Chapter 240: Mana Sphere

The ex-Navy SEAL coughed up blood, and his face rapidly became paler. Alex placed his other hand over Joseph’s wound and started plugging it with mana while continuing to heal Petra with his other hand.

"Don’t worry. Both of you will be okay. I promise that," Alex said calmly, trying to reassure them even though he was deeply worried about their condition.

Joseph tried to chuckle despite his injuries, but the attempt only made him wince in pain. Petra remained pale and trembling as she closed her eyes, her body twisting slightly whenever another wave of pain passed through her.

Alex continued working without allowing his concern to affect his movements. He used Minor Heal Spell on Joseph, and although his injuries were much easier to deal with than Petra’s, the healing was still not fast enough for Alex’s liking.

He quickly looked around the battlefield and noticed that only one Mid-Rank Species’ badger was still alive. Considering the number of Mid-rank Species they had killed, everyone should have gained enough EXP to level up once the battle finally ended.

The level-up would heal their injuries.

However, there was a problem.

The hidden enemy was still alive, which meant the battle wouldn’t end even if the badger fighting Emma and Yulia died. Unless every enemy involved in the battle was defeated, the System wouldn’t distribute the EXP, and without the EXP, nobody could level up.

’We need to defeat the hidden badger. But where is it?’ Alex thought.

He glanced toward Frank, who was already looking around carefully while remaining prepared for another sneak attack. "Frank, did you see where the attack came from?"

"It came from over there," Frank replied while pointing toward the other side of the tunnel. "A badger’s hand came out from the shadow of that mushroom, and it was holding a spear. It threw the spear so quickly that I couldn’t react in time."

Alex nodded before turning toward the location Frank had indicated. He poured more and more mana into his brain, increasing his focus until the sounds and movements around him became muted.

He started thinking carefully about what he knew.

’The monster can hide and attack from shadows, but it still had to come out of the shadow to throw the spear. That means it can’t attack while remaining hidden.’

’If that’s true, then we can bait it into attacking, and if we’re fast enough, we can kill it before it retreats.’

Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible right now.

The Mid-rank Species in this dungeon were much more intelligent than the monsters they had encountered before, and the hidden badger had already demonstrated that it understood how their group worked.

It had specifically targeted Joseph and Petra instead of attacking someone like Yulia or Sarah. The monster clearly understood that killing their healer would put the entire group in a much more dangerous situation.

’It will probably keep hiding until Petra dies, and only then will it attack again.’

Alex’s expression became heavier as he reached that conclusion. If the monster was patient enough to wait for Petra to die, then simply protecting her wouldn’t force it to reveal itself.

’So we need to force it out of hiding.’

Alex looked around the dungeon while continuing to heal Joseph and Petra. His gaze moved across the walls, the floor, the mushrooms, and the shadows covering the tunnels as he tried to find something that could help him.

Then an idea came to him. All energies were like oil and water.

Faith couldn’t naturally mix with Mana or Aura, while Mana couldn’t mix with Aura or Faith either. Even mana belonging to two different people couldn’t properly mix because their Wills were different.

Alex had noticed another thing before when he tried controlling Joseph’s mana after it had lost its Will. Even without Joseph’s Will interfering with him, Alex still found the mana difficult to control, almost as if it retained some unique signature belonging to its original owner.

’If this is true for Mana, Aura, and Faith, then it should probably be true for Origin Energy as well.’

The Origin Energy belonging to the monsters shouldn’t be able to naturally mix with his mana. It should also be unable to mix with Aura or Faith, which gave Alex a possible way to detect the hidden monster.

’If I can force my mana into the tunnel walls, I’ll know where the monster is hiding. Wherever the monster is, my mana shouldn’t be able to penetrate that area because its Origin Energy will interfere with it.’

Alex’s eyes brightened slightly as another part of the plan came together.

’Then I can use Fire Element Mana to remove the shadows. If it loses its hiding place, the monster will have no choice but to come out.’

The theory made sense, but Alex quickly noticed the problem.

He would need to cover the entire area at once.

If he slowly spread his mana through the tunnel section by section, the hidden badger could simply move from one shadow to another before Alex reached its location. By the time he discovered where it had been hiding, the monster would already be somewhere else.

Alex couldn’t cover the entire tunnel with his mana at once.

His mana control had improved significantly, and he could now extend his controlled mana to around fifty inches, which was a huge improvement over the thirty-five inches he had previously managed. However, that range was still nowhere near enough for the tunnel, which was around five meters wide, four meters high, and extended far into the dungeon.

Even if Alex pushed his mana control to its limit, he couldn’t cover such a large area while maintaining complete control over his mana. Trying to force it would only cause the mana to become unstable and make his plan useless.

Alex’s gaze shifted toward Petra.

Priests had an easier time controlling Faith over a larger area, and if Petra were in better condition, she might have been able to spread her Faith throughout the tunnel and locate the hidden monster.

Unfortunately, Petra couldn’t even utter a word right now.

Alex looked back toward the tunnel and continued thinking. He didn’t have much time because Petra could die at any moment, and every second they spent without finding the hidden monster made her condition more dangerous.

The battlefield had become quieter after the badgers were defeated, but Alex knew that the silence didn’t mean they were safe.

The hidden badger was still nearby, and since the battle hadn’t ended and no EXP had appeared, there was little reason to believe that it had simply escaped. Alex knew the monster was probably waiting for another opportunity to attack, and with Petra’s condition getting worse every second, he couldn’t afford to let it keep hiding.

Alex thought of a method that might work. He had already been planning a way to improve his Mana Sense Spell, and although he hadn’t intended to experiment with it inside a dangerous dungeon, the improved spell might allow him to find the hidden badger.

His current Mana Sense only scanned enemies along a single axis, which was one of its biggest weaknesses. Alex wanted to create a new method that could sense mana in all directions at once, essentially giving him a 360-degree Mana Sense.

The basic idea was simple. Instead of creating a mana pulse and allowing it to travel outward in one direction, Alex would create a mana sphere and make it expand in every direction.

..

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