Chapter 67: Echoes

The distorted, skin-crawling whispers violently multiplied within the freezing grey void, their sickening, dual-toned pitches echoing directly inside the human ear canals with a relentless, mechanical precision.

One second the voices were weeping miserably, and the next they were giggling with a hollow, chaotic glee, mimicking the exact dialogue Thomas and his friends had spoken hours ago inside the transport cabin.

The heavy, suffocating fog rolled over the semi-dry ground like a living entity, turning so thick that Thomas could no longer see his own boots sinking into the grit.

SNAP.

Without a single microsecond of warning, the physical chain shattered.

The tight grip of their fingers was violently broken as an unnatural, freezing wave of atmospheric pressure surged between their shoulders, tearing them apart in the blind grey dark. Thomas immediately spun on his heels, his left hand lunging out into the empty mist to re-establish a hold. But there was absolutely nothing left to grab. Ryan, Mina, and Lina had completely vanished into the dense white wall, their presence entirely swallowed by the abyss.

"Ryan! Mina!" Thomas shouted flatly, his voice carrying an unrefined grit that failed to carry even two feet past his lips.

No human words answered his call. Instead, a chorus of frantic, terrified screams erupted from three different coordinates within the fog. His friends had instantly become lost deep in the illusory whispers, their minds completely ensnared by the supernatural trauma of the uncharted territory.

[ ARTIFACT DETAILS: EYE OF KHEPRI ]

* Status: Merged with Host’s Right Eye (Suppressed via Shielding Protocol)

* Function 1: Acts as the primary anchor for the System and the host’s true power.

* Function 2: Grants the passive ability to see through structural illusions and perceive hidden mana flows.

FLASH.

The hidden system anchor violently flared to life with a brilliant, glowing golden light, the crimson rune etched right below his right eye illuminating through the darkness. Instantly, the second function of the Eye of Khepri engaged at full capacity. The pale, faceless silhouettes drifting through the fog didn’t just blur; they completely fractured like cheap glass before his vision. The distorted, weeping whispers turned into nothing more than harmless, vibrating sound waves rippling through the atmospheric moisture. Because of the artifact’s passive ability to see through structural illusions and perceive hidden mana flows, Thomas remained entirely unaffected.

But the real situation was actually much worse for his friends.

Through his crimson-tinted vision, Thomas looked at the glowing outlines of Ryan, Mina, and Lina. They were trapped mere meters away from him, yet they were completely blind to his presence, violently thrashing their arms and kicking their boots against invisible phantoms that existed only inside their minds.

[ ARTIFACT REGISTRY: TARGET PARAMETER CHECK ]

* Subject 1 (Ryan): Mana Consumption Rate — 12% Per Minute

* Subject 2 (Mina): Mana Consumption Rate — 15% Per Minute

* Subject 3 (Lina): Mana Consumption Rate — 22% Per Minute (CRITICAL)

Thomas’s dark eyes narrowed into thin slits as the translucent blue lines of his interface tracked the rapid degradation. He notice that the more his friends tried to frantically struggle against the phantoms, the faster their internal mana consumption rate was multiplying. His thoughts immediately turned to Lina. She possessed a low Grade D talent, meaning her baseline mana pool was exceptionally shallow compared to the rest of her friends. If she continued to thrash around trying to protect herself from the imaginary strikes, her energy reserves were going to quickly run out faster than everyone else, leaving her core to flatline from spiritual exhaustion.

He knew he had to find the source of the illusion and stop it before her time ran out.

But he did not know where to start. The suffocating grey fog was completely uniform in all directions, offering no physical clues or mechanical vectors. He quickly calculated the variables, and he thought that maybe the source of the structural illusions was the exact same entity that had violently taken Julian from the swamp muck hours ago.

He had to make a choice. He decide to leave his friends right where they stood, hoping that he can find the source of the illusory whispers soon and terminate it before Lina ran out mana.

Thomas turned his heel away from their thrashes and immediately began following Julian’s distinct, bleeding mana trail deeper and deeper into the forbidden uncharted lands.

The moment his boots left the perimeter of his circle, the disturbing sensation of being watched from every single angle intensified tenfold. But this specific weight wasn’t the same as the chilling, calculated feeling he had gotten from the golden-cloaked church deacon. That one carried a different type of malice; this one carried a raw, primal hunger. It felt like the things looking at him from the dark void wanted to thoroughly devour his flesh, crush his bones, and drink his core dry.

The pale, faceless silhouettes in the fog grew thicker, drifting right alongside his shoulders as he marched. This time, because they realized his mind was an unyielding wall, the whispers turned directly into a direct, disturbing assault aimed straight at his psyche.

"The Holy Church will thoroughly destroy you, lesser," a dual-toned voice hissed right against his left ear, the sound wet and clicking like a reptile chewing on bone. "You are nothing but a common piece of dirt trying so incredibly hard to stand out among the spires. You think you can topple the sacred order of this kingdom?"

Thomas ignored the voice completely, his face remaining perfectly smooth as a stone lake as his boots continued to track Julian’s violet-tinged energy path.

"You are not the first one who tried," another whisper wept from behind his neck, the tone perfectly mimicking Mina’s voice but layering it with a sickening, hollow echo. "Many have come before you, and all of them were ground into fine dust by the light. Look at your pathetic family, Thomas. You dragged them from poverty just to place them in that vulnerable outer sector of the Outskirts. Sector 9 will burn slowly because of your pride."

"Give us your sight," a third silhouette giggled, its long, invisible fingers scraping softly against the soft fabric of his linen shirt. "You wander through this darkness pretending to be brave, yet you do not even know your own heritage."

Thomas subtly tightened his fists inside his pockets, his calloused fingers resting against the edges of the high-level runetech ring on his hand. He did not respond, keeping his mouth shut as he accelerated his pace through the freezing grit. The words of the phantoms confirmed a terrifying truth whatever was anchoring this illusion was tapping directly into his weaknesses.

The path beneath his worn-out shoes began to incline sharply, the semi-dry ground twisting into a narrow, stone-walled ravine choked with massive, bleeding black roots that dripped foul-smelling sap into the mist. Julian’s mana trail was glowing brighter now, turning into a thick, pulsating line of deep violet energy that zipped directly into the yawning mouth of a massive subterranean cavern up ahead.

The hungry gazes from the void multiplied until the air currents felt thick as mud. He had a High-blood to retrieve and a friends to save, and as he stepped past the threshold into the pitch-black maw of the cave, he steeled his resolve to completely slaughter the beast ahead.