Chapter 342 (Patreon)

Suri gulped.

Even though she was winning, fear still lingered inside her chest.

The old man floating opposite to her was terrifying.

The colorful world around them shifted and twisted endlessly, a strange realm made of scattered colors and painted skies. There was no ground beneath their feet, no horizon to orient herself by. They simply floated in a vast canvas of her imagination, surrounded by fragments of a world that existed only because Suri willed it to exist by activating her skill [Phantasm World].

Yet despite controlling everything here, she wasn't comfortable.

Not even close.

The old man kept throwing those black orbs.

Each one looked harmless until she focused on it. Then she could feel the hunger inside them. The way they swallowed mana. The way they seemed capable of devouring anything unfortunate enough to touch them.

If this battle had taken place in reality, Suri was fairly certain she would already be dead.

Especially now.

Half of her mana had already been spent during the ambush. The storm of illusionary turning into real blades she had unleashed against hundreds of enemies had drained far more mana than she cared to admit.

That was why she had hesitated before activating [Phantasm World].

The skill alone consumed nearly over twenty percent of her remaining mana.

It was an expensive gamble and a dangerous one. Unlike her offensive skills, [Phantasm World] wasn't meant to overpower an opponent. It attacked something far more fragile.

The mind.

Once trapped inside, the victim entered a world entirely under Suri's control. Everything they saw, heard, touched, and experienced became part of the mental illusion. If they believed they were injured, their body reacted accordingly. If they believed they were exhausted, their strength faded.

And if they believed they were dying...

Well.

The mind could be surprisingly convincing. Suri hadn't expected it to work this well against an evolved-class opponent. She had assumed someone that powerful would eventually figure it out.

Kana certainly would have.

The memory made her smile despite herself. Kana's awareness bordered on absurdity. Suri still remembered how quickly her friend had pierced through when she tried the [Phantasm World] to her.

Only a few heartbeats.

That was all it had taken. Afterward, Kana had explained that illusion-based abilities worked best against people whose thoughts were already scattered.

People who were distracted. Confused. Focused on the wrong thing.

Suri had accepted that explanation at the time. Now she wasn't so sure. Because the old man wasn't confused. He wasn't careless either.

If anything, he had been extremely cautious from the beginning.

Yet somehow he had never realized he was trapped. Never questioned the colorful battlefield surrounding them. Never suspected that every skill he had cast, every injury he had suffered, every exhausting exchange between them existed only inside his own head.

The old man's hand moved again. Another black orb began forming.

Or rather, it tried to. The skill sputtered before vanishing entirely.

His eyes widened. For the first time since the battle began, genuine uncertainty appeared on his face.

"I ran out of mana?" he asked, breathing heavily.

Suri almost laughed. Not because it was funny. Because it worked. The old man's mana reserves were probably nowhere near empty.

But after casting skills after skills inside [Phantasm World], his mind had already accepted a simple conclusion.

He was exhausted. And once the mind accepted something as reality, the body often followed. Relief washed over Suri. A wave so strong she nearly sagged from it.

She had done it.

Against all expectations, she had actually done it. Raising her staff, she summoned dozens of black orbs around herself. Then dozens more.

The spheres gathered like a dark constellation, filling the painted sky.

The old man's own skill.Copied perfectly. His gaze slowly traveled across the countless floating orbs.

This time he made no attempt to defend himself.

No attempt to cast another skill. No desperate last attack.

Instead, he simply stared at them. For the first time, he looked every bit his age.

Tired. Old. Defeated.

"The young [Oracle] was right," he muttered quietly.

His voice carried neither anger nor regret. Only acceptance. A man finally reaching the end of a prediction he had feared from the very beginning.

"I'm going to die."

Suri lowered her staff. The black orbs surged forward. One after another they engulfed him. The colorful world immediately began to crack. Fractures spread through the painted sky. The endless canvas shattered like glass struck by a hammer. Colors broke apart into countless fragments.

The illusion collapsed.

Then everything vanished.

Gray.

The endless gray world returned around them. Suri blinked as reality settled back into place. The old man was still there. Still breathing. Still alive. Technically. Tears streamed from his eyes as he stared into nothingness. His body trembled, broken not by wounds but by certainty. Somewhere inside his mind, he had already accepted death.

Suri stood silently for a moment. Then she reached toward her belt and pulled out a small dagger. The old man didn't react. Didn't struggle. Didn't even look at her.

Slowly, she walked toward him and crouched beside his trembling form.

"You should've stayed at home, old man," she said softly.

There was no hatred in her voice. Only exhaustion. The exhaustion of someone who had been forced to grow up too quickly.

Without hesitation, she drew the blade across his throat. The old man's body jerked once. Then it became still.

Silence settled over the gray world.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Suri found herself staring upward.

Waiting.

Hoping.

Then she heard it.

A crack. Sharp and clear.

Like glass breaking somewhere above her.

Another followed.

Then another.

Thin fractures appeared throughout the gray sky, spreading farther and farther with each passing second. Soon the entire world was covered in cracks, as though reality itself had become a damaged mirror moments away from shattering.

Suri stared at the sight and finally allowed herself to breathe.

A small smile appeared on her face.

The old man had been the foundation of this place.

And now he was dead. Which meant the prison was breaking.

And if the grey prison was breaking… Then everyone should go back to the same place before everything happened.

…

The desert had only just begun to taste blood.

An hour earlier, as the knights collided with the enemy forces scattered across the dunes, Artin had taken to the skies in his avian form, circling high above the battlefield like a restless shadow. From up there, everything looked almost orderly in a cruel way: blades flashing, spells erupting, sand rippling with each impact. Kana still hadn’t detected anything unusual at ground level, which itself was beginning to feel like a warning rather than reassurance. If the enemy could hide this well, then watching from the ground was no longer enough.

Below him, the camp had already begun to fracture into chaos. A sudden tremor ran through the sand, likely the result of one of the knights’ heavier skills colliding with an enemy formation. It was enough to jolt the students off balance, sending one stumbling into two others in a messy heap that would have been almost funny under different circumstances. Artin even felt a flicker of laughter rise in his chest as he hovered above them, but it never fully formed.

Because then he heard it.

A voice.

Not shouted. Not carried by wind or distance.

It simply arrived, as though the sky itself had spoken.

The words were unfamiliar, layered with a pressure that made instinct scream louder than reason. Every part of Artin’s transformed body reacted at once, the ancient urge of survival flooding his mind with a single command.

Move.

Now.

He did not hesitate. His wings snapped as he shot backward through the air, abandoning his previous position in a frantic burst of motion. Beneath him, Kana’s voice cut through the battlefield, sharp and urgent as she shouted for everyone to run. A moment later, light descended.

A pillar of bluish brilliance fell from the sky like a judgment, striking the area around the wagon with terrifying precision. The impact was not explosive in the traditional sense. There was no roar, no scattering debris that followed. Instead, it felt as though space itself had been pressed downward and erased.

Artin had only barely escaped the edge of it.

A few inches closer, and he would not have been flying anymore.

He hung in the air for a heartbeat longer, staring at the aftermath, his mind struggling to accept what his instincts already understood. The wagon with its beast lizard was still there, but something was wrong with the way it existed. The students and Lady Rose. The familiar presence of allies.

All gone.

No blood.

No remains.

No lingering traces of mana to track.

Just absence. He dropped from the sky and reverted mid-fall, landing awkwardly in human form as his boots hit the sand. His head snapped around immediately.

“Is everything alright?” he called out, though the words already felt pointless.

Only silence answered him.

Around him, the battlefield had not stopped. Steel still rang against steel. Skills still flared in the distance. The knights were still locked in combat, unaware or unwilling to break formation even as something far more important had just been stolen from the field.

Artin’s breath came heavy and fast now.

Where have they gone? The thought refused to leave.

After a moment of hesitation that felt far too long, he transformed again, wings replacing arms as he took to the sky once more. He circled the impact zone, scanning every inch of sand, every ripple of disturbed earth, every possible trace of displacement. If it was some sort of [Teleportation] skill or scroll, there should have been residue. A mark. A distortion. Something.

But there was nothing.

Only emptiness where people had stood seconds before.

Eventually, the fighting below began to wind down. The enemy forces either scattered or fell, leaving behind a battlefield that felt too quiet for what had just happened. When the vice captain approached him, his armor still stained with sand and blood, his expression was already tight with understanding.

“Where is Captain Rose?” he asked, voice low. “And the students?”

Artin landed again, his throat dry. “They got caught in that light earlier,” he said slowly. “After that… they were just gone. I can’t find them anywhere.”

A heavy silence followed. Then the vice captain turned sharply.

“Knights!” he barked.

The remaining soldiers snapped into formation at once, disciplined even in uncertainty. 

“The captain and the students are missing,” he announced, his voice carrying across the dunes. “Spread out. Search every inch of this area. Now.”

And so the desert, already stained by battle, began to search for what had been erased from it.

Post note:

The old man was kinda weak mentally(due to the death prophecy from the [Oracle])2nd chap of the week.

Hope you enjoy the chap! 🙂

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