Zalanir quickly latched onto what was going on. He wasn’t sure about others, but with the descend of the Aegis Racer, his attention had been one hundred percent on the big reptile and forgotten about the existence of another target, the one which sowed sorrow for his groupmates in their previous attempt: the Meahli.

  The particular fox had gone missing right after his Sonic Lance stirred the area. No kill notification yet meant that it was still alive, possibly lurking somewhere and had managed to hit him with its illusion when he wasn’t looking.

  The question was when? Was any of what had happened even real?

  His palms started to get wet. Like brooks running down the mountain along some crevices, sweat also sought his stinging bruises and intensified them with its dampness.

  But he ignored these attention-seeking children. Hurt as they did, he had a bigger problem to tend to.

  As the creature having its name reserved for the dungeon, there was no way it could be a simple matter to deal with. Ioviann and Shinnya had given him enough warning about this one-eyed fox, which was an expert in illusory magic. They could blur the border between the two worlds, making it so real that the victim wouldn’t be able to tell them apart and thus be trapped for a long time. The illusion itself caused no physical harm, but indulging for an extended period would mess with one’s mentality.

  Not to mention all the danger from other creatures or meahli themselves. A tale as old as time was the meahli guiding its victim toward death traps, or turning one adventurer against another. The latter would require two meahlis working together, or one strong fox capable of charming more than one victim at the same time.

  Luckily for the adventurers here that such a strong meahli was usually late C-grade, and it was rare for a large group of meahlis to leave The Oasis of Misfortune at once and together. If they did, the balance of this Meahladh dungeon would be destroyed, and none would dawdle around here looking for adventurers.

  Zalanir stayed crouched in place, pretending to examine and worry about this Wanyi. No doubt the meahli was still around, he needed to figure out how to break the illusion first before drawing further attention.

  It was as if he came back to the bat cave again, with sight be damned again and hearing became the saving grace, except this time the noise was a steroid compared to the muted, eerie, and visual-less sensation back then.

  His hands kept on shaking Wanyi, but his ears were following the breath on his left. Faint and somewhat irregular. Which one, one of his groupmates or the fox? Definitely not the Aegis Racer. Its hissing and slurping sound were never that tame.

  He shifted his body to the other side of Wanyi, angling so that he wasn’t crouching between her and the target. This should work.

  “Hey, Shinnya. Wake up! We’re in trouble!” He unleashed a series of taps on Wanyi’s face and her shoulder while focusing on a particular spot several meters ahead. Not over ten, probably six to eight meters. Wind Rush would bring him there in an instant, he just had to hope that no obstacles were standing between them.

  As expected, no reply. If it was any of the other three, they would’ve reacted to his wrong call already. The main fight was further away, so either this was the meahli, or someone had retreated here and was in meditation. If it was the latter, well, sucked for them, but then he would still get a major lead in the information department. On the other hand, he had a high chance of breaking out of this illusion on his own, the odds he would take gladly every time.

  Wasting no time, with wind empowering his feet, Zalanir charged forward and called upon a Hurukele Whirlwind right on the spot. Unlike the all other times where he retreated right after, he zeroed in to the muffled-turned-rushed intake of breath within arm’s length, trying not to lose its trace among the raging vortex currently taking shape.

  Creeeee!

  Gotcha! A tiny flash of relief crossed his mind when he heard the sound. Not a teammate. The bet had paid off.

  He fired sound bolts in the direction of the snarl. The spot was empty visually, but he trusted his ears. This was basically semi point blank, there was no way none would hit.

  Creeee!

  Right there, three steps to his left, right on a perfectly normal patch of dirt. He jumped up, conjuring a large pane of pure energy mid-air, and slammed it down toward the enemy using his whole body. A bump and a yelp right before the pane crashed onto the earth signaled that he got it.

  Now was the test of endurance.

  Wind sliced his arms, legs, face, and basically everything. The howling vortex was formed by his own mana, but it made no bias whatsoever for its creator. In the middle of an artificial, yet very real nature anger, nothing was spared.

  His newly bought robe jerked toward every direction, flapping and sending wave and wave of bata bata sound to his own ears. A rock knocked onto the bridge of his nose, as if it was a deliberate punch from a hater. Warm liquid crawled out of his nostril, but they never made it to his mouth. Together with the mucus, seemed like it had flown toward a new home already.

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  Where? None could tell. Or at least he couldn’t. Pain was ravaging his body due to all the scratches, gashes, or numerous wounds he had contracted, or would continue to in the next few seconds. If there were a Guinness World Record for the number of injuries a person received during a short moment, he would for sure be a prime candidate.

  Though he wished this could be it. Physical wounds only, that were. No, he was tortured from another source of assault at the moment: sound. He had never realized this, since this was the first time he was staying inside a max power Hurukele Whirlwind, but the volume here compared to the edge was night and day. It wasn’t just one to five, more like one to twenty.

  Sound Sense had allowed him to pick up this particular magic, but it turned against him in this very situation. His main affinity was sound-raping his own tympanic membrane, like an army funneling into the main gate of the opposing castle. They slashed, cleaved, whipped, trying to bring down the pesky doorway standing in the way.

  Would it hold? He didn’t know. He wanted to lift his hands up to cover his ears, but he couldn’t move them against the raging wind. Perhaps not investing in Strength had now come back to bite his ass.

  The whirlwind growled, but he stood his ground. He had to. His groupmates were battling the Aegis Racer somewhere — hopefully winning — so it was him on his own to deal with the meahli. This wasn’t the time to give in to the suffering yet. Sleep would come later, and he was sure when it came, it would be the sweetest pleasure ever, but not now. The fox was still up, its wailing was still surfacing here and there among this mess. There was no way he would lose to a fox. He refused to believe it.

  Then, with no prior warning, like glass under pressure, his vision cracked and shattered. No, he didn’t lose his eyes; they were still functional, even though they were crying for him to close them down. Instead, an invisible hand was peeling back layer after layer, revealing the true reality underneath.

  Still the silvery, placid cold of the mine, but where previously was an empty spot now lay sprawled a red ball of fur — no longer the lustrous red, its skin the clay of the Philippe-Chatrier the two finalists left behind after their epic final. Its brushy tail curled inward, four limbs lost under its hiccuping body. As if noticing his gaze, or perhaps due to the break of its illusory magic, it looked up, the two sleepy eyes, which were on the verge of shutting down, widened and glistered a pink hue.

  On the spur of the moment, Zalanir jerked all the sound toward the small fox, wanting nothing but stopping whatever the meahli was about to do. With both of them on the last leg, whatever that pink gleam was couldn’t be good. This was what he had learned to speed up the channel of Sonic Lance, but the skill would be too slow, so he improvised, or rather, desperately improvised.

  His body was too hurt and exhausted enduring all the wind assaults to move an inch, and any skills in his arsenal would still need a primed phase of some sort — even Adaptability Bolt. No, he needed something constant, and he chose sound.

  In the middle of this wrathful vortex, sound existed everywhere, and they moved fast. Instantly, rather. He couldn’t think of anything too complex at the moment, so he went with a simple imagination. The fox was lying inside an unstable, shapeless sound cage, so he just had to bring down the structure to bury it.

  No second thought, just action.

  Like a bomb being set off, the fox’s spot exploded, dismantling the scrawny body into hundreds of pieces. No scream, no twist, and no attempt to escape. The only recognizable —somewhat intact — part was one retina still flashing dull pink hue, preparing for what would never come. The blast arrived without warning and left behind a fractured dead fox, which likely had no idea how its death came to be.

  His desperate attempt worked! Outperformed, even!

  Adding to his surprise, there were two other things as well, one a tiny red marble being blown up by the wind immediately and flown to god-knows-where, and one a green trace levitating right above the fox’s last spot.

  Zalanir smiled. If he was to look at his face in a mirror right now, no doubt it could be a horrid image. He had gulped down his blood and bile and whatever was still clinging onto his throat many times already, and even that wasn’t enough to prevent at least four times he was unable to suppress them. The exact number didn’t matter. And then, the same precious red liquid had also flooded down from myriad clefts on his face, which, because of him thinking about them at this moment, all the cuts flared up their pain to let him know that this wasn’t the situation for a smile.

  But he still did, because the primary object of his trip down the dungeon was floating right there. The awakening of Cokhi might’ve made this achievement slightly less enjoyable, but still memorable. All the previous souls were kinda there for him to capture. None came as the direct result of his killing effort, and it left him unsatisfied.

  He had seen Verizss’ia killed into an ant colony to hunt for the queen’s soul and succeeded. Today, he accomplished the same thing. The first of many to come.

  There was no need to physically come there and trick the soul anymore. He was no longer the guy clueless about how to activate the skill back in the cave with the soul toddler perching on top of the summoning altar; here he already had the lantern fully functional.

  With a mental command, his head became like a vacuum cleaner, and despite the soul’s initial struggle, he took no time to catch and throw it onto its own section, separating from the curious gaze of a certain crocosaurus.

  “Your new neighbor. Help me study it. I will come back soon.” He left a quick message and returned to the real world right away.

  Hurukele Whirlwind was in its last phase. The wind carried around the musty smell of dirt, a bit of a nauseous feeling, and the taste of victory. He felt like he could grab all the sounds, cup them in his hands like fireflies, and witnessed their triumphant laps within.

  He shakingly lowered his legs, bent forward and touched the cold-but-not-too-cold earth with his right palm, exhaled a deep breath to allow his body a moment to stabilize, angled his body to be as low as possible, and then let it drop.

  Harder and more painful than he had thought, but alas, now his head, back, butt, swelling heels, and plenty of other touchpoints were finally resting on the floor.

  You have slain [Meahli — Level 73]

  Level advances to 56

  …

  Level advances to 58

  Three whole levels from the fight? Worth it!

  He ignored the combat noise rippling from afar, relaxed, and in no time, allowed sleep to take over.