"No… it’s not regenerating!?" The monster screamed in disbelief. "Why isn’t the damage being transferred? This is impossible!"

  Zhu Shi flicked her sword through the empty air to shake off the blood, then glanced down at the monster sprawled on the ground. Without a trace of pity, she said, "Z, cauterize his wounds."

  At her words, I looked at the monster. Flames erupted instantly from the severed stumps of his limbs, searing the flesh black and stopping the bleeding cold.

  He let out an agonized howl, but he still hadn’t given up on survival. He kept trying to summon the surrounding shadows. Yet the moment they began to stir, I burned them away with fire, rendering them useless.

  It seemed he no longer had the means to trap us in that labyrinth space again. Most likely, just as Zhu Shi had guessed, he’d relied on some consumable item to pull off the earlier feat. Now, he was truly defeated.

  Still… how had Zhu Shi stopped him from regenerating? No matter what I’d tried earlier, I couldn’t manage it. It didn’t look like his "lives" had simply run out either. I wondered if, later on in private, she’d be willing to tell me how she did it.

  The cold, piercing blue glow gradually faded from Zhu Shi’s eyes, returning them to normal. The detached expression on her face vanished as well.

  I stepped out of fire-element form and walked over to her. "Sorry for stealing your spotlight earlier."

  "I was just kidding around—I wasn’t actually complaining," she said. Then, in a quieter voice, she added, "Though I really did want to show off a little in front of you…"

  "You just did," I replied, nodding toward the pitiful monster on the ground.

  Zhu Shi looked down at their broken enemy too, but there was no pride or satisfaction in her expression—only a complicated sigh.

  "You’re the monster who’s been killing off local dignitaries nonstop for the past two months, right? We have some questions for you," she said.

  The monster didn’t seem to hear her. He just muttered deliriously, over and over: "Impossible… impossible… why… why won’t it regenerate… why could the labyrinth be destroyed…"

  "You want to know how we broke the labyrinth? It’s actually pretty simple, I—" I started to explain, only to be met with a sharp glare from the side.

  Zhu Shi deliberately raised her voice in mock anger: "Senior Zhuang, could you please not explain your tricks to the enemy?"

  Why pick this exact moment to call me "Senior Zhuang"…? I swallowed the rest of my explanation.

  I wasn’t unaware of the downsides of talking too much in front of enemies—I’d done it knowing the risks. But even if I pointed that out, she wouldn’t accept it. Since she was making herself this clear, I’d just have to hold back from now on. I’d already checked off plenty of items on my personal wish list in the past; making a small concession like this for a friend wasn’t a big deal.

  Zhu Shi sighed again, looking exhausted.

  "So, what do we do with him next? We can’t take him alive, right?" I asked.

  Before she could answer, a somewhat familiar voice called out from a distance: "Since he hasn’t self-destructed yet, let’s try interrogating him like this for now."

  Zhu Shi and I turned toward the sound. A man in his twenties approached across the sports field, dressed in a deep-blue outfit that blended modern and traditional styles.

  "Lu Chan? What are you doing here?" Zhu Shi asked, surprised.

  I hadn’t sensed Lu Youxun when I was in fire-element form—he must have arrived after I returned to normal.

  "Such intense and frequent mana fluctuations suddenly appeared and then vanished right here. Of course I had to come check it out," Lu Youxun replied with a smile at first. Then his expression turned serious as he looked down at the monster. "This is the one?"

  Zhu Shi nodded. "Yeah. But he doesn’t seem willing to answer us properly. Do you have a way to make him talk?"

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  "Leave it to me. This is my job now." As he spoke, Lu Youxun pulled a black ring from his pocket and slipped it onto the middle finger of his right hand.

  Only when he got closer could I see it clearly: a ring that looked like it had been woven from iron wire, its surface faintly stained with old blood. Once he put it on, his right hand became hazy and translucent, like a ghost’s limb.

  The monster was still struggling desperately. Lu Youxun walked over, crouched down, and plunged that ghostly right hand straight into the monster’s chest.

  Despite having been blown apart by me and sliced apart by Zhu Shi, the monster’s body was clearly extremely tough. Yet against this hand, it offered no resistance at all—like cutting through tofu.

  No—on closer inspection, the hand hadn’t destroyed anything. It had simply phased through the monster’s flesh as if the body weren’t even there. From the angle, it looked like Lu Youxun had grasped something deep inside the chest—most likely the heart.

  The monster froze instantly, like a cat grabbed by the scruff.

  "I’ve got his heart in my grip," Lu Youxun said calmly. "From now on, he can’t lie to us, and he can’t stay silent when we ask him something."

  Was that the ring’s effect? I’d never imagined such an item existed.

  While I was still marveling inwardly, Zhu Shi—seemingly unfazed—spoke to the monster: "Was it you who attacked my brother… who attacked Zhu Changan?"

  The monster’s eyes darted wildly, searching for any escape. But his mouth moved against his will: "Who is Zhu Changan?"

  "Not you?" Zhu Shi was taken aback.

  I pulled out my phone, brought up a photo of Changan, and showed it to him. "Do you recognize this person?"

  The monster strained to keep his mouth shut, but the words still came out: "I don’t know him…"

  Zhu Shi and I exchanged a glance.

  There was no doubt a monster had attacked Changan. Yet this one didn’t know Changan’s name or face.

  In other words, more monsters were definitely operating in this city.

  Lu Youxun pulled a photo from his pocket with his free hand. I caught a glimpse—it was a close-up headshot of Alice, the same one Agent Kong had shown me when she first came to my door.

  He held it up for the monster to see. "Then do you recognize this girl?"

  This was exactly what I desperately wanted to know. Under Zhu Shi and Lu Youxun’s watchful eyes, though, I couldn’t let my urgency show too much. Fortunately, Lu Youxun had asked for me.

  Still, if the monster really had any leads, Lu Youxun would hear them too—there was no avoiding that.

  The moment the monster saw the photo clearly, his eyes widened. "It’s her!"

  "You’ve seen her?" I asked immediately.

  "Last night, I was hunting in the new district when she suddenly appeared from the shadows and attacked me…" The monster spoke helplessly, unable to stop himself. "Any damage I dealt to her healed in an instant. But the wounds she gave me… for some reason, they wouldn’t heal right away.

  "And in front of her, I couldn’t enter the shadow world no matter what I tried. I could only run and run… I don’t even know how long I ran before I finally shook her off…"

  He really had encountered Alice!

  But why had Alice attacked him?

  Did she see monsters as harbingers of the end? Was she attacking them to gather evidence that doomsday was approaching?

  From what he described, Alice seemed to possess some kind of rapid healing ability—and the power to prevent enemies from using theirs. But if she could heal, why hadn’t she ever recovered while she was with me? Was it limited to visible injuries? Or had she been too gravely wounded back then for even her healing to work, and only recently regained the ability?

  I immediately asked where exactly in the new district he’d seen her. He answered truthfully.

  One more detail caught my attention: "She can use spatial transfer. Are you sure you really escaped her?"

  "Spatial transfer?" The monster looked confused. "No… she never used spatial transfer in front of me…"

  "To injure you so badly and force you to flee like that… it sounds like that amnesiac girl is at least city-level in strength," Lu Youxun mused. "But are you certain you actually got away? It’s extremely hard to lose someone with spatial transfer using normal movement. And if she deliberately hid that ability from you… are you sure she didn’t tail you?"

  Tailing him was exactly what I’d planned to do to this monster from the start. I’d never considered that Alice might do the same.

  But it was entirely possible. If I could think of tailing a monster to lure Alice out, she could just as easily think of tailing one to investigate clues about the apocalypse.

  In other words… was Alice possibly nearby right now?

  I scanned the surroundings but saw no one else. I hadn’t sensed anyone when I was in elemental form either. Still, I couldn’t rule out that she might be watching from farther away, monitoring the situation.

  I wasn’t the only one looking around—Lu Youxun and Zhu Shi were also subtly observing the area.

  At that moment, the monster made his move.

  Perhaps driven by sheer survival instinct, he’d noticed this was his last chance. He suddenly let out an ear-splitting roar, drawing all our attention to him. At the same instant, the shadows beneath our feet darkened dramatically and spread outward. The ground turned soft and swamp-like in an instant.

  He was trying to drag us into the shadow world.

  But even now, I’d never let my guard down against that move. His final gambit was doomed to fail. Even Lu Youxun showed no surprise—he simply began pulling his ghostly right hand back out, as if preparing something.

  The fastest among us was Zhu Shi. Without changing expression, she swung her sword downward in a flash, stabbing straight into the ground.

  The shadows recoiled as if struck at their vital point, retreating like a reversed tide until they were nothing more than ordinary, lifeless darkness.

  Seeing this, the monster’s face finally twisted with true despair.

  His bulky, grotesque body rapidly shrank and reshaped into that of an ordinary human. But in the very next moment—contrary to that normalization—his entire form began to swell grotesquely, bulging in horrifying ways as if something inside was about to burst.

  He was going to self-destruct!