When they returned to the city in the afternoon, everyone seemed... rattled. The guards reacted strangely to their presence even after seeing Melissa and Cassandra right behind them. They still let them inside the city, but it didn't get better from there. Some citizens looked warily at them, but Kiel didn't think much of it.

That said, the city did seem less lively than he'd been expecting.

It remained a mystery until they got close to Melissa's home and started hearing sounds of fighting from far away. He was the first one to notice and so he informed Melissa. They started heading towards the source of those sounds which happened to be towards the east gate.

A minute later the sounds of fighting stopped, but they continued towards the gate. The closer to the gates they got, the less people were walking out in the open.

That did not paint a good image.

The image got even worse when they were stopped before reaching the eastern gate. Three very tired-looking guards approached them. "If you want to help with the defense of the city, I'm going to have to see a quest before letting you go any further," The man in front said, his posture straight despite his sunken eyes, "otherwise, please leave and avoid this area."

Melissa looked at the rest of them uncertainly. While they hadn't been gone for long, it had been a long day. Completing two dungeons in the same day was more mentally taxing than it was exhausting. Their plans to take it easy for the day evaporated as they decided to visit the adventurer's guild nonetheless.

The walk over to the adventurer's guild was short and quiet and Kiel wasn't sure how to feel about that. On one hand, he preferred not having to walk between crowds of people, but on the other hand it felt weird seeing only one or two people in the usually busy roads.

Inside the guild was the opposite situation. Even before entering they could hear the bustling noises. Dozens of people talking, screaming, yelling... well, maybe not screaming, but some were getting close.

The poor receptionists were swamped with work and considering how this place was, he didn't want to imagine what the city hall would look like.

Cassandra went to look for someone who might know anything about the situation while Melissa got in line to ask the receptionists with Kiel and Edel following behind her. Edel growled in discomfort which caused the surrounding people to look at them.

She wasn't angry or agressive, but the first reaction the adventurer next to them had was to take out his sword. Kiel was half a second away from tearing the throat of the adventurer about to take a swing at his friend when he felt his entire body become heavier out of nowhere.

He didn't seem to be alone in this, however, as all of the adventurers, receptionists included felt their knees buckle. In the silence that ensued he could hear a man sigh from the corner of the guild.

"You rascals can't go one day without causing trouble? Do not let me see any of you unsheathe weapons again," a dark-haired man said from behind them, and the pressure vanished.

Melissa translated the man's words a moment later and he nodded. He tried to remember the words that confused him and the ones that he thought were gibberish. Still, it wasn't the time for a lecture so he saved his questions for later.

At least he wouldn't need to make a scene on top of all of this.

He was able to understand some words of the man's sentence without Melissa translating. He would really like to focus on learning Saph with her, but free time seemed to be getting the short end of the stick. Putting his annoyances aside, he focused on trying to calm Edel down.

As much as he wanted to leap at the idiot who tried to attack them, he didn't want to leave Edel uncomfortably waiting in line.

In the end he decided to find a nice quiet and empty corner to rest with Edel. Well, quiet wasn't going to be possible, but empty wouldn't be too hard. He already had a few nice spots that caught his eye, one of which was close to the man that emitted the pressure before, the same man which Cassandra was approaching.

He informed Melissa they might have found someone who would know what was going on. Melissa seemed to think about it for a moment before leaving the end of the barely moving line and heading towards Cass.

He didn't move from the nice corner he found for himself and Edel, opting to rely on Melissa to relay the information to him.

The man was dressed in leather armor with a relaxed posture that betrayed confidence. He didn't doubt the man was strong enough to deal with everyone in this room if he wished. He didn't seem to be as strong as the guild master, but he was probably in the same rank.

He wondered how many gold-ranked adventurers or individuals this city held when Melissa interrupted his musings. "The attacks are not a recent thing, but the intensity and level of attacking monsters is," Melissa said.

He'd gotten so used to listening to her voice as well as her thoughts when she was translating, it felt weird to do one without the other.

Cassandra had an impassive face as she asked another question, but he could see her hands clenched tightly in a fist. The man's expression didn't change as he explained what happened while they were gone.

"A few hours ago a low gold-ranked monster attacked and almost broke through the wall. The city has been like this ever since." Melissa had a grim look on her face as she continued to listen to the man speak, "The monster killed almost a dozen guards and injured many more before they managed to kill it."

Considering the kind of threats outside the city he half expected a man like this to be helping with the defense.

Melissa thanked the man for the information and headed towards him and Edel. Her previous good mood was in tatters as she scratched his head behind the ears, lost in thought.

"I heard a few people talking about leaving the city and most of the quests posted on the board are escorting ones," she said, "it's not a good sign."

Out of nowhere a man burst into the building and started screaming, The man held tightly on the person closest to him after entering the building. His eyes were sunken and blood-red. "The void; the corruption; the absolution... they are here, and it's too late to run!"

The man continued to scream at the top of his lungs, managing to make himself heard above the noise of dozens of disgruntled adventurers. He was interesting enough that he asked Melissa to translate.

Before the crazy man could repeat himself for much longer, the dark-haired man they'd talked to a few seconds ago moved from where he was sitting, his calm demeanor nowhere to be seen. He moved with such a speed that Kiel wouldn't have imagined anything other than teleportation if he didn't have the ability to sense the space around him.

The insane man fell unconscious and was gently put down by the other guy. "Take him to the healers..." he said to a guard standing at attention close to the entrance. The guard nodded and put the unconscious man's arm over his shoulder and walked outside the building. The guard looked unbothered by the man's weight and he remembered that humans and everyone with a few levels under their belt was generally much stronger than someone back on Earth.

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That was an interesting bit right before they left the guild.

"Melissa, can you ask someone if they know what kind of creature attacked the walls?" he asked her on a whim.

They continued to walk towards their house while she answered, "Cassandra already did," she said, "red eyes, walked on four legs, dark fur and more interested in eating anything that moved than killing. Probably why so few guards died before reinforcements arrived."

That seemed... familiar.

His mind circled back to the zombie-like monkey that'd chased them out of the deeper parts of the forest. Had it found its way to the city?

Despite the city managing to repel the attack, and most of the citizens continuing their life same as usual, he couldn't help but feel time was running out.

He wondered if they could clear out the rest of the dungeons even faster. They had managed to complete two dungeons in less than half a day and a large part of that was spent travelling.

At a pace of three dungeons a day they could finish the day after tomorrow. But there was another danger in rushing things as much as possible and that was being too tired to deal with any unexpected threats.

With those thoughts in mind Kiel entered inside their house. Instead of going to rest, he couldn't help but pace around. Edel seemed equally uncomfortable, but that was more because of how he seemed to be handling the recent developments.

Melissa and Cassandra on the other hand were about two seconds away from falling asleep.

Unable to stand still, he went to his room with Edel and started practicing with his ether and his skills after warning Melissa. He wasn't planning on anything dangerous, but a small warning still felt prudent.

He went about exchanging different parts of his body's sub-attributes for ones he had yet to try, and more. It was interesting, and more than anything it helped take his mind off what was going on outside the city.

Sacrificing perception made him too dizzy to even stand, so that was a no go.

Sacrificing endurance made him too weak to move after a few minutes of activity and drastically reduced the amount of time he could use Unbound Adaptation. The correlation between endurance and the skill made a few things more clear to him.

He then tried to sacrifice other aspects of his body, like rigidity or toughness, which to his surprise was easier than he thought.

They were a bit more tricky to get a hold of, but once that was done, the process was the same as always.

Sacrificing toughness made his body extremely susceptible to damage, probably even more so than Melissa's body.

Endurance affected how fast the attributes took to return to normal, as well as his apparent energy, with boosted endurance making the sacrificed attributes come back to normal almost immediately and providing him with inexhaustible stamina. In comparison, with non-boosted endurance his attributes reverted to normal in three to five seconds, though he wasn't sure why there was a discrepancy.

Sacrificing the rigidity of his body made him slower than a turtle for no greater benefit. It still proved to him that he could sacrifice parts of his body he hadn't thought about and sent him on a theorizing brainstorm.

He also tested the maximum number of his body's attributes he could sacrifice at once. That number turned out to be four for now. Sacrificing strength, vitality, toughness and flexibility, he boosted his perception to as high as it could go. Everything went black and instead of the world slowing down, he seemed to have knocked himself out cold... or at least that would have been his explanation, if it weren't for the fact that unconscious people usually couldn't think.

He spent a few seconds in the darkness before it started feeling asphyxiating.

The darkness in his head was like an inky mess that he couldn't get rid of.

He tried to see through it, because that was what he was used to the most. For a being never without light even in the darkest of nights, that was which was most natural to it.

His perception was still boosted and his energy was draining at a fast pace, though slower than he was expecting.

And true to his perception... he ended up piercing the veil.

That had been a mistake. A mistake that happened because he didn't know better, because no one would be expecting a silver-ranked monster to be able to boost its perception to that high of a level.

His eyes saw something they struggled to decipher. His brain was confused at the being in front of him. The best way he could describe was an organic creation of insanity's amalgamation. A thousand, thousand eyes part of a fleshy sphere... and he was unable to take his eyes off it.

In morbid curiosity and dreadful horror he continued staring at the entity in front of him. The monster's eyes rapidly changed focus from place to place, all looking at different things, all somehow making sense.

The more he looked, the more the inky blackness pulled back, the more he saw and the more transfixed he became.

Geometry lost its meaning as he found himself lost from orientation. His body was in the wrong perspective and he couldn't see more like this. He needed to see more.

He twisted his head as far to the right as it would go, yet there was always more to see. He tried to turn his head more but his flesh wouldn't give.

He felt something tear in his body, yet if that were the case he should have felt something. Pain was nonexistent though, the only thing he could feel was endless annoyance at being unable to see more.

He was trying to tear his neck in an attempt to see more when he swore he could hear a voice.

A faint voice screaming for a familiar name.

A howl searching for an unfamiliar friend.

He tried to ignore the voices, the feelings, the thoughts, but they wouldn't go away. The voices grew louder. They were screaming at him so loudly if it was real their vocal cords, they would have been torn to shreds.

Darkness begun to pile on top of darkness, as his attention wavered, hiding parts of his vision.

When everything turned to black, he opened his eyes and almost fainted again.

He held himself conscious by sheer force of will, feeling Edel and Melissa in the room with him, though he was unable to see them. His eyes, barely open as they were, couldn't make coherent shapes, and a small part of him was afraid that would remain true for eternity.

Edel looked like she'd grown three heads and lost all of her fur at the same time. Melissa looked like the flesh on top of her body had been peeled away and her bones were starting to show beneath her faint muscles.

The vision contrasted with what he knew they should look like and he opted to keep his eyes closed for the time being.

Edel licked his face and Melissa stroked his fur, comforting him however they could.

It really wasn't helping his headache, but hearing Melissa's voice and Edel's howls was oddly soothing. His neck was hurting like hell, and everything he could see with his eyes made him want to throw up, but he was back, and the system had a gift for him.

You have seen the true body of a Corruptor! Title Gained; Third Eye.

The title was as impressive as they came. Third eye basically gave him resistance, or outright immunity, to illusions and mental attacks. That would have been awfully helpful in the butterfly dungeon, or even a few minutes ago, but he wouldn't say no to a defense against the most unfair kind of attacks.

"You silly little cat, how do you always get yourself in these kinds of situations?" Melissa asked him, gently stroking his fur, "I haven't seen another cat getting into so much trouble in as short period of time as you. The feedback from the bond was scary enough... are you alright?"

He found it hard to concentrate on replying, "I think..." he said, sending his mind spinning from the effort.

He was lost in thought when a loud explosion broke the silence at the direction of the eastern gate. He held no doubt, if Edel's howls hadn't woken up the entire neighborhood, this definitely had. He had half a mind to go and check up on the situation, to which Melissa couldn't help but stare at him incredulously while Cassandra started to laugh when she explained to her what was going on inside of his head.

"You can't be serious..." she folded her arms, "Have faith in our strength. If the situation was dire enough, they would have called for an evacuation. Rest."

True to her words, the explosions stopped a few minutes later and silence returned to the city. If Melissa trusted them, so would he... to an extent.

He fell asleep exhausted half an hour later, resting next to Edel and Melissa.

When he woke up the morning after, Melissa was still sleeping next to him, a blanket thrown over her with another empty blanket next to her. Edel meanwhile was awake and lazily watching them sleep, her tail softly waving at them.

He felt like he'd just woken up from a hangover, and that was weird because he'd never experienced one.

His head still hurt from the nightmare yesterday, though given the new title, nightmare was putting it mildly. He half expected to wake up with more soul damage, but thankfully that wasn't the case.

He let out a sigh of relief, he had plans for the day, and soul injuries were the most annoying thing he'd experienced to date.

He'd had enough with the recent dangers. It was high time he checked out the situation in the eastern forest. Looking at the sleeping face of Melissa, he wondered if it would be easier to ask for apology than permission.

Not that he needed to ask for permission, but leaving on his own while they were a party seemed... irresponsible. At least he knew Edel would be on his side.

Turning his head to watch Edel as he relayed his plan, he could see her narrow her eyes.

... Or not.