Chapter 81: Deception

Chapter 81: Deception

After Qonas Kilgor finally figured out which Beyonder pathway his enemy belonged to, the Gehrman Sparrows in the garden, vineyard, and manor’s main building all raised their left hands at the same time. They curled their middle, ring, and little fingers, extended their index fingers and thumbs, and formed the simple outline of a handgun.

Those index fingers, representing barrels and muzzles, swiftly aimed at Qonas Kilgor in midair. Their corresponding forearms all jolted upward at once, as though struck by the recoil of a shot.

Bang bang bang bang bang!

Amid deafening sounds, beside the Fallen Count in white shirt and black trousers, one illusory white dove after another suddenly emerged and flew in all directions, creating a sight both magnificent and beautiful.

This was the random mutation brought by the “tin” pocket watch—Concerto of Light and Shadow. It had transformed shells of air capable of collapsing houses into completely harmless “doves of peace”!

Qonas Kilgor, who had used Confusion to interfere with the enemy’s volley, saw the doves flap their wings and scatter high into the sky, yet he showed not the slightest astonishment.

He had long since prepared himself mentally.

He had endured that Sealed Artifact’s negative effect for several years!

Seizing this opportunity, he raised both hands without hesitation—the one gripping Concerto of Light and Shadow and the one holding the strange handgun—and prepared to strike them together.

This was Distortion, Distortion targeting every Gehrman Sparrow below.

For Qonas Kilgor, when fighting a Bizarro Sorcerer, the most troublesome point was that he could not distinguish whether the enemy before him was a marionette or the true body—unless that marionette had been crudely made.

Because of that, he did not dare use many of his Beyonder powers, for they would be ineffective against marionettes.

Area-of-effect Prohibitions were acceptable, but Deprivation aimed at a single target had no practical combat value at all. No matter how many Beyonder powers were deprived from a marionette, the true body would not be affected. At that point, the opponent could resolve the issue simply by switching to another marionette.

For similar reasons, Qonas Kilgor had also strategically and temporarily given up Amplifying the negative effects of the mystical items carried by those marionettes.

Likewise, Bestow from a Fallen Count would be even less useful—less useful than Deprivation. Deprivation could at least make a Bizarro Sorcerer’s marionette lose the corresponding Beyonder powers, while the negative states granted by Bestow could not interfere with a marionette at all. Whether passive negligence, loss of fighting spirit, impatience, agitation, or focusing only on money, none of them held any meaning for a marionette, which was essentially a dead person without its own thinking or tendency toward action.

Therefore, Qonas Kilgor decided to first resolve the problem of distinguishing marionettes from the true body.

In this area, others might have no way, but a high-sequence expert of the Lawyer pathway certainly did not have such concerns.

Everything had rules. Everything followed certain patterns. Demigods of the Lawyer pathway excelled at finding loopholes in those rules and exploiting them for their own use.

Coupled with the fact that he had fought other Bizarro Sorcerers before and, afterward, had seriously considered how to deal with similar situations, Qonas Kilgor was quite certain at this moment. He believed that Distortion could counter his enemy.

He knew a Bizarro Sorcerer could seamlessly swap between his true body and all his marionettes. He planned to “distort” that fact, changing it so that the Bizarro Sorcerer could only switch places with two or three specific marionettes!

In that way, the difficulty of distinguishing the true body from the marionettes would be reduced to the minimum.

Of course, if Distortion were not unable to exceed…