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There was an image burned into Taj’s brain now. An image of Jafar and his reaper, Karexa, standing there, facing down the enemy alone so that the rest of them could continue fleeing.

He didn’t think he would ever forget that man. In fact, if he somehow lived through this, he was going to make his cousin’s incredible bravery known to everyone he could. Somehow.

But that was a task for his future self. For now, he was still dedicating all of his effort to surviving their current predicament.

And while he was not one given to looking on the bright side, he knew that things were not yet hopeless. They’d managed to evade their pursuers this long, after all. And that was no fluke. His cousin and the reapers had taught him much about the nature of these sorts of chases.

The core problem, as one might expect, was the enemy reapers. Once they memorize their targets’ soul signatures, a chase becomes much more dangerous. It becomes virtually impossible to lose them via hiding spots in the topography, and when they focus, they can sense souls across truly vast distances.

In the face of such problems, the group had been employing various methods of countering. None had worked flawlessly thus far, but there had been downtime here and there. Opportunities to sleep and eat, even. Luxuries for servants in the thick of battle, Orolix said.

Their first method of counter had been to infuse their souls into the environment as much as possible. If the soul power and ardor in the topography were too minuscule to interfere with an enemy reaper’s sense, then the solution was to add more. As much as possible. Spread it around and lead them on a wild goose chase. It helped even more when they split up and sent the enemy in different directions.

But splitting up was dangerous, too, of course. And naturally, it couldn’t last forever. Infused soul power dissipated over time, and it also took considerable skill to infuse it into objects across larger and larger distances. So in the end, that trick wasn’t much use when the enemy reapers were already far away. In fact, it might’ve just made things worse, like leaving behind a giant trail of blood for them to follow. It was better for confusing the senses of reapers who were already close by.

When they already had more distance to work with, the better method was to hunt down localized sources of ardor. Which, mercifully, the Undercrust had in much greater abundance than the surface. He could understand why the decision was made to flee down here.