“Been a while, but still just heaps of carcasses everywhere.” Seseguri said, both hands wrapping behind his head.

  Wanyi slammed her shield on the floor three times, causing three golden spheres to appear, each unfurling, expanding outward in a sphere and lighting the area until the darkness of the chamber consumed them. Thanks to the light, Zalanir caught the sight of two other entrances in the opposing far distance, their mouths the shape of a lopsided archway.

  Wafting in the air was a distinct rotten smell mixing with something being fermented, reminding Zalanir of mountains of trash racking up day in, day out beside the river back to his apartment on Earth, which was forever being promised but never tackled by the authorities.

  Though here, the sensation was a bit more bearable, perhaps courtesy of the almighty System and the hidden stupefaction of some stats. No idea which was which, but he also had no intention of finding out.

  “Now, you mentioned I could borrow your fire? I guess here’s the part where I come looking on my own.” He turned to Shinnya, whose hand was hovering around her nose and wrinkles rooting on her forehead. This made him appreciate her even more for agreeing to come here.

  With a flick of the hand, she pulled over the hides of some monsters, one of which belonged to a pangolin with more than half of its scales already missing. Then, she incinerated them together, and with some sort of … unsightly display of ambient magic, she turned them into a makeshift burning torch, with the handle being a beast’s limb from a nearby heap.

  “There you go,” she said, handing him the light source he was asking for.

  “Thanks!”

  Walking among this place was indeed an unpleasant feeling, but Zalanir trod on. All for the sake of finding another soul. It could be a steal if he got one. Even Ioviann wasn’t sure when pointed him to this place, only citing “maybe with luck”.

  Small rats and cockroaches scattered whenever he came to the foot of a chest-high heap of carcasses, displacing and misaligning some remnants at the bottom. Though these same disgusting but too-weak-to-pose-a-threat-to-him creatures made their way back and enwreathed the pillars of corpses almost right away after he shifted his attention elsewhere. The sound of their soft paws crawling and rattling together with some soft-pitched chitters produced a mellow, balmy verse — the kind served as the background to traditional folk ballads his grandpa used to play on his archaic radio.

  Zalanir stopped at one such heap. It was shorter and smaller than some he had passed by, but somewhere in it leaked a “scent” that caught his attention. And so he dug. Not with his own hands — even though he didn’t really mind, as he had seen and done worse, especially after being taken over by the crocosaurus’s soul back at the cultist lair — but the brown staff Djaxinz left him with.

  Pangolins, mutilated rats, snake’s hides, wrinkled old serpent skin from ecdysis made up the majority of what he had dredged up, but then, he paused after a human arm surfaced and slid down near his foot. Only the part under the elbow remained intact, with the flesh around the cut being ravaged like muddy swamp pools after a brawl for supremacy. Still looking fresh, so perhaps from one of the recent adventurers.

  He spent a bit of time contemplating and examining whether the arm was what he was looking for, but turned out, it wasn’t. Thus, he kept on digging. Every two to three strokes with the staff revealed an angry rat or a cluster of cockroaches scrambling away. At first, he still identified them out of caution, but after realizing their highest level was only 18, he ignored them altogether.

  The clump of carcasses almost collapsed on him after he made a dent too big in its base, but he managed to grab the torch and sidestep the mini-avalanche without any physical issues. The reek of carcasses buried deep inside took the opportunity instantly by marching out in bulk, striking him with an invisible suffocating attack that gave him no opportunity to defense.

  After several coughs and waves of hands to displace the pesky scent, Zalanir stabilized himself, and that was when a broken sword rooted among the trash came to his attention. Not because of its quality, but for the tip of the jagged edge.

  Zalanir pulled it over using ambient magic, mimicking what Shinnya did earlier with her fire magic. Telekinesis like this was so convenient. If he could increase the range and the strength of these invisible sound threads, perhaps he could use them to affect physical objects in combat. He had managed to hurl them all together to finish the meahli before, so who could say this wasn’t doable? Practice — he needed more to make it viable.

  With the sword in hand, now he could confirm that this was indeed what was calling out to him sensationally. Or to be precise, the soul lingering on the dried blood stain did. Similar to the soul toddler he had caught on the summoning altar, this one didn’t seem to be full. Its energy wavered and fragmented, like the light a fishing boat struggled to keep in the middle of a storm.

  Despite that, when he tried to absorb the soul over, it fought back. In a similar fashion to the soul toddler, it gripped hard onto the parched blood remnant, while at the same time gnawing at the pulling force he was exerting.

  If this was still him back then, he would have to nudge, trick, and then slowly guide the soul inside his mind in order to capture it. But here, with a simple mental command, he increased the pulling force, giving it no chance to resist. If only it were his first ever, then perhaps he would play nice, but here, he would just be the overlord bludgeoning the farmers into giving up their estates.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  A gray soul was floating in its own cell next to the meahli’s. Its shape was of a human, albeit with only the bare ribcage upward, with two fists continuously punching the cell wall. Reminding him of the djinn in the One Thousand and One Nights collection. Opposite it, in a cell ten times bigger, the soul lion also did the same — albeit a bit more extreme by slamming its massive body onto the prison’s frame — as if guiding the newcomer how to do it properly.

  Zalanir projected his own avatar next to the main window. Right after his appearance, the new soul stopped its defiance, turned toward him, and surprisingly, spoke.

  “A human?” Its voice reminded him of the old man living next door, who often came over to play xiangqi with his gramps.

  “The same for me. Thought you would be a pangolin or a rat, as you are buried along with all the monsters,” he said.

  “Your energy signature suggests C-grade, how? Your soul … how come it’s so strong?”

  “That’s what I want to know as well,” Cokhi chimed in, floating right in front of Zalanir’s spot. Maybe he should move the crocosaurus cell to another position. Letting it stay right under the main window would just invite the bastard to do the same thing again.

  “Well, I’m not catching you to have you question my power. Tell me about you. Who are you, and how did you end up in the Bone Hill?” He shot the ball back to the newcomer, though the remark just now about him being strong was pleasing to the ears.

  No words came through from the gray soul. It had no eyes, but he was sure it was assessing him and the lantern. On the far side, the soul lion continued its antics, like a baby raging and crying to call out to their parents.

  A thought popped inside his head. With a flick of the fingers, he reshaped the prisons, creating a tunnel connecting the new captive to the soul lion. A brief pause registered, but then, the beast snarled and pounced, crossing the main chamber toward its prey like an unstoppable avalanche.

  “Wait! I will talk!” The gray soul shot up to the ceiling, scratching the top of the tunnel with its feeble hands.. He heard no sound, but the visual was captivating enough that he could picture a zombie clawing onto the door, trying to reach the frightened prey. But if the zombie could have a chance with the door, here, he would reward the human soul with freedom immediately if it could even make a small dent in the lantern ceiling.

  After the soul lion passed over the halfway mark, the gray soul screamed, “Stop it! Can’t we just talk in peace? I’m not even offending you or anything.”

  Zalanir pretended to not hear it.

  One-fourth of the distance left, when the beast was about five jumps away, the human soul yelled, “I’m Josef, was betrayed and killed a year ago, peak C-grade, lived beyond the meahli oasis.”

  Zalanir waited until the last moment to conjure a cell to protect the gray soul from the soul lion’s charge. The biggest soul inside the lantern slammed its massive body onto the box, its claws poked in-between the bars, reaching just an arm short of the shivering human soul in the middle. Then, it turned toward him and growled, as if commanding him to get rid of the pesky box safeguarding its prey.

  “Depending on how you answer, I will decide to feed you to it or not, so you better be sincere. You mentioned the meahli oasis, is that the Oasis of Misfortune?” Zalanir ignored the frenzied soul lion and focused on Josef — it had to be a male name, right?

  “Yes.” The man kept swiveling his head back and forth, as the predator right outside of the cage had been jumping around and assaulting, each ram shaking the frame violently.

  “There are people living there? How many?” Now wasn’t this interesting? This was in line with one of the rumors Shinnya had mentioned. Perhaps it was no rumor, after all.

  “Just me. I’m getting trapped there after battling past the meahlis.”

  “You are an adventurer?”

  “Correct.”

  The man did mention he was a peak C-grade, so not impossible for him to go past the area, but didn’t Shinnya say that it had been a while since anyone broke through? Perhaps this man was in the last group that managed to complete the feat, or Shinnya was wrong with her information.

  “Can you recall the beast? I have answered your—”

  “I’m not finished yet. What’s on the other side?”

  “Nothing, just a dead end,” the man said, his attention continued to peg onto the soul lion, which had stopped slamming idiotically onto the cell and instead only floating around now. Though Zalanir had no doubt if the protecting cell wasn’t there, Josef would be chewed up in mere seconds.

  “You mentioned being betrayed. By whom?”

  “A bastard in my group who wanted to rob me of my belongings.”

  “Okay. Anything else?” Zalanir asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If that’s all, then it’s time to say goodbye.” Zalanir flicked his finger once again, imprisoning the soul lion while creating another tunnel leading Josef to Cokhi. He got zero useful information from all the talking, so no reason to keep this man alive. Better feed him to the crocosaurus and searched for another soul. Perhaps the next one would be more useful.

  “Kaka, good. Stay there, little one.” Cokhi raced forward. Despite being the smallest part of its whole, the green soul was still in a league of its own compared to the adventurer Zalanir just caught.

  “Wait! Why? I have answered all your questions!” Without the little cell protecting, Josef flew upward once again, hands punching the ceiling non-stop.

  The hustle was worth applauding, Zalanir had to give the man that. Perhaps after one million tries, it would work out?

  “And? Tell me why should I spare you?”

  “You are a demon. Don’t you have any benevolence toward a fellow adventurer?” Josef plunged down, hands digging into the floor. Cokhi was almost on top of the man now.

  Zalanir didn’t even bother to answer. He had a soft spot for the meahli soul, not just because it was the first soul he had purposely fought and caught, but also because of its useful illusory magic. As for this man? Nothing but a dead soul. Instead of wasting mana and time getting to know what the man could do, he would rather fatten the crocosaurus up.

  He was about to return to the outside to continue his search when a shrieking voice rang up from inside the lantern.

  “Wait! If you can help me kill a bastard, I will tell you the secret beyond the oasis.”

  We all have 24 hours a day. Thank you for spending some of that with me!