Chapter 2739 Confrontation and Concession <TOC> Chapter 2741 Mental Obstruction
Translator: SumTLMan
As everyone puzzled over it, they suddenly heard Daus’「eh」exclamation.
「Look, doesn’t this resemble a human silhouette?」Daus said, pointing to a black streak on the shattered glass.
A moment ago they had noticed only how murky the mirror was and paid no heed to the marks upon it. Now that Daus had spoken, they finally focused on the dark smear.
At first glance it really did look like a human figure, and……
「Why does it seem familiar to me?」asked Vai. He too thought the dark stain looked like a silhouette, and he felt sure he had seen it somewhere before.
Speaking, Vai leaned in beside Daus, craning his neck to scrutinize the mirror, almost pressing his face against it.
Just then the surface flashed, dazzling Vai’s eyes.
Vai reflexively stepped back and shut his lids.
When he opened them again, the surroundings were utterly quiet. Looking around, he found everyone staring at the mirror in astonishment.
Vai rubbed his throbbing eyes and stepped up for another look.
As he gazed again, his expression matched the others’, filling with incredulous surprise.
「H-how did…… it change color?」
The black silhouette-mark remained, but the blurred glass had turned entirely blood-red, scarlet light seeming to flow across it.
Not only the crowd, even Angel was amazed. He had focused on the silhouette, yet now the coursing blood-light left him baffled.
He had examined the shard and sensed nothing abnormal. If anything odd existed, it should have been inside the mirror space. Now the surface itself had altered, had something within affected the material realm?
Angel cast his gaze toward the Sovereign of Wisdom above, hoping for an answer.
The Sovereign of Wisdom said nothing; instead his eyes settled on Gray Merchant.
Since Daus had remarked on the silhouette, Gray Merchant’s party had stayed silent at the side. When the mirror turned crimson they exchanged startled glances yet still kept quiet.
Now, under Sovereign of Wisdom’s regard, though no pressure was added, Gray Merchant felt a weighty atmosphere.
He knew what the Sovereign of Wisdom wanted: an explanation.
He hesitated. Speak, and perhaps offend the person; stay silent, and offend the Noah family.
If he angered the Mirror Dweller, his memories would likely never return; if he angered the Noah family, he doubted he would survive.
Balancing the two, he chose candor.
「The shard turned red because it picked up the ‘target’s’ pheromones.」
Daus:「Target pheromones?」
Gray Merchant nodded and briefly explained.
Halfway through, everyone grasped the hidden story. The「she」mentioned by the Sovereign of Wisdom had indeed approached Gray Merchant, otherwise their duel would never have happened.
She gave them the broken shard, saying once it touched the target’s pheromones it would glow blood-red.
Their task: find the target and, if possible, block or even kill them.
The shard had been smeared with Angel’s scent and even Daus’, yet nothing happened; when Vai’s pheromones touched it, crimson light burst forth. Without doubt, Vai was the Mirror Dweller’s quarry.
Or one of them.
Now Gray Merchant, Angel, and the rest understood: her prey was the Noah family. Of those present, besides Vai there was one more, Black Count.
Earlier, had Gray Merchant known Vai was the mark, he might have acted; knowing Black Count was near, any desire vanished.
Losing memory was bearable; losing life was not.
「So she can track by pheromones.」Daus chuckled, patting Vai’s shoulder:「Looks like many of your ancestors died by her hand.」
Such tracking pointed to bloodline linkage; she must possess Noah blood.
Daus’ words were somewhat biased, Noah forebears might not all have died by her hand; she could have obtained their blood otherwise.
Yet Vai did not rebut him; given her order to Gray Merchant to『cut down』Noah descendants, Noah ancestors might indeed have fallen to her.
「Hmph, we’ll purge this rebellion.」Vai growled.
To him, the ruin site belonged to Noah heirs. Any intelligent beings inside, even if they obeyed the forebears and not descendants, should still respect the heirs. Failure was betrayal, insurrection!
Insurrection must be quelled, best by eradication, once and for all.
Finishing, Vai turned to Angel with hopeful tone:「My lord, we can surely do it, right?」
Before Angel replied, Daus quipped:「Why ask him? He didn’t make the glass turn red.」
Vai choked; he had no rejoinder, his question had slipped out, forgetting Angel’s position.
As Vai faltered, Angel said meaningfully:「Elimination isn’t the only path, cooperation might be possible.」
Vai held his tongue but disagreed inwardly. With blades almost drawn, cooperate, how? He realized even the lord’s words weren’t always gospel.
Most others thought the same; only Gray Merchant sensed Angel’s words hinted at…… achieving the goal through softer means, had he agreed to trade?
Yet they all misread him. Angel’s idea of cooperation was not with Aedannis but with the male voice that had spoken to him earlier.
Though that man’s identity remained unclear, he likely dwelt within the sigil of the Demon God of Mirrors, and his goodwill was plain. Working with him might help the Noah heirs reach their aim, perhaps even sway Aedannis’ view.
At this moment Angel truly was weighing matters from the heirs’ perspective.
However, one question left Angel utterly puzzled. Why did both Aedannis and that kindly male voice show an interest in him?
He was clearly an outsider, someone who ought to be seated among the spectators, so why had the spotlight fixed on him, and why did the stage itself feel as though it might slide beneath his feet?
Surely it was only his imagination. After all, Aedannis had stated plainly that her target for interception was a descendant of Noah… and the male voice might not have contacted him alone; perhaps the Black Count had received the message even earlier.
With that thought, Angel managed for the moment to quiet the doubts in his heart.
He turned back to Gray Merchant; the matter of the mirror shard ultimately had to be resolved.
Gray Merchant’s earlier account had been extremely detailed, hiding nothing, so everyone now understood why Shrew and her companions had reacted so violently and why Gray Merchant attached such weight to the shard.
Every fault could be laid at the feet of the Mirror Dweller, for she had sealed Gray Merchant’s most crucial memory inside the mirror.
Why that memory mattered so much, Gray Merchant had not said; yet the reaction of Shrew and the others made it clear that the memory likely involved Gray Merchant’s secret, perhaps even secrets of the Traveling Merchants Organization itself.
Thus Gray Merchant had an unavoidable reason to reclaim the shard, and Shrew’s brazen snatch had been based on that.
That Gray Merchant was now suddenly choosing retreat, seeking his goal through negotiation, even willing to relinquish it altogether, was easy to understand once one noticed how clearly he revered the Black Count: he had obviously recognized the Black Count’s identity.
Most people in the Wizarding World know how to read the times, and Gray Merchant was no exception.
「This mirror shard……」Angel had only spoken the first words before he paused, deep in thought, leaving Gray Merchant’s heart hanging high, unable to settle.
Angel was not stalling on purpose; he truly was considering how to handle the shard.
He had taken it for study, while Gray Merchant sought it for the memory sealed within.
On reflection, their goals did not clash at all; a consensus was entirely possible.
And to reach such a consensus, only one problem needed solving: releasing the memory that Aedannis had sealed inside the mirror.
If that memory could be freed, the shard would lose all value for Gray Merchant, and Angel could take it afterward without dispute. The question now was, how to break the seal?
As Angel pondered, Gray Merchant grew increasingly uneasy. Up to this moment he could not read the thoughts of the red-haired, golden-eyed wizard opposite him.
If Angel did not wish to negotiate, he could simply refuse outright. Yet he had not refused; he even seemed inclined to bargain, so why had he fallen silent halfway through his sentence?
Was he weighing what to trade, or still deciding whether to trade at all?
After what felt like a lifetime, even Daus could not resist waving a hand before Angel’s eyes to see whether he was still thinking, Angel finally lifted his gaze.
He appeared to have returned to himself, yet instead of continuing his earlier sentence he manipulated a tendril of mental power to wrap the shattered shard and lift it from his palm.
Suspended in mid-air, the shard allowed everyone to see the image upon its surface more clearly.
The blood-red glow had not yet faded, and the silhouette Reflection Within the Mirror, outlined against crimson, stood all the sharper. From its lines it was plain that Gray Merchant had not lied, the figure inside was identical to him.
While Gray Merchant gazed with mixed feelings at the mirrored image, Angel’s next move left the whole group startled.
Angel raised a hand and extended it toward the broken surface. By common reasoning his hand should have been blocked outside the mirror.
But in reality no obstruction met him at all; his hand passed straight into the mirror.
It looked as though he had thrust his hand into the glass, yet that was not actually the case: the shard itself was small, scarcely larger than his hand, and the mirror served only as a medium. If one watched closely one could see spatial ripples forming before his hand touched the glass. Without making direct contact he had slipped into the mirror’s interior.
To the Black Count and the others this operation seemed normal enough; Angel had already livestreamed them a demonstration of reaching into an oil painting on the Hanging Prison Stairs.
To Gray Merchant’s party, however, the sight was astonishing.
After the Mirror Dweller had sealed Gray Merchant’s memory, they had tried every method to probe the glass, all to no effect. In their eyes it was nothing but an ordinary, fragile, broken mirror,
Any excessive force would have smashed it to pieces.
Having made many attempts in vain, they had finally conceded defeat.
Because they knew firsthand how fragile and ordinary the mirror was, they were dumbfounded to see Angel accomplish what they could not.
……
Angel’s reaching into the mirror was abrupt, yet no one present was foolish; thinking it over and combining Gray Merchant’s earlier explanation, they could guess he meant to attempt removing the seal.
After their initial shock, Gray Merchant and the others collected themselves.
They forgot their earlier conflicts and stared at Angel with hopeful eyes. Even Shrew had changed her gaze, fixing unblinkingly on the hand thrust into the mirror.
From the slight movements of Angel’s arm they could tell his hand was groping back and forth inside.
Whether he had found anything only Angel could know.
After a while he withdrew his hand, empty. The image on the mirror remained.
Gray Merchant and the others looked somewhat disappointed, yet they had not abandoned hope. Since Angel could put his hand inside, unsealing the memory was possible.
Perhaps the distance had simply been too great to reach it.
Or perhaps Angel had already touched the memory and now meant to discuss terms with Gray Merchant before releasing it.
Eyes bright, they waited for an explanation, but from their position none felt free to speak.
The only one who would ignore position and occasion and shout was Pink Jasmine, and Pink Jasmine had been silenced by Gray Merchant.
As they considered secretly freeing her to stir up the atmosphere, someone spoke up ahead of them, voicing exactly what they all wanted to ask.
「Is there anything good inside the mirror?」
From the manner of the question there was no doubt the speaker was Daus.
Chapter 2739 Confrontation and Concession <TOC> Chapter 2741 Mental Obstruction
Thank you for chapter.