Zalanir woke up to a pulsing warmth of something like a fireplace and the soft whistling of the wind. His mind was clear and fresh, but the rest of his body was suffering bittersweetly. He wrinkled and flattened the face skin; they hurt around the temples, other areas simply ached and itched. The same went for his palms, albeit more like they were being poked by small needles with a bit of stiffness down there.

  He opened his eyes to a shadowy ceiling lurking outside of a flickering orange-red aura. Fire. Which meant Shinnya. And there she was, sitting beside him; the left hand wrapped around her waist while the other hung loosely to the side. Her head titled to the left, resting on the dark brown wall. No major injuries as far as he could see, but the craggy red robe smearing with dried blood suggested some hard battles.

  Only Shinnya was with him. The shimmering light from the small flame floating and sustaining itself next to her, coupled with the stillness of the dungeon confirmed his thought that Wanyi and Seseguri weren’t here.

  Were they still inside the Diorite Mine? He was pleased to awake to this peace, but now he wasn’t sure if his groupmates had won against the Aegis Racer.

  Wait! I can just check the notification … There it is. He blew the concern out.

  You have slain [Aegis Racer — Level 84]

  No new level, but the fact that he still got credited for this was more than enough. He contributed nothing, after all.

  So they were likely scouting or resting somewhere, perhaps trying to farm additional monster cores. Which was a good thing.

  He stood up, motioning his body parts around to remove the rigidness while avoiding making unnecessary noise. After five minutes or so, he was back to a functional state. A quick glance at the top right of his viewport where the three resource bars were docking there showed the yellow bar of stamina in full, while health and mana hovered around the 60% and 50% mark, respectively.

  Must’ve been several hours already …

  With nothing urgent to do, he sat down across from where Shinnya was and started meditating immediately while projecting his attention toward the new addition of the small family inside his mind.

  “Took you a while.” The voice of a certain crocosaurus filled his ears right when he appeared outside of the still-magnificent-no-matter-how-many-times-he-had-seen-it lantern.

  “Well, things happened. Anything noteworthy about it?” Zalanir observed the stationary red soul in its own cell. For some reason, the color had changed to mirror its shiny fur in the physical world. No complaining though, as it was easier this way to tell them apart instead of everything the same green hue as the crocosaurus.

  “Too weak. Why did you even bother capturing this guy?”

  “You can tell its power? How weak are we talking about here?” He chose to ignore the second part entirely. No point in explaining everything.

  “Nothing special. A weak C-grade — early or mid, I suppose? — with the main affinity being illusory and some mix of earth and dark, both being elementary.”

  “How could you tell this? I have never seen it cast any earth or dark spell.”

  “Better work on your ambient magic,” Cokhi sneered.

  “So you are saying that I can identify, based on the look of someone, which affinities they have? Isn’t this … too handy in choosing your opponent?” Zalanir asked.

  “Is common knowledge this poor in the First Ring? No wonder why it’s the place for a bunch of weaklings.” Cokhi continued its insults. “Listen, we can tell it somewhat based on how sophisticated the target’s affinities were. The higher their understanding of the concept, the higher your own mastery of ambient magic required to tell it apart. Under normal circumstances, you can only get a sense of their main affinity, as they basically breathe it all the time. But for a mere C-grade in its weakened, underdeveloped soul state? I must be the biggest idiot in this universe to fail that.”

  “Hey, stop with all of those shade throwing. You want to collaborate or not?” He had been ignoring everything, but this bastard had just kept going on non-stop. Was this how all the almighty of the Second Ring behaved? A bunch of braggarts?

  Cokhi had no mouth, but he swore it was sniggering right now.

  But this was good. Its power and mind state might not be back to full power yet considering the other two bigger parts of its soul were still lying there, but even this common knowledge of an A-grade from the Second Ring was already a gold mine for him. Had to find a way to harvest all of this.

  “Anything else?” Zalanir asked.

  “You can get rid of the barrier, or its own jail, and just hand it here. Its best use is to become my nutrition.”

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  “Yeah, over my dead body. Try to recover on your own. Don’t just rely on me for energy.”

  Even though his mana wasn’t overflowing at the moment, he still threw each of them 10% of his maximum. Ignoring the crocosaurus, the meahli needed a bit of guidance, and after absorbing his mana, two half-sticks had trudged out, mimicking the two front limbs of the red fox. Perhaps it wouldn’t be long until he could experiment what it could do.

  He was meditating and under no danger at the moment, and the stronger these souls got, the safer he would be anyway, so not like this was a waste or something. Once the meahli soul came back to life, hopefully he would have another useful tool in his arsenal. Cokhi could have its opinion, but he believed in the potential of illusory magic.

  His meditation wouldn’t last long — he got about 7% of his full mana bar in total — as he had picked up approaching footsteps and Seseguri’s grumble. Still, he was surprised to see the radius of Sound Sense had expanded this large. No doubt the quiet feature of this dungeon played a factor in it, but based on how long it took for his groupmates to be back, the area covered by the skill had become at least one hundred meters now.

  “Oh, he’s up? Hey Shinnya, wake up!”

  Zalanir opened his eyes and saw Seseguri poking Shinnya’s shoulder, whereas Wanyi was shooting him a bright smile. None of them showed any sight of major injuries.

  “You keep bringing on the surprise, don’t you? Taking on a meahli all by yourself, that’s a feat worth celebrating!” The paladin took down her helmet and started finger-combing some naughty bangs. He almost splurted out a “don’t, they look good,” but managed to hold his mouth back from running wild. The last time he commented about her hair having to piggyback some pangolin scales, he had been met with a fiery gaze which made him question if she ever needed a bonfire to boil water. It was as if Wanyi was another person altogether when it came to her beloved black, long hair, and he shouldn’t ever entertain referring to it in any shape or form.

  “Just a desperate attempt that somehow ended up working in my favor.” He returned her smile with one of his own.

  “Oh, you’re good now? Anything weird or uncomfortable?” This time, it was Shinnya who addressed him with her concerned eyes.

  “Functional, haha. Sleeping helps a lot. By the way, how long has it been? I saw the kill notification. Good job taking down the baddie snake!” Zalanir kept his smile on without any trouble.

  “About five hours. With you passing out like that, we couldn’t really remain inside the mine, so we pulled out.” Wanyi brought up her hair ends and sniffed. Now they looked like an exquisite river once again, streaming and waving along with her hand movements.

  “Eh, sorry. I tried to stay up, but …”

  Shinnya stood up, giving her robe a small beatdown with taps and swipes. “Why saying sorry? Thanks to you, we had the chance to settle an old grudge. Honestly, I was glad back then knowing it was you, not Wanyi, who was the target of the illusion. No harm, just that we faced off better having a tank rather than three damage dealers, although both you and Seseguri better be classified as volatile rather than purely offensive.

  “By the way, how would you break the meahli’s illusion? Last time I was trapped inside, I couldn’t really tell anything, and even attacked Wanyi when she came to help.”

  “I’m curious too, mind sharing?” Seseguri chimed in.

  Zalanir gave them a breakdown of what he did, minus some details about the other Wanyi and the soul in the end. That was when he recalled an important aspect.

  “The core! The wind had blown it away. Had any of you picked it up?” he asked, eyeing his groupmates for a miracle, but their startle implied bad news.

  “Damn, how could we miss it?” Seseguri’s voice was like a player missing a clear cross-court winner after successfully pushing the opponent back five meters behind the baseline on one half.

  “Just unfortunate. That’s a potential 150 coins loss, so 35 for each of us.” Wanyi laughed in uneven intervals, shaking her head.

  “Though your sound magic was a direct counter to the meahli, wasn’t it? Never thought it’s that useful.” Shinnya changed the topic again.

  “You know what, it evened out in the end. We don’t have to use this incense, after all.” Seseguri fiddled with the popped-up brick-red incense.

  The loss of the meahli core was soon a throwaway matter after some jokes, and the group entered a quiet period where none spoke anything. Everyone just minded their own little stuff, with Seseguri cleaning his saw blades with the help of Wanyi while Shinnya leaning onto the wall and staring at god-knows-where.

  Even though Zalanir had already captured the meahli soul, he still wanted to take a look at the Bone Hill. Who knew, maybe he could luck out there and score another soul for his collection.

  “So, what’s the next plan? If nothing, then can I suggest a detour?” He brought the topic up to his group. After all, he still needed a light source to explore the dungeon. Having to cling to the wall and projecting everything using his ears only like what happened inside the bat cave? No, thanks!

  “Now that you mention this, hey Seseguri, Wanyi,” Shinnya called out. “Zalanir had told me before that he wanted to take a look at the Bone Hill. Mind to tag along with us?”

  “Sure! Why not? How about you, Wan?”

  “I’m down. It’s close by, anyway. But what do you look for there? Anything special?” Wanyi’s attention was still on the two blades in her hand, which she was scrubbing using a beige microfiber cloth, but no doubt the target of the question was Zalanir.

  “Just a small task for a friend. Don’t worry, nothing of danger. Will be quick when we get there.” Zalanir made up a lie on the fly. The existence of the lantern was his biggest secret, and even though he liked everyone, no way he would share it.

  “Haha, not like that place is dangerous to begin with. Okay, let’s go!” Seseguri rose up.

  “Erm, not right away. Can we wait until I fill up my resources? Probably in four to five hours.” Zalanir smiled wryly.

  “You’re still that hurt?” Shinnya threw his way a worrying look.

  “I bet he is. His face is still a bit pale. Tanking a full whirlwind like he did shouldn’t be a simple matter, right, Ses?” Wanyi chimed in.

  “Tsk!” The Carrier sat down, pulling out the saw blades and starting to clean them again. Though this time, the man pulled away his weapons when Wanyi stretched her hands out, which prompted a hearty laugh from the paladin.

  Ignoring those three for now, Zalanir focused on meditating, all the while also playing with ambient magic in his own little circle.