Who said that the five senses were the only sources?
The thought made Alex freeze, but he immediately moved again as a bolt of lightning struck toward him.
Now that he thought about it, wasn't there another sense he used, whether actively or passively, most of the time?
That's right, there was also his mana sense.
Well, it wasn't a sense per se. It was rather the ability to feel the energy known as mana, both inside and outside his body. Whether consciously or not, he was always interacting with mana, be it his own mana inside his body or the mana present in his surroundings.
As this thought occurred to him, Alex recalled another application of mana that might very well help in his situation.
He wasn't sure if it would work considering his now low level, but he still gave it a try, sending out several pulses of mana into his surroundings that acted as a sort of scanner.
Alex immediately received feedback, and the details of his surroundings appeared in his mind.
This was the same method used by those who couldn't rely on their other senses to perceive their surroundings, whether in a fight or otherwise. It was also the same method that the majority of his opponents used to try to detect his presence whenever he surrounded himself with his smoke. It didn't work against him for obvious reasons, though.
Alex initially felt like he had found a valid method to map out his surroundings and avoid some of the dangers he was facing, but he quickly realized that wasn't the case.
First of all, the amount of mana he would have to spend using this method was insane, and considering his current low reserves, there was no way he could keep it up for more than a couple of hours.
Secondly, besides being unsustainable, this method was simply not effective enough. It barely did any better than his normal senses, if at all. What use was there in detecting a bolt of lightning a split second before it came his way if he was too slow to move out of its path?
Worse, he felt that using this ability to scan his surroundings this way was actually counterproductive. He had to consciously think, expend mana, and then react accordingly to the feedback he received. In a situation like his, he felt that relying on his instincts to move the moment he sensed danger was the better option.
It didn't mean that he had to abandon his mana sense, though.
'If I can somehow integrate my mana sense into my being so thoroughly that there is no longer any difference between it and my other senses, my instincts should become sharper,' Alex thought as he continued running for his life.
It was easier said than done, though.
However, despite the difficulty and danger ahead of him, a small smile couldn't help but appear on Alex's face.
The constant feeling of danger, the feeling that no matter how much he improved, it wouldn't be enough to guarantee his survival, that a single mistake could mean the end. All these feelings reminded him of the days when he had been on the battlefield with nothing but his weapon in hand and an enemy he had to strike down.
Those were the good times.
Make no mistake, he hated war, mostly because it was almost always people in power disagreeing over something and sending their fellow citizens to war while they themselves stayed in the comfort of their homes.
He hated war and still did, but the feeling of danger and the constant fight for one's life, that, he liked... because it was in those kinds of environments that he thrived.
'I can't expect to get out of here without taking some risks,' Alex thought to himself as he did something that clearly went against what his mind was telling him was the correct course of action.
Drawing inspiration from how he used his smoke ability, Alex burned through his mana reserves as he released his mana into his immediate surroundings.
What he did was similar to his previous mana-scanning method, but instead of constantly sending pulses of mana through the ground, he went a step further and spread his mana throughout the entire space around him. It wasn't limited to the ground anymore. His mana permeated the air as well, filling the space around him and allowing him to perceive anything that entered its range.
His mana blanketed the surroundings within thirty meters of him, forming a dome-shaped field that constantly scanned everything inside it and fed new information into his mind every second.
He went even further and deliberately restricted his other senses to cover only those same thirty meters.
After the black heart that had invaded his body in the Night's base, his senses could now extend dozens of meters away from him. But right now, Alex forcefully restrained them, even going as far as to limit his own vision.
This was actually very risky because some of the attacks came at him from hundreds of meters away. By restricting his sight to thirty meters, he wouldn't see them coming until they were only a few meters away from him. There was also the fact that he would have no idea which direction he was heading in.
But he knew that none of that would matter if he died anyway.
Alex's mana reserves also began to burn at an alarming rate. If before he felt that he could last a couple of hours relying solely on his mana, now he estimated that he could last half an hour at most.
He wasn't worried, though.
Half an hour would have to do.
With all his senses, from his mana sense to his other senses now restricted to thirty meters, Alex felt as though he had a firm grasp on everything happening around him.
His thirty-meter domain had become an extension of his own body. Every disturbance within it was immediately registered by his senses. The slightest shift in the air, the vibration of the ground, changes in mana, even the faintest movement of debris all reached his mind almost simultaneously. His senses were no longer merely perceiving his surroundings. They were constantly bathing him in information, allowing him to build a near-instantaneous mental image of everything within his domain.
So when the ground beneath him suddenly bulged upward, Alex had already noticed it before the earth had even begun to rupture.
He casually shifted his body to the side as a massive pillar of stone erupted from the ground where he had been standing, sending chunks of rock flying in every direction.
Before the debris could reach him, he ducked beneath a spinning boulder, sidestepped a sudden wave of scorching air that swept through his domain, and immediately felt another disturbance coming from behind.
Without even looking back, Alex twisted his body and narrowly avoided a jagged blade of earth that shot through the air where his head had been a moment earlier.
A second later, the ground beneath his feet suddenly sank.
Alex didn't even hesitate. He pushed himself forward just as the soil collapsed into a deep pit behind him.
Then came another attack.
And another.
A violent gust suddenly tore through his domain from the left, followed by dozens of razor-sharp fragments of stone being carried along with it.
Alex lowered his body and weaved through them with practiced movements.
A patch of grass ahead of him suddenly turned black and began spreading rapidly across the ground. Alex immediately changed direction.
A deafening crack rang out above him.
His mana sense detected the disturbance before his ears even registered the sound, allowing him to leap forward just as a massive bolt of purple lightning struck the ground behind him.
He landed, rolled, and continued running without slowing down.
For the next ten minutes, Alex easily escaped every attack that came his way. Even the dangerously fast lightning bolts were now somewhat manageable, allowing him to avoid most of them before they could reach him.
For the first time since entering this hellish place, the accumulation of wounds on his body had stopped.
Instead of his previous smile, though, a deep frown could be seen on Alex's face.
'Are there really no clues?' Alex wondered as he kept running.
From the instant he had stepped through the invisible barrier and entered this place, the only thing that had greeted him was chaos.
This place was the most chaotic environment he had ever witnessed in his life. Everything was a jumbled mess, with completely random events occurring from one moment to the next. There seemed to be no pattern, no logic, and no discernible rules governing what happened around him.
And yet, there was one constant.
Him.
No matter how random the attacks were, they kept coming toward him.
There was only so much that could be attributed to randomness. Alex was certain that something, or someone, was targeting him.
And that was precisely why he had been willing to burn through his mana.
His plan had never been to simply survive by dodging attacks until he somehow completed the objective. He wanted to find whatever was targeting him and neutralize it.
However, as time passed and he burned through another third of his mana reserves, Alex began to wonder if he had been wrong.
'No. There has to be something,' he reaffirmed to himself as he continued running across the deathly plains, constantly avoiding the hazards that appeared around him.
Seconds ticked by.
Soon, nearly twenty minutes had passed, and Alex had nothing to show for it except for the wounds that had begun accumulating on his body once more.
The reason was simple.
Alex had become so focused on perceiving everything within his domain that he sometimes failed to react quickly enough when an attack entered it. His mind was processing an overwhelming amount of information every second, and even with his enhanced instincts, there was a limit to how much he could handle.
It was the most focused he had ever been in his life.
In both of his lives.
Everything else had been thrown out the window. His only concern was understanding what was happening around him. He plunged his consciousness deeper and deeper into his surroundings, trying to grasp even the smallest irregularity, to the point that he had almost forgotten about his rapidly dwindling mana reserves.
After an indeterminate amount of time, however, Alex felt something.