Illusion Report

Most people take four years to earn enough credits to graduate, but Chaisi had spent five and a half years at Blackmoor University before he finally did.

His guiding principle when scheduling classes was simple: the fewer, the better.

Chaisi’s life had deviated completely from the conventional track long ago. It was strange that he’d even gone to university like a normal person. Thinking back on it now, it was probably because, in Uncle Kai’s original plan, Damian was supposed to go to college.

Whenever he walked around campus, seeing the young faces laughing and chatting, Chaisi always felt like Blackmoor University was a simulation. He felt he was just surfacing from his grim reality, temporarily entering a sunlit game of make-believe to catch his breath.

If it weren’t for the university’s minimum course load, he might still be a student at Blackmoor University in name only. In five and a half years, the number of people he knew, and who knew him, probably didn’t exceed twenty in total.

Morando was one of them.

He hadn’t thought of that name in years.

"Who are you working for?" Chaisi asked. "Come work for me, and I can forget this ever happened."

The road outside was silent.

The only sound came from the cars that occasionally passed on the distant highway down the slope, which sounded like whips cracking through the air.

He’d arrived too quickly. Mercury’s Mercenaries hadn’t caught up yet.

"...Thank you."

Several seconds passed before Morando finally spoke. Chaisi remembered her as a polite and proper person, and this moment was no exception.

"Unfortunately... if this were just a job, I would never have taken it in the first place."

"I don’t recall any personal grudge between us."

As he spoke, Chaisi slowly opened his car door. He pushed it halfway and paused. Still no movement from outside.

Judging by the direction her voice had come from, Morando was still positioned by the roadside ahead. Her gun was likely trained on the car, ready to fire the second he got out. But he couldn’t stay in the car forever.

"Of course we don’t," Morando said from a distance. "What happened years ago was just a dispute between Family Factions. Besides, I left the Knight Family long ago."

"Then why are you doing this?" Chaisi asked, his voice deceptively calm.

His situation was far from ideal. He was hunched down below the steering wheel, unable to sit up. The moment his head appeared behind the glass, she would fire. He couldn’t even see her position, let alone return fire.

Normally, if an initial ambush on a vehicle failed, the attacker would close in, suppress the target with a hail of gunfire, and kill the driver before they could bail out.

But Morando hadn’t done that.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to kill him—otherwise, she wouldn’t have aimed for his head. She likely knew that without the numbers to overwhelm him, getting close to a car with Chaisi inside would put *her* in danger.

That was the problem with facing an acquaintance: they knew your strengths and weaknesses.

Besides, Morando held all the cards. If she could kill Chaisi, great. If not, just delaying him would be enough to let the others attack Uncle Kai.

"I have my personal reasons for having to do this to you."

Morando’s words were a non-answer. "And for those same reasons, I can’t tell you who I’m working for."

The conversation had lasted nearly a minute. Forcing himself to talk through his mounting anxiety, Chaisi had finally found a way to deal with Morando and get to the cemetery.

He’d spotted an empty black duffel bag under the passenger seat, likely one Mercury’s Mercenaries had used for their weapons.

"It doesn’t matter," Chaisi said with a low laugh. "You might not want to talk, but I’m sure someone at the cemetery will."

Before the words were even out of his mouth, he snatched the empty duffel bag and flung it out the half-open door. The instant the bag left his hand, Chaisi sat up straight.

The bag had barely hit the asphalt when two gunshots cracked through the air. It leaped from the road, sent tumbling several feet by the impact.

’...Found you.’

Chaisi kicked the windshield. The glass, already webbed with cracks, couldn’t take the force. With a great CRACK, it cascaded down like a shower of shattered silver. While the fragments still hung in the air like frozen rain, he fired three shots toward Morando’s position.

Morando must have thought that in the instant he made his move, he couldn’t possibly focus on two things at once.

But it was in that exact instant that Chaisi had sat up, his eyes fixed forward, and caught the tiny flash of muzzle blast from between the trees as she fired.

He didn’t know if he’d hit her and didn’t waste time finding out. The moment the shots were fired, Chaisi dove out of the car, rolled, and sprang back to his feet. He was already halfway across the road, plunging into the trees on the other side.

Gun in hand, Chaisi crouched low and sprinted toward the cemetery up the slope.

His goal wasn’t to kill Morando—though he certainly wouldn’t pass up the chance if it arose. The most important thing was to get to Uncle Kai’s side immediately. He couldn’t waste a single second.

"Sorry to do this, senior."

By the time he heard her words, Chaisi realized something was wrong, but it was already too late.

When he’d woken up this morning, he never would have imagined that he’d be trapped by an Illusion in Blackmoor City not once, but twice. The first time had been on his own terms, more or less. This time, he had walked right into a trap.

Morando wasn’t a professional sniper. Her primary role was that of an Illusion Hunter.

"I need more than just a good aim to come stop you all by myself."

Her voice grew closer, as if she were walking toward him. Chaisi slowly straightened up and lowered his pistol, his gaze fixed on her piercing blue eyes.

Inappropriate as it was for the situation, he felt a faint pang of nostalgia for times gone by.

And then there was that flicker of familiarity from just a moment ago. It was impossible to grasp, like a message in a bottle bobbing on a distant wave. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t place the feeling—but he knew it wasn’t simply because he knew Morando.

Chaisi couldn’t afford to waste time on something as intangible as a ’feeling’.

"What kind of Illusion is this? At first glance, the surroundings look almost identical."

He focused, sweeping his pistol in an arc around him before bringing the muzzle back to rest on Morando. "I assume shooting the ’you’ in front of me would be pointless?"

Beneath the brim of her baseball cap, Morando gave a small laugh.

The years must have been good to her. It had been so long since they’d graduated, yet she hadn’t changed a bit. She still looked like the same young kid who had just enrolled.

"That’s right. Because I’m not really there. I’m surprised you realized you’d entered an Illusion so quickly. How did you figure it out?"

She used the word "there," as if she were watching him from another location. The source and distance of her voice had clearly been altered, because she sounded as if she were standing right in front of him.

Chaisi gripped his gun, slowly scanning his surroundings.

"This Illusion activates silently... but its limitations must be significant, right?"

"Correct. Unfortunately, once you’re inside the environment created by this Illusion, I can see you, but I can’t attack you." Morando shrugged, pulling the brim of her cap down so a shadow covered half her face. "Since I couldn’t kill you, trapping you is the next best thing."

’While I’m standing here like an idiot, Uncle Kai could be facing death in that cemetery on the hill.’ 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Chaisi tightened his grip on his pistol. He gritted his teeth, his lips slowly twisting into a smile.

"If anything happens to Uncle Kai, all of you will regret it," he said in a low voice. "For every second I’m trapped here, the person you’re working for will get to live one second longer in my hands... no matter how much they beg for a quick death."

Morando looked at him and suddenly let out a soft sigh.

"Chaisi," she said, her eyes downcast, "you’re in so much pain. It would have been a mercy if my first shot had killed you."

Chaisi said nothing.

"Threatening that person is useless," Morando said. "They’re already living in their own personal hell every day. They aren’t afraid of your retaliation."

"Who is it?"

He knew she wouldn’t answer, but he asked anyway.

He hoped she would say more. Any sound echoing within the Illusion’s space was a form of interaction with it, and it might give him a clue.

"I can’t tell you what you want to know, but there are some things I *can* tell you."

Morando looked up from under the brim of her cap and gave a self-deprecating smile.

"I know that by absorbing the power of a Hunter Family Faction, that person has a chance to get what they want. As for why we targeted the Kai Family and not someone else... I can only say your luck is too good. You were the one who just happened to find the Illusion left behind after Westley died. To save that person, I have to take away the thing you value most... It seems life is just a choice between making a mistake and committing a sin, isn’t it?"

She gave Chaisi a nod. "I should go. Sorry, but I can’t wish you luck."