Silence!
The overwhelming sounds had completely disappeared and Mako could not hear anything now. He looked at the prompt in front of his eyes with massive gratitude because he didn't even know that the system could do something like this.
At first, it might seem scary, considering Mako knew very little about the system and he didn't know what other functionalities it had hidden from him. If the system could temporarily block his sense of hearing, then what else could it also block? His sight? His heartbeat?
However, Mako didn't have any such thoughts in the given situation as he was just so happy to not hear that constant creepy noise. Now that Mako was unaffected by the sound, he stood up once again and started Analyzing his surroundings, trying to find the source of whatever was causing this.
It was quite a unique experience for Mako, one that he couldn't say he actually liked. To not be able to hear absolutely anything was quite terrifying in its own right, but was still better than the auditory overload.
Everyone had tried to cover their ears as kids to see if they could completely block their sense of hearing, but they would still fail as a tiny amount of noise would make it through and if they were in a quiet enough room, they would start hearing the sound of their internal organs.
Mako was unable to hear anything at all - neither the sound of the wind rustling through the trees, nor the gentle flow of the nearby stream, nor even the beating of his own heart.
Using this to his advantage, Mako scanned his surrounding completely but still wasn't able to find anything out of the ordinary that could be the cause of the sounds.
Now that Mako was unaffected, he did have the option to just leave the area and return back to the shelter, but at this point, Mako was certain that sounds were real and were created by either a cadet or a beast that was very good at hiding or using some sort of camouflage.
Either way, Mako didn't want to lead whatever it was back toward the shelter and potentially compromise their position so he needed to figure out where the source of the sound was. After making sure that he hadn't missed anything, Mako only knew one place that he hadn't checked and where the source might be.
"UP!" Mako shouted.
[High Jump has been activated]
Mako launched himself high above the branches of the tree and whilst being in the air, Mako used Analyze once again to see if there was anything on top of the trees, and sure enough, he had found the source of the sound and a lot of them.
[Analyze]
[High-level Cicada Snake]
[Ability: Sound (Level 3), Poison (Level 2)]
[Description: A Cicada Snake has 2 stages of life where the snakelets come into the world as a Medium level beast and naturally evolve into a High-level beast as it grows up. Once an adult, the Cicada Snake fully develops its wings that wrap around its body, which it uses for mobility as well as to use its sound ability in a unique way.
Cicada Snakes can use their wings and sound ability in unison to create sound illusions to confuse and overwhelm their prey. They mostly travel in groups as the strength of their illusion is stronger with multiple Cicada Snakes making use of the sound ability at the same time.
Cicada Snakes have very unique skin as it has evolved to be able to blend into their surrounding and hide from the line of sight of everyone. Their skin provides a natural camouflage that can change depending on which terrain, they are currently on, making them really hard to spot.]
[Weakness: Lightning, Fire, Ice]
Once Mako had identified the actual location of the beasts that had caused him such a level of mental hurt and anxiety, he grabbed the hilt of the Storm Caller staff and extended it to its maximum height.
Mako channeled his lightning aura straight into Storm Caller Staff which started to glow as it became charged with his aura. Once fully charged, a single fast bolt of lightning erupted from the crystal that was attached to its top and struck the nearest Cicada Snake.
[Lightning Strike has been activated]
The lightning attack was much faster than any of Mako's own attacks and even the Cicada Snake was caught off guard because it wasn't able to move in time to dodge the attack.
The lightning bolt traveled through its body dealing massive amounts of damage as lightning was indeed one of its weaknesses, but rather than dispersing into thin air, like regular lightning attacks, the shocks lingered on the body of the first Cicada Snake.
After a second or two, the lightning used its body as a conduit to travel to the next Cicada Snake and shock it too, creating a chain effect hitting several Cicada Snakes. Mako was able to locate a total of 18 Cicada Snakes on top of the trees and so he launched another chained lightning strike before coming back down.
The Lightning caused the bodies of the Cicada Snakes to become paralyzed and they ended up falling to the ground alongside Mako. As soon as their bodies touched the ground, their skin color changed and adapted to the now muddy and grassy terrain of the ground.
However, Mako had no problem locating his targets as Analyze was able to bypass through their camouflage and show Mako exactly where their position was.
The effects of the lightning soon wore off and now all 18 Cicada Snakes went on the offensive and started to hiss at Mako while spitting a ball of green liquid at him from their mouths.
[Motion Sense has been activated]
Mako used Motion Sense to reliably dodge all the incoming projectiles using minimal movement. Once he was able to dodge all of them, Mako grabbed the hilt of the Storm Caller staff once again and reduced the height of the staff to its original height.
After he did that, Mako channeled his lightning aura into the staff once again. Since the staff was in its normal setting it won't use any of the active skill modes during this attack and will just execute whatever skill that Mako wanted to cast.
After sufficient lightning aura had been transferred to the crystal, Mako the staff from the middle with a firm grip and using all his force slammed the hilt of the staff on the ground.
[Electrical Discharge has been activated]
The staff released an electrical pulse at the point of contact with the ground, similar to how Mako releases a pulse from his own body when he uses Electrical Discharge. Nevertheless, the pulse generated by the staff was significantly larger and broader than any previous electrical discharge produced by Mako.
The pulse was able to cover all the Cicada Snakes and paralyze them completely. Since the Cicada Snakes didn't have any facial expressions, it looked like they had been frozen place without the use of an ice ability.
Once they were locked in place, Mako decided to one of his favorite combos to finish them all in one go. He dropped the Storm Caller's staff on the ground and placed his hands on the ground.
The Cicada Snakes watched while remaining perfectly still as Mako planted more and more fire aura into the ground. After he had picked his target and planted an unnecessary amount of fire aura into the ground, Mako activated one of his favorite abilities.
[Flame Pillar has been activated]
The paralysis of the Cicada Snakes had just worn off and they had started to gather more green liquid in their mouths to launch another wave of poison projectiles at Mako, but before a single drop of the green liquid was produced inside their mouths, the very ground beneath them turned into a pit of fire.
Mako had practiced his skills a lot so that he could level them up and make them stronger and more effective. One of the skills that he had practiced and leveled up the most was the Flame Pillar skill which paired very well with his Electrical Discharge ability.
A tall pillar of flames erupted from the ground, engulfing all 18 Cicada Snakes and burning them all. Once the duration of the skill had elapsed, Mako received several notifications confirming the killing of the beasts and granting Mako the EXP reward.
Mako walked over to the smoking corpses of the Cicada Snakes and started harvesting the crystals from their husky and crunchy remains. Since most of their body had been evaporated and crisped up, taking the crystals out was not a big deal at all.
Mako placed all the crystals inside his backpack along with his other crystals. He was still not able to find time alone from the group and absorb the remaining crystals so that he could regain his lost energy, but he was planning in doing it tonight while he would be on guard duty.
After he was done, he quickly started making his way back to the shelter and updating everyone about the location of the information tablet, but he wasn't even able to take ten steps when a sudden system notification appeared in front of his eyes.
*DING!*
[Threat for Auditory Sensory Overload has been terminated]
[Re-activating User's sense of hearing]
"AHHHH!" Mako screamed as his hearing was turned back on by the system.
