He had received his first injury in the middle stage and it was 5 at once. It turned out that she could four more phantoms and somehow thrust 6 times in a second. His barrier wasn't destroyed but a hole appeared in it that the other phantoms used to reach him.
He retreated immediately in a bid to create some distance between them and assess the situation. But she was able to keep up with him. She flashed forward like a phantom being pulled forward by her needle. The needle had a homing ability that pulled her towards him. So he had to face her head-on.
Their numerous clashes enabled him to realize that she was poor at spear or weapon mastery. She was using some sort of ability that enabled her to stab really fast and penetrate through almost everything. Still, he couldn't come close to her at all to use his knuckles.
That simple ability is enough to keep him on the back foot. If he had his spear, things would have been different but he couldn't bring any spatial equipment into the divine dungeon since they use mana, unlike his communicator which uses spiritual energy.
Things started to get worse when her threads joined the fight. She could control them with her mind and they kept coming from the spool she was carrying. She tried to restrict his movements and bind him with them. Then his fire torrent spell came to his rescue. It helped that her thread was weak to fire. She burned up soon after, giving him some useless understanding of thread working and tailoring. Then he moved on.
Most of the fight after that was easy, he beat them outright and the fight ended in less than 10 seconds. Some were tough, the fight lasted a minute or more. One of them was life-threatening. That fight ended in less than 10 seconds but he almost died.
He faced a poison user and he would have died if the fight took longer. He had done the usual by rushing up to them and engaging in a fistfight. This mana entity wasn't disoriented enough not to be able to use its aura of poison. Just staying close to it resulted in him being poisoned. The poison bypassed all his barriers and would have gotten worse had the fight not ended quickly enough.
"I know that gods can't use any power apart from the ones that are allowed in their domains." He said as he wrestled for his life on the ground.
"I didn't think it would be true if they are mana entities. Then again, I have never heard of gods that are mana entities."
His golden fur had turned green. His immense vitality became fundamental to his ability to stay alive.
Mana entities shouldn't be capable of using poison to fight unless it is a divine ability. It was then that he realized that all the abilities of these vestiges were literally using their divine abilities. It brought to mind the fact that gods can't use powers beyond their domain.
Their divine domain empowers them but it also binds them. It explained the needle and thread mana entity. She could only use what her domain allowed her to use. It was powerful and inexplicable but it wasn't versatile.
It also explained the use of poison. Poison isn't an element of mana but a law. So it should be out of bounds for normal mana entities. Of course, some could fight with poisoned weapons.
These mana entities are vestiges of gods, so it shouldn't be out of place for them to behave more like gods rather than normal mana entities.
He faced a mana entity that was throwing food at him next. He understood the reason for the oddity quickly enough. He only wished he had encountered the food god rather than the poison god.
The vestige of the god of food couldn't use any spells or weapon mastery. All it could do his throw plates of food at him with uncanny accuracy. The projectiles couldn't be dodged but it wasn't enough of a threat to Soverick.
His journey through the middle stage of the dungeon earned him a lot of energy and understanding. He became proficient in various fields, some helpful to him and Legion. Others, not so much, no matter how he looked at it. What use is an understanding of mining going to be for Legion as a whole?
He went through 38 fights before he couldn't go ahead anymore. The easiest fight was a fight with a mana entity that used illusions and soul attacks. All the illusions failed to affect him and the soul attacks didn't even tickle him. To top it off, the mana entity was extra fragile. A single punch broke it to pieces.
The most difficult fight was his 38th fight. It was the fight that finally gave him pause. He knew something was wrong the moment he entered the room. His instincts screamed danger. He moved sideways and dodged a spear attack. Except everything about the attack was wrong. The spear returned to its wielder. It more or less shrunk back into the mana entity's hand.
The mana entity was in the middle of the room but the spear it was holding hadn't been thrown at Soverick. The spear had elongated to reach Soverick, then it shortened when he dodged it. Soverick had seen weapons that could change form before, Origin weapons are like that. So he wasn't seeing such a weapon for the first time. But he was highly surprised to see it in the hands of a mana entity. Still, he didn't show it. He didn't let the surprise stop him from dodging as more attacks came. He adapted quickly.
Soverick isn't one to let his emotions influence his judgment. So he focused on the fight, but a further examination of the mana entity revealed details that stunned him. He couldn't help but blurt out.
"You're real."
His opponent grinned menacingly "Yes, I'm real."