Chapter 405 : The Real Illusion

At the moment he burst out of the interlayer, Saul felt as if he had been struck by a beam of black light.

Strangely, he didn’t feel injured, nor did he feel any discomfort.

After returning to the second storeroom, Saul didn’t have time to think. He immediately rushed back into his body.

Only afterward did he get up to check on Senior Byron, who had emerged ahead of him.

But as soon as Saul sat up, he froze in place.

Was this… still the second storeroom?

All around him was nothing but broken walls and ruins.

If not for the shadow of the wall corner where he had been lying, he would have seen sunlight pouring down the moment he opened his eyes.

“What happened? How did the Wizard Tower collapse the moment I blinked?”

“Little Algae!”

Saul immediately called for the Soul-Devouring Mire inside his body, but no black tendrils responded.

“Penny?”

Nor did any silver butterflies dart about in his peripheral vision.

Saul’s expression darkened slightly but soon gradually calmed.

“An illusion? Hypnosis?”

He took two steps forward and stretched his hand into the sunlight.

There seemed to be some warmth yet also not.

“Could it be that last beam of black light?” Saul pondered.

The black light that had shot from the eyes had struck him without causing the slightest injury. But since it was the final trump card meant to block him and Senior Byron, it surely had some effect.

Since the attack from the eyes wasn’t a form of energy damage, it was almost certainly a mental attack.

“But this illusion’s setting is quite interesting. These eyes living in the Wizard Tower’s interlayer actually created an illusion of the tower’s collapse.”

Although he was likely trapped in an illusion, Saul wasn’t overly anxious. The top priority was to find the flaw in the illusion and target the weak point to unravel its core.

Or he could simply force his way through.

Saul stepped fully into the sunlight and turned to look back at the Wizard Tower.

The floors above the first level had completely vanished. Most of the ceiling of the first floor of the East Tower was also gone without a trace.

Only the spot where Saul had been lying still had a patch of shadow, conveniently blocking his view upward.

“It disappeared so thoroughly, and the rubble on the ground would, at most, be enough to reconstruct a second floor. So where did the rest go?”

Even though everything before him was likely an illusion, finding logical points within the illusion could serve as a breakthrough. Thus, Saul carefully observed his surroundings and tried to deduce how the Wizard Tower ended up like this.

“It’s like it was affected by some powerful spell,” Saul thought as he walked from the East Tower toward the West Tower.

When he crossed the spot where the ramp had been, a dense patch of vegetation appeared before his eyes.

On the East Tower’s side, things were still mostly as before—the nearby ground was flat, with grass only beginning to grow sparsely about a hundred meters away.

But it was different on the West Tower’s side.

Beyond a distinct boundary line, half-human-tall plants had sprung up.

When the wind blew, the lush grassland rippled like waves of grain.

Yet the scene wasn’t beautiful at all.

When the stalks of grass bowed slightly, revealing what lay beneath the green—a partial human skull.

There were many, many skulls peeking out from behind the grass.

Not just one spot. Not just one patch. Not just one ground.

Some skulls stood higher, exposing an upper jaw with a few remaining teeth; others were lower, revealing only two hollow, dark eye sockets.

Some skulls were fairly intact, while others bore obvious signs of fatal injuries.

But no matter their height, completeness, or damage, all the skulls faced the ruins of the Wizard Tower.

Judging by their height, they were either seated… or kneeling.

Saul walked into the grass.

Up close, the scene became even clearer.

It wasn’t that they were sitting or kneeling.

Beneath each skull was a rough wooden stake.

Neatly arranged, they had been carefully propped up in the grass.

Each skull had been precisely adjusted so that its empty gaze fixed upon the Wizard Tower.

Even though Saul believed this to be an illusion, the scene was unbearably heavy.

“Who’s there?” A hoarse voice suddenly came from the other side of the Wizard Tower.

Saul immediately grew alert, and a little excited.

Changes in the illusion, and especially the appearance of an entity capable of responding, were good signs.

Carefully avoiding the skulls standing in the grass, Saul quickened his pace toward the source of the voice.

But halfway there, a beam of black-gray light shot toward him.

The magical fluctuations were so vivid and familiar that Saul instinctively activated Soul Armor.

The Zero Rank spell Strike Undead failed to pierce through his First Rank Spirit Armor.

Yet both the attacker and Saul, the defender, paused for a moment in surprise.

“The flow of magic feels very real,” Saul thought, looking at his hands. Under the control of his soul body, his fingers rapidly turned translucent. “And it’s very responsive, almost no sluggishness from the illusion. Although, maybe that’s because the magic I cast isn’t part of the illusion.”

But even so, it didn’t explain why the magical fluctuations from the opponent’s attack felt so genuine.

Could the opponent also be someone pulled into the illusion?

Saul took two more steps forward and finally saw the person who had just attacked him.

It was an old man, with a head full of white hair, a face covered in wrinkles, and cloudy, soupy eyes. He wore a pitch-black wizard robe and was standing, somewhat feebly, behind a broken wall.

After launching the attack at Saul, the old wizard froze there, craning his neck as if trying to make out Saul’s face clearly.

“You’re… Saul?” the old man called out his name, sounding shocked, as if he’d seen a ghost.

At the same time, Saul felt a strange sense of familiarity toward the man—like he had seen him before, and they weren’t strangers.

But his memory insisted that he had never met this old wizard.

“You… Why are you here, and… and so young? No, you haven’t changed at all,” the old wizard muttered, his gaze sweeping Saul up and down, his astonishment deepening.

Saul’s eyes fell upon the old man’s clouded eyes, and he could faintly tell that both eyes had once suffered serious damage.

Moreover, they had originally been different colors.

“Are you… Haywood?” Though seeing anything in an illusion should be expected, Saul still couldn’t help but call out in surprise.

“It’s me,” Haywood squinted his eyes and stepped out from behind the ruins. “Saul, where have you been all these years?”

“All these years? How many years? I remember we just saw each other not long ago,” Saul said, rolling his eyes a little, playing along.

“You don’t know? The last time we met was a hundred years ago!” Haywood declared.

At that moment, Saul felt like laughing, but there was a bizarre sense of reality pressing down.

“Is that so?” Saul countered, “Then do you remember what we talked about the last time we met?”

The aged Haywood sank into thought. After a moment, he lifted his heavy eyelids to look at Saul again. “You don’t believe me, huh? Heh, it seems… you’ve been living in chaos these hundred years too.”

Saul raised his right eyebrow but didn’t bother to argue.

The aged Haywood’s brief smile quickly vanished, as if his sagging, heavy skin couldn’t support it for long.

“Even if my body has deteriorated, my memory isn’t as muddled as yours. The night before we parted, you came to borrow Heidi to help you search for something in the interlayer.” Haywood’s gaze drifted past Saul toward the forest of skulls, and he continued, “But Heidi’s condition was unstable, and she was too important to me. So I didn’t agree. Instead, I lent you a fish. In return, you gave me a bottle of body enhancement potion.”

“Then why didn’t you use it after all these years?” Saul asked, eyeing Haywood’s skin. Although aged, wrinkled, and dark, it was certainly not corpse-pale.

“Because I hadn’t fully figured it out before a rebellion broke out in the Wizard Tower!” Haywood’s face twisted in rage, and he cursed loudly, spittle flying.

“Those sons of bitches! They betrayed the master!”

“They killed Master Gorsa!”

(End of Chapter)

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