I Can Read People's Comments

Chapter 82 Training

[Chapter 81 Comment]

[Hunter_Keenan_2132: If you're able to use illusion to introduce pain, can you use it to take away or send competing information so it lessens? Can you use…see more]

…

"Hah… Hah…" Avalon panted a few times while raising his sword. He was currently inside a room with a few shining floor tiles. Each light was different in color. When he stepped on the red floor tile, the light from the red floor tile began to shine.

Surprisingly, there were a few invisible humanoid figures that got caught by the reflection of that light, making them barely visible. When he was about to strike them, he instinctively raised his sword to the side.

His sword was struck by another blade and the strength was pushing him back to the point where his feet didn't touch the shining floor tile anymore. As a result, the few invisible figures that he saw earlier disappeared once again.

"There are five colored tiles. Each of them has different purposes, and I have only found out about three of them, which are the warriors, assassins, and magicians. If I choose one floor tile, the others will swarm me, so what should I do?"

Avalon gritted his teeth. No matter how hard he tried to calculate the enemy's movement as well as predict their next move, he ended up getting suppressed. In fact, he took a tad too long to consider his next move, causing the invisible enemies to stop and even defeat him.

"I'm not done yet!" Avalon shouted and turned around, going to another tile. But right after he took one step forward, his head was blown away by something. It was a sharp pain as though his head was pierced by something long. In that instant, he recognized it while dying, "An archer…"

…

Just like Avalon, the others were also facing their respective challenges. As expected, the challenges were so hard that they couldn't easily overcome them. In fact, some of them thought it was impossible within one month's time.

And one of them who thought that way was Jayden. After coming from the same world as Theo, Jayden had a bit of an inferiority complex.

Theo was blessed by a Royal Grade Demon, but he never made his strength known. Jayden was envious because he would become an important figure if he could possess the demon of the same grade.

But that obsession was the reason why his challenge was to face people less talented than him.

"Kh." Jayden glared at this humanoid figure. It didn't have any features other than its basic humanoid shape. However, he could see the power that this opponent had.

It raised its stance, ready to fight against Jayden.

When Jayden came forth and punched his opponent, the latter clapped its hands and spread them open. Spider webs were forged between the gaps of the hands.

Instead of taking Jayden's punch, the humanoid figure allowed Jayden to punch the spider webs and stretch them far.

But as soon as its elasticity reached its limit, the webs returned with a more powerful force, causing Jayden's body to spin.

Jayden wasn't so weak that he would be defeated with a simple trick. While spinning, he stomped the ground, cracking the floor.

They were fighting in an open arena without anything around. It was clear that Jayden had a great advantage compared to the humanoid figure who had a Spider Demon. Additionally, Jayden knew that a Spider Demon ranked lower than his Strength Demon. In fact, the Spider Demon was classified as a Common Grade Demon, not a Knight Grade or even a Noble Grade like his Strength Demon.

However, the opponent had been suppressing him the whole time.

Since it would be foolish to give the opponent a place to take advantage of its real ability, Jayden didn't use enough force to cause an avalanche and a few spikes didn't emerge from the ground.

He also controlled his strength so that a portion of the floor was broken, allowing him to grab it.

Jayden pushed it up, ready to throw it at the enemy.

Sadly for him, the other party shot out a web to the upper part of the floor and pulled it down, taking advantage of the momentum of the floor to let it rotate.

Bam!

The floor ended up dropping right in front of Jayden. And his opponent used the broken floor to his advantage. The spider web was attached to one of the smaller pieces as the humanoid figure spun its body, using the centrifugal force to hit Jayden from the side.

Jayden tried to block it with his hand, but it ended up numbing his hand. In addition, the humanoid figure grabbed another piece and slammed it into Jayden.

He ended up failing to block the second one as the piece ultimately broke his skull, causing him to die.

"Kh." Jayden woke up again from the illusion, fully annoyed.

If he were defeated by another Noble Grade Demon or a Royal Grade Demon, he wouldn't feel so stressed out. But because the opponent was a mere Common Grade, he was pissed.

Jayden still thought that the Demon Grade was everything to a fight.

In fact, he wasn't that wrong. In the Demon Realm, all the Royal Grade Demon possessors were at the top, followed by Noble Grade Demon possessors. The reason he was pissed about Theo was because Theo's ranking was lower than some Noble Grade Demon possessors.

But that soon disappeared when he saw Theo's overwhelming ability which had been hidden from the world. In the end, that action itself caused Jayden to believe that one's ability would be related to the grade of the demon residing in their body.

Sadly, this was why Theo created this challenge. He wanted to show Jayden that the demon grade wasn't everything to decide victory or defeat.

Due to the propaganda and the world's ideology, he had fallen too deeply to realize it. Unless he could acknowledge that fact within one month, there was no way he could win against a common-grade demon.

Theo controlled and monitored every illusion for his students. It was very taxing because he had to maintain twelve different illusions at once. In addition, those illusions had to look real. So he was only sitting on the wall, waiting for them to wake up before approaching them.

While waiting for his students, Theo took the time to check the comments.

"Everything is possible within my illusion. It's just that maintaining something I'm not familiar with takes a toll on my mind. When that happens, I can only maintain the illusion and not fight physically. In addition, I have to choose whether I want to use the illusion that affects the surrounding area so that all the people can see the same thing or plant an illusion in one's mind to focus on that person. If there is more than one person like this one, it's really hard to maintain it, especially for a long period of time."

"Just like the previous mission where I manipulated all their minds to kill them, I can only maintain it for about twenty minutes before I am completely out. Of course, to invoke emotions, one needs to understand the emotion itself completely like what kind of thing will induce that emotion and what experience can take it away."

"While I can induce emotion or confuse the brain with my illusion, I can only use it when I have enough information and essence."

After replying to the comments, Theo raised his head and noticed that one of his students had woken up.

It was Aurora.

Instead of returning to the illusion world, Aurora actually stood up as if she wanted to give up.

"What's wrong? Do you want to give up the trial?" Theo asked.

Aurora shook her head. "It's not that… I'm just feeling a bit restless, so I thought I should calm my mind first before challenging the trial again."

Theo squinted his eyes. Aurora was the first one to do this. It was also a good approach, considering if one was getting too agitated when tackling a challenge, they would end up making a mistake that they wouldn't have made if they were calm.

Theo nodded. "Sure. You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't disturb others."

Aurora took up his invitation and sat next to him.

Aurora was a princess in her home world, so she couldn't help but feel drawn to this man who wielded his abilities like none other. The first time Theo piqued her interest was not during the sparring, but when he solved the kidnapping problem.

"Teacher. I have a kind of personal question." Aurora was a bit hesitant, not wanting to be rude.

"If I can answer it."

"With your power, you can become famous and wield a powerful influence. In fact, you could easily dispel all the rumors you had in your original world. Ah, I should apologize for doing a background check on you…"

"I don't mind. If you have the power, you can do anything you like. And doing a background check on me won't make me weaker." Theo calmly shrugged it off. "So, what do you want to say?"

"With great power comes great responsibility… But I don't see any of that within you." This was the reason Aurora was hesitant earlier. It was a rude statement but an important thing to know as royalty.

Theo looked at the ceiling and chuckled. "Then, I should ask you back. If you are just a commoner, will you ask this question?"

"Eh?!" Aurora fell into deep thought. This kind of question only appeared because she felt responsible as a member of royalty, so would she ask this question if she were just an ordinary elf? She found herself unable to answer that question.

"Then, I should change my question. Why do you ask that question? Is it only a mere curiosity? Is it because of your sense of duty? Is it because of your identity? Or is it because you really think that way?"

Aurora was completely frozen. As royalty, she felt like it was too suffocating at one time. She had to maintain her manner, think about the country, and perhaps sacrifice herself through political marriage.

"We protect our world not out of a sense of duty but because there are people important to us that still live there. We are fighting for our country not because we're forced to, but because of our patriotism. We are living here not for the sake of others, but for the sake of ourselves."

"I disagree with the last one." Aurora frowned. "What about your loved ones?"

"Imagine sacrificing yourself for your loved ones, do you truly think it's for them? Or is it because you want them that way?"

"…" Aurora's mouth was completely shut when she heard the second one. If one sacrifices for their loved ones, they usually do it because they want their loved ones to gain something like survival or a better life. On the other hand, if their loved ones forced them to sacrifice themselves, it ended up being coercion or a sense of duty or identity.

When Aurora thought about it, Theo wasn't completely in the wrong either. She couldn't help but ponder deeply her own question.

Would she ask that question for herself without being influenced by her identity, duty, or anything else?

The moment she arrived at that conclusion, she couldn't help but ask, "Teacher… This might be presumptuous for me to ask, but will you choose my world for the next mission? Even if I can't join that mission, I'd like to ask you to see my world. I want to know how you view my world."