The next day, at the edge of the player-controlled zone.
Bi Ren Liang Mou had just maneuvered his Mecha's foreleg onto a protruding rock ridge when a stream of foul, dark green acid came pouring down over his head!
He reacted instantly. With a slight movement of the control stick, the Mecha's front limb snapped back. The acid grazed its outer bone armor and fell into the thick layer of charred wreckage below, erupting in a large cloud of pungent white smoke with a hiss.
"Damn it, they really have it out for me."
Old Liang raised his head inside the cockpit, his gaze sweeping through the neural-sensory viewport toward the jagged bone ravine ahead.
This was an entrance to a Lesion the clearing team had just mapped out. The sides of the passage, stretching hundreds of kilometers, were piled with calcified bone shells secreted by parasitic creatures. Their densely packed holes resembled a honeycomb. Coiled within every hole was an Abyssal Parasite as thick as a water barrel, the acid sacs bulging from their backs glowing faintly.
[Abyssal Parasite (LV.51, Tier Two)].
As far as the eye could see, the red-named monsters in those holes ranged from level 47 to level 55.
These underworld freaks were absurdly cowardly. Their bloated bodies were wedged tightly behind bone-shell cover, with only their mouthparts and spray glands exposed, forming an elevated crisscrossing fire network. Anyone who tried to force their way through from the ravine floor would immediately be melted into nothing by the torrent of acid raining down on them.
In the passage below, the suppressed players had long since grown frantic.
"Brother Liang, can we go up already? Those spitters pulled back into their holes again!"
"Fuck, the bone spear I threw out to test them just got dragged into