Devourer

His body being flung to the side, barely dodging yet another water spear, Felix issued a grunt of pain as some force was exerted on the stump that was his left shoulder.

Landing back on his feet, Felix felt his control over his body increase with every second, but he was still feeling as confused as before. It was hard to form any thoughts in the state he was in, much less to think, but through sheer willpower, Felix's control over the situation quickly increased.

But Felix ignored that, and instead closed his eyes, concentrating fully on his Mana. Felix was capable of perfectly sensing his Mana inside his body, and could somewhat extend that sense outside of his body.

However, to really feel Mana, Felix needed to touch something, and send his Mana in. Otherwise, while he could still sense Mana he wasn't physically touching, it was a lot less accurate.

That's why while he was barely able to feel the Ausafàr using its skill from a few meters, it was only after a thorough examination of the skill on its dead fellow.

But now, as he shut down his physical senses, fully focusing on his Mana Sense and relying solely on it, Felix felt Mana become clearer and clearer, its secrets unraveling before him.

Until, something clicked.

[Inner Perfection (S)→ Inner Projection (SS)]

The pressure Felix felt completely disappeared as he suddenly felt like a completely different man. Opening his eyes, Felix still saw the Devourer standing over the water, his ears picking up the sound of its enraged roars as countless water spears started manifesting around it.

However, his Mana Sense was telling him something else.

Felix still felt his control over his body was messed up, and he could hardly move, but he no longer felt the earlier fear and confusion. His thoughts were now fully coherent, and he finally realized what was wrong.

The water spears were not moving yet, but through his Mana Sense, Felix felt something coming. And unmistakably, a second later, one of the water spears was suddenly launched at 'blinding' speed.

His eyes were unable to follow the attack whatsoever, but Felix easily dodged it as he had started feeling it coming before it even started moving.

That was not precognition though, or some sort of future sight. Instead, it was something much simpler.

Illusions.

That was what had been bothering Felix since the beginning. Although his physical senses had been messed with, Felix's mind still knew there was something amiss, and had been warning him.

And something wrong there was. As his meditation Skill evolved, if it could even be called that still, Felix's grasp on his Mana increased exponentially, and every hint of Mana within his surroundings was clearly felt.

Before his skill evolved, his weaker Mana Sense had not felt anything was wrong, as he felt the overwhelming Mana emanating from The Devourer, which eclipsed everything.

Now that every Mana signature had become clear though, Felix understood there were no Devourer to start with.

The massive Mana signature did exist, but it was instead a giant amalgamation of Mana, a giant Illusion Spell. As for these attacks, they were actually not attacks, but beings.

Ausafàrs.

He recognized their Mana signatures straight away now that his Mana Sense wasn't getting blinded by the Illusion Spell anymore, and that made him realize the truth of the situation.

There never were any Devourer to begin with, only Ausafàr. They were master illusionists, and had been fooling them.

And Felix had to admit, that was a very impressive illusion. Even now that he knew about it, his body was still fooled by it. Not only were his senses going completely haywire, but his control over his body was just as bad.

But now that his Skill had evolved, Felix was no longer fooled.

Five Runic Circles appeared above him, and in an instant, they all activated.

'First Circle: Flamethrower'

The Ausafàrs, hidden under illusions and until now fighting an unresponsive enemy, were completely taken aback by the sudden attack. Because of how fast it had come, the ones targeted failed to even move before they were bathed in flames.

Despite their low defenses, some of them were above Level 50, so most did not die immediately, and others were starting to flee. But before they could do so, two more Runic Circles appeared in the middle of the fire.

'First Circle: Gravity Well'

The physically weak Ausafàrs were forcefully dragged into the fire, burning to death before the spells ran out.

Felix felt the illusion restraining him weakened with the death of several Ausafàrs, but there were still quite a few that were able to not get hit.

But as Felix was about to attack, he suddenly felt something at his side.

Drakon looked dead, with gaping holes in his chest. However, through his Mana Sense, Felix felt that he was still very much alive, and the world's Mana suddenly became attracted to him as he started moving.

The Guardian moved fast as reached the Ausafàrs, whose Mana signatures started disappearing one after the other.

Before long, the illusion completely disappeared as Felix opened his eyes, and saw the carnage around. Dozens of Ausafàrs laid on the shore, some burned to a crisp and others split open.

As for Drakon, he was knee-deep in the water turned greenish from all the blood, his sword raised high as an Ausafàr bigger than the others hung at the tip of his sword.

It was dead, so Felix couldn't see its ID, but he had felt its Mana, which was a notch stronger than the other Ausafàrs.

As for Drakon, he looked relatively fine, his armor was somewhat messed up and blood trickled down his face's orifices, but he still stood strong.

Felix, however, was in not so great of a shape. His arm getting severed was not an illusion, one of the Ausafàrs had really managed to take his left arm off, and the pain had been dulled by the illusion it seemed.

Falling to his knees with a painful groan as Felix stopped himself from crying in pain, he quickly acted as he slung his Bag of Holding off his back, and searched for something inside.

Sending a glance to his Status, Felix noticed that out of his 370 HP, only 97 was left, and it was rapidly going down from the blood loss.

Fortunately, yesterday, when he had passed by the Alchemist Guild to sell the corpse of Lesser Demon Yusax, Felix had bought a few of low grade health potions, which he fished out of the bag.

[Tier 1 Health Potion, Great, Level 50]

[Upon consumption, recover 106 HP.]

Gulping three of these health potions, Felix's HP quickly rose back to full, the excess energy directly going to his left arm.

Unfortunately, his left arm was worth more than the 100+ excess HP from the potions as all it did was stop the bleeding. Well, it was better than nothing, and Felix expected it.

While all injuries could be recovered from with time, the more that was missing, the more that had to be recovered. And regenerating missing body parts more often than not required more energy than healing back to full.

Even against Lesser Demon Yusax, when Felix had lost an ear, he had only managed to recover it because the potion he drank recovered 1650 HP, which was the equivalent of several of his total HP.

So for an arm, although Felix didn't know the exact value, he probably would have to receive the equivalent of several tens of thousands of HP.

That might sound a lot, but compared to never getting the arm back, it wasn't.

HP Regeneration was not the same calculation as MP Regeneration, as instead of two hours, it took a full 24 hours for a player to recover their entire HP, not counting any skill that would make this faster.

So the calculation was even faster, Felix could generate 10 000 worth of HP in about 27 days, with his current HP. A single month worth of energy to recover a lost arm was not that steep of a price.

Of course, that was to a normal person. To Felix, this was a huge inconvenience. It would be more worth it to kill himself and lose a level. A level wasn't worth a month of his time, after all.

But that wasn't the only solution. This world had other solutions, which Felix would have to explore back in the city.

For now, Felix grit his teeth as he looked at his newly evolved Skill.

[Inner Projection]

[Rating: SS]

[Effect: Projects the Inner World to the user's surroundings, granting them a level of influence over the World's Mana. Mana Regeneration increased by 200%.]

His Skill had become downright absurd, giving him a Mana Regeneration increased by 200%. That meant his entire MP would recover in 40 minutes, instead of 2 hours. That also meant he had gotten much closer to his goal of reaching a recovery of 1MP/s, as he all he needed now was 240 Spirit.

But that was only a bonus. The real strength of the Skill was the increase in Mana Manipulation.

The situation inside his body hadn't changed, so this Skill wouldn't help him in the slightest to reach the Infusion Realm. However, it helped immensely with his Runic Magic.

He had gone from only being able to activate a First Circle Spell in half a second to activating 5 of them instantly.

His mental capacities hadn't increased, but his capacity to manipulate his Mana outside his body had increased so much that this had become possible.

After all, this was an SS Rank Skill, the second best rank for skills. This was absolutely not something someone of his level should ever have access to, but he had learned it nonetheless.

Well, in the end, this quest had benefited him more than anything. However, Felix was a little disappointed he had not leveled up, but he also somewhat expected it.

He had leveled up quickly before because he had been hunting monsters that were not only far above his level, but also of a high rank. On the other hand, while these Ausafàrs were very dangerous, they weren't very high ranked, and most were below Level 50.

The only one that was of some worth had just been flung off the tip of Drakon's sword.

Looking at the miserable state Felix was in, Drakon sighed, "Sorry."

Titling his head, Felix asked, "Why are you apologizing?"

Drakon stepped back toward the shore as he replied, "I am a Guardian, and you are a Mage. I am the one supposed to take the damage, not you."

Attempting to shrug, Felix winced as his left shoulder sent a spike of pain. Drakon took a step closer, inspecting the wound, before mumbling, "That looks painful."

His eyes growing wide, Felix exclaimed, "You think?!"

Chuckling as he stepped back, Drakon turned back toward the lake, and said, "Well, at least I'm not blinded anymore."

Felix paused as he heard that, and said nothing. Everything became clearer as he had a sudden realization.

They had been trapped in the illusion for far longer than he thought. Looking back, Felix realized he had grown far more annoyed at Drakon's complaints than he ever normally would have. Sure, it was annoying, but not to the point of almost coming to their fists.

And even the way Drakon had been blinded, as Felix himself had told him, even when they got to the other end of the lake, he had still been blinded by the sun, which made no sense.

But now that his mind wasn't under any influence anymore, Felix understood that it wasn't really the sun, but merely an illusion. The same went for his anger, he was influenced by their magic.

As for the reason why only Drakon was blinded, it simply was because of their difference in Stats. Drakon had been left relatively harmless by the attacks, but he had been deeply influenced by their illusions.

On the other end, Felix had shown a high resistance to their illusions, but had been grievously injured by their attack.

A high Vitality provided resistance to physical damage, while a high Spirit provided resistance to magical damage.

But now, that begged the question, how had Drakon managed to break the illusion? As a mage, Felix himself had struggled. So how had he, who was much deeper into the illusion, broken it?