The shriek at point-blank range was a different category of experience from the suppression roar in the main hall.
That had been area effect, designed to cover ground, intimidate populations, the frequency calibrated for wide dispersal. This was focused, a tight cone at forty centimeters, the full output of a lead Harpy's Sonic Shriek ability concentrated on a single target at close range.
Yuan's Enhanced Stony Skin took the first wave.
He felt it happen, the A-rank passive engaging the sonic input as physical force, which was what it was at sufficient intensity, and distributing it across his surface rather than letting it concentrate at any one point. The mitigation wasn't total. The physical component dampened. The neurological component, the frequency interaction with his inner ear, with his mana channels, with the cognitive systems that Battle Instinct and Mana Sense ran through, came through the passive without interception because Enhanced Stony Skin was physical defense and this was not purely physical damage.
His spatial awareness came back in fragments.
First fragment: he was falling. The mid-air momentum from Shadow Step had converted to uncontrolled descent somewhere in the half-second of disorientation, and the floor was approximately two meters below him.
Second fragment: the Harpy was in front of him, still shrieking, mouth open, the mana output visible to his Sense as a focused beam of structured sound that was doing its best to take his cognitive function apart from the inside.
Third fragment: his right hand was still extended.
He grabbed the Harpy by the throat.
Even though his spatial processing wasn't reliable enough for precision targeting yet, it was just a closing of his fingers on the closest available surface, which happened to be the lead Harpy's neck, and then he used the grip to pull himself into it rather than away from it, closing the distance to zero and taking the sonic output full in the chest at contact range.
The Enhanced Stony Skin took that wave too. Distributed it. The neurological component came through again, and Yuan's vision went white at the edges, and he hit the floor with the Harpy underneath him and his grip still closed.
He pressed his palm flat against its chest and pulled.
The extraction was the roughest one yet, the Harpy was alive and fighting, wings beating against his arms, Talons finding his back and scraping across the Enhanced Stony Skin without penetrating, the sonic output continuing at reduced intensity as the creature's mana depleted. His talent worked through all of it, the core coming loose in pieces rather than whole, and when it finally released the Harpy went still beneath him.
He lay on the junction floor for two seconds and let his spatial awareness finish reassembling.
[Ding!]
[C-Rank Shrieking Harpy — Leader variant defeated. Experience +90]
[Ding!]
[Ability Extracted: Shrieking Harpy — Sonic Absorption (C-Rank)]
[New Skill Acquired: Sonic Absorption]
[Rank: C | Type: Active | Cost: 15 MP]
[Description: Creates a localized field that absorbs incoming sound-based attacks, converting them into minor mana regeneration. Duration: 5 seconds. Cooldown: 12 seconds.]
He got to his knees.
Zhang Wei was still on his feet, one arm braced against the junction wall, reinforcement flickering at critically low output. The remaining six Harpies had redistributed without their lead individual's coordination signal, the tight tactical formation dissolving into something more chaotic, but chaotic and six C-rank monsters was not meaningfully safer than coordinated and six C-rank monsters when one person was absorbing all of it.
Two of them were lining up concurrent shrieks.
Yuan activated Sonic Absorption.
The field expanded from his position in a radius he hadn't expected, the skill description said localized but the actual coverage was broader than that implied, roughly four meters, enough to encompass Zhang Wei's position if Yuan moved three steps toward him. He moved three steps.
The concurrent shrieks hit the field and stopped.
Not dampened. Stopped. The sound arrived at the field's edge and the mana structure of it inverted, the frequency pattern collapsing inward, and Yuan felt it convert in his chest, a faint warm pressure, diffuse and brief, his MP ticking up by three points. The mana regeneration from conversion was small. The tactical value of watching six C-rank Harpies produce their primary weapon at full output and achieve nothing was not small.
Zhang Wei lowered his arms from his ears. Looked around. Looked at Yuan.
"What just happened?"
"Extracted the lead one's ability. Sonic Absorption." Yuan kept his eyes on the remaining Harpies, who were circling the field's edge with the uncertain behavior of things whose instincts had just been contradicted. "Stay inside four meters of me."
"Happily."
The Harpies tried twice more, first a coordinated shriek from three simultaneously, then a rapid-fire sequence from a fourth attempting to find the field's frequency gap. There wasn't one. The absorption was broadband, not frequency-specific, and each attempt fed Yuan's mana pool another two or three points.
On the fourth attempt he stopped feeling generous and activated Flame Breath.
The cone covered forty degrees and two of the circling Harpies were in it. C-rank fire versus C-rank aerial agility, Aerial Agility won on pure speed, both Harpies banking out of the cone's path before full contact, but the edges caught the trailing one's left wing and the Burn status applied.
A burning Harpy with a compromised wing was a Harpy that was no longer operating in three dimensions.
It dropped.
Yuan was on it before it landed. Extraction, quick and efficient, the core smaller than the lead individual's but present. He was standing again before the other five had processed the sequence.
[Ding!]
[C-Rank Shrieking Harpy defeated. Experience +75]
Zhang Wei had found a piece of ceiling debris approximately the size of a large book. He threw it at the nearest Harpy with his reinforcement concentrated in his throwing arm, and it connected with the kind of impact that an E-rank build produced when it stopped trying to be defensive and committed everything to a single output.
The Harpy hit the wall.
Yuan extracted it on the way past.
[Ding!]
[C-Rank Shrieking Harpy defeated. Experience +75]
The remaining four made a collective decision that Yuan chose to interpret as tactical wisdom on their part, they rose toward the ventilation shaft access point in a tight group, the coordination fragmented without their lead but the shared instinct to leave apparently sufficient to synchronize their retreat. He let them go. The Sonic Absorption field was still active with two seconds remaining and he was not going to spend the MP on pursuit when the timer in his head said four minutes and the dungeon core was still below them.
The field dropped... and the junction went quiet.
Zhang Wei sat down on a piece of rubble and put his hands on his knees. He was breathing carefully, the reinforcement fully depleted, the kind of controlled recovery that meant his body was running on obligation rather than energy.
"Right," he said. "How are you at this."
"At what?"
"This." He gestured at the junction, the two dissipated Harpy remains, the scorch mark from the Flame Breath, the smooth section of floor where the lead Harpy had been. "The adaptation. You come out of every fight with something new. Every single time."
Yuan considered how to answer that. The honest version was: I was designed for it, apparently, by whatever mechanism produces SSS-rank hidden talents in F-rank students during graduation exams. The less honest version was still true. "I pay attention to what I'm missing," he said. "Then I find something that fills it."
Zhang Wei looked at him for a moment. "That's either very simple or very profound and I genuinely can't tell which."
"Neither can I."
Zhang Wei almost laughed. The shape of one passed across his face and Yuan counted it.
"Go up," Yuan said. "The main hall needs you more than this corridor does and we both know it."
Zhang Wei nodded slowly, the argument he might have made clearly not materializing. He was a practical person when he was exhausted, which was one of his better qualities. He stood, tested his weight, found it acceptable.
"Four minutes," he said.
"Less now. Move fast."
Zhang Wei moved. Yuan watched him take the upward corridor and disappear around the first bend, and then he turned back to the downward path.
The air ahead was different.
He noticed it first through his Sense, the ambient mana wasn't flowing the way it had been, the normal directional current of dungeon atmosphere replaced by something static and coiled. Then he noticed it with his eyes: at the point where the corridor descended into the final level, approximately thirty meters ahead, the air had taken on a visible quality. Not fog exactly. The colour was wrong for fog, too pale, too uniform, the faint luminescence of disturbed mana rather than suspended water.
It sat at the corridor's mouth like a threshold, the edge of it perfectly defined, and beyond it the dungeon's lower level was completely invisible.