Chapter 69: Absolute Hypnosis
Absolute hypnosis.
As the name suggested, it was an ability that placed a target under hypnosis, but the ability, just as Isla, wasn’t so simple.
To understand it, one needed to understand exactly what Isla herself was.
Unlike the large majority of spirit mages in Avera, Isla didn’t gain her abilities from contracting a spirit....
Well, not in the way most did anyway.
Instead, she was an experiment.
One born from humanity’s determination to use mana without relying on spirits.
Spirits were powerful, yes, but as stated before, they were also very selective.
Due to this, those who believe that humans, as a superior species, didn’t have to rely on such annoyingly inferior, picky creatures started a project and dubbed it,
Project Apotheosis.
And Isla was one of the few failures from this project...or at least that’s what the researchers had originally thought.
Their goal was for humans to use elements with their mana and as such, the researchers involved kidnapped a few hundred pregnant women.
But these women weren’t selected at random, they were women with large mana reserves and whose unborn children would have the highest chance of surviving whatever twisted experiments they were going to run on them.
***
Raw, unfiltered mana of every single element was forced into developing bodies that hadn’t even formed a sense of self yet.
Most mothers and children didn’t survive and discarriages became soon routine.
Those that did make it to birth, didn’t always come out whole.
Some were born without functioning organs, others were little more than empty husks, their minds completely absent.
By the time the first generation was complete, out of several hundred, less than twenty remained.
And even among those, most were considered failures.
Isla was one such failure as she didn’t display any ability to control even a single element of any kind.
Isla was, by all means and observation, a normal girl with pale skin and white hair due to the experiments.
But the researchers soon realized how wrong they were, when a staff that was supposed to be delivering her food was caught in her ability by mistake.
And that’s when the researchers realized that instead of creating a human who could use elemental abilities without spirits, they had achieved something far more terrifying.
They realized that Isla was controlled reality or rather, an individual’s perception of it, an ability they called,
Absolute hypnosis.
They gave it that name because it was the only term that came close, but unlike illusion magic, which merely deceived the senses, Isla’s was a lot complicated.
It bypassed perception entirely and rewrote the individual’s interpretation itself.
In simple terms, if Isla decided the sky was red, then to you, it had always been red, but that wasn’t the end as even if you did realize that the sky was blue and not Red,
It wouldn’t be enough to break out of the reality that she placed the individual in.
Breaking out was a completely different level of complicated. Subjecting yourself to pain wouldn’t work, trying to wake your real body up was also useless.
The only way to escape is if Isla herself released the ability or the individual caught in it, dies.
But death within the illusion wasn’t without cost and the researchers quickly realized that when they lost a couple of researchers caught in her illusion.
Once one died within Isla’s reality, their real body followed. Even those with strong mental will were not resistant to this fact.
That was when the true horror of Absolute hypnosis became clear, it wasn’t just an illusion or just perception alterations.
It was authority, just like time and space.
It was the authority to define what was real and what wasn’t. Once that authority was accepted, even unconsciously,
It became absolute.
The researchers realized that they had built the perfect weapon, and their true intentions finally surfaced.
They didn’t care about humanity relying on spirits, they didn’t care about advancing the human race, all they wanted was to rule the world as gods.
And Isla was the perfect puppet.
Unfortunately for them, their experiments didn’t survive for long as something strange happened.
One second, they were observing the child through their monitors, and the next everything was on fire, including themselves.
The last thing they saw was a cloaked figure walking out with the sleeping child in hand, and soon after, they, some of which were still caught in her ability, alongside their research was engulfed in flames, lost forever.
Isla was then delivered at an orphanage where the cult somehow discovered her one of the caretakers there tried selling her, causing Conan to take her and runaway.
***
According to the manhwa, Isla had been actively suppressing her ability because she was aware of what it had done to a couple of researchers.
This was why she was always either sleeping or looked sleepy.
Well, that is, until Adrian forced her to release it, even though he knew the effects of the ability.
But as her said, he wouldn’t have made this gamble if he wasn’t certain of a way out....though, he would’ve been trapped here forever if Noctis hadn’t appeared.
"There you are," Adrian said with a grin as he continued falling.
The cause of his collapsing apartment was a giant monster that didn’t even belong to world like Avera.
Well, not naturally at least.
It was a colossal humanoid monster with only a single eye and a horn on its head. It was similar to a cyclops but a lot taller.
It’s skin was grey with patterns on it and it’s single pupil was glowing red as it looked at its falling target whilst debris fell all around.
The creature was terrifying, no doubt, but Adrian wasn’t the least bit intimidated, instead, he muttered,
"That’s my key out of here."
***
Meanwhile, back in the Ardent mansion training grounds, Renelle watched as the barrier that surrounded Adrian and Isla darkened, obscuring view of the two.
With a frown, she tapped the button again, trying to put the barrier down, but nothing worked.
The magic tool seemed to have malfunctioned.
"That idiot," she muttered as she lifted her palm.
She had a nagging feeling that he knew this was going to happen, hence the reason why he ensured she was out of the barrier.
A massive ice spear formed above her head and with a flick of her wrist the spear was launched unto the barrier, and the next second,
BOOM!