(Cyrus Pov)

After my failed attempt to progress through this labyrinth, I gathered the courage to choose another passageway. This time, there were no immediate threats as I walked down the pitch-black corridor. Reaching the end, I was once again presented with an assortment of choices, staring at the faintly glowing runes before me. Each decision made me feel increasingly blind in this situation. Even my perception of cosmic energy flow was useless—it felt erratic, making it impossible to determine where it was emanating from. I felt surrounded, watched by some unseen force.

"You just gotta make a choice and deal with it, Cy," I muttered to myself. Taking a deep breath, I placed my hand on the rune to the right and pushed cosmic energy into it. Like all the previous doors, it groaned open with a grating sound. Enveloping myself in cosmic energy, I proceeded into the dark passage once again.

Like before, I remained wary of a potential encounter with whatever had attacked me in the dead-end tunnel. I tried my hardest to detect even the slightest fluctuation in cosmic energy, hoping to sense any lurking behemoths. Yet again, I had no such luck. Whatever inhabited these corridors possessed remarkable abilities—it was incorporeal and capable of completely masking its cosmic energy signature. Most astral behemoths of the Stellar Fiend rank or lower lacked such abilities.

"I really hope there's not a Nebulord or a Cosmophage lurking in this rift," I muttered, shaking off my unease as I pressed forward. When I reached the end, I found no runes—another dead end. My heart pounded in my chest, and I involuntarily became hyperaware of my surroundings. My eyes darted through the darkness, searching for even the subtlest movements in what felt like an inescapable tomb.

I didn't want to move, but I knew I couldn't stay here. Channeling cosmic energy into my legs, I sprinted back toward the entrance. As soon as I activated my energy, noises erupted from all directions. Whatever had attacked me before was not alone this time. As I ran, the growls and barks intensified, surrounding me. The closer I got to the entrance, the louder they became.

With the faint glow of the runes in sight, I caught something in my peripheral vision. Shadows twisted along the walls, taking the shape of hounds running alongside me. It was as if they were tethered to my own shadow. "That explains why I couldn't sense them," I muttered, pushing myself to run faster. But before I could reach the entrance, multiple shadow hounds leaped from the walls, blocking my exit.

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Standing face-to-face with the creatures, I knew there was no way out but through them. While scanning their cores, I heard movement behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted three more hounds, their razor-sharp fangs bared. "It's never just a one-on-one, huh?" I muttered, trying to formulate an escape plan.

I had a feeling that physical attacks would be useless. "The Solaris Constellation would be really handy right now," I thought, channeling cosmic energy into my legs. I launched myself past the hounds in a burst of speed, but I wasn’t fast enough. One of them slashed my back as I tried to rush past, stopping me in my tracks. The attack wasn’t particularly strong, but it threw off my balance, causing me to crash into the wall.

Before I could recover, the pack swarmed me. Like true predators, they clawed, bit, and tore at my flesh. I was their prey, and they weren’t going to let their kill escape so easily. In the midst of their onslaught, I activated my ability to try and repel them—but my gravitational field had no effect. "Fuck," I screamed in my head. Panic surged through me as I channeled cosmic energy into my arms and legs, kicking and striking in desperation.

Each time my limbs phased through them, my hope dwindled. "Is this how I die? Mauled by hounds I can't even touch? How honorable." Desperation clawed at my mind. "If physical attacks don’t work, then how did I get one off me earlier?" With my vision darkening and my senses fading, I attempted one last thing. I released several pulses of cosmic energy in waves.

The hounds were sent flying, crashing into one another.

Wasting no time, I launched my battered body toward the entrance. Barely making it out, I quickly sealed the passageway just as the shadow hounds lunged at me in fury. "No dog food for you," I wheezed, gasping for breath. My body collapsed to the ground, wracked with pain. "I can’t make too many more mistakes like that… or I’m finished."

Taking a moment to rest, I allowed my worst injuries to heal before moving again. As I watched the gashes on my arms slowly close, I mulled over my encounter with the shadow hounds. They were just as fast as me and could attach themselves to my shadow, making sprinting useless. My martial skills were rendered ineffective, as I couldn’t physically harm them. The only thing that worked was the cosmic energy pulse I had released in desperation.

That meant their incorporeal forms were affected by cosmic energy.

With that realization, I understood how to handle them going forward. I just couldn't afford to waste too much of my reserves.

With my core constantly leaking cosmic energy and my astral form active, I had to be mindful of my expenditure. I had already used more than a quarter of my energy. My next moves had to count.