Chapter 645 [Withering Wail]

Thanks to their professionalism, the group had already inspected the cave thoroughly while fighting off the goblins when they first entered the Goblin Lair.

Aside from a few adventurer corpses the goblins had dragged back—already frozen solid—they hadn't found anything else of note.

Confident in their expertise, the three members of the Sulfur Dragon Breath squad hadn't taken Xia Nan's warning to heart. Since they had already swept the area and confirmed there were no hidden dangers, they let their guard down and focused entirely on the green-skinned Goblins.

As it turned out, Xia Nan's Perception didn't lie.

Hum. Accompanied by an eerie fluctuation of magical particles, the temperature plummeted. Countless tiny water droplets instantly condensed, forming a white fog far thicker than the misty rime forest outside the cave.

The malicious spirit, a creature that heralded death with mournful weeping, launched its attack from a place no one expected: straight down from the bare stone ceiling.

Layers of frost rapidly spread across the rock walls, accompanied by the faint crackle of freezing ice.

A slender, exquisitely beautiful woman's arm with translucent, grayish-white skin unlike any living human's reached silently down from the stone ceiling.

It wasn't fast. Its movements were elegant and unhurried, almost like a dancer's.

Yet it struck at the perfect moment, leaving the adventurer below with no room to dodge.

Reaching from the blind spot behind the half-orc, dark cyan, razor-sharp fingertips gently tapped his shoulder.

[Corrupting Touch]!

His robust, muscular physique could withstand swords, but against the deathly negative energy erupting from the banshee's fingertips, it was completely defenseless, as if facing its natural predator.

Centering on where that slender finger touched the half-orc's shoulder, a lifeless, ashen gray spread toward his heart, neck, and arm at a visible rate.

He had been locked in close combat with a Bugbear, relishing the sense of power that came from dominating a weaker foe.

The half-orc, Gank, had completely failed to anticipate that the enemy they were tracking would attack him at this moment, in this place, and in this manner.

The attack was simply too bizarre. Furthermore, fueled by his innate half-orc battle lust, his attention had been entirely focused on the Bugbear in front of him.

As a result, despite being the closest to the enemy, he was the absolute last person in the group to realize she was there.

It wasn't until Xia Nan's warning pierced the air, slowly filtering through his battle-crazed and sluggish brain as he mentally translated it from common into his tribal dialect, that he finally understood what was happening.

By then, that finger, steeped in dense negative energy, had already touched his shoulder.

When the half-orc finally felt the lethal threat piercing his heart and sensed the freezing, agonizing pain spreading across his back, he panicked. He shoved away the Bugbear tangled with him, spun around, and instinctively swung his left arm to fight back while leaping in retreat.

By that point, everything from his elbow up, including his entire shoulder and a small patch of his back, had already turned into a stiff, ashen gray.

His envisioned counterattack—punching the enemy away to create some distance—never materialized.

The translucent, pale arm reaching from the ceiling seemed entirely intangible.

Driven by terror, the half-orc twisted his waist for a full-force strike, only for his fist to pass straight through the slender arm.

With nowhere to vent his immense strength, the momentum betrayed him.

Having swung at empty air, Gank was spun around like a top by his own momentum.

Losing his balance, he fell hard onto his backside in a miserable heap.

Instinctively, he tried to catch himself with his ash-gray arm. The accumulated necrotic damage erupted into blinding agony in an instant. Gank let out a scream of pain as he collapsed backward onto the cave floor, his intact right hand tightly clutching his practically ruined left arm.

"Ah!!!"

"My hand! My hand!"

Crackle. Frost continued to spread, and the dense fog in the air drifted gently like wisps of sheer veil.

The slender arm reaching from the ceiling slowly lowered, and the rest of her body gently drifted out from the frost-covered stone.

Only then did the dangerous monster, which had severely wounded a squad member the moment it appeared, finally reveal its true form.

A phantom floating in midair.

Unlike the rotting, maggot-infested corpses typically associated with undead creatures, the entity now hovering before them possessed an eerie, indescribable, and haunting beauty as it floated amid the swirling, veil-like fog.

She wore the long gown from the final moments of her life, its hem swaying softly in the mist. Her pale, cyan-gray body was completely translucent. Long strands of hair drifted without wind, as if suspended in water. The tips of her hair and the edges of her dress dissolved into wisps of smoke, blending seamlessly into the surrounding fog.

Her facial features were distinct—a high bridge on her nose, a delicate, pointed chin, and long, slender ears. Even though she had long since perished, anyone could easily tell that she had been an Elf in life.

Her sunken eye sockets were now two pitch-black hollows. Where bright, clear, and lively eyes should have been, the eerie blue ghost-fire unique to the undead now burned.

Challenge Rating Iv4, banshee!

"Ah— Ah—"

Clutching his excruciatingly painful and completely useless left arm, the half-orc Gank rolled on the ground, wailing in agony.

But at that moment, neither Xia Nan nor Gank's teammates from the Sulfur Dragon Breath squad made any move to save him.

Instead, the very second they laid eyes on the banshee's true form, they unanimously reached their free hands into their pouches and pockets.

They each pulled out a potion—prepared back in Bloodcast Keep and stored in the most easily accessible spots—and downed the entire bottle.

Contained in a pinky-sized glass vial, the dosage was small enough to swallow in a single gulp with a slight tilt of the head.

Unlike a healing potion that glowed faintly as the liquid sloshed, this potion didn't emit light. Its color was only slightly bluer than pure water.

Its function was incredibly ordinary, possessing only a single, simple effect that was clearly reflected in its name.

Deafness Potion.

The banshee was a highly unique type of undead creature.

Typically, only female Elves could transform into one after death.

In life, these wicked, spirit-like monsters usually possessed a beauty far beyond ordinary humans. Perhaps because of this, after being corrupted by negative energy and turned into banshees, they still craved exquisite and beautiful things, yet fiercely despised the sight of their own pale, undead faces.

Banshees were exceptionally dangerous. Many people even believed their threat level far exceeded what their Challenge Rating suggested.

Once, an Adventurers' Association branch located on the border between the Elf habitats and the Underdark conducted a survey among local adventurers, asking: "Which monster do you least want to encounter during a quest?"

The final results revealed that among adventurers with a Class Level below Level 5, the banshee ranked near the very top.

It ranked even higher than many monsters with higher Challenge Ratings, such as carrion crawlers and xorns.

As for the reason.

On one hand, it was due to the banshee's extreme, violently erratic personality, corrupted by negative energy.

But the most troublesome aspects were her rare traits as an incorporeal undead, and her devastatingly overpowered special attack.

Banshees were completely immune to poison, cold, and necrotic damage.

They also possessed considerable resistance to thunder, acid, fire, and physical damage.

Additionally, special status effects like charm, paralysis, fear, and petrification were completely useless against them.

They boasted an absurdly comprehensive suite of damage resistances.

Ordinary adventurers would find it almost impossible to inflict any meaningful damage.

Without targeted preparations made in advance, or a Spellcaster with a fairly robust spell list in the party, even many elite adventurer teams would struggle to defeat one easily.

In most encounters, they could only rely on their heavily resisted physical attacks to whittle the banshee down to near-death inch by inch, forcing her to retreat as they watched her drift away.

Of course, if this were all, banshees wouldn't have earned such a terrifying reputation among adventurers.

After all, adventurers active in the Underdark frequently encountered bizarre constructs from ancient ruins, some of which had even more sickening and troublesome resistances than a banshee.

What truly propelled them to the top of the "least wanted to encounter during a quest" list was a specific special ability.

[Withering Wail].

Its effect was actually quite simple to describe.

The banshee would unleash a sorrowful wail, forcing every creature within a thirty-foot radius—excluding undead and constructs—to make a Constitution saving throw.

On a successful save, they took a certain amount of psychic damage.

On a failed save, they died instantly.

Yes, instant death.

Much like the gaze of a Petrification Lizard, it was purely a mechanical hazard.

No matter how high their Constitution attribute was, or how confident they were in their own bodies, the vast majority of adventurers had zero desire to experience such a brush with death.

Xia Nan was no exception.

In fact, given his usually calm and cautious nature, even if he wanted to amass War Merits to exchange for the [Proof of Diligence] accessory at Bloodcast Keep, he never would have chosen such a dangerous target with an instant-death mechanic.

The banshee possessed such comprehensive resistances and the terrifying ability known as [Withering Wail].

Yet its Challenge Rating was still judged by the Adventurers' Association as Iv4, not Iv14.

This alone was enough to prove that, in reality, it wasn't nearly as invincible as its abilities made it seem.

The fact that the banshee topped the "least wanted to encounter during a quest" list, yet was nowhere to be found on the "most troublesome monster targets" list, perfectly illustrated this point.

Only by accidentally stumbling across this monster mid-quest—completely by surprise and without any preparation—would one truly fall into grave danger.

If one had even guessed they might encounter it along the way, or if the banshee was their explicit mission target, they could make the necessary preparations and handle the fight with ample readiness.

Just like the potion Xia Nan and the others had just consumed.

It was simple: a bottle of Deafness Potion—costing a mere three silver and seven copper, lasting fifteen minutes, and temporarily depriving the user of their hearing—was entirely sufficient to render the banshee's once-a-day [Withering Wail] completely useless.

Taking unexpected variables into account, Xia Nan had even made a second layer of preparation.

His own Constitution attribute sat at 9 points, and as a monster, the Winter Wolf Fanny beside him possessed a much higher Constitution than he did.

Even in the worst-case scenario where neither of them succeeded on the saving throw, the [Fate Glimmer] die he carried could help him and Fanny pass the check. At most, it would simply mean using the die's once-a-day saving throw bonus, plus burning the enhanced effect that had a one-month cooldown. Compared to the consequences of failing the save, Xia Nan found this price completely acceptable.

Furthermore, based on what Xia Nan had learned before temporarily teaming up with the members of Sulfur Dragon Breath, they had prepared additional countermeasures beyond just the Deafness Potion.

With all these layers of protection, the chances of the banshee's [Withering Wail] actually succeeding had been reduced to the absolute minimum.

And if one wasn't willing to bear even this level of risk, there was probably no point in staying in the adventurer profession anyway. After all, you could run into a passing dragon just gathering common herbs at the edge of the village.

"Swish!"

His reaction was the fastest on the field.

While on the other side, Uriah and Treebrook of Sulfur Dragon Breath were just realizing the banshee's appearance and reaching into their pockets.

Xia Nan's hand had already moved with blistering speed, precisely plucking two potions from his pouch in a blur.

As he raised his arm, he flicked his fingers, sending one of the bottles flying toward the Winter Wolf Fanny beside him.

"Gulp—"

"Crunch!"

The sound of his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed the liquid and the crisp crunch of the potion vial being crushed by sharp wolf teeth rang out almost simultaneously.

She could understand common, and they had already communicated about this before the operation began. Naturally, there was no need to waste time explaining it now.

She downed the Deafness Potion at the exact same time as Xia Nan.

There was no need to worry about glass shards cutting Fanny's mouth. As a monster with a Challenge Rating above Iv3, there was no way she was fragile enough to be injured so easily. Furthermore, these potions were specifically designed with specialized, softened alchemical materials, anticipating situations where uncorking them was inconvenient and they had to be bitten directly in the mouth.

As for the bald Ranger Tal behind them, while his own reaction time wasn't quite as fast, he made up for it with sharp wits. He had kept his eyes glued to Xia Nan's movements the entire time.

Because of this, his reaction was even quicker than the bard and Rogue ahead of him, and he swiftly chugged his Deafness Potion.

Hum. The potion took effect instantly. The once noisy world plunged into sudden silence, leaving nothing but dead, soundless quiet.

Realizing the Deafness Potion was working, Xia Nan swept his gaze over the banshee hovering ahead. He glanced at Fanny beside him, and seeing that she hadn't suffered any mishaps either, he breathed a small sigh of relief.