Chapter 66: Grey Fog [5]
"Idal..."
It was a voice I hadn’t heard in a while. A voice I cherished the most in the whole world.
STEP~STEP~
Even the footstep sounds were familiar, and yet also strange.
STEP~CREAK~
I resisted the urge to turn towards the voice and kept walking forward.
STEP~STEP~RUSTLE~
’This is an illusion, she’s not here — she can’t be here...but what if that’s really her?’
I shook the thought away and kept walking.
I knew I couldn’t stop moving forward, because I had a goal — my goal was...huh...?
What was my goal again?
"Idal...come here...come to your mother."
Right, it was to follow the voice...her voice.
I stopped walking forward, and started walking towards the voice instead.
"That’s right, cooomee to mee."
I followed the voice and kept walking until I saw a figure — she wore a long orange dress that reached her ankles, her long black hair still tied in the same bun my dad used to do for her. And wow, her eyes, deep emerald, like mother nature. She wore the same smile she’d given me the last time I saw her.
Ah...Ahhh...Ahhh...it was actually her.
She was here.
Happiness bloomed on my face and I rushed forward to meet her.
I wanted to embrace her, tell her how much I’d missed her, and about the things that had happened to me so far.
Once I got close enough, my mother opened her arms wide, inviting me for a hug. I didn’t hesitate and fell into her embrace.
She wrapped her arms around me and patted my head. "How have you been, my child?"
Her embrace felt so cold for some reason, but I ignored it, thinking that maybe she was just feeling cold.
"I’ve been alright," I pulled back from the embrace and looked at her. "Just a lot of things have happened."
"Tell me about everything." She said with a smile and looked at me with those emerald eyes.
I gave her the kindest smile I could and drove a dagger through her chin.
"M-My son, why a-are you hurting me??" She said with a hurt voice that could shatter my heart into pieces, but this thing was not my mother.
The fake smile on my face was long gone, replaced by a cold expression.
"You pathetic creature, how dare you try to impersonate my lovely mother?" I said coldly.
"H-how?" The creature asked in pain and confusion.
"The eyes...the eyes never lie." I replied, before driving the dagger deeper, the blade protruding out of the creature’s forehead, black blood spurting on my hand and into the air.
"Aghhhhhhhhhh!" The creature shrieked in agony before falling to the ground, lifeless.
I stared down at the creature as the figure of my mother disappeared, revealing its true form — it was humanoid, its skin charcoal black, with long limbs, its head had a few strands of black hair, and its face...it had no face, only a mouth with missing teeth.
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
’Holy shit! Thank goodness you snapped out of it. Do you know how worried I was? You suddenly fell into the Nightmare of the Fog’s illusion and couldn’t hear me. You almost had me intervene.’ Ezio spoke with relief inside my head.
"I’m fine." I said.
You didn’t know how grateful I was, because of [Eyes of the King].
If you don’t remember its ability, let me refresh your mind.
[Eyes of the King] was a passive gift that made me immune to any sort of mind attack or illusion, meaning nothing that attacked the mind would affect me. It was quite the broken gift.
You see, it started from when I stepped onto this land and read the writing on the ground.
That writing was written by the Nightmares of the Fog. That was how they put their prey into an illusion — you didn’t even need to read it, as long as you looked at it, their sorcery would activate instantly, dooming you to be their food.
It would’ve worked on any other person, but not me, after all, I had one of the most broken gifts in this world.
Since I didn’t want the monsters to know I was immune to their sorcery and risk them running away, I played along. I faked being in an illusion.
So I ignored Ezio and acted like I was really into the illusion, giving the monster a sense of security that I was already in the palm of its hand.
Another reason I played along was to test if my gift was actually the real deal, and no doubt, it was the real deal.
That made the plans I had for the future a lot easier.
But right now I was pissed — or at least I tried to be, because [Calm Mind] eviscerated the feeling the moment it appeared, so I couldn’t be angry, only cold-minded.
This creature, instead of choosing anything else to try to lure me with, had decided to choose my mother. The person I loved the most in the whole universe.
Even if I didn’t have [Eyes of the King], I wouldn’t have fallen for this illusion, because I knew my mother’s eyes very well.
Ah, how angry I was.
I made up my mind that today, I would wipe them all out of this forest. For daring to stain my mother’s image.
The other Nightmares were frozen in their spots as cold bloodlust released from my body, making them tremble.
I didn’t have to worry about them being Apex-class monsters, because their only arsenal was their mind-attack powers, so I could level this whole forest easily.
Before the Nightmares could even take their first step to run away, my body was already moving. Mana infused into my legs and in an instant, I was a black blur of motion.
My figure blinked and appeared right beside a Nightmare, my katana already flashing with darkness energy, drawing a black arc in the air. The monster didn’t have time to react because its head was already on the ground, staring at its decapitated body, which released a black fountain of blood.
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
The other Nightmares screamed and shrieked in fear and dispersed in different directions.
And just before they got out of my senses, I activated [Emotion Manipulator] and intensified their fear, slowing their speed down.
My figure blurred again and crossed a distance between me and the group of Nightmares — 30 meters worth in 5 seconds.
My katana flashed up and down — limbs and heads flew into the air.
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
I moved again, leaving a black streak behind me, and punched a Nightmare in the chest — the monster’s chest caved in and cracked upon impact, and it was sent flying like a ragdoll, colliding against the bark of a tree and sinking into it.
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
Everywhere I moved, death followed, and every time I raised my blade, bodies fell in its wake.
It was futile for the monsters to try to attack me with their illusion sorcery or fight back, because none of it worked. I was stronger, faster and deadlier.
I didn’t care whether blood stained my clothes anymore — all I cared about was their suffering.
I made sure to torture them before they died, so that in their next life they wouldn’t try something like that ever again.
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
[You have slain an Apex Common Monster, Nightmare of the Fog.]
That day, the Nightmare of the Fog population’s number in that forest decreased dramatically.