"What?! He left?!" Exclaims Micheal.
Calvin nods.
...
"You are saying that there is something different about him?" Says Vicious.
"Although no adventurers paid attention to him, I find him rather interesting to be able to survive so long with zero talent so I paid a small amount of attention to him." Says Micheal. "I can say for sure, that something happened. But even if he wants to leave, he can't. He is already registered under the military in the adventurer department and the officials have ordered him to join the vanguard in the assault against the elve fortress east of Enchantio."
"They are asking him to die again?" Says Calvin.
"..."
--------------------------
I walk to the entrance, and the guard sees me and recognizes me. "Stop, where are you planning to go?" One of them asks.
"The capital," I reply.
"..."
The guards whisper something to one another before turning back to me. "I'm sorry but you will have to stay, you've been enlisted to participate in the next assault. Refusing to do will result in immediate execution." The guards draw their swords.
...
Time is not on my side. I do not know if one second in this illusion equals one second in the real world.
I wouldn't normally do this in real life but since it's an illusion...
I draw my sword.
!!
Immediately, I appear behind one of the guards and stab him.
"What-"
I decapitate two of the guards at once and gather demonic mana around my sword. A black ink engulfs my blade as I swing it down, black crescent energy flies towards the remaining three guards, killing them.
Huff huff...
"What...?" A sudden voice says.
?!!
I look around. The source of the sound is nowhere to be seen or detected.
That sounded like a young girl...
...
No, whatever.
I quickly run out of Enchantio. Taking a deep breath, I channel the mana into my leg and sprint at the highest speed possible.
However, after a few minutes, I detect a heavy presence. A woman is flying in the sky and launching herself at me.
"What the fuck?!"
I jump back instantly as she crashes into the ground in front of me. I formed several barriers around my body as I was blasted back from the wave, crashing through several trees and into the floor.
After the smoke clears up, it is clear who it is, Vicious.
"What? Why? How? Huh?" I gasp.
Wait wait wait. Something is wrong, Vicious is someone essential, yet they send her out to find me, a mere F rank?!
...
As I clear my head, a hypothesis came to mind. It was already illogical that those elders from the Azure family were trapped within the illusion for such a long time, they would have overcome their trauma or regret.
But...
The demonic sword is altering the illusion as it pleases as long as it can keep me in here. This Vicious in front of me has lost the light in her eyes as if she is being under control.
She jumps towards me with her axe up high.
Shit! Too fast-
I jump aside to avoid my torso from being ripped into pieces, but...
!!!
I look to the right to see my arm being torn off.
"Arghhhhh..."
Gritting my teeth to endure the pain, I throw a glance at Vicious.
An SSS rank adventurer...
What is going on?
"The kingdom has ordered me to take you back, resist and you will die." She says in a monotonous tone. That isn't vicious.
...
"Are you really Vicious? Why come after a mere F Rank?" I say.
"I see you want death."
!!!
Vicious suddenly appears in front of me and decapitates me.
My vision was sent flying into the sky, watching my headless body fall limp to the ground...
----------------
What?
I can still feel my body, it's dark.
!?
I open my eyes to find myself back on the battlefield of countless corpses, the battle of sacrifice.
What?
??????????
A time loop? This isn't what I remembered about "Soul Imprisonment".
I get up and sit upright. This time, there isn't any rain here.
First of all, a normal "Soul Imprisonment" illusion will kill the victim in real life if they die in the illusion by destroying their soul.
Secondly, the illusion should be very accurate to what the victim experience. Every single people should act the way I expected or at least seen.
The demonic sword...is purposely altering the illusion to trap me.
...
I need more samples...
For the next few rounds of the loop, I tried going to Capital, where my family is located, instead of Enchantio.
This is what happened to me:
-Hundred of deathworms suddenly appeared and killed me.
-Akira shows up for no fucking reason and killed me.
-The ground below me crumbles and breaks, forcing me to fall a tall height of about 100 feet.
-Fucking lava suddenly appeared and killed me.
I open my eyes again on my fifth loop.
...
I take a deep breath. I need to stay calm. Veins can be seen in my head as I try to ignore all the ridiculous things that happened.
This is definitely the demonic sword's doing.
But there's one thing I realised. The demonic sword cannot alter the "properties" of things. For example, in the waves of deathworms that killed me, I managed to kill more than 40 as they have the same weakness and pattern of attacks before I succumb to my wounds and fatigue.
Now then...
I walk into the cave of Wolfen again. Carl attempts to talk to me but I ignored him. The Wolfen wakes up from their slumber when I traverse deeper into the cave, they are hungry.
With a growling stomach and drooling mouth, they look at me like some sort of prey as they circle me.
All of sudden, they experience a jolt and become docile.
!
It worked!
Since this illusion is created based on my experience and properties can't be altered... I just have to forcefully change my perspective and knowledge of things.
I walk to one of the Wolfen and pat it, it snuggles its head against my hand.
Let's attempt to go to the capital again.
------------
I decided to avoid the main road and take a detour through the forest. On the way, I will most likely meet a village. At this point, I won't be surprised if I see triple Akiras chilling at the village awaiting my arrival.
I shuffle through the bush and reach a wide space that has wooden infrastructures built.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. When I open it, the village that once used to be here is now a barren land of grass fields. I force myself to believe that there wasn't a village here.
"Huh? Wait, how?" A voice says.
I quickly run through the grass field, ignoring the familiar voice.
It's that child again. She's been observing me and commenting on my actions even though I have no idea where she is. I concluded that she is the demonic sword's spirit and the one behind all these illusions and ridiculous antics.
Suddenly, the floor below me vibrates, deathworms again.
One deathworm pops out below me and attempts to swallow me, it immediately explodes into a pile of bloody mess.
?!?
Several other deathworms appear, destroying the surrounding infrastructure before exploding.
She's trying to make me fall. I jump in the air and boost myself into the sky.
Woah... I'm floating just by thinking that I can manipulate mana to fly.
I take a deep breath and channel every mana in the atmosphere to propel me in the direction of the capital.
When all else fails, a flying Vicious came but I materialize a giant black sword in my arm and slash her into two.
Then another ridiculous thing happened. Even though I killed Vicious, several other Vicious spawned but all died in my hands.
"Stop?! How are you doing this??" The voice came from behind.
?
I turn around to see a young child in a black long dress with a red outline. Her long black hair blends in with her dress and her crimson eyes are emitting some sort of mana.
"You are... The demonic sword?" I say.
"Yeah, I am! Now stop cheating!" She whines.
...
The ridiculous antics all of sudden makes perfect sense.
"No," I reply.
"What?! How dare you! Shame on you, an adult cheating!"
"As if you are one to talk, why should I stop in the first place."
"Uh well..."
...
"A-Anyway! Fine, I won't interfere anymore. Just do this the proper way okay?"
"No."
"What why not?!" She starts whining.
"I can just complete this using the fast way," I say.
"F-Fine! I will make a contract with you! This is what humans want right?"
"No, I can just force you into a contract."
"What?! Why are you so mean?!"
...
"Grrrr, how about this? I will give you all the life essence and cultivation base I extracted from the previous toys- I mean humans and give it to you if you complete it the normal way, okay?"
...
"Sure... I will just go to the capital now."
"W-Wait!! Okay okay, let's do a soul contract!"
A soul contract is a contract that must be fulfilled no matter what or the person will die.
I touch the girl's forehead and a black mana ooze out of her, combining with the blue natural mana in my body.
"I vow to form a contract with Loi and give him all the life essence and cultivation base I extracted if he manages to get out of this illusion, Lydia." She says, revealing her name.
The mana sinks into my skin and hers before going to the chest, locking the heart with mana.
"There, satisfied?" Her tone becomes arrogant.
Her panicked appearance turns into an arrogant smirk. "I've seen everything in your memory, you are the weakest human to ever exist. You should have realised that your life essence is being taken away by me, by the time you managed to break the illusion, I would have extracted all of your life essences. Now that you can't cheat, you won't be able to defeat even guards like what you did in Enchantio. Good luck human, show me a good show will you?"
And she disappears.
I sigh as I drop back down to the floor from the sky.
Fuck... I feel sick.
Leaning against a rock, I vomit out a lifetime.
Huff huff...
It is very mentally exhausting to force myself into a different perspective, if she haven't appeared I would have gone crazy.
I lean against the other side of the rock as I try to deal with my nausea, I was very close to forgetting my name, let's take a short nap...