Chapter 271: Tier V?
Listening to Azarex’s answers, Dhruv wasn’t surprised because he already understood what was going on. The reason behind his quick understanding was that this wasn’t the first time this had happened.
To be the icing on the cake, it had happened in exactly this dungeon barely a day ago.
And with all of this together, it wasn’t strange that he had realized what was happening...
"Azarex, we might... no, we certainly are trapped in an illusion." Muttering this, Dhruv turned his head around and began to inspect the surroundings more carefully.
Although he was confused, Azarex nodded, not doubting the words of his master a bit. Bur accepting didn’t mean he wasn’t still curious about the illusion. Turning himself around, he tried to find any change.
A frown appeared over Azarex’s skull face as he found everything the same. The snowfall was still the same, and so was the surrounding landscape.
Hesitating for a bit, Azarex asked, "Which type of illusion is this one?"
Shaking his head, Dhruv answered, "I don’t exactly know the type, but I’m sure we are in an illusion."
To check something, Dhruv quietly extended his hand and caught some falling snow. Despite his belief, the moment it touched his hand, the snow melted—there was no sign that the reason behind the snowfall was an illusion.
Everything behaved exactly like it should.
’Fuck! This shit is too real. If it weren’t for that, I couldn’t have guessed that we were in an illusion...’ Cursing himself, he quickly recalled how he had realized they were in some sort of illusion.
The reason Dhruv had realized the problem was once again because of his ability: Illusion resistance.
Being a passive skill, it continues to accumulate experience whenever Dhruv encounters some sort of illusion. And the moment it reaches a threshold, it automatically evolves to the next tier.
Even though it wasn’t present in his status, Dhruv could feel his skill evolving. And because of these exact irregularities, he didn’t even need a skill point to evolve the skill to the next tier.
Because of all this, the moment his resistance evolved, he began to find some irregularities in the surroundings. The most noticeable was that the snowfall, which had been happening, had begun to get thinner.
If Dhruv was right, this whole snowfall was the result of an illusion, no matter how real it looked.
After thinking for a while, Dhruv found two purposes this illusive snowfall served: first, to limit the sight of one traveling within it; and second, to hide the footprints so no one could guess if they were traveling in circles or progressing further.
’Huh! Wasn’t the rabbit behaving something like this... huh! So, it was also trapped in the illusion. Poor thing.’ Dhruv pitied the monster as he pieced a few things together. Doing so, he felt one step closer to the truth.
Even though the snowfall was the most noticeable, it wasn’t the only change either.
While observing his surroundings, Dhruv lifted his head. To his surprise, he found something new in the sky as well.
’Is that the mana trail left by the undead eagle?’ Dhruv thought as he noticed a fragile blue trail right above his head. It was so dim that if his mana sensitivity wasn’t strong, he could’ve missed it.
’So, Azarex wasn’t the only one who can see his undead trail after all,’ Dhruv formed the obvious conclusion.
Even after having stronger mana sensitivity compared to Azarex, when Dhruv wasn’t able to sense the mana trail left by the undead previously, he had thought that only Azarex was able to see them.
But now that he could see it... that wasn’t the case, and anyone with strong mana sense could see them.
’This clearly means the illusion even affected the mana trail left by any creature. Does it play with my perception or the world’s...’ Dhruv couldn’t figure out which of the two this illusion was using to fool them.
When Dhruv couldn’t find any real answer, he put it to the back of his mind and began to think of their next course of action. After some thought, he eventually settled on two options.
’Because the trail was also being affected, there is no point following them. So, we could do two things now? We could either wait here, maintaining ourselves for the eventual fight with them, or we can continue to walk around.’
As Dhruv’s Illusion resistance could accumulate experience just by being in the illusion, he didn’t need to walk around. He could just sit here while the resistance would do all the work and eventually become strong enough that he could break free from the illusion.
This was a laid-back option but a slow one after all; the more he experienced the illusion, the faster his resistance would evolve.
At first, Dhruv thought that it would be okay to just sit there, and that was exactly what he did. But after relaxing for a moment, he quickly realized something.
’Man, this is too boring...’ Dhruv thought as he understood that he couldn’t sit still in one place without doing something. Even though he knew he was the type of person who quickly got bored... what he didn’t know was that it had gotten this bad.
"Let’s move around, Azarex..." After filling his core with mana fully, Dhruv decided to move.
As he was moving through the snow, he thought of the question which had been bugging him for some time, ’How is it that the illusion cast by the Cyrstallion is stronger than the illusion of the Great Echomind Hunter? I mean, it shouldn’t be the case, right?’
No matter how much he tried, he just couldn’t find any reasonable way to answer this.
If he were to follow the logic, there was no way this illusion would be stronger than the previous one. After all, this one is probably cast over a very wide area, which would make its power more thinner making it more vulnerable in the process.
That wasn’t all, either. What made it even more dangerous was that even after having the Illusion Resistance strong enough to break the dream illusion, it still wasn’t strong enough to resist this one.
’This doesn’t make sense unless the caster is a high-tier V monster... or someone very, very skilled in illusion magic. And neither of those opponents sounds easy to beat,’ Dhruv thought as an awkward smile appeared on his face.
If it was a monster versed in illusion magic, he might have a chance. But if the monster is tier V...
A shiver ran down his spine as he imagined fighting a tier V monster... not just any tier V, but a unique tier V monster.
