"Hehehehe..."

  The strange ughter seemed to be coming from all directions. The antennae on System's head swayed back and forth, but no matter how much he looked around, he couldn't determine where the strange ughter was coming from.

  Because he was used to seeing corpses, the dead bodies of ordinary creatures wouldn't typically make System feel uneasy. However, the way the lizardman had committed suicide, coupled with the strange ughter that had no apparent source, created a strange atmosphere. It made System feel like he'd stumbled into the plot of a horror novel.

  If it weren't for the mosquitoes flying around being so noisy, perhaps the atmosphere would be even more unsettling.

  "Cough cough..."

  Amidst the strange ughter, System suddenly heard a few very pained coughs.

  The coughs turned out to be coming from the lizardman whose throat Ying had cut earlier. It seemed he wasn't completely dead yet.

  System thought for a moment, then stretched out his tentacles and activated his druidic [Healing Power]. He pnned to keep the lizardman alive, then have him confess the truth about what the two lizardmen had been up to. He would also make the lizardman expin what was going on with the strange ughter.

  The [Healing Power] of the druids had a miraculous effect when it came to healing wounds, and the wound on the lizardman's neck began recovering at a speed visible to the naked eye.

  If this mortally wounded lizardman had been rescued at the beginning, he would have had an excellent chance of surviving. Unfortunately, the lizardman had already lost too much blood at this point. After coughing up another rge mouthful of blood, he finally died from excessive blood loss.

  The strange ughter hadn't stopped by the time the lizardman died, and System's group had also started hearing inexplicable footsteps. Some of them were simir to the sounds made by humanoid species trudging through mud.

  However, just like the strange ughter, System couldn't find the source of the footsteps. They seemed to be coming from right beside him, but when he looked, there was nothing there.

  While System was wondering what was going on, a strange figure nearly two meters tall suddenly appeared about twenty meters away.

  The strange ughter and footsteps had finally revealed their source, seemingly coming from this figure that had appeared out of nowhere.

  The figure seemed to be some kind of humanoid life form and wore a hooded bck robe. The robe's cuffs and hood were embroidered with luxurious, mysterious golden patterns that System didn't recognize.

  However, compared to the figure's hood, System's attention was more focused on the huge sickle in the figure's hand.

  The sickle was about three meters long and bck in color, with a gleam of silver light shining from its bde.

  The unusual appearance of this humanoid creature gave System a depressing feeling, but it didn't cause his [Intuition] to send out a warning of danger.

  The fact that his [Intuition] didn't give him any sense of danger was precisely the biggest warning that System could get.

  He muttered to himself, "Could this humanoid creature be a being like the Lord of Gciers or the evil god Rafael?"

  Only extraordinary beings like those could render System's [Intuition] ineffective.

  However, he didn't feel any extraordinary pressure from the humanoid creature. It was completely different from the fear he'd felt when facing Aura's frost dragon form or the evil god Rafael.

  System didn't act rashly. He told Shava and Meatball to stay calm and quietly watched the bck-robed figure approach.

  The figure finally came to a stop fifteen meters away from System. It stopped ughing strangely and began speaking with an unpredictable cadence.

  "Ignorant wandering creatures, offer your souls. I will grant you eternal life."

  The figure's voice was very strange. It sounded neither male nor female and was mixed with some sort of mental fluctuations intended to bewitch them, trying to instigate System, Shava, and Meatball to give up their souls.

  But this bewitching effect was too weak to work on System, who often communicated using mental messages. Even Shava and Meatball easily freed themselves from the bewitching effect after receiving System's warning.

  Not long after System shook off the bewitching effect, he noticed something unusual about the bck-robed figure.

  This new discovery led him to deduce that the strange figure wasn't a physical entity at all.

  This level of the Abyss was filled with countless mosquitoes. System noticed that the mosquitoes buzzing through the air were flying back and forth through the bck-robed man's robe, and even the steel-like sickle had many mosquitoes passing through it.

  'Could this figure be a ghost or some other kind of spirit?'

  System's face showed a puzzled expression, but he soon saw through some of the figure's mysteries.

  'No, it shouldn't be a ghost.'

  The bck-robed figure fifteen meters away wasn't a spirit, but an illusion.

  If the bck-robed figure was a spirit, then the strange footsteps from before couldn't be expined, because spirits wouldn't produce any footsteps at all.

  This was why the bck-robed figure had stopped moving about fifteen meters away from System. If it had come too close, System would have easily seen the mosquitoes passing through the bck-robed figure without any hindrance.

  The existence controlling the illusion obviously didn't anticipate System having super vision. Although they were surrounded by thick fog, he could still clearly observe the mosquitoes fifteen meters away.

  System immediately used the ability to identify objects in his [Tools Menu] to outline the frame of the bck-robed figure with a faint light.

  Although the outline of the illusion was much more detailed than the ones created by the ratman wizard, System still noticed some fws.

  The bck-robed figure was indeed an illusion.

  In this way, there was a reasonable expnation for why his [Intuition] hadn't warned him of any danger.

  It was because the illusion couldn't threaten System's safety at all.

  ...

  After discovering this, System didn't take any action. Since he'd realized that the other party was a non-threatening illusion, he didn't mind performing a show with the other party to observe what the existence controlling the illusion wanted to do.

  System looked at the illusion more than ten meters away and spoke in his hoarse voice, "What is a soul?"

  The illusion made a series of strange ughs again, and the bck robe fluttered without wind. The bck-robed illusionary figure holding a sickle gradually floated up into the air.

  "Souls..."

  The phantom began to speak in what seemed to be a thousand different voices, but just as it started talking, it suddenly disappeared, leaving the group in complete silence...

  As System was wondering why the phantom had disappeared, he found that Ying, who had vanished earlier, was now flying toward him carrying a round shell about thirty centimeters long in her arms.

  The shell was yellowish-brown and appeared somewhat simir to a snail's shell.

  When Ying dropped the shell onto the ground, System found that what she'd caught was indeed a snail. However, unlike ordinary snails, this snail had a pair of human-like arms.

  Just as System was about to use his tentacles to inspect the snail, he received a mental message from Ying.

  It seemed that this snail was the fellow who had created the illusion...