翁公和媛媛在厨房里猛烈进出

Though even without that information, a preliminary explanation was already forming in my head.

All the inconsistencies and strange things are tied to one thing.

The sudden appearance of the spirit that was "suicidal" after our purple beam destroyed most of the tree.

Something was definitely off with that spirit...

Making no noise, I increased my space to sprint and dashed forward after activating the usage period.

Manifesting a dragon\'s wing right now was dangerous and unnecessary, as if there really was an enemy trying to trap us; I was just showing off one of my powerful traits.

Also, it would only save me around two minutes of running... and what could possibly happen in two minutes?

...maybe I should just use the wing.

Pushing the idea out of my head, I dashed forward as soon as the cooldown reset before peering through the darkness.

Slowing my pace to a jog, I sighed and wiped the sweat off my face as the seven figures of the main came into view.

Like me, the four girls and three boys were blindly following the path of green particles ahead of them.

They also all had their weapons out and were on standby, ready to defend or attack in case anything showed up.

Shaking my head, I hid behind a rock and watched intently, waiting for a perfect moment to pop out.

Why would our enemy reveal itself to us?

We were the ones trapped with no escape and no information.

Our enemy had all the time in the world.

The seven main cast members and I were not going anywhere anytime soon.

Again, that prompted the question... who exactly was our enemy?

My first thought, of course, was the spirit, the only connected trait between all the inconsistencies and strange things.

But... how could an intangible thing be our enemy?

Spirits were different from us... they didn\'t possess physical bodies; instead, they had astral forms.

These astral forms were impossible to damage or hurt, as any physical or magic attacks would just go straight through the body.

However, that meant that the spirit also couldn\'t attack us due to its astral body; just like how we couldn\'t touch it, it couldn\'t touch us.

Or could it...?

If the spirit couldn\'t hurt us itself... then it could simply use a physical object or person.

What exactly was at the end of this green particle path...?

The most obvious answer again was a person that the spirit had contracted, as the spirit could actually influence that person to attack us.

However, most spirits, except a couple of important exceptions, which definitely could be this spirit, could only have one contractee.

Didn\'t Alya say at the start that she had contracted with the spirit?

Contracting with a spirit wasn\'t necessarily hard...in reality, it was as simple as making a handshake.

No documents, forms, or procedures were involved.

If a spirit voiced that it would like to contact you, all you would have to do is agree, and that was it.

Just like that, a bond between you and the spirit was immediately formed.

The process could take less than a minute.

The spirit granted a portion of its power to you, and in turn, you gave the spirit some of your energy when you used its power, allowing the spirit to survive.

To maintain its astral body, a spirit had to some contractors as its body required at least some energy to survive.

Peeking out above the rock, I honed on Alya, who was the only person to have communicated with our perceived enemy, the spirit.

...how didn\'t I see this earlier?

Did my loss of hope just suddenly cause my brain to turn off?

Having spent so much time recently with Alya in the loop, I had subconsciously formed a visual profile of her with my eyes, including her normal expressions, hand movements, and leg movmements.

Recreating her normal way of walking, including the distance she moved her hands and legs each stride, I coped down in front of me.

Comparing it to the figure of Alya right in front of me... they were completely different.|

While the normal Alya moved her right foot and hands at a 49.5-degree angle usually, this Alya was far off with around 67 percent angle.

Also comparing the breathing patterns of the Alya in my head and the Alya in front of me, they were off as the Alya in front of me breath a faster rate.

Of course, in a normal circumstance, something like this would be normal as she could have just gotten less sleep or been more stressed, causing her walking motion and breathing pattern to be different.

But, with all the things going on, and the inconsistent surrounding the spirit, I couldn\'t just disregard the fact that she was also acting abnormal.

It couldn\'t be a coincidence that after taking and contracting with the spirit, she was acting abnormal.

Since Alya was the only one who contracted the spirit, she was the only one able to see and communicate with it.

Even with my amazing eyesight, I couldn\'t just look into the astral dimension where the spirit\'s astral body was located, as there were boundaries separating the different realms.

In other words, she was my one way to actually confirm if the spirit was leading us into a trap.

Moving forward towards the cover of another rock, I kept my gaze locked on Alya, who continued acting abnormally.

There was just one problem remaining now...

While a human couldn\'t kill a spirit... it could kill the tethers keeping the spirit\'s astral body alive.

Without any tethers or contractees, a spirit would have no energy to maintain its astral body and, therefore, disappear.

If the spirit was confirmed to be my enemy and the loop\'s end condition...how could I make it disappear?