Pastor's Tantra

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... Am I dead?

Count Orleans was stunned.

Intellectually, he wanted to regard the other party's words as nonsense... but he couldn't suppress the fear in his heart.

Ever since he got the Skull of the Mad King and studied some of its rules, Count Orleans had ambition and fear in his heart at the same time -

On the one hand, he thought that he had the Skull of the Mad King and could defeat any enemy; on the other hand, he also knew that he could fail no matter what enemy he faced.

Will it be... that he was really abandoned by it this time?

Or has the Swan King in the Empty Box woken up? He realized that he was using him? Now he wants to take the opportunity to kill himself?

Or, was his previous worry correct... Yassen really cooperated with the Vendôme family and the Hawkeye Organization to study the secret of the Skull of the Mad King, and now they want to rob his treasure?

Countless thoughts floated up and down in his mind, and the fear in his heart made Count Orleans feel unusually cold.

It was like swallowing a piece of ice, feeling the coldness like a knife cutting open his esophagus and drilling into his stomach.

The moment he had such a thought, Count Orleans realized that it was not an illusion.

...Why is my stomach so cold?

Why is it so quiet all of a sudden?

Did Yassen stop singing? When did he stop?

Count Orleans slowly lowered his head and saw a trace of blood gradually emerging from his stomach.

Streams of blood spurted out, splashing on the ground and the wall. And when he looked down and saw that he was cut in half, the blood suddenly spurted out.

Like water in a bucket poured on the ground, the blood splashed on the ground with a splash, splashing a semicircle.

His upper body leaned back and fell to the ground. An abnormal fatigue and weakness swept through his heart, making him feel like a mortal, closing his eyes and falling asleep forever...

...Wait.

Speaking of which, will my bleeding be so heavy?

The moment this thought came to his mind, he realized that something was wrong.

"No... wait!"

Suddenly, Count Orleans opened his eyes.

He was still standing in the corridor where the fog had just been dispelled, and the three people had not yet launched an attack.

Yassen did not sing, and the Son of the Moon did not take out the winter demon's sickle.

"...Sure enough, everything before was an illusion."

He breathed a sigh of relief, suppressed his inner fear and fear, and pretended to be calm and said calmly: "This kind of thing can't be hidden from me."

"Oh?"

Seeing this, the Son of the Moon in front of him suddenly showed a cold smile: "Are you so sure that you have come out of the illusion?"

"... What?"

Count Orleans opened his eyes wide in astonishment.

He looked down and found that a trace of frost spread rapidly from his abdomen to both sides, freezing himself in the ice sculpture in the blink of an eye.

The coldness made his mind stagnate instantly.

After an unknown amount of time, he realized something was wrong again: if he was in that corridor before, it meant that they had just started fighting, and no one had shown any illusion ability at this time.

He was still in the illusion!

So Count Orleans woke up again.

The chill had penetrated his heart - he only felt that his limbs were extremely stiff, and a slight movement would make a creaking sound. It was as if it was not flesh and blood, but a puppet with sand filled joints and inconvenient movement.

He appeared in the cold white fog.

Even Yassen had not appeared at this time.

—— This must be the source of the illusion!

He had fallen into an illusion from the very beginning! Everything he remembered was false!

Thinking of this, Count Orleans did not intend to disperse the white fog this time, but to sneak in it and wait for an opportunity to ambush and attack the illusionist.

But thinking of this, he felt that his body was losing temperature and condensing frost marks at a very fast speed.

Damn, when was it...

—— Which one is real? !

As he thought so, his mind stagnated again.

In a trance, Count Orleans seemed to see countless versions of himself.

Burned, frozen, and cut in half.

Cut into pieces by shadows, purified by holy light...

... and, deeply trapped in a dream.

Like a spinning kaleidoscope, countless possibilities intertwined in his heart.

——And at this moment.

Aiwass, who was outside the illusion, had put away his sickle.

He was squatting in front of the ice sculpture of the Moon Child that was cut in two with rainbow light, and stretched out his glowing right hand to touch the head of the ice sculpture - he was reading the other party's illusion.

At this moment, the dagger Sarastro was still knocked to the ground in the distance, and the knocked-down Arsen had just stood up from the ground.

The illusion, as deep blue as the sea, disappeared when Arsen put the dagger Sarastro back into the sheath.

"You need to practice swordsmanship, Arsen."

Evans said leisurely: "Otherwise, I think your father might be dissatisfied with you - letting the family heirloom sword be knocked out so easily. You'd better check if there is a gap on it."

"No way..."

Arsen blurted out, but then his voice became weaker. Because he also thought of this possibility.

He drew out the dagger uncertainly: "No way...? Hey... It's actually true..."

Although the blade of the sword was fine, a piece of the gem on the scabbard was indeed knocked off. There is a silver ornament in the shape of a bull's head, which also shows obvious signs of friction.

Yasen knew that the texture of silver was too soft. Being knocked away by such an impact, it's normal for it to be damaged...but isn't the sword reinforced by a preservation technique? !

"...What's wrong with him, Aiwass?"

Sherlock on the side frowned and asked doubtfully.

He didn't know what Star Ice was capable of.

In his opinion, the battle ended extremely abruptly and caught people off guard——

After the Earl of Orleans knocked the dagger away with a stick, the hallucination like a wave enveloped everyone.

But immediately afterwards, Aiwass condensed a shield falling from the sky - if a solid ice wall shining with colorful lights could be called a shield - blocking Yassen and the Count of Orleans.

The Count of Orleans, who was trapped in a hallucination, could not see the ice wall at all.

He hit the ice wall hard - and then, his body suddenly stopped moving. The ice wall, like cut diamonds, spread toward him, enveloping him in the blink of an eye.

But Aiwass just stepped forward and waved the sickle extremely lightly——

There was no resistance, no flicking of the knife or dodge.

The Count of Orleans, who was frozen into an ice sculpture, was cut into two pieces in just an instant.

And the wound withered and lost color in the blink of an eye, turning into a gray-white stone sculpture. And the traces of petrification are like crystals gradually precipitating in the test tube, gradually spreading towards the inside of the ice sculpture.

...This is the fifth energy level?

The enemy barely even made an effective attack and was defeated by them?

Sherlock felt a little unreal for a moment.

"He..."

Aiwass chuckled, but his eyes were cold and indifferent: "I am reincarnating in an endless cycle of nightmares."

"Is he still alive?"

"No, he is already dead. It's just that he hasn't realized this yet... so he is kept alive by the Box of Nothingness. When he wakes up from hallucinations again and again, he will get closer and closer to the reality.

"But before that happens, he will probably lose his determination to live."

The more crazy he becomes, the more he reveals his ugliness, the more he refuses to die... the more he will be abandoned by the box of nothingness and approach death.

But the more he wakes up, the closer he gets to the reality that he is dead——

This is a dead end with no solution.

"So, he's dead."

Aiwass declared.

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