Shepherd Tantra

Chapter 1062 Aiwass: You are already dead

...I'm already dead?

The Count of Orleans was stunned.

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

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

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

Could it be that this time... I am really abandoned by it?

Or has the Swan King in the Empty Box woken up? Did he realize that he was being used by me? And now he wants to take this opportunity to kill me?
Or was it that his previous worries were correct... Arsene really cooperated with the Vendôme family and the Hawkeye organization to research the secret of the Skull of the Mad King, and now they want to steal his treasure?
Countless thoughts rose and fell in his mind, and the fear in his heart made Count Orleans feel extremely cold.

It was like swallowing a piece of ice, feeling the chilly cold cutting through one's esophagus like a knife and drilling into one's stomach.

The moment this thought came to his mind, Count Orleans realized that it was not an illusion.

...My stomach, why is it 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 abdomen.

Streams of blood spurted out, splashing onto the ground and the wall. When he looked down and saw that he had been cut in half, the blood spurted out suddenly.

Like water from a bucket being poured onto the ground, blood splashed onto the ground, forming a semicircle.

His upper body fell backwards and fell to the ground. An abnormal fatigue and weakness swept through his heart, making him feel like an ordinary person, closing his eyes and falling asleep forever...

……and many more.

By the way, would my bleeding be that heavy?

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

“No…wait!”

Suddenly, the Count of Orleans opened his eyes.

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

Arsene did not sing, and the Moon Child did not take out the Winter Devil's sickle.

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

He breathed a sigh of relief, suppressed his fear and pretended to be calm and said, "You can't hide this from me."

"Oh?"

Seeing this, the Moon Child in front of him suddenly smiled coldly: "Are you so sure that you have come out of the hallucination?"

"……what?"

Count Orleans opened his eyes wide in astonishment.

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

The chilling coldness made his thoughts freeze.

He didn't know how long it had been before he realized something was wrong again: if he had been in that corridor before, it meant that they had just started fighting, and no one had shown any illusion ability at this time.

He is still in the illusion!
Then the Count of Orleans woke up again.

The chilling coldness had penetrated his heart - he only felt that his limbs were extremely stiff, and the slightest movement would make a creaking sound. It was as if they were not flesh and blood, but a puppet with joints filled with sand and difficult to move.

He appeared in the cold white fog.

Even Yassen hadn't shown up yet.

——This must be the source of the illusion!

He had been trapped in an illusion from the very beginning! Everything he remembered was false!

With this in mind, Count Orleans did not intend to disperse the white fog this time, but instead planned to sneak through it and wait for an opportunity to ambush the illusionist.

But as he thought about it, he felt that his body was losing temperature and frost was forming at a very fast rate.

Damn it, when was it...

——Which one is true?!

As he thought this, his thoughts came to a standstill again.

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

I was burned, I was frozen, I was cut in half. I was cut into pieces by the shadows, I was purified by the holy light...

...and myself, who was deeply trapped in the dream and unable to extricate myself.

Like a spinning kaleidoscope, countless possibilities are intertwined in the mind.

——And at this moment.

Outside the illusion, Aiwass had put away his sickle.

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

At this time, the dagger Sarastro was still knocked to the ground far away, and the knocked-down Arsene had just stood up from the ground.

The illusion, as deep blue as the sea, disappeared as soon as Arsen sheathed the dagger Sarastro.

"You need to practice your swordplay, Yassen."

Aiwass said leisurely: "Otherwise I think your father might be dissatisfied with you - letting the family heirloom sword be knocked away so easily. You'd better check it for any nicks."

"No way……"

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

He drew out his dagger uncertainly: "No way...? Eh...it's actually true..."

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

Yasen knew that silver was too soft. It was normal for it to be damaged after being blown away by such an impact... But the sword body was not reinforced by the preservation technique? !

"…What's wrong with him, Aiwass?"

Sherlock on the side frowned and asked in confusion.

He didn't know the power of Star Ice.

In his opinion, the end of this battle was extremely abrupt and caught people off guard.

After Count Orleans knocked the dagger away with a stick, the illusion like a tidal wave enveloped everyone.

But immediately afterwards, Aiwass condensed a shield that fell from the sky - if a solid ice wall shining with colorful rainbow light could be called a shield - and blocked between Yasen and Count Orleans.

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

He lashed at the ice wall fiercely - and then, his body suddenly stopped moving. The ice wall, like a cut diamond, spread over him and enveloped him in the blink of an eye.

And Aiwass just walked forward and swung the sickle very lightly.

There was no resistance, no deflection or evasion.

The Count of Orleans was frozen into an ice sculpture and was cut in half in just a moment.

The wound withered and lost its color in the blink of an eye, turning into a grayish-white stone sculpture. And the traces of petrification gradually spread into the interior of the ice sculpture, just like the crystals gradually precipitating out of the test tube.

...This is, the fifth energy level?

The enemy didn't even make a single effective attack, and yet they were defeated like this?

Sherlock felt it was a little unreal for a moment.

"He..."

Aiwass chuckled, but his eyes were cold and indifferent: "He is in an endless cycle of nightmares."

"He's still alive?"

"No, he's dead. He just hasn't realized it yet... so he's kept alive by the Box of Nothingness. As he wakes up from his hallucinations again and again, he's getting closer and closer to reality.

"But before that, he will probably lose the will to live."

The crazier he is, the more he reveals his ugliness, the more he refuses to die... the more he will be abandoned by the Box of Nothingness, and the closer he will be to death.

But the more awake he was, the closer he was to the reality that he was dead—

This is an unsolvable dead end.

"So, he is dead."

Aiwass declared.

(End of this chapter)