Chapter 2734 True Battle <TOC> Chapter 2736 Space Disorientation
Translator: SumTLMan
At this moment the Gray Merchant was like a high-speed spinning top. Upon landing he smashed a great pit into the arena floor, proof of the terrifying power he now wielded.
Whenever a crater appeared on the stage, one could already imagine that the Sovereign of Wisdom would issue a reminder about compensation.
Yet at this point the Gray Merchant cared nothing for such rules. In a true battle, if one allowed regulations to tie one’s hands, how could one fight to one’s heart’s content? How could one be worthy of an opponent willing to go all out?
Ignoring the noise in his ears, the “spinning top” rose again, wrapped in vast draconic might, leaving a long gouged track across the arena as he barreled straight toward Angel.
One must admit, so long as the Gemstone Earth Dragon does not show its head, every other part of it is dazzlingly magnificent.
Now, although the Gray Merchant had taken the form of a spinning top, his rolling cut a rainbow ribbon of gem dust behind him. Ground into glittering powder, the fragments glimmered with flowing iridescence.
Spectators saw dreamlike colors, but to Angel such shimmering tides spelled dreadful danger.
His brow throbbed faintly; confronted with the approaching peril, a tingling ran across his scalp, a warning from his intuition that the coming strike, with his present strength, was absolutely irresistible.
Even Eremy incessantly sounded alarms to Angel.
Though the danger had not yet fallen upon his head, Angel now understood why the bloodline branch could dominate its peers. That crushing oppression, that unavoidable trembling, that horror with nowhere to hide, all laid bare the gap in the clearest, most visceral way.
Bloodline wizards are true engines of war, or rather… war monsters!
From the danger sense roiling through his body Angel could be certain the Gray Merchant was now deadly serious, doubtless moved by some notion of a “real battle” and therefore giving everything he had.
Faced with such a terrifying onslaught, Angel naturally could not simply do nothing.
Yet what he did left the onlookers puzzled.
He merely stretched out a hand and closed it. The blue lantern flower above Eremy’s head, once swaying, gradually grew still.
The entire sequence looked like nothing more than the silent final gesture of a mime. None present sensed any energy within it, and even in an energy vision no anomaly could be detected.
No one understood what Angel’s action meant, until… they looked at the Gray Merchant.
The Gray Merchant remained a spinning top, charging toward Angel in a flash of dust. Originally this should have been an inevitable head-on collision, yet strangely, while spinning forward, he suddenly veered at an angle.
His original trajectory was certain to strike Angel, but for some reason a clear deviation appeared. Because of that deviation the path skipped past Angel altogether.
At first the crowd thought the Gray Merchant was anticipating Angel’s anticipation and was lunging toward a line the latter might dodge along.
But the outcome proved Angel had not moved at all, whereas the Gray Merchant, by a hair-breadth angle, slipped past him and rolled straight toward the edge of the arena.
That minuscule skew intersected Angel by the thinnest margin; even the streamers of light trailing from the Gray Merchant merely brushed him.
Witnessing this, everyone suddenly realized Angel must have done something.
What exactly he had done, however, no one knew. Even the Sovereign of Wisdom aloft had seen no outward action.
Indeed, even the Gray Merchant himself had no idea what he was doing.
In his own sight he had charged directly at his foe. With the opponent’s gem giant, how could he possibly lose a locked target?
From beginning to end the Gray Merchant had fixed on Angel, yet somehow he had missed him.
When he saw the black void beyond the arena looming ahead, he threw every ounce of effort into arresting his immense momentum.
A long fractured rut ran across the floor to the arena’s edge, and at that brink a pit even larger than the one from his earlier impact yawned.
It showed just how much force the Gray Merchant had used to keep from hurtling into the void.
Barely stopping at last, he immediately heard the black robed adjudicator’s fine warning in his ear. The Gray Merchant lifted his head slightly.「I will repair and compensate for the damage once the battle is over.」
Though he did not spell it out, his meaning was clear: he hoped the adjudicator would refrain from reciting penalties during the match.
How could the Sovereign of Wisdom fail to understand? With a faint smile and a tone laden with significance he answered:「Very well.」
With that, the Sovereign of Wisdom tapped the air toward the arena.
At once the Gray Merchant felt a hush descend. The howls of beasts outside, the murmur of voices at ringside, every distracting sound was screened out by the Sovereign of Wisdom.
Having done all this, the Sovereign of Wisdom added once more:「As you wish, no outside voices will disturb you. I trust you will keep your word when all is done.」
His words still brimmed with layered meaning.
The Gray Merchant merely assumed that beings as mighty as the black robed adjudicator enjoyed speaking in such unfathomable tones, and so he paid the manner no mind, but offered a grateful nod.
Without the surrounding clamor he could indeed better calm himself for a duel between men.
Yet he failed to notice that all along the sidelines the crowd stared at him in astonishment.
The pink-haired girl was even shouting at the top of her lungs to him, but just then the Sovereign of Wisdom’s sound screen ensured that, intent on facing Angel, the Gray Merchant never looked their way.
He gazed at the gem giant opposite and drew a deep breath:「Lord, your character is noble; I respect you. From now on I shall not err again.」
He called his opponent noble because, when he had slipped up earlier, the other could have pursued but did not.
By ordinary logic one might think the opponent had scorned him. Yet the Gray Merchant had already judged his foe to be a “qualified” adversary seeking a “true battle.” By that logic, the lack of pursuit was not contempt but elegance, a mark of lofty character.
Whether his conjecture was right or wrong is another matter.
But the expressions of the onlookers outside grew ever more peculiar.
The Gray Merchant could not hear them, but they could hear everything within; in this the Sovereign of Wisdom showed a certain humanity.
Yet more than such details, the members of the Traveling Merchants organization felt anger and helplessness that the adjudicator had deliberately raised the sound barrier at this crucial moment.
Because… the Gray Merchant had a problem.
Moreover, the problem was plain to every observer while the man himself remained utterly unaware. If no one pointed it out, he might stay lost in delusion forever.
Exactly what the problem was is hard to state, but they could plainly see the oddity of his behavior.
For instance, after stopping he spoke to the black robed adjudicator.
Instinctively, he lifted his eyes to the upper left sky, and all along believed the adjudicator was there, yet the adjudicator was clearly in the upper right.
The Gray Merchant was staring at empty air, speaking to it!
Because she realized that the Gray Merchant might have been caught, Pink Jasmine shouted:「Wrong, wrong! The direction is wrong!」 hoping the Gray Merchant would quickly notice his own problem.
However, the adjudicator chose that very moment to raise a sound barrier.
How could this not fill them with anger? They already suspected the adjudicator was in league with the other side, but such brazen favoritism left them both chilled and helpless.
They had pinned their hopes on the Gray Merchant to spot the anomaly quickly, yet they were still too naïve.
The Gray Merchant spoke at length about「noble character」to his foe, but the one before him was not the mysterious wizard calling himself Eremy at all, merely empty air.
Eremy was plainly standing on the Gray Merchant’s other side!
「What now? Lord Gray Merchant still hasn’t sensed anything wrong!」 Pink Jasmine hopped about in anxiety, itching to rush onto the arena floor.
「Fretting won’t help,」came a faintly tired voice from behind, Shepherd, who had somehow awakened unnoticed:「It’s normal he hasn’t noticed yet; when his second attack also misses, he should catch on.」
「All you ever offer are cold-water comments. That shapeshifter opposite is so cunning, it’s a mystery whether he’ll even let my lord land a second blow.」 Pink Jasmine snorted.
Shepherd blinked:「Shapeshifter?」
「That shadow giant, one moment he feels like a shadow elemental, the next he turns into an earth elemental. Isn’t that a shapeshifter?」Pink Jasmine said in all seriousness.
Shepherd:「Whoever Lord Gray Merchant is facing is your senior. Aren’t you afraid he’ll bear a grudge?」
Pink Jasmine found no retort; she merely pouted:「He can’t hear me right now anyway.」
Shepherd pointed across:「Those inside can’t hear, but those outside can. Haven’t you noticed the apprentice over there glaring at you this whole time?」
Puzzled, Pink Jasmine looked over and saw a wizard apprentice standing close to Red Sword Daus, staring daggers at her.
Perhaps out of guilt, Pink Jasmine glanced once, then instantly looked away.
Shepherd:「Setting that aside, aren’t you curious about giant shadow’s methods?」
Pink Jasmine:「What’s there to be curious about?」
This time Shepherd fell silent; instead Mammoth spoke up:「Back in the carrion squirrel corridor, Lord Gray Merchant clearly sensed an illusion node. We’ve long suspected an illusionist wizard on the other side, yet no one has appeared.」
He paused, then said to Pink Jasmine:「Don’t you think the giant shadow’s current methods look very much like an illusion?」
Mammoth merely stated a fact, but Shepherd waited until he finished to add a jab:「Don’t forget you’re an illusionist yourself. If the opponent truly is an illusionist wizard, how can someone of the same branch be so insensitive?」
Pink Jasmine opened her mouth but suddenly found no reply.
She could only look toward Lady Shrew, hoping to hear from her that the foe was no illusionist.
Yet Shrew replied blandly:「I sensed no fluctuation from an illusion node earlier, so I can’t say he’s an illusionist. Still, these methods do rather resemble the illusion branch.」
That even Shrew thought so left Pink Jasmine embarrassed: as an illusion apprentice she had sensed nothing at all, while practitioners of other branches had to remind her…
Shepherd:「Since you’re in the illusion branch, tell us, if the giant shadow is an illusionist wizard, what sort of illusion is he using?」
Though Shepherd asked normally, Pink Jasmine felt humiliated… and worst of all, she couldn’t flare up.
After a moment’s silence, Pink Jasmine said:「If it really is illusion, it might be misdirection of the senses.」
Pink Jasmine had barely finished when Shrew shook her head:「From outward signs it does resemble sensory misdirection, but tampering with the senses isn’t high-level illusion. Gray Merchant should perceive it, yet he still hasn’t, so it’s likely not sensory misdirection.」
So-called sensory misdirection is manipulation of the five senses, the very foundation of the illusion branch.
For instance, a beginner deceives the opponent’s eyes, vision, then perhaps hearing, smell, touch… all fall under sensory misdirection.
In Shrew’s view, if it were sensory misdirection, it could only be primarily visual guidance. But visual guidance is the most basic illusion, how could the Gray Merchant fail to see through it?
Although the Gemstone Earth Dragon bloodline boasts strong physical resistance and weaker mental resistance, that hardly means Gray Merchant’s mental defenses are frail.
Recall that the Gemstone Earth Dragon’s earlier stage is the Crystal Earth Basilisk.
The Crystal Earth Basilisk is extremely vulnerable to elemental damage, average to physical, yet extraordinarily resistant to mental attacks.
As a blood source wizard, Gray Merchant undeniably inherited that strength when refining his bloodline; his mental resistance is far from poor.
He could not be fooled by a low-level illusion.
Shrew’s opinion was in fact shared by most present, including the Sovereign of Wisdom.
Yet reality proved far from their conjecture; indeed, Pink Jasmine’s guess lay closest to the truth.
The illusion Angel employed truly does count as one that affects the senses.
Only, this illusion touches not merely the senses but something extending from「sense」 and plunging deeper: cognition.
Affecting only the senses may fail even against apprentices, but once cognition itself is deceived, waking unaided becomes exceedingly difficult.
To deceive cognition is to render every「it seems reasonable」perfectly self-consistent within one’s own understanding.
Take an imperfect analogy: people with red-green color-blindness find it hard to realize their color perception is biased. Color-blindness stems from a medical condition, so it differs from Angel’s illusion, yet in terms of cognitive hindrance they share common ground.
When every personal assumption forms a logically self-consistent closed loop within the brain, that is the so-called Cognitive Blockade.
……
When Angel arranged for Eremy to duel the Gray Merchant, he was hardly just「AFK.」 Besides seeking abnormal emotions, he pondered the duel itself, when would be the best moment to act?
His conclusion: strike at close range; with Eremy providing cover outside, he could work his little tricks unseen.
Thus, when Eremy’s fist materialized, pierced the Gray Merchant’s gem shield, and struck his chest directly, Angel acted.
The illusion he had prepared long before, borne on the energy ripple of that clash, attached itself straight to the Gray Merchant.
In truth, penetrating Gray Merchant’s body and influencing him from within would have been ideal, but Angel never underestimated blood branch flesh; to avoid discovery, external attachment was safer.
Moreover, Eremy’s elemental simulation perfectly mimicked the energy traits on the Gray Merchant’s surface, masking the trace of Angel’s illusion.
At that moment the illusion showed no sign of activation, and with gemstone power as camouflage, the Gray Merchant sensed nothing.
Nor had Angel yet decided how to use the illusion; he merely laid it as an opening move, to be triggered when the time was ripe.
Chapter 2734 True Battle <TOC> Chapter 2736 Space Disorientation