Chapter 2735 Cognitive Blockade <TOC> Chapter 2737 Goodwill in the Void
Translator: SumTLMan
With his bloodline fully unleashed, Gray Merchant leapt into the sky and bore down like a「spinning top」, grinding everything in his path.
When Angel saw this scene, he knew the opportunity had arrived.
While Gray Merchant was spinning at high speed, it was almost impossible to lock on to his opponent with the naked eye; at such a moment he was surely relying on his energy vision to lock onto Angel.
During a fierce assault, offense becomes defense.
Under these circumstances, Gray Merchant’s defense against mental power would accordingly weaken. Of course, weakened does not mean「non-existent」, it was merely less sensitive than before.
Moreover, with his bloodline fully opened and blood energy surging, Gray Merchant had no fear of mental assaults from the outside.
Thus Gray Merchant’s current state was layers of defense on the outside, yet unimpeded within.
And Angel’s illusion happened to be attached to Gray Merchant’s body, barely qualifying as「inside」.
Sensing the chance, Angel started to make a small move.
Angel controlled Eremy to extend a hand and give a slight squeeze toward Gray Merchant. The gesture carried no energy significance, which was why outsiders could detect no fluctuation at all.
Yet having no meaning on the level of energy did not mean the gesture was meaningless.
The gesture was one of the suggestive motions Angel had devised while studying the「Heart Mind Illusion」.
Every illusionist, when cultivating Heart Mind Illusion, designs a corresponding suggestive action: some swing a pocket watch, some snap their fingers, some mime an invisible harp…… and so on.
Such suggestion resembles the ritual movements performed before hypnosis.
Since it resembled a ritual movement, it naturally applied only to the complete「ritual」. Because it was linked precisely to the illusion Angel had cast upon Gray Merchant, Angel could, through that gesture, exert a certain degree of control over the illusion.
Beyond covert manipulation of the illusion, Angel had another purpose: to draw Gray Merchant’s attention. Once attention was divided, the probability of the illusion’s trigger succeeding rose sharply.
Whether he had caught Gray Merchant’s eye, Angel could not tell. Yet when Gray Merchant’s trajectory skewed, he knew the illusion had fired successfully.
……
Illusion name, Space Disorientation.
Angel had only just coined the title, yet he found it very fitting.
Originally this spell was merely a sense-obscuring illusion, whose name was simply「Basic Illusion」, but Angel had made a few tweaks to that foundation.
First, the illusion belonged to the Nightmare Illusion school and was cast through Angel’s right eye. That alone elevated its tier by several levels, and with the right-eye green rune’s bonus to Heart Mind Illusion, a sense-oriented basic spell was directly transformed into a cognition-targeting illusion.
Next, Angel embedded his understanding of space within the illusion. Though no space energy was mixed in, the caster’s perception of space deepened the illusion’s foundation; for anyone with a lesser grasp of space principles, the structure and power of this spell were virtually overwhelming.
Finally, the spell’s deployment was tailored to its environment. In a wholly asymmetric space, forcibly altering another’s spatial cognition and using a「swap」approach to create confusion would clearly be ill-timed.
But in the present setting it was ideal. The arena platform was symmetrical and empty, and it floated in the void; all around was pitch-black except for the void creatures, leaving no reference points at all. And since the void creatures were living beings reflected within the illusion itself, they could scarcely serve as fixed markers. Besides, most had not revealed their true forms, only countless pairs of bloodthirsty eyes glittering in the dark, so using them as coordinates was difficult in the first place.
Only under such spatially compatible conditions did Angel dare to activate this category of spatial-cognition illusion.
Facts proved that time and terrain both stood with Angel.
Gray Merchant fell neatly into the trap, completely unaware that the space he perceived had, at the sensory level, already been swapped.
Thus Angel orchestrated a grand illusory drama.
To put it plainly, the illusion simulated a disorder akin to symmetrical spatial dysregulation.
For an ordinary person it might have been an incurable affliction, one that could only be accommodated by altering daily habits.
Yet for a formal wizard, the duration of such spatial disorientation was actually limited, hinging chiefly on「human factors」.
Those「human factors」referred to Gray Merchant himself; once he touched something his eyes could see but his hands could not feel, doubt would naturally arise.
Such doubts could be fooled once or twice, but as the failures mounted, even with his cognition deceived, the target would grow suspicious and realize something was wrong.
For instance, when Gray Merchant missed several attacks in a row, he could initially patch things over with imagination, yet after enough misses he too would find it odd.
However, the key here was the number of attempts,「frequency」.
After Gray Merchant fell for the trick, would Angel grant him that many swings and doubts?
Certainly not. Therefore, once Gray Merchant was snared and no outsider could warn him, the outcome was already decided.
……
Gray Merchant lavished praise upon a foe that「did not exist」, and only after finishing did he strike a pose, ready to engage Eremy in a true battle.
In theory, Angel could have acted right then.
He could have used Space Disorientation to dupe Gray Merchant off the platform, or simply relied on Eremy’s combat prowess to floor him in his confused state.
Whether by 『Strategy』 or by 『Battle』, victory was already secured.
Yet Angel chose neither; he picked 『Delay』, or rather, to 『Delay』 while awaiting 『Change』.
Whether he won this bout was not truly important, for even if Angel lost, Daus and the Black Count were resting and ready behind him. At the level of formal wizards, they were bound to win.
With that conclusion in mind, Angel hoped instead for some unforeseen「variation」to appear in the battle.
Angel placed that hope on Gray Merchant.
Since that presence resided in Gray Merchant and was observing him at such close range, would「She」seize the chance to intervene? Even if she refrained, would she direct Gray Merchant on the side and awaken him from his impairment?
Were she truly to do so, Angel would have grounds to target her directly.
Indeed, Angel had already, covertly, locked his gaze upon the locus of the anomalous emotion he had sensed earlier.
Yet as time passed and Gray Merchant repeatedly brushed past the「Eremy」that wasn’t there, even as self-doubt began to creep over him, that entity still made no move.
Moreover, Angel’s perception of that anomalous emotion was growing fainter and fainter, either the other party had noticed his probing, or she was moving away from Gray Merchant.
Angel personally favored the latter.
Although his gaze had occasionally swept across the critical spot, he had taken no direct action. Unless the other side could read minds, and pierce Eremy’s shell to probe Angel’s thoughts, she should not have sensed Angel at all.
Yet if it was the latter, her method of distancing herself from Gray Merchant was quite odd. The anomalous emotion was still clinging to Gray Merchant, yet it gradually weakened, as though Gray Merchant’s body contained a spatial passage: she had first lingered at the entrance and was now moving away from it, heading deeper inside……
The strangeness of it stirred a vague realization in Angel’s mind.
The anomalous emotion soon vanished, and at that moment a conjecture surfaced in Angel’s thoughts.
After pondering a while, Angel looked at the still-disoriented Gray Merchant. A notion flickered through his heart; he decided to seize the chance and test whether his conjecture was correct.
Angel’s hesitation, in outsiders’ eyes, looked like he was toying with Gray Merchant.
Gray Merchant had been trapped in an illusion from start to finish, never facing Angel directly, instead dueling wits with empty air. The sight even moved Daus to remark.
Clearly he could have defeated, even killed, his opponent with ease, yet he chose to「humiliate」him in this fashion……
「Tsk, tsk, tsk…… that’s why I say his heart is black, believe me now?」Daus said to Vai.
Vai merely pursed his lips:「What do you know? If the lord acts so, he must have his reasons.」
Daus’s eyes went round:「You can whitewash even this?」
Vai:「I am doing no such thing. Besides, even if the lord really meant it, so what? Didn’t you hear how that bunch across the way cursed him just now, calling the lord a shapeshifter?!」
The more Vai spoke, the angrier he grew:「The lord even promised to let them enter the Sunlight Sanctuary, what ungrateful curs! So he humiliates them; what of it?」
He raised his voice deliberately so the opposing group could hear.
Shrew’s party did indeed catch every word. Yet among them only Pink Jasmine took the taunt to heart; the others, Shrew included, paid it little mind.
After all, though Eremy seemed to be trifling with Gray Merchant, he had taken no further action. And who could say whether Eremy’s illusion required a buffering interval after being cast, or perhaps barred him from using other powers thereafter? A spell capable of affecting a bloodline wizard surely came with side effects, no?
Thus Shrew and her people did not overthink it.
But when Eremy, done with his「games」, began to move, approaching Gray Merchant step by step, they finally grew tense.
They had felt unconcerned because Gray Merchant was unhurt; now that Eremy was on the move, uncertainty crept in.
No one knew whether Eremy’s intent toward Gray Merchant was mercy or murder.
Shrew’s party scarcely dared to blink, staring at the duel within the arena for fear of missing a single detail, yet their expressions quickly turned strange.
Eremy did not strike a killing blow, but his actions baffled Shrew and the others.
They saw the blue lantern flower atop Eremy’s head give a gentle sway, and a succession of severed hands, each fashioned of crystal or gem, materialized before him.
In but a few seconds, nearly twenty such hands appeared, differing in hue yet identical in shape.
Shrew’s party might not recognize the design, but the Black Count’s group knew it at a glance: the hands were modeled after Dangros down to the eye and mouth in each palm!
Once formed, the severed hands bore the aura of earth as they moved toward Gray Merchant from every angle.
To keep Gray Merchant from sensing them, Eremy launched feints in a「mirror-symmetry」pattern, continually drawing Gray Merchant’s attention.
Even so, some hands were caught in the crossfire and utterly destroyed.
Yet each hand, broken or not, fulfilled its final duty: dissipating into dregs to make Gray Merchant believe he had struck Eremy, thus lessening his doubt about the spatial confusion.
By the time any hands reached Gray Merchant, fewer than half remained.
Compared with Gray Merchant, who had fully unleashed his bloodline and assumed the form of a Gemstone Earth Dragon, the hands were as insignificant as ants, so small he did not notice them at first.
They climbed up the dragon’s tail, drifting across the gem-studded hide.
Such was the scene now playing out on the arena floor.
With such feeble energy the hands could never kill Gray Merchant, but their crawling over his body, the picture was…… indescribable.
Fortunately Gray Merchant had activated his bloodline and no longer looked human; otherwise the hands roaming over him would have resembled caresses, an even more unsightly spectacle.
「I was wrong.」 Daus suddenly sighed:「I thought his earlier toying was humiliation enough, who knew he had an even crueler trick.」
「If that were a witch down there, the feud would be to the death once she left the arena.」
Everyone except the two combatants heard Daus’ words.
Whether Daus was slandering him or had truly seen through matters, his comment made Shrew’s eyes darken at once.
The men present felt little empathy, but Shrew, being a witch, followed Daus’ logic and the sense of violation surged within her.
Earlier she had not felt Angel’s conduct was especially wrong, nor that it humiliated Gray Merchant, yet now her thoughts had changed. Her vicious stare locked onto Angel, seeing in the gem giant a lecherous aura through and through.
Angel naturally felt Shrew’s gaze.
He sensed her mood shift from neutrality to malice, yet he had no leisure to pursue the reason.
Because he had felt another anomalous emotion!
And this time it did not come from Gray Merchant, but from…… the void!
Chapter 2735 Cognitive Blockade <TOC> Chapter 2737 Goodwill in the Void