Autophagy

'Heh... Did you really think that you would be able to take me down like this?' Song Lei boasted inside his head with pride. Focusing solely on his hearing and touch senses, he felt the changes in the smoke around him.

'One is to my right, slowly closing in. The others are constantly circling around me to confuse my hearing senses. What a stupid decision. They should've tried to run while they still could,' he analyzed. He formed a mental map of his current location as he placed the enemies on that map one by one by listening to their footsteps and gurglings.

He then transformed that 2D map into a 3D simulation around himself. Combining all the input his remaining senses could provide him with, Song Lei seemed to recover his vision precisely.

'Now you have fucked up,' Song Lei muttered inwardly. Although arranging all of his senses into one had taken him at least a few seconds, it would've been a smart decision to utilize that small amount of time to attack Song Lei while he was unaware of their exact locations. However, unfortunately for them, they had decided to try and run around to confuse his senses. They were also trying to mask the third monster's footsteps, that was slowly approaching Song Lei from behind.

Without further ado, Song Lei turned his sword in his hand and held it in a reverse grip. Before the monsters could comprehend what Song Lei was trying to do, he flared up his soul and took two rapid and wide steps backward. It was so sudden that the mouth-faced monster wasn't able to put up a fight before being penetrated by Song Lei's sword in its abdomen.

Feeling the sword penetrate through flesh, Song Lei let the soul energy inside his sword run rampant and stir the insides of the monster.

After taking out the sword from its body without killing the monster, Song Lei dashed towards the other two.

His sudden attack must've dumbfounded the two, as the two couldn't react in time to Song Lei's actions. Swinging his sword, Song Lei severed the two arms of the last mouth-faced monster as he turned to face the amalgamation of human body parts. To be honest, he had no idea how to deal with this monster. As far as he knew, randomly cutting at it might not have been the smartest idea. After all, it seemed to be a slime-type monster.

However, there was no harm in trying. The spirituality of the sword was strong enough, and what Song Lei needed was to weaken the monster as best as he could.

With all of its remaining teammates dead, the gurgling pile of human body parts with coagulated blood binding it together did its best to slither towards the main entrance. It was so scared, so afraid of dying that Song Lei could perceive the warning signals its soul emitted.

'Well... Sorry, bud. Maybe next time,' Song Lei apologized in his head as he swung his sword five times to reduce the body mass of the monster, taking away its mobility while doing so.

In less than three minutes, Song Lei had incapacitated five monsters that could be considered low-mid level.

'This isn't enough. Just an illusion is still enough to make me shit my pants...' He reminded himself and suppressed the sense of pride rising from the deeps of his mind. Looking at the nearly or fully unconscious monsters lying motionlessly on the ground, Song Lei flourished his sword stylishly and got rid of the putrid blood on it. He then seemingly stabbed empty space and let The Excommunicator go back to his soul storage.

The second and the most troublesome part of his plan was done.

'Good job. You should start the second phase now before something happens,' Aston reminded Song Lei. Without responding, Song Lei kept the Adrenal Rush running. Lowering his body and getting ready to run as fast as he could, Song Lei took a deep breath.

"AHHH!!"

He started shouting with all of his might, causing his voice to resonate throughout the apartment. Of course, this action was responded with a wail from the apartment itself. Having recovered to some degree, the apartment's digestive system started pouring out unconscious souls to form a wall of death.

Of course, Song Lei spared no second thought on this as he kicked the ground as fast as possible without losing his balance. In merely twenty seconds, he ran from the first floor to floor 7 and threw himself into the fortified corridor. Before doing so, he also separated from Aston without saying much.

Taking deep and controlled breaths to calm himself down, Song Lei deactivated the Adrenal Rush.

Those wailings of the apartment were still pretty audible, however, they were left on the first floor. In no time, the horde Song Lei had just caused would consume the five incapacitated monsters all together with their souls and bodies. Those would be broken into their most primitive and small bits to be used by the apartment to heal itself, to fortify its defenses, and make it overall sturdier.

As the wailings that were resounding throughout the apartment gradually calmed down, Song Lei sighed a deep breath of relief.

[Congratulations! You've beat a Mouth-faced Moster with the help of The Heaven and Hell Apartment. You've gained EXP!]

[Congratulations...

As Song Lei read the five notifications one by one, a gradual realization washed over him.

'This is an incredible way of leveling up!' He shouted in his head. 'It's like an MMO! And there aren't any dangers...'

'No. There is danger actually,' Song Lei came to realize. 'What if something that's much, much stronger than me enters the apartment? According to what I know, the strength level of the individual monsters in the black smog is pretty homogeneous. However, mishaps can always happen...'

'There is no easy and foolproof way of leveling up after all,' he quickly dismissed the idea.

After dismissing the five notifications about killing the monsters, a new one appeared.

[You've leveled up and gained two stat points!]

"Nice..." Song Lei commented with a suppressed excitement in his voice. Dismissing the notification, he decided to check out the first floor for the aftermath....