Chapter 356: The Teardrop Ripens [3] All three managed to dodge or deflect her initial assault through their specialized abilities, but Lola had accomplished her objective. She now stood between them and the teardrop fruit, her position forcing them to go through her to reach their prize. "Back off now, and you live," Lola stated coldly, her voice carrying absolute authority. "Continue this fight, and you die here. I’m offering you one chance to walk away with your lives." The three beasts hesitated for only a moment. They had reached this critical stage through decades or centuries of effort and patience. The teardrop represented their best chance at advancement to the peak of grandmaster rank, possibly even breaking through to legendary tiers that few creatures ever achieved. Giving up now, when the prize was so close, felt impossible despite the overwhelming threat she represented. The turtle, cat, and parrot exchanged glances laden with meaning. Some unspoken communication passed between them as they simultaneously reached the same conclusion. Their only realistic chance lay in cooperation rather than continued individual competition. They immediately abandoned their attacks on each other and turned their combined attention toward Lola, forming a temporary alliance born of desperate necessity. The three grandmaster-rank beasts believed that coordinating their assault might have enough combined power to overwhelm even a peak grandmaster opponent. The turtle created earth constructs that rushed toward Lola from the ground. The cat phased through her defenses to strike from unexpected angles. The parrot bombarded her position from above with concentrated energy attacks. The coordinated assault was genuinely impressive, demonstrating why these creatures had survived to their current ranks. But unknown to the three beasts, this response was exactly what Lola had been planning and hoping for. She gave Noah a barely perceptible signal, a slight gesture that would have been invisible to anyone not specifically watching for it. Noah moved immediately, his enhanced attributes allowing him to accelerate with speed that rivaled low grandmaster-rank practitioners despite his official adept ranking. While all attention remained focused on the spectacular battle between Lola and the three grandmaster beasts, he moved sneakily through the chaos, using the chaos and smoke from burning vegetation as cover. The clearing had erupted into absolute pandemonium as Lola engaged all three opponents simultaneously, her flames creating walls of fire that served dual purposes. They defended against incoming attacks while also creating visual barriers that obscured Noah’s approach to the World Tree. He moved slowly but surely, his spiritual sight allowing him to navigate through the chaotic mana flows and avoid detection by the distracted combatants. Every eye remained locked on Lola’s spectacular display of power, making Noah’s subtle approach virtually invisible despite occurring in plain sight. The teardrop fruit hung just above him now, glowing with concentrated power that made his senses ache from proximity to such pure magical energy. Just a few more meters and he could reach it while the grandmaster beasts remained completely focused on eliminating what they perceived as the only real threat to their prize.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Just as Noah was about to close his fingers around the glowing teardrop fruit, he felt the wind particles nearby behave in an unusual pattern. The air currents shifted in ways that didn’t match the ambient chaos of the ongoing battle, creating disturbances that his wind manipulation sensitivity immediately registered as wrong. His senses screamed danger at him with such intensity that he reacted on pure instinct. Noah leapt backward, creating immediate distance from the fruit just as something materialized in the exact space where he had been standing a fraction of a second earlier. A lizard-like creature with mottled scales appeared suddenly, its extraordinarily long tongue extending toward where Noah’s hand had been moments ago. The beast was approximately six feet long with a body built for stealth and assassination rather than direct combat. Its eyes were cold and calculating, showing intelligence that matched the other grandmaster guardians. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎 Noah stared at the creature in shock as it vanished once more, its form blurring and disappearing so completely that even his spiritual sight struggled in tracking it. The lizard’s invisibility wasn’t simple at all. ’An invisible grandmaster-rank lizard?!’ Noah thought with alarm, immediately reassessing the entire tactical situation. ’This isn’t s good development. He just exposed my position and ruined my plans.’ He didn’t waste time on shock, instead immediately launching whirling blades of compressed wind toward the area where the lizard had been. The technique served dual purposes: potentially damaging the hidden threat while also using the wind currents to map its position through disturbance patterns. His eyes darted to the teardrop fruit, which remained hanging from its branch, still unclaimed despite all the violence erupting around it. The lizard had somehow gotten within striking distance without any of them detecting its approach. The creature had likely been hiding under their awareness the entire time, using its invisibility to remain undetected while the more obvious threats focused on each other. Or perhaps it had only recently moved into close proximity, timing its approach to coincide with maximum chaos when detection would be most difficult. Either explanation made sense for an ambush predator of this caliber. Unable to see the lizard with normal or even spiritual vision, Noah began actively trying to feel the wind particles in his immediate area, using his level 15 wind manipulation to create a sensory net that could detect disturbances in air flow. Any physical object moving through space, regardless of invisibility, would displace air molecules in detectable patterns. The technique required intense concentration, forcing him to divide his attention between maintaining awareness of the larger battle and tracking microscopic changes in wind currents around him. His doubled comprehension speed made the complex multitasking possible where it would have been impossible before the enhancement. The other grandmaster beasts had finally noticed Noah’s dangerous proximity to the prize, their attention momentarily pulled from Lola’s overwhelming assault. The ethereal cat immediately attempted to disengage from the fight, her translucent form beginning to phase toward the tree and the vulnerable human who had somehow penetrated so close to the teardrop.