“… Not now,” Finn said after some silence. “After we kill the Baron.”

“Mkay~” Zelestria smiled happily. “Just remember, the longer you stall, the less Souls that get transferred to me since your body is consuming it all, fufu~”

With that, she sent Finn back to the real world, where he woke up. While he was asleep, his head had unconsciously rested on Iris’s, resulting in Jim looking at the two of them with a smug grin while chuckling mischievously. It made them look like a couple.

Finn quickly straightened his head and listened for any signal that the other team had returned. The slight movement caused Iris, who was a light sleeper, to wake up as well, rubbing her eyes cutely and shaking her head.

“Mm… how long did I sleep for…”

“Not long,” Finn replied, having calculated the number of minutes he spent in the reality rift. Two hours at best.

“E-Eh? Finn?” Iris immediately sat up straight as well, cheeks flushed pink with embarrassment.

“… What?”

“I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to, erm… lean on you like that…”

“… Don’t worry about it.”

“That said… where is the other team…? Are they still not done with their side?” Iris wondered aloud, changing the topic.

“Relax,” a voice cut in — Pang Zi. “Who do you think we are? Sure, we came back a little later than you guys, but that’s only because we had the harder boss.”

“Rampager…” Tian Long muttered exhaustedly. “Remember who saved us when we were about to fall to our deaths…?”

“R-Right. My bad. But you can’t deny… fighting that Boss was one annoying process.”

“I agree,” Yun Xin said timidly. “It was difficult because we didn’t have an Oculus Angelica user on our side…”

“Oculus Angelica…?” Iris murmured, curious about her own power being brought up here.

“Well, since we’re resting for a bit anyway, I might as well tell you about it,” Tian Long said with a sigh. “You see, what happened was…”

– A Few Hours Earlier (Flashback) –

The Big Five of the Thousand Dragons Sect descended down the corridor for the swooping falcon side. It was quite narrow and lit up by the same white lotus-shaped lanterns that were a common sight in this Paracausal Realm, just like what Squadron 154 encountered.

Rather than a jumping puzzle, however, the Thousand Dragons Sect’s members were faced with a maze — but it wasn’t just any maze, unfortunately.

The group could see the doorway on the other end of the room — but they couldn’t reach it by merely walking forward. There were invisible walls in place, forcing the group to navigate their way through an unseeable maze.

Pang Zi, being Rampager, attempted to bash his way through the walls, but that didn’t work even with his enhanced physical strength. Burning, freezing — nothing worked. If it were a living being, Si Shen could’ve simply inflicted death on it using his Deathmaster Angelica, but it definitely was not a living being, rendering this plan useless.

In the end, the group was forced to use Pang Zi as a guinea pig to take the lead and slowly make their way across the maze. Qi Ling froze the ground as they went so they could retrace their steps easier, but that didn’t lessen the amount of times Pang Zi ended up smashing his face headfirst into a wall at all.

With an Oculus Angelica, this would’ve been much easier. Invisible walls meant nothing in front of the Eye of Omnipotence.

By the time they finally made it across the annoying maze, Pang Zi had several bumps on his forehead and a bunch of bruises that hadn’t even formed yet.

But that was just the easy part.

Next came the Boss — its name was Sydia, Bound to Dar’ Talor (not to be confused with Synia, whom Squadron 154 fought and killed).

This was a Phantom that had morphed into a large spider, crawling up and down the walls of the boss room. It spat out some sort of invisible gas-state venom that messed with the group’s minds and rendered them unable to see the creature, but that was about it.

Because it moved in a set pattern to try and sneak attack the group, all the Big Five had to do was determine this pattern and hit it despite being unable to see. Sure, this took a long time to get down — hence why they arrived later than Squadron 154 — but it wasn’t all too difficult. Just annoying.

Little did they know, this encounter could’ve been easily beaten if they had an Oculus Angelica user. Within the maze, for example, there were actually symbols on the ceiling marking the right path — circling fish, swimming fish, skewered fish, leftward fish, and rightward fish, in that order.

And that wasn’t all. In the boss room, these same five symbols would light up every time Sydia was about to spit out her venom. If they could avoid all 5 attacks before her venom ran out, they would be able to see the boss and end this encounter a lot sooner. In the first venom spit, all the group had to do was head to the circling fish symbol. In the second, the swimming fish, and so on.

But alas, they managed to conquer the challenge anyway. In the end, the reward they received from the chest was a staff similar to the one dropped by Synia, except instead of white, this gemstone was black.

“… And that’s about what happened,” Tian Long concluded with a sigh. “It wasn’t an intense or difficult fight by any means. The surprise attacks made were all quite predictable, given all the sound it made.”

‘So if we were to have gone that way, the skill I could’ve stolen from this Synia Ghost would just be the ability to make myself invisible to someone by blinding them with an invisible venom attack. Pretty useless, considering I can simply go invisible directly using the Nightstalker Angelica I obtained from Elder Hua.’

“Heh, things were a lot easier on our side thanks to Ivy,” Octane chuckled proudly. “She did the most work, so she deserved the staff.”

“Ah… thanks…” Iris murmured, uncomfortable with all the attention she was receiving so she cowered behind Finn’s head as she rode on his back.

“Yeah… on our side, we chose to gave it to Claire,” Tian Long said. “She needs it most, given her passive nature.”

“Well, sorry to interrupt, but…” Jim cut in, arms folded. “If yer all rested, let’s get goin’. We ain’t bloody done here just yet, folks.”