"What about the needle? Why did it hurt so much?" Vino raised his voice slightly.
"It was the narrative that you were afraid of. You made it hurt." Galena looked downward.
Vino was visibly struggling with what reality was anymore. The words of this woman made no sense. "So you basically used my own fears against me?"
Galena shook her head and sighed. "That was simply what happened subconsciously. Same for me."
Vino denied it. He didn't want to believe in what he was feeling subconsciously. He was in an unstable state of mind at the time. He slapped the sides of his head and looked her in the eyes. "Can you reverse it?"
"I haven't activated my ability since you started chasing me." Galena snuggled up to Vino's chest. His sword dispersed into nothing. "This feeling was completely unexpected. Same as when I accidentally used it on those guys. They became dogs that had no decency, even after I ended the ability."
"I am sorry." Galena grinned again. This time there was a hint of evil, finally revealing her true colors. "It's fun to manipulate people."
Galena stabbed Vino in the back with a needle she hid between her fingers. The pain reverberated throughout his entire body.
How the hell was I tricked not once, but twice!
Vino knew he was smart, but he fell for these tricks too easily. Galena faded from where she stood and appeared behind Vino once again. The thing he was hugging was a corpse.
"Damn it! What is wrong with me?" Vino screamed.
The lady slid her dress down slightly to reveal her chest. There was a mark of a bleeding heart with a knife stabbed through it.
"Tricked, tricked, and tricked again. Tsk. Tsk." Galena scoffed, "I feel like you deserve a truthful answer before you die."
Vino pulled away from the corpse and turned to face the girl. She was a monster in his eyes.
'My eyes? Maybe none of this is real after all. Maybe we are actually in my mind.'
"I know what has been going on here." Vino smiled. "We are inside of my mind, aren't we? You set it up where I would notice the gem and assume you had an ability of illusion. But you made one small mistake."
Vino smirked, "To deceive your enemy, you must first deceive yourself, for only in believing your own illusion can you weave a trap they cannot see. You are trapped here with me now."
Galena jumped backward and looked at her hands. They were shaking. "What have you done?"
"I've beaten you at your own game." Vino watched as the world around him shattered, and he was actually still in the forest, lying on the ground.
Still right beside the pool of blood that was at the bottom of the hill, the two corpses still there, and the big pile of corpses still ahead. Rina and the other two were right beside him, sound asleep.
He quickly jumped up and drew his sword on Galena, who was right beside him, still waking up.
"You were very smart, Galena. But you lost at the very end; you doubted yourself for one second, allowing me to escape your world of lies." Vino sighed. "I actually had no clue what was going on. I wasn't tricked, just a little confused. I decided to play along to get a better understanding."
Galena decided against activating her ability. Vino was standing in such a way that if he fell unconscious, he would stab her straight through. Though all she needed was a moment to get him back into the dream world.
Vino took his sword and slashed at her arm, causing her stinging pain. Adrenaline pumped through her body. She wouldn't be able to go unconscious.
"I am guessing you cannot use your ability if your body won't let you sleep." Vino motioned the sword to the gem around her neck.
"Give me the gem," Vino held his hand outward. Galena took the gem from around her neck and handed it over. She looked away in shame.
"Get the hell out of here. If I see you again, I will kill you." Vino motioned his sword over to the side, signaling for her to run away. She got up and began running, knowing that the same trick couldn't work twice.
Frags began clapping inside of Vino's head.
"Vino! I saw everything, and I must say, Bravo!" Frags laughed and sighed, "How the hell did you manage to make the situation so confusing? First you had your first admirer, and a few minutes later, you are being stabbed in the back."
"I somehow tricked you too." Vino cracked his neck and began stretching. "Do you really think I didn't know I was in my own mind? I knew whenever she let me see the fairies."
"Oh?" Frags was intrigued.
"There was no way for me to escape that place unless she broke the illusion herself. I couldn't even stab her without her healing. What gave it away was those shy fairies not actually being able to approach me when I look too lively. She was using what I know against me, and she had no clue what I was seeing on my end." Vino took a breath and woke the others.
"Ah! So you tricked her into ending her little fun time. She must have thought someone was attacking her on the outside." Frags sighed and rolled himself over in bed. "Such a boring end to a fight. You guys should have kissed. That would have changed things for sure."
"Shut it." Vino said.
"What happened, Vino? We were almost there." Rina asked.
"I will explain on the way!" Vino began running, and the others followed along.
<
"Are you guys ready?" Vino asked the group. He happened to notice Galena pushing her way through the crowd with some pink-haired man.
This made him get a little ticked off, remembering the encounter from earlier, but he continued watching on at the center of the Concordium.
'I know I said I would kill her, but It's not a good time.'
A man walked onto the stage, a representative for the principal.
"Good afternoon, my friends, and enemies." The man looked into the crowd, locking eyes with Vino for a second.
"I welcome you. This is a place of learning, whether scholarly or physically." The man glanced from Benna in the crowd to Adrien standing up front.
"There is an issue though." The man smiled and pointed to the buildings all around.
"We don't have enough accommodation for all of you. Unless you don't mind sharing a room with another person." The man smirked and held a little button with a number on it.
"There are around fifteen thousand of these buttons. One side has a number between 1 and 599; the other side has an alphabetical letter."
The man continued, "It seems this year, people were a lot more forgiving than ever before, because we have 30,000 people here right now!"
Vino looked around and thought for a moment. 'There has to be a catch to all of this accommodation.'
"It is simple. You get a button and find your room before time is up! When time runs out, anyone outside will be eliminated." The man had a big smile and he lifted his hands in the air.
"Now who is ready for the game!" The man clapped his hands and buttons began raining out of the sky.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!" The man on the circular raised stage disappeared. A man near Vino conjured fire and immediately, his head was blown off.
Blood splattered on his face, and the screams began. People seemed to forget the one rule on campus! No using abilities outside.
"Five thousand," Benna said. "Five thousand people just died."
"What!?" Rina almost knocked Anne off her shoulder. The group looked up to see all of the buttons falling. A man with turquoise hair jumped high into the air and grabbed a few.
Adrien looked down to plan his landing, and he successfully got 15 buttons.
"As i thought, they aren't being dropped in a random order." He held the buttons that were the numbers 445 to 460, with the letter 'U' on the back. Adrien looked over to see where the A numbers would be, and he sprinted there, leaving the U's behind.
"As a prince, I need either a 1 or an A!" Adrien ran off.
Vino noticed that the numbers that Adrien left behind were snatched up quickly, and the ones who did it ran off immediately.
Vino looked up and began running, looking at what area they were in.
"It would take ages if we got a letter across campus!" Vino looked and he spotted a gate with the letter Q. He smirked and began looking around. When people ran by, he looked to see if they had the letter Q, and he ran to where they were running from.
"Bingo!" Vino saw a bunch of buttons on the ground, untouched. He called Rina over, and they grabbed a few out of the mix.
Benna grabbed Vino's shoulder. "We should take all of them."
Vino thought for a second. "But wouldn't that make us targets?"
"We can give out the buttons to people that deserve them. Keeping bad people out of our living area would be a good idea in the long run."
A familiar face appeared from an alley nearby.