As our ship approached the island, I hid my aura. Turning towards the carriage, my face began to deform, regaining its former features. After completing the transformation, I asked the nearest pirate, who was nervously watching me, with a neutral look.:
"Do I look like a human?"
- Y-yes. The pirate closest to me replied.
"That's fine. I replied with a slight smile.
With a wave of my hand, my puppets disappeared from sight. Under the illusion, they descended from the hinges and, slipping into a hidden dimension, fell silent. Now they are ready for the next act.
"You're free," I said, letting go of their fears one last time.
As soon as my feet touched the ground of the second island of Sabaody, I felt the usual tension of the audience preparing to release. Here, in this crowd, the island was full of people. Some were unloaded from ships, some were loaded on the contrary. Someone was fearlessly robbing the weaker ones.
The second island was one of the lawless islands. That was why the pirates and robbers acted so freely. However, it doesn't matter.
The puppets had already taken up their positions, hidden by the illusions I had cast even before I set foot on the island. Absalam, who looked like a man with translucent skin showing muscles and bones, stood in the center. He held his hat in one hand, as if he was preparing to greet the guests. His appearance was distorted, as if the light around him was breaking, making him even more strange.
The first step was an illusion that attracted the attention of the crowd. A single eye growing on someone's arm, then another on their back. People, noticing this, screamed, but still did not dare to run. Their bodies seemed rooted to the spot, but not by my efforts. This was the work of Flygria, her ability to compress space, creating mazes from which it was impossible to escape. They didn't even realize that they were surrounded by invisible walls. For them, it was the usual fear that held them back.
I started with a light one: the air around me trembled, and a moment later I appeared a few meters from my former place, leaving a column of smoke in my wake. Someone in the crowd screamed, and I raised my hand as if I was going to calm them down. Instead, a stream of paper shot out of my palm, turning into a swarm of knives that stabbed into the ground in front of me. Absalam, seeing how attention was shifting, took a step forward, his body began to disintegrate into pieces, but instead of blood, thick black smoke flowed out of him.
Then I made my next move. One of the onlookers, who was closest to me, suddenly screamed, his mouth widened unnaturally, and thin threads like cobwebs began to escape from it. It was my job to create an illusion in which his body becomes strange and frightening. But as soon as the others started to turn away, the puppets under my control made their move.
One of them, Flygria, suddenly jumped out of the crowd, grabbing a man who, as I later noticed, was trying to get a gun. She lifted him up high and then dropped him, allowing his body to gently touch the ground. Of course, it was all just an illusion. In fact, he continued to stand in his maze, barely aware of what had happened. But others saw the scene differently — for them, he disappeared, as if swallowed up by darkness.
I completed my act by making Absalam take the form of a giant creature, his arms became long like the branches of a tree, and his body was covered with eyes. He took one threatening step forward, and it was enough to cause a loud shout from the crowd. People began to run away—within their mazes, of course.
And then, with a light wave of my hand, I erased everything at once. Absalam and the other puppets disappeared, and the crowd was suddenly free. Flygria blew up its walls, and people, not understanding what had happened, began to rush in different directions.
I took on my usual appearance and disappeared into the crowd. The payoff was enough, but constantly scaring the same people would be ineffective. I can scare people in other areas once, only then I have to hide so that the guards don't pick up the trail, but I had plenty of time. Now I was looking for a much more suitable team.
I needed real scumbags, pirates who don't mind being deprived of their will. I considered their ships and crews as a product in the catalog, wanting to choose the losers most suitable for all criteria.
An hour later, having decided not to bother with the choice, I decided to spend the rest of the weekend on entertainment. And make a full-fledged choice tomorrow.