Till now, Angor didn’t know that illusions could affect his soul as well.
With each passing second, he felt his mind to be even more stressed out than before.
“Give me a minute... I’ll try again.”
He left his body behind and used the best speed he could manage. He assumed that he could reach the surface under three seconds if nothing stopped him.
One minute later, he returned to the group again. His grim expression already told the others what happened.
“It’s all because of me... If only I take our boat a little farther...” Nausica sulked as she accused herself.
Nobody said anything against her words, but they were beginning to direct annoyed looks at her.
Nausica was always calm and confident about everything. As Angor believed, she would say sorry and then try to amend her mistake in normal circumstances, rather than wasting time on these self-accusations.
And why is everyone acting like that?
Angor quickly felt something wrong and tried to survey the surroundings again.
As an illusionist, he was sensitive to the condition of illusion nodes. He successfully found out that several “stale” nodes around his teammates were now active.
So that’s what happened...
He decided to do a little test and began to release mana from his hand.
“What are you doing??” Keely braced herself with a questioning look.
The others saw Angor’s action and suspected Angor’s intention.
They acted this way without realizing anything was wrong, yet Angor knew that something was affecting their minds.
Luna sensed the abnormality from Keely’s behaviors as well, and it meowed anxiously at her.
Keely lifted a foot and wanted to kick it away, but she refrained after some mind-struggling.
Angor saw the others still giving him the look of “prepare to face our rage if you can’t give a satisfying explanation” and chose to speak since he had no other choice.
“We can’t get out because of this illusion. I’m going to attack it.”
The others considered and accepted his words.
Moving as quickly as possible, Angor shattered the active illusion nodes that surrounded his teammates. The nodes reappeared a second later, but it seemed that they were going to need more time to reactivate again.
Meanwhile, Angor felt that the mental condition of his teammates had returned to normal.
“We can’t afford to tarry anymore,” said Keely, “shall we look around for another way?”
“Angor saw a woman attacking Nausica and took her sword, right? Then she must know how to get out. We should find her,” Shan suggested.
Keely nodded. “Agreed. Angor?”
Angor made sure they were talking normally before he displayed a simple illusion in front of everyone.
It showed them what happened a minute ago, especially the interaction between Keely and Luna, as well as the great impatience and unfriendliness displayed by Keely.
Keely was a little surprised by what she saw. “I almost forget about that... Yeah, we weren’t ourselves back then.”
“But how could I blame Nausica like that?! This is not her fault!” Shan also exclaimed in horror. “And did I just, prepare to attack Angor??”
“Something amplified our negative emotions...” Keely scowled. “It was only some verbal trouble. But a little ember to start a fight and the outcome would be way more severe.”
“We’re fine now. Did Angor do something to help?” Shiliew spoke up, which was rare.
“Illusion nodes. There are a lot of inactive illusion nodes around us, but some of them ‘woke up’ around us,” Angor explained to them the things that he observed. “We can’t stay here. Nobody can tell what will happen if the nodes start working again.”
People quickly grew fearful since something unknown could manipulate their minds any second. Nobody wanted to become the distrustful jerks they just saw in Angor’s illusion.
Angor noticed that the nodes around Shan’s position were lit up again.
“Shan, something is going to you.”
Instead of stopping the unknown trick in action, Angor asked Shan to try to suppress the effect on her own.
“Really??” Shan panicked. “But I don’t feel anything. Are you... lying to me? WHY ARE YOU LYING TO ME?!” Her panic quickly changed into hysteria.
Angor moaned and snapped his fingers to detonate the energy he already placed around the active nodes, thus breaking them apart.
Shan slowly calmed down.
The others all saw what just happened to Shan and fully understood the situation. What Shan just displayed had told them that they had no way to resist whatever was affecting them.
When Angor moved his hand again, several streams of energy exploded beside Keely and Nausica. This time, they didn’t need to ask Angor to figure out what he just did.
“I can sense the nodes but I can’t tell their condition,” said Keely. “Can you do something to stop them from working?”
Angor shook his head. “They aren’t under my command and I have no idea what kind of illusionist created them. It’s too hard to fight for their control.”
“Can any of our defense spells block their effect?” Nausica asked.
“Let’s try.”
A moment later, Angor destroyed several more nodes. “It doesn’t work. Simple defensive cantrips have no effect against them... Hey, wait. Simple cantrips? What about more complicated ones?”
He quickly had a new idea.
What will happen if I occupy the space around everyone with my own illusion nodes first? I can use MY illusion nodes to defend against the enemy’s ones!
He revealed his plan and quickly got to it.
“... No, I failed.” He shook his head again after removing several more active nodes.
They couldn’t leave the strange area without solving the problem, and they were getting really fidgety as the remaining time ticked away.
“If only we can forcefully control our own emotions...” Nausica mumbled.
“They say that wizards can all do that. But... we aren’t there yet...” said Shan.
Their words just gave Angor another idea. Control emotions? But I can do that too.
His special talent allowed him to create a music box that affected the emotion of someone as powerful as Lady Mirror. He did more tests later and learned that he could do more than manipulating emotions—he could warp someone’s sense of direction, space, and about oneself.
Usually, the victim of his attempts had to be weaker in terms of strength, but he could also make exceptions by blending nightmare aura in his illusions, which sometimes allowed him to affect the minds of mighty beings.
He never figured out how it worked. It was probably because of his Nightmare Form.
So, if I take control of their emotions first, will they still have trouble with the enemy’s illusion?
The others heard his suggestion and immediately agreed to the radical plan as they didn’t have any other options.
Angor did his test on Nausica first, since Nausica was still a level-1 apprentice, which meant he didn’t need extra effort to get inside her mind.
But how exactly should I control her?
Angor would like to avoid using anything that affected Nausica’s own judgment or any joyful emotions which might be troublesome in this dire situation.
He finally made a decision—calmness.
He planned to forcefully tell Nausica to stay calm and suppress all other mental interference. However, he had to make it work by using illusions while the target was inside. He couldn’t create “mobile” illusions right now.
He thought about another approach to affect someone’s emotion. Nightmare illusions.
This more advanced version of illusion relied on his own nightmare aura to trick people. He didn’t need actual illusion nodes for this. Instead, he simply had to inject some nightmare aura into someone’s head. It would carry the types of emotions that he wanted to achieve.
As a small trace of gray energy sank in between Nausica’s eyebrows, the woman’s original carefree and indolent temperament slowly turned serene and aloof as if she had become a second Keely.
“How do you feel?” Angor asked.
“Good. All unnecessary thoughts are gone and I can think as clearly as ever. I believe I can start meditating as soon as I sat down.”
The others grew extremely curious about Angor’s wonderful mind-controlling ability, and at the same time, a little afraid of it.
“Get ready, the nodes around you are moving again.”
They watched closely and waited for the result that would ultimately decide whether they could escape from the unknown illusion.