He recognized the voice. 'Is that Rex!? What is he still doing here?'
He turned to the source of the voice and searched for him but was unable to find him. As he was searching, the Bliss Spider appeared behind him while he was distracted and slammed him into the ground with its rear.
BOOM!
A crater formed where he crashed, and though injured, he forced himself to get back up and jumped out before the spider could attack again.
Rex's voice lingered in his ears again, but this time it was slightly more distorted and carried a mocking tone. "Help me… plan the party!"
It was then that he realized he had been tricked.
Keeping an eye on the creature, he thought to himself, 'It's cunning. It could control what I heard the whole time and only waited until now to trick me.'
He was foolish to think it wouldn't strategize against him and had been too focused on stalling.
'But still, it appeared too quickly behind me… how?'
Sol checked its tethers again and realized that a few had already recovered much faster than he expected. In addition to that, they were slightly more colorful, which he guessed was due to their recovery.
'Its recovery sped up the time it took to regain its disabled skills. But when it noticed it had access to them again, it waited and didn't reveal it until now…'
He should have paid more attention to the tethers or disabled them more frequently to ensure they stayed unavailable. It would have been even more ideal if he had maintained his will suppressing the skills, but it was impossible to split his concentration on that while casting magic, summoning shadows, manipulating earth, and guiding the magic hands. He also had to keep most of his focus on the spider or he would be unable to react to its attacks in time.
It was simply too much, and his mind wasn't able to keep up with everything. He even used his psychic powers to help him focus better, but with it still being stuck at the beginner level, its effects were limited. This was why he had to cut back on constantly manipulating the Bliss Spider's tethers and chose to disable them for short bursts.
But the Bliss Spider was truly too cunning and used that to its advantage, even when it was already superior in almost all ways to him. He quickly disabled its normal skills again just in time as the spider landed back on the ground.
The Bliss Spider also noticed it had lost access to its normal abilities once more and went back to launching gas orbs and bliss slashes at him. While it admitted the human was slippery, it was only a matter of time before he would slip up or become exhausted. He would then be enveloped in bliss and become its next meal.
The fight continued, and the Bliss Spider's judgment proved to be correct. As Sol continued attacking and running away from the spider, more and more bliss gas filled the area. It made it harder to predict and dodge random moments when the gas would suddenly gather and launch a concentrated attack. He used wind magic to disperse the gas, but it would return in due time.
It didn't help either that most of his powerful skills were on cooldown, like full spectrum, and he was unable to use [Overpower] as he knew it wasn't enough to win in the short period of activation. In a battle of endurance, the exhaustion caused after using [Overpower] would seal his fate. His Tynamo Cannon was also something he couldn't take out easily, as it was his strongest means of attack, and if he timed it wrong, he doubted he would be able to get another chance to use it with how intelligent the enemy was. There was also the worst-case scenario in using the cannon in which it simply wasn't strong enough to hurt it, as nothing he hit it with so far was able to injure it.
Eventually, he fell for another attack, and while he escaped, he also lost his sense of taste. He was then forced to taste many delicious foods, and while that normally wouldn't be something to complain about, it also included spicy, sweet, salty, and many more flavors that together would make anyone nauseous.
Feeling the increasing pressure, Sol used the PAL to contact Torben. "Torben! I don't know how long I can hold it back! Hurry up!"
The voice sounded like Torben's, but he knew exactly who was actually talking to him. He frowned as he looked at the Bliss Spider, which had a smug look from the way its eyes curved.
Another voice came from the PAL, but it wasn't from Torben or any of his squad members. It was an androgynous voice that carried no distinct accent or tone.
"Sorry to disappoint, but I don't plan on dying—and especially not while hallucinating. Torben is sending the Chosen Slayer here right now. The one who's in trouble is you, not me."
A loud laugh came from the PAL.
"Oh yeah? Then why am I still alive? I don't think it's as easy as you say it is."
While the Bliss Spider and Sol conversed, they never stopped fighting. Gas orbs and bliss slashes were sent his way as he dodged them either by diving underground or turning into shadows. Sol sent his own attacks, and the moment skills went off their cooldown, he immediately used them. Once duochrome went off cooldown, he combined the purple and orange hands to create an amplified gravity zone around the spider, slightly slowing its movements further.
The effects on the spider were minimal, but with so many other attacks raining down on it, it was like trying to swim upstream. Sadly, in this case, fighting against the current wasn't a very difficult task for the Bliss Spider.
Sol dodged another bliss slash that turned the house behind him into a large cake, but when he landed on the ground nearby, he went right through it as if he were using [Burrow]. But there was one big problem, he hadn't used [Burrow].
'The floor was fake!'
Unknowingly, he landed straight into a pit full of the bliss gas. The pit was one of the countless ones created from the aftermath of their battle and was inconspicuously disguised by the spider when Sol wasn't paying attention. It was actually during their conversation that the Bliss Spider secretly moved the gas to conceal a few pits in the area.
Unlike before, where he was able to fall out of the gas thanks to gravity, he only sank deeper with no way out.
The last thing Sol could hear as he sank into the pit of gas was the taunting laughter coming from the PAL.