Chapter 193: I fainted, I faked it
Viktor held his chin in Saul's mold, "That is to say, what we see has always been an illusion. It's a poignant encounter to live and die, and to keep meeting between the wheels of fate."
Victor strolled back and forth on the steps of the staircase, gently rocking his harp as if immersed in a self-woven musical poem.
"When our mental fluctuations are in sync with the spirits here because of the psychic force field, we see clear skies. But when we get out of synesthesia, we go back to rainy days. Hiss-"
Victor stopped, leaned his back against the stair railing, and jerked backward, his upper body stuck almost ninety degrees out of the stairs, looking up at the circling steps and the distant roof.
"I really like this kind of romance."
Straightening his back again, he rose with no effort at all and turned his head to the right, looking at Sol, "But didn't you once talk to a knight who disappeared halfway through the month? If it was a sighting of the past, how could you have joined in? It can't be that those knights ran into the same wizards as you at the time and said the same thing, can it?"
"That's where I was initially misled into thinking I traveled through time." Thor's eyes drifted back to the room full of kneeling men he had seen in the antechamber of the castle, "I was indeed communicating with whoever it was I was communicating with, so after being misled, I was conditioned to think that it was myself that those mercenaries were afraid of. If I became more and more certain that I was entering the past, I fell deeper and deeper into it, unable to break free."
"Right!" Victor suddenly clapped his hands, "If we can really see into the past, we can also follow their footsteps, and perhaps find the reason for their deaths, which must have something to do with the secret of this castle!"
Victor bobbed his head towards the top of the stairs, "Enough thinking, now we should go find the truth, don't you want to know what happened to all those mercenaries when they ran up there? Now that we've understood how the psychic force field works, we have a defense against being easily influenced again, don't we?"
Saul's eyes darted down and back up again, somewhat abruptly relieved.
"There's one last query left now. We need to figure it out before we can go upstairs."
"What?"
Saul took out a small porcelain vial from his arms, "That thing the knight gave me, do you remember it? Why won't it disappear? I don't dare to continue exploring if I can't figure that out, who knows if the next one to attack over is real or an illusion?"
Seeing that Sol just refused to continue exploring, Victor's face flashed with some impatience.
He swept over the object in Saul's hand, "You mean this bottle of holy oil? Perhaps you picked it up from the ground yourself after seeing the hallucination. As long as we maintain the stability of our mental bodies, we won't be ... again."
Sol suddenly snorted a laugh, "Brother, didn't I tell you ... that thing is called holy water?"
Victor narrowed his eyes.
Saul shook the small porcelain bottle in his hand, and the liquid inside made a dull sound of clattering.
"So this potion, you slipped it into my hand on purpose, didn't you?"
Victor completely tensed up, he lowered his head and laughed so hard that his shoulders trembled.
"Heh heh heh heh heh heh ..."
"Everyone who has a problem with wizards guesses in the most horrible direction. I'm not surprised you guessed a little. But what I can't figure out is that you were able to discover the nature of the temporal shift just by entering the synesthesia twice. And even recognized my identity twice."
Twice?
Thor froze, but before he could respond, Victor suddenly strummed the long quiet harp in his hand.
The ethereal music sounded, and Saul's eyes began to empty.
He seemed to be still making a final struggle, his eyes fluttering, one moment looking at the man in front of him who was concentrating on playing the harp, the other staring at the air in front of him.
Victor's fingers brushed over the harp, finally pressing gently on the strings.
The music came to an abrupt halt.
Victor looked up with a complicated look on his face and said, "Well, it seems that my sweet brother has reached the age where he will tease his older brother. I'm really kind of sad to see him go."
"But the Manor Master's good show is coming up soon, and as uninvited guests, it's not good for us to be absent at the end. So ..."
Lightning flashed and thunder cut through the darkness.
Without any sign, they once again "returned" to the rainy world.
Victor was still standing on the stairs, and Saul was still standing a few meters below him.
Victor put away his complicated look and smiled gently, loosening the strings and extending his right hand to Saul.
"My good brother, do you remember what you came here for?" "To ...," Saul replied in a daze, "find one thing. To solve a problem."
Victor tsked, "Still so tight lipped."
"Then let's go find your precious thing now, you remember the old wizard and the little boy just now?"
Saul nodded slowly.
"They've already passed, but they're a lot more eager than you are! If you don't get going, you're going to fall behind!"
With a few moments of bewilderment on his face, Sol raised his hands and covered his cheeks helplessly, "But I seem to have forgotten something important."
"Bam!" A loud bang came from above the heads of the two.
Victor and Thor looked up at the same time, the sound seemed to be thus a few more glimpses of clarity appeared in Thor's eyes.
Victor saw this and hastily plucked the strings again.
Confusion returns to Thor's eyes.
Victor played again and again and said quickly, "Misbehaving brother, look, the people up there have found your treasure, come up quickly, if you don't go over there, what originally belongs to you will be snatched away by others."
Saul, at last, as he had wished, showed a look of anxiety, and began to stride forward with gradually quickening steps.
His eyes skimmed over Victor toward the highest level to which the rotating staircase led.
It was from there that the loud rattling sound had just come.
Victor frowned anxiously as well, "We may have to go faster, a little faster."
However, Victor was only halfway through his performance when Saul, who had run close to him, suddenly threw something at him, and at the same time, his left hand lashed out and jumped straight down the stairs.
Victor was startled and just wanted to dodge, but he saw that thing unexpectedly burst directly in mid-air.
Countless pieces of iron splashed out, and quite a few of them pierced into Victor's body.
However, completely unprepared and too late to cast a spell, he actually chose to hold the harp into his arms first, using his own body to protect it!
Victor raised his head and looked at Saul who had landed on the first floor, his eyes full of surprise, "You actually managed to break free?"
There was also a wound on Victor's face, blood stained a few strands of his long silver hair red and dripped onto the ground again.
Saul stood on the next floor, looking at Victor who was gradually turning into a bloody man, and did not answer.
The effect of Iron and Fire wasn't that satisfactory in open space, but Saul couldn't have found a better chance to make it explode in Victor's close range.
Numerous tiny black tentacles instantly stretched out from the back of Sol's neck, slashing towards the blood man on the stairs.
Viktor's narrowed eyes, however, revealed a few moments of surprise, "Could it be that you were all just performing?"
Even as he spoke, Victor's hand did not stop, quickly picking at the strings while dodging.
The clear but stirring music rang out, the air vaguely appeared to vibrate and fluctuate, most of the black tentacles just got close to Victor before they were cut into several sections by the sound waves, falling to the ground and twitching continuously.
However, there were still a few tentacles that escaped the sound wave attack and came in front of Victor.
Victor suddenly opened his mouth and let out a low gulp.
Saul, who was standing far away, instantly felt a buzzing in his ears, and his originally smooth mental body immediately began to vibrate.
The black tentacles of the small algae also uncontrollably began to become sheepish, barely touching Viktor's body, but unable to cause any more damage.
A few black tentacles, due to inertia, rested on Victor's body.
The latter simply twisted his body gently, and shook off all the tentacles hanging on his body.
(End of Chapter)