Chapter 179: Black Out
With a mental command, Ethan’s summons surged forward.
But in the same instant, Harold’s grin returned.
"Black out."
And right then, most of the legendary summons, with the exception of Arael, felt the world around them shift into total blackness. Suddenly, it felt as though they were falling toward an unending abyss.
Summons, unfortunately, were not exempt from illusions.
Although for these summons, they existed in a half-illusioned, half-aware state. You could see awareness in their eyes and the strain on their bodies, as if trying to regain full composure, but the effect still held them unmoving.
Anselam, the mercenary, took the opportunity, and he pulled his second gun. The weapons in his hands were SMG-like firearms that fired at extreme rates.
He moved his hands side to side and released a flurry of bullets toward everything before him.
His bullets had a yellowish aura coating them, and each strike of these rounds, regardless of where they hit, would deliver the same level of damage as if they had struck a vital point.
However, the ink that had initially formed into projectiles and followed beside Arael in their surge toward the assailants quickly reshaped into a barrier of black.
The bullets all struck it, falling off or deflecting away without breaching past. With more ink infused, the barrier kept spreading and enlarging until it turned into a full demarcation, separating the part Harold and the ambushers came from and Ethan’s side.
The only reason Arael had not been affected was due to her divinity status. Summon or not, the minds and perception of divine beings in this world would never fall under an illusion cast by a human, or any such race that fell under the same banner of humanity.
The summons, however, were not the only ones trapped in that one single spell. Clustervayne as well, with the exception of Ethan, had fallen prey to it.
Although they had different reactions. Like the summons, Hayley was in a half-illusioned, half-aware state as she stared at her clenched palms, trying to resist.
"What.... Is .. this?" Her growling voice dragged under the strain.
Wilson gritted his teeth in frustration but fared far less better than Hayley.
Percival and Aliyah, on the other hand, were affected in full and stared blankly.
It soon became clear it was a matter of their talent levels in comparison to the spell. The spell was Tier 6, which made sense why it would have a lesser effect on people who were S-tier, and in the case of summons, Legendary class.
Ethan, on his part, had faced Harold before. The last time he was placed in an illusion, the electric charge running in his neural pathways due to his dragon affinity, had acted like a biological resistance to illusions.
Although, there had been a longer lag time between when the illusion caught him and when it released.
But he learnt from that scenario.
With that, at the earliest moment he had sensed Harold’s signature, he let his body build more of his Charge aspect internally. That was why when the Blackout spell was cast, the effect on him had worn off almost as quickly as it came. It was straining him more than ever, but he would live.
There was also another factor in play here: that ring on Harold’s finger.
It was true that the Blackout spell was an illusion affecting every one of the caster’s targets within an area of effect.
However, given the number of S-tier level beings the spell was targeting, from Ethan, who could be compared to an S-tier, to his legendary summons, to Hayley, and even Wilson growing toward his full potential, it should have worn Harold down considerably trying to keep up the spell’s hold on them.
But due to that ring, he didn’t feel the adverse effect.
The reason was this: the ring artifact was essentially a force multiplier. Harold invested the same amount of mana, but the ring distributed that effect to multiple targets individually, each receiving the full potency as if they were the sole target.
Regardless, given a bit more time, the S-tier level beings would eventually break off from the effect of the illusion.
Unfortunately, time was also another thing not on their side.
Ethan was thinking of the best way out of here, with more priority given to leaving this dimensional space as a whole.
With the number of times the walls of this place had rumbled, they had maybe about five minutes or even much less left before the exit locked for good and this place collapsed on them.
His teammates were all struggling with the illusion, and he couldn’t leave them either.
At first, Albedo’s teleportation skill came to mind, but there were a few limiting factors.
One, the teleportation’s distance. Even with his amplification, he could only move a total of 200 meters, and his standpoint to the exit wouldn’t cover the full length either.
He also could not teleport directly out of the breach with Albedo’s teleportation skill. One time he had tried it, just as he walked through the portal and into a breach that day.
But it failed, even though Ethan was literally standing this close to the portal from the inside.
This was because, in the true sense of it, the portal between their world and this dimensional breach shortened the real distance between both places.
Albedo’s skill respected range, and logically, without the portal that sent them into the breaches, it was not so simple to consider a travel distance between their world and the dimensional gap.
The second factor was the weight of these werewolves in comparison to him. Percival was transformed, so were Hayley and Aliyah, and they could likely weigh double his weight.
He could not move with them, because they most likely would form double his weight, and this was another skill limit.
Finally, the line of sight of the enemies. Even if he decided to teleport them one by one closer to the exit portal that led out of here, the enemies were much closer to it.
Given their position of the enemies, they would immediately turn and continue their assault, and in their disoriented state, his teammates would be easy targets, especially if they were still trapped in the illusion.
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Harold, on his part, was actually conscious of the walls rumbling here. Of course, he had no intention of being trapped, and when he turned his left, he could see the exit portal point.
His plan was to force Ethan and his team to remain here under the effect of his illusion until the last few seconds, when he and his own side would easily dash into the exit, leaving before it trapped them too.