fight it.

That wasn’t all. The Heavenly Rejection, as mentioned, worked against perception itself. That also included the common sight. Those who looked at the Raven wouldn’t be able to focus their vision. The Raven looked more like a mass of black mist.

The way the cultivators used to fight against it when the Ravens attacked was to simply allow it to get further into the Sacred Relic’s Influence. The stronger the influence was, the weaker the Heavenly Rejection became. Finally, when it became possible to lock on the Raven by Celestial Sense or vision, the cultivators fought back.

But that also meant allowing not only the Raven, but the horde to advance much further into the Besgol Region. The Ravens were always the leading Godly Creatures of the assaults during their time. If the horde didn’t advance, the Ravens wouldn’t either.

The main problem was that you never knew when a Three-Eyed Raven would appear, so it wasn’t like you could simply give up the advanced defense lines that were usually used against other hordes.

The Raven was truly a flying calamity itself. It didn’t even need to attack anyone. It only had to fly over the battlefields, and if any Celestial Sense touched it, the backlash was instantaneous. That meant the Raven could easily turn the tides of any battlefield it appeared on.

In a world heavily dependent on Celestial Sense, the Raven was its nemesis.

*Whistle...*

Kentucky was genuinely impressed. ’That thing seems almost too good to be true. Would the laws of the world truly allow the birth of such a monster?’

Rean agreed with Kentucky. ’For such a crazy shit like that to exist, there has to be an equally strong disadvantage.’

[I would very much like to know what it is, then. The available information indicates nothing that points to a weakness. The only thing that seems to counter its abilities is the Sacred Relic’s power, but you have to bring it quite deep into the Besgol Region to work well enough.]

’The timing...’ Roan suddenly thought of something. ’Why are they so rare? Sister Orb, check the network for the other Godly Horrors that appeared over the last one hundred years. See if there is any other race as rare as the Three-Eyed Raven leading the hordes.’

[Uh? Oh... okay.]

It took a few minutes again, but Sister Orb finally came up with an answer. [Not really. In fact, our Besgol Region doesn’t really have a lot of diversity in Godly Creatures. The Godly Horror that has appeared the least, other than the Raven, was the Xonrel Squirrel. It has led a total of 231 hordes. That’s over ten times more than the Raven.]

’So that’s how it is,’ Roan said. ’The timing is their main issue. That ability, as you said, is too overpowered. The laws of the world wouldn’t just let it be. It is especially so at such low levels. Godly Horrors might be the highest known level of Godly Creatures around the Besgol Region, but we all know it is nothing compared to the real Godly Creatures.’

Roan continued. ’This Raven doesn’t even have intelligence due to its level, so it wouldn’t know how to fight against the restriction imposed on it either. If I’m not wrong, not only is its birth rate extremely low, but its abilities aren’t available at all times. Sister Orb, change the search scope. Look for patterns during the invasions of the Three-Eyed Raven that were not present during other assaults.’

[On it!]

’Would there be detailed enough information available for it?’ Kentucky asked out of curiosity.

’Absolutely,’ Rean assured him. ’Don’t forget, the regions are always hanging by a thread. Any piece of information about the hordes is extremely valuable. You can check it yourself. Every horde, even the one we recently helped defend against, is available on the network for anyone to see. How many Gody Creatures appeared, their levels, how many were killed, how far they advanced, what was the weather condition, the Celestial Energy and Godly Pressure concentration, you name it.’

’I see...’ Kentucky was actually curious and wanted to take a look now.

Roan wasn’t in the mood to wait for Kentucky, though. ’Just do the research, Sister Orb.’

Rean and Celis didn’t even bother looking into it anymore. They couldn’t beat Sister Orb in that kind of activity.

This time, Sister Orb took a lot more time. It wasn’t until two hours later that she finally came up with an answer.

[That one was hard, but it also made me feel like an idiot in the end. There weren’t really any specific environmental changes that could explain the Three-Eyed Raven’s appearance. However, there was one thing on our side that always happened when they came. All the twenty-two times the Raven appeared were also the twenty-two biggest concentrations of cultivators defending against the hordes.]

Roan’s eyes lit up. ’Perception!’

Everyone looked at him.

Of course, Roan explained. ’Perception is the key point here. For the Third Eye to work, you need to be perceived. However, you need a certain number of beings perceiving your existence or no deal. You can more or less call it the fuel of Heavenly Rejection. If there aren’t enough experts aware of your existence in that battlefield, the Third Eye will not work.’

’Sister Orb, check the battlefields where the Raven appeared during the hordes. I’m pretty sure it always stayed close to the biggest battlefields with the biggest armies. That would also explain why it never dares to advance further into the Besgol Region before the hordes also advance. The hordes are likely part of the beings it needs to perceive itself.’

[Already have the answer for that, and you are correct. The Ravens have always participated in the biggest clashes. It was never seen alone or engaging in any kind of stealthy action, like ambushes.]

’So...’ Kentucky didn’t seem very happy. ’It means it is only weak when there aren’t enough cultivators close to it. But how does that help us? Even if the third eye doesn’t work, and even if we somehow miraculously find where the Ravens are, can we even get there?’

That wasn’t all. Most of the time when the Ravens appeared, they were always Godly Horrors. Even if they were Godly Predators, the twins’ group can’t possibly beat them head-on. Just getting close without being detected seemed like a pipe dream.

’First things first,’ Roan didn’t jump steps. ’We need to figure out how to find one of them.’