The moment Alex appeared mid-air above the void creatures, he pointed out his left hand down and unleashed a blinding light that overwhelmed the large hall, blinding all the void creatures temporarily.
Naturally, he was also blinded. But before that, Alex made sure to memorize the position of multiple void creatures before going blind. Additionally, his light-based abilities allowed him to recover from light attacks much faster than other abilities.
The resounding roars and screeches of the void creatures made their annoyance clear to him. Wasting no time, he dashed to his first target and ran through it with his spear, not forgetting to make the creature go boom.
His vision quickly returned before the flash died down. Taking advantage of that, he swiftly moved around and finished off many more void creatures before they realized what happened.
When their vision returned, Alex was nowhere to be seen as he disappeared into another path.
'Huu… That was a success.' He thought in delight and looked at the path before him that branched into two sections a few metres away.
He slowly moved forward this time around, as there was no need to rush. The void creatures were still screeching and roaring in the back, and he knew they wouldn't move unless they saw someone. For whatever reason, those void creatures refused to move unless they saw someone.
Alex got to the junction that split the path he was on into two and did a quick scan to determine his way forward.
"Hmm?"
However, the scan came back positive for both paths. Since the range was short, the algorithm drew a path that had no dead-ends for as far as it could see.
And in this case, both paths showed no dead ends.
"This isn't a coincidence, is it?" He pondered with furrowed brows. He experienced the same thing on the previous path he took.
"Either one is the actual path and the other is not, or both are dead ends just like the other." He muttered and looked back to the path he took, wondering if the last remaining path was the same as the first two.
"Haa…" He sighed and decided to choose the path on his left. Since there was nothing he could do except explore it, he moved ahead with it.
Sometime later, he explored both paths and met dead ends, proving his theory about his location being entirely different from the rest of the labyrinth.
"It's been over 20 minutes and there haven't been any shifts either." Alex was starting to get impatient and felt like he was trapped. With nothing else to do, he resigned and resolved himself to try the last path.
Imploring the same strategy, he eliminated more void creatures and entered the last path, and as luck would have it, or not, encountered the same situation as the last two.
"Okay, this is weird. Why am I even here?" He felt like screaming to let out his frustrations. After considering his situation for some time, he came up with the only one solution; completely eliminate all the void creatures.
"Let's take a breather first." He proceeded to sit down and recover his stamina, not that he needed to do so, but for his state of mind, he needed the break.
An hour later, Alex prepped himself and got up to finish the remaining void creatures. "It's been over an hour since we got to the labyrinth, and I've been stuck here with no clue how to move forward." Time was already close to crossing the second hour and he was still trapped!
His frustration and annoyance were written all over his face. He also couldn't stop himself from worrying about his friends and while they were capable just as he was, anything could happen, just like how he was trapped here.
And that thought drove him mad, especially when his mind drifted to Julia and what she might be doing in her bid to find him.
Letting out a breath in resignation, he moved towards the large space with the void creatures. Their numbers had reduced since he came here and at least, they wouldn't pose too much of a problem for him.
Alex created a protective ward around his body in addition to his armour and channelled his mana into the spear. Once he got close to the entrance, he sped up and appeared instantly amid the void creatures, instantly taking out two of them.
This quickly drew their attention and before they could react, Alex had taken out another four, his movement speed overshadowing what the creatures could react to as this time, he was not holding back in the physical department.
His annoyance at being trapped played a big role in his raging emotions at the moment as he let off on the poor creatures.
When the void creatures began moving and shooting their killer beams at him, only a few of them were left and with much more space to manoeuvre, Alex easily evaded their attacks and closed in on them with his spear.
He couldn't afford flashy techniques as he had to think of his mana capacity, the only limiting factor that limited his abilities. He did, however, unleash one of his special techniques when a void creature was closing in on him while he was dealing with another.
Alex focused the ambient light of his mana into a concentrated, laser-like beam that was capable of burning through most materials and dealing precise, piercing damage. He could adjust the intensity, allowing it to either knock back or incinerate his target depending on the situation.
And in this situation, he decided to incinerate the void creature. He called the skill Solar Lance; of course, he wasn't going to go around calling out its name whenever he used it in fights. Who does that?
The only issue was it burned a huge chunk of his mana pool. Pointing out two fingers of his left hand, the concentrated beam travelled at astounding speeds and incinerated the incoming void creature, leaving nothing but ashes of its existence.
A few minutes later, Alex was left standing in the ashes, blood and flesh of the void creatures. His facial expression was dark and menacing because of the bits and pieces of flesh and blood splashed on him, but he gave it no thought.
"Now what…"
He wondered as he looked around, not sure what to do.