Valerie could feel her limbs again as soon as the monster had been disturbed. She looked around and found that instead of her, it was Calista who was now struggling to move. The gaze of the monster was fixed on Calista during that time.
Valerie felt that she had figured it out, the only flaw in the offensive of the monster. She deduced that it was the vision of the monster that had the paralyzing effect and the reason that its target was afflicted with the fear status causing it to hallucinate and be tied down by fear.
Valerie in order to test what she had just determined deliberately created confusion by mobilizing her mana. She created a dust storm in an instant and created a curtain to act as interference between the monster and Calista. If Calista recovered from the paralysis the test could be considered to be a success.
Valerie kept her eyes on Calista and tried to determine whether she was right. As it turned out, she was right but the determination of that answer came with a price that she was unable to pay.
The monster had been joyfully playing with them all this time but this little trick of her displeased her greatly. Her clever attempt to disrupt its meal had the exact opposite effect to what she had been expecting.
The giant faced monster raised its face, opened its mouth wide and produced a soul shaking scream that reverberated in their very souls and shook them up from the inside. All of them spat out blood and Valerie even leaked blood from her ears.
All of them lost their sense of balance and fell on the ground. Their internal gyros had been dismantled temporarily because of the auditory hallucination that the scream had produced. It had rendered them all paralyzed at the same time by shaking every cell in their body.
Dahila threw up as soon as she fell on the ground. The nausea was the least of it. All their internal organs had been shaken badly and the weaker ones were even bleeding internally.
Since the monster had chosen to take an extreme action like this, the only reason could be that it had been fed up with their consistent interference.
The monster made its move once again. This time there was no one to disturb its meal. All the disturbances were lying in front of it. The anger that it had been showing on its face faded and was replaced by that creepy smile once again; the smile that said, "I am going to eat you now."
Valerie was lying weakly on the ground. The earlier scream had been targeted towards her so she had suffered the most harm.
Valerie was only happy that it had been her instead of anyone else. She could not let anything happen to anyone else. It was her responsibility being the strongest of them all.
The large eyes of the monster were sneering at Valerie, as if daring her to try any of her tricks again.
Unlike its previous attempts, this time the monster no longer wanted to enjoy rather it only wanted to eat without all of its antics. Valerie guessed that it was getting impatient since its prey kept running away and was getting increasingly frustrated.
Calista wanted to move but even her finger wouldn't move. She was still unable to relieve herself of the effects of the scream.
She had secretly started to heal herself already and was trying to reach out her hands to get a hold of her bow that was lying very close to her. She wanted to use it to save Valerie from her predicament.
But the speed at which she was recovering the feeling in her body was nowhere close enough for her to save Valerie. There was nothing she could do to prevent that outcome. She could only hope for some kind of miracle.
Valerie on the other hand wasn't worried about herself at all. She was constantly urging Calista with her signals to escape as soon as the monster attacked her.
While the monster had yet to come close to her, she was still free from the fear that it induced in its targets. That was the reason that she still had the sense to convey her thoughts to Calista through the signals.
But as soon as the monster was all that she could see in her field of view, she felt that fear that made all humans lose their minds, the fear of death that was inevitable.
She was so afraid that she had forgotten to even breathe. She was in a state of stasis. She was so overwhelmed that she became incapable of rational thought. In such a state, even if the monster was not staring at her, she still wouldn't have been able to move.
Seeing her in such a state, the monster seemed to be satisfied. It opened its mouth wide with a huge grin plastered on it to swallow her whole like it had done with the S rank mage earlier.
Before the monster could close its mouth, a figure leaped in front of its mouth and used the blood wall to block it from reaching Valerie who was completely defenceless at the moment.
Valerie opened her eyes and noticed that the suppression on her had vanished. The blood wall had created a curtain between her and the monster's eyes. She was free from its debuff.
The one who had saved her this time was none other than Zavier. She did not immediately realize that the Zavier that had saved her was already dead as far as she knew.
The next second it hit her and hit her hard. Her jaw almost dropped and hit the ground very hard from the shock that she was feeling. She wondered how a corpse was capable of moving just like a normal person. There was no way that it was possible but it was already happening in front of her.
Despite her shock, Valerie had already determined that the corpse definitely was that of Zavier since it was still missing the arm that Kyouko had cut off earlier but was unable to understand how it was possible for it to save her at this time.
Zavier on the other hand wasn't feeling too well. He felt that he had been trapped. Not just in body because he was being stared down by the monster, but because he couldn't even take back his own consciousness that he had been using to remotely control his own corpse.
As it turned out, Zavier had been heading towards the girls after taking over the clone with the necromancer system when he had heard the scream of the monster from their direction.
As a precaution, he had taken control of his corpse and had been operating it to get close to the monster so as to avoid dying. But the result was too terrifying. He was unable to withdraw his consciousness. It had been locked in the corpse. Even the clone with the Necromancer system was unable to do anything about it.
Zavier panicked for the very first time ever since the battle had begun with Kyouko. He had never been worried about his own survival even once since he had two more clones to fall back to. The one that was hiding in the closet at home was the safest one and the one with perception system was also available for him to take over. There was no problem even if he died one more time.
But the way that his consciousness was unable to move and change bodies like before in the presence of the giant faced monster scared the wits out of him. His survival depended on him changing bodies. If even his consciousness was affected, there was a high chance that he might not be able to make it out of here alive.
The monster let out another scream indicating his anger on being disturbed yet again. It didn't want to play with the lousy bunch any longer. It opened its mouth in a wide motion and bit down on Zavier who had already been restrained by him. As a result, Zavier was swallowed whole into wherever it was that the food of the monster went.
Zavier's biggest fear had been realized. The consciousness that he was so dependent on to change bodies after death was not shifted to the other clones that he had left behind. Instead it was him who lost connection to all of them. He had been somehow imprisoned inside his own body.
Zavier slowly lost all the feeling in his body after having been devoured by the monster. It was as if the outer layer had been peeled away without even him knowing and only the soul had been left.
He found himself shoved into a dark place that was as dark as the mouth of the deepest abyss. Screams of anguish and pain reverberated all around him, wails and screams seemed to be the endless music in the place yet there was not a single soul to be seen in the vicinity.
Zavier wondered if that was what hell looked like. The tortured souls and the constant screams reminded him of the definition of hell that he had heard about in his previous life. This was exactly the same scenario.
Before he could get used to the screams, the surroundings shifted and he felt as if he was falling. He was in place but the feeling of weightlessness that he was experiencing could not have been more vivid.
As soon as the feeling left him, he found himself in a place that looked like a crowded market place during a sale. Soul upon soul and each more terrified than the last could be seen everywhere his sight could reach.
He found that his surroundings were filled with all kinds of souls who were in constant pain and were screaming out a chorus of their pain and suffering at regular intervals. There were all kinds of human souls. Zavier even saw the man who had been the companion of Kyouko and had been swallowed by the monster before him.
Zavier would have paid more attention to the souls around him had he been able to do so. He felt intense pain in every part of his soul as if someone was pulling it apart from all directions.
As it turned out there really had been phantoms of arms all around him trying to divvy up his soul amongst them. The pain of one's soul being ripped apart was not something that one could imagine without having experienced it for oneself.
Zavier was also learning about it the hard way.
"Tell me how do I get out of here and into another body?"
"Can you hear me?"
"Are you still around?"
…
Zavier tried to contact the system in this place but found that the system was not responding at all no matter how much he called out to it.
Zavier felt that it was this place that had somehow cut off his connection to everything else. Not only the system, but Zavier was also unable to contact any of his clones. It was as if he was not getting any signal reception in the place.
In fact, Zavier had guessed right. The connection with his system had also been cut off by the place that he was stuck in. Zavier felt that the stomach of the monster was a whole other world that was full of pain and the tortured; nevertheless it was a domain of its own that didn't allow any external element to operate within its boundary.
The clones on the outside had shut down and had lost all ability to function as soon as Zavier had been stuck in the monster's maw.
The reason was that the system that had been responsible for controlling their automatic responses had gone offline and there was no consciousness capable of taking on their reins.
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