[Vol. 8] Chapter 145: The One from the False Realm
Seeing her “dead teammate come back to life,” Sybil was completely shocked. She wanted to shout out to the other side, but it was like they were separated by a mirror. No matter how hard she tried, no sound could pass through. All she could do was pace anxiously in place.
And not far away, the scene unfolding behind Miss Dark Spirit was even more shocking. As soon as Mr. Ferryman and Miss Dark Lotus rushed to her side, they saw that in a space that looked like the same red sea of flowers, but with only her inside, the girl who should have long lost the strength to move was instead fighting like someone possessed.
She was charging wildly between more than ten blurry enemies, using deadly attacks without concern for her own safety. It was as if she had been provoked and hated the enemies in front of her deeply. The sight sent a chill down their spines.
Although they still didn’t fully understand what was going on, the moment the scenes behind Sybil and the others appeared, it wasn’t hard to realize something. The people fighting each other in those illusions… weren’t they actually Miss Dark Spirit and the Sybil’s priests team, both with their appearances hidden by some kind of power?
These people weren’t dead at all. The supposed “deaths” and “serious injuries” were actually just another way of being gathered together. Under the influence of a strange power, they had been tricked into a deadly fight!
With fake mixed into real, and real mixed into fake. If everything were purely an illusion, it would be easy to tell. But when most of it is real and only a small part is false, figuring out which parts are fake becomes extremely difficult.
At that moment, the meaning behind something the black-haired priestess had said earlier, “it’s hard to see the truth when you’re inside the mountain”, suddenly hit everyone like a flash of insight. Everything started to make sense.
Almost instinctively, they turned to look at the priestess who had already seen through everything, and at the strange vision that appeared with her movement.
But what shocked them even more was this, the scene behind Ayla Light wasn’t some illusion or fantasy. There were no people trapped inside, confused and fighting each other. Instead, all they saw was a strange, jellyfish-like, semi-transparent, glowing blue creature floating silently behind her.
Its body was only a few meters wide, but it had nearly a hundred long, thin tentacle-like limbs extending outward. These soft limbs, which looked like they could pierce through space itself, reached out in every direction. Some were connected to Mr. Ferryman, Miss Dark Lotus, and even Sybil. Others stretched into the illusions where the priest team and Miss Dark Spirit were fighting. All of them were connected, forming a huge, invisible web.
And through those connections, small glowing lights seemed to be flowing along the tentacles from everyone present, slowly moving toward the strange jellyfish behind Ayla and merging into its body.
But even now, even though they could clearly see what the creature looked like, no one had noticed any signs that something had been taken from them. They couldn’t feel the tentacles at all.
It was terrifying.
Noticing the shocked looks on everyone’s faces, Ayla frowned slightly and seemed to sense something. She glanced behind her, and saw that strange, ghostly jellyfish floating in the air. But the scholar girl didn’t show much of a reaction.
She didn’t panic, didn’t try to pull away the blue, semi-transparent tentacles that were connected to everyone else, except her and the black-haired priestess. Instead, she simply turned her head calmly and asked the black-haired girl to confirm.
“So, Miss Violet… this is the real mastermind? The one the machine pointed to wasn’t any of them, it was… me?”
The priestess nodded slightly.
"To be exact, it’s the thing behind you. That machine you used is very interesting. It doesn’t seem to detect just physical matter. I don’t really understand how it works, but through the mix of real and fake energies left in the illusion, it actually managed to precisely locate this evil creature attached to you. You could say it’s an unbelievable invention, way ahead of its time."
"All of you are elites of this era, so take a good look at this thing. Learn from this experience, I don’t think this will be the last time you deal with something like it."
“……”
Following Violet’s signal, the scholar girl, who quickly understood what she meant, took out the radar-like device and no longer tried to hide it. She showed it to everyone again.
The flashing red dot at the center of the device clearly matched the strange “jellyfish” floating behind her. If you looked closely, you’d see that even their movement patterns were perfectly in sync. It was clear, and very unsettling.
As their shock started to fade, the group also realized something else. This jellyfish-like, semi-transparent creature didn’t seem to go wild after being exposed. It was like it didn’t exist in the same space as them, or maybe it just didn’t realize that the people it was attached to could now see it.
The group looked at each other, confused. Then Sybil glanced at the intense fight still going on inside the other illusion and said with concern.
“I still don’t fully understand what’s going on with all these real and fake illusions, but now’s not the time to worry about the small details. Miss Violet, what should we do now? If what you said is right and this machine is accurate, then… do those red dots mean there are over a dozen more enemies like this one outside…?”
“...To be honest, I’m just a normal priest without any special power. But I can clearly feel that this strange creature... it’s definitely not one of the goddess’s tests. It feels completely wrong, just looking at it makes me uncomfortable. If this is really some enemy that snuck into the trial, shouldn’t we leave right away and report it to the Saintess or Her Holiness the Pope?”
“No. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”
The one who quickly said this wasn’t the priestess, it was Ayla Light, who had already started to understand the whole situation. She looked at the strange jellyfish floating quietly behind her again, as if trying to memorize its weird and creepy form. Then she shook her head and said,
“Miss Sybil, haven’t you realized it yet? The ones trapped in these illusions made of twisted, fake, and real elements aren’t just your teammates or Miss Dark Spirit. If the red dots shown on the device represent other similar creatures, then there must be many more people who’ve also been captured by them.”
“They didn’t want to be discovered before, so they were secretly guiding and tempting everyone into fighting each other. But that doesn’t mean these strange creatures are only capable of doing that. Since they can control illusions, mix real and fake people, and even swap them without us noticing… then if we push them too far, it’s completely possible that they might go as far as blowing themselves up.”