Kael voiced his own guess.
"Not a bad analysis." Dox offered a word of praise, but the next second, his tone abruptly shifted. "But post-battle analysis is still a step too slow. Battles change in the blink of an eye—where would you find so much time to sit there and think things through? You still have a long way to go!"
After first lifting Kael up only to knock him back down, Dox finally answered Kael's doubts.
"Your guess was right. Wai summoning those stone pillars was indeed a small mistake. He hadn't considered that his shadow had already become connected to the pillars, giving Ghost Shadow an opening."
Dox said, "But you got one thing wrong. Ghost Shadow didn't tamper with Wai's shadow multiple times. He actually only did one thing."
Kael looked at Dox, waiting for him to reveal the answer.
Yet Dox fell silent at that moment and looked toward Angel instead.
Angel said, "The Mycelial Matriarch."
Dox turned back to Kael. "That's right. The Mycelial Matriarch."
Kael: ...Did you look at Lord Transcendent Dimension because you didn't know?
Kael's suspicious gaze made Dox slightly uncomfortable. He turned his head aside rather than meeting Kael's eyes, then coughed softly twice. "The name isn't important. What matters is knowing what it does."
"The Mycelial Matriarch can attract the separated mycelial bodies. You saw it too—why did the fungal barrier spread so quickly? And why could it completely cover Wai no matter where he went? Because the Mycelial Matriarch had been planted in his shadow."
Wai had wanted to evade the fungal barrier, darting rapidly around the arena. Yet that very action had instead caused the fungal barrier to expand at high speed.
The reason Wai was now lost within the fungal barrier was also that, no matter where