CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.
I began applauding without even realizing it.
I had lived through countless cycles, but this was the first time I had encountered someone like him.
“……?”
The bastard stared at me as though I were insane when I suddenly stopped taking his blows and began applauding in admiration.
“Ha. In a way, this is impressive. Did you simply change your perspective? I have met countless people, but never anyone like you.”
“…What?”
An Infiltration Skill was ordinarily dispelled the moment its user attacked someone.
However, it did not disappear when the user stole something.
“Is that the principle? You ‘steal’ a piece of someone’s clothing. You ‘steal’ their hair?”
“……!”
His expression plainly asked, ‘How did you know?’
“You disguised an Infiltration Skill as an offensive ability. Remarkable. Truly. You are a master of unconventional thinking. I will give you that.”
Helena’s Illusion was not a Time Acceleration ability.
As its name suggested, it created an illusion resembling a clone and deceived the enemy. It was an infiltration–deception-type skill.
“Ha, haha! I-I have no idea what nonsense you are talking about.”
“No, I genuinely find it impressive. I have never seen anyone use a skill like that before. It was not that you chose not to kill anyone. You could not kill anyone. The moment you attacked with genuine murderous intent, the illusion would disappear.”
“…….”
The collapse of his expression told me there was no need to explain the trick any further.
‘What an incredible bastard. Did he repeatedly create and dismiss the illusion in an instant to make it look like Teleportation? That explains why I could not sense any presence.’
There was also a reason I heard only the sound of the air being split.
Even that would probably have been impossible if he had not equipped the illusion with physical equipment.
‘Then the problem is his true body. Where is it?’
Discovering his identity did not fundamentally change the situation.
The illusion could still continue attacking me.
“If this is Helena’s Illusion, its effective range cannot be particularly large. His true body cannot be all the way back at the Jump Spot.”
His true body had to be hiding somewhere nearby.
However, when I looked around, I saw only faces I recognized.
There was no one who appeared to be a Raider.
‘None of the Raiders who infiltrated this place survived either. One was killed by the falling weight, and another was ambushed from behind.’
When I examined them, both corpses had unquestionably been dead.
Their hearts had stopped, and neither had been breathing.
No matter how skilled someone was at acting, they might be able to hold their breath, but they could not conceal a beating heart.
‘No one other than those dead men infiltrated this far…?’
The user could not be too far away while controlling the illusion.
In other words, his true body had to be close.
But how?
There was not a single place to hide between Point 4 and Point 5, where the Guardian Stones were concealed.
“……!”
<Only Orpheus can find the vanished Hermes’ Shoes.>
The final riddle suddenly returned to me.
‘Orpheus failed to recover his wife because he violated a taboo.’
In mythology, Orpheus descended into Hades to retrieve his dead wife.
He barely managed to find her, but he broke the prohibition against looking back and failed to return her to life.
Yet the riddle said that only Orpheus could find Hermes’ Shoes.
‘The first riddle mentioned the feet of Hermes, so I naturally assumed it referred to an acceleration ability… Ah!’
Hermes was not merely the messenger of the gods.
He was also a god of trickery.
“Your ability was not acceleration. It was deception.”
“H-how did you…?”
“…Hades, the dead, and looking back.”
Everything fell into place.
Using an ability of Hermes, the bastard had disguised himself as one of the corpses and controlled the illusion from there.
Until now, he had probably pretended to be dead in a safe location and effortlessly claimed the rewards afterward.
“This situation is over. I will see you shortly.”
“Wh-where are you going?! You are not getting past me!”
I quickly turned and ran back the way I had come while avoiding the illusion’s desperate attempts to restrain me.
Since it could not inflict a fatal injury, I only needed to defend myself enough to keep moving.
He would hurry to escape while using the illusion to slow me down.
‘But he is still trapped in the Buddha’s palm.’
The bastard needed a Guardian Stone to survive, so he had nowhere to run.
‘Th-this is bad. He discovered everything!!’
Helmen was terrified.
‘I-I have to buy time. Right! I will head toward the Gate!’
The main force of Raiders that breached the Gate should have been advancing toward Point 5.
It was unfortunate that he could no longer monopolize the Guardian Stones, but now that his identity had been exposed, he had to hide himself.
‘Hide a tree in a forest!’
The moment he made his decision, Helmen desperately used the illusion to block the man’s advance.
Controlling the illusion to hinder his pursuer while simultaneously fleeing with his true body made him dizzy, but there was no other option.
Helmen activated Hermes’ Feet once again.
It was originally a stealthy Rare-ranked movement skill that erased the user’s presence.
However, it possessed a hidden mechanic.
Once his Skill Proficiency increased, his presence disappeared even while he remained motionless.
It allowed him to enter a corpse-like state of concealment so perfect that no one could detect him even if they pressed an ear directly against his chest.
As long as he properly disguised his appearance, neither monsters nor Awakened could tell that he remained alive while he lay among the dead.
“Damn it! If I had even one offensive skill!”
He would soon leave this wretched place.
Once he did, he could use the Points he had saved to purchase skills.
He had survived by developing this unusual application of his abilities precisely because he possessed no Combat Skills whatsoever.
Had he learned even a single Active Skill capable of ranged attacks, he would not have been forced to flee like this.
He possessed nothing but Infiltration and Stealth skills.
He had no confidence that he could defeat another Awakened in combat.
He had always been rather cowardly in the first place.
‘I thought I could simply control the illusion like a game character…!’
Helena’s Illusion had made everything feel like an easy mode where he could die dozens of times without consequence.
Now, it had abruptly transformed into a hard mode where his actual life was at stake.
“What the hell… is that bastard?”
Helena’s Illusion and Hermes’ Feet were both Rare-ranked skills so powerful that calling them absurdly overpowered would not have been an exaggeration.
Helmen had been blessed with extraordinary luck.
However, luck was relative.
When he encountered someone even more fortunate than himself, he could not avoid feeling comparatively deprived.
Through the information shared with the illusion in real time, Helmen desperately tried to determine the man’s identity.
If he could discover even one weakness, he believed he might reverse the situation.
However, the man was strong.
THUD! THUD!
No.
He was durable.
The clone created through Helena’s Illusion relentlessly struck his body, but the man ignored every blow that did not target a vital point.
‘He will catch me soon at this rate! I wish I could get another lucky kill like before.’
When Helmen first arrived, he had pushed a Raider who was moving ahead of him from a high place and killed him.
However, he had only intended to shove the man aside and overtake him, not kill him.
He had never expected an Awakened to die so easily.
“Phew… I have to remove the intention. The intention to kill.”
Helmen aimed for the man’s vital points while suppressing every desire to kill him.
If the man died by accident, then Helmen would not have attacked with murderous intent.
However, every attempt failed.
WHOOSH!
The illusion thrust its spear toward the man’s heart, only to vanish like a mirage.
-What is wrong? Can you no longer control it?
“Damn it!! Again! Again!!”
The illusion had no Cooldown.
Unless it was forcibly destroyed, it consumed almost no Vitality.
The only resource it consumed was Mental Strength.
SWISH!
WHOOSH!
SWISH!
WHOOSH!
He repeatedly recreated the illusion and tried to kill the man without harboring murderous intent.
Every attempt ended in failure.
With the illusion no longer hindering him effectively, the man drew closer even faster.
‘Just a little farther. Just a little…!’
Killing the man with the illusion had reached an impasse, but Helmen was almost at the Gate.
Once he reached it, he could reorganize himself and calmly target the man from behind again.
“I made it…!”
THUDTHUDTHUD… TAP.
“…Who is that?”
“I have never seen him before.”
Helmen stared at the scene before him like a computer frozen while trying to process unexpected information.
“…He looks like a Raider.”
“Was there a survivor?”
Countless corpses had been piled into mountains before the Gate.
A large group of Awakened who appeared to be Sentinels were gathered there, clearing them away.
“…H-huh?”
The moment they noticed Helmen, they adjusted their grips on their weapons and began approaching him one by one.
‘I am fucked….’
His real face looked completely different from the illusion.
It resembled what would emerge if the illusion’s features were reconstructed according to the golden ratio and enhanced with every possible correction.
That was why I had not recognized him immediately.
‘I know that face.’
His performance varied greatly from cycle to cycle, but I remembered that he had consistently possessed enough ability to escape the Tower of Beginnings.
‘His name was… something beginning with Hel?’
Before long, the man identified himself as Helmen and began begging for his life.
The allies clearing the area before the Gate had captured him effortlessly.
Aside from his illusion, he possessed almost no combat ability, so he apparently had not been able to resist meaningfully.
“Ughhh… Please.”
I gave an incredulous laugh as I looked at Helmen, who had been reduced to a half-dead state before being dragged to me.
From Helmen’s perspective, joining the Raiders—the closest thing he had to allies—would have offered his best chance of survival.
What he had failed to anticipate was that the main force had already been subjected to a one-sided massacre.
“P-please, spare my life….”
“Even if I spare you now, you will die without a Guardian Stone.”
“P-please! I will do anything you order! Th-this! I will give you this in exchange for my life!”
He handed me a pair of boots decorated with images of wings.
“What is this?”
“H-Hermes’ Shoes! When equipped, they grant feather-like air resistance during a fall, as well as a stealth movement skill that conceals the wearer’s presence.”
“…What?”
Occasionally—
Very occasionally—
Someone fortunate enough could obtain an item with a skill embedded in it.
However, acquiring such an item at this stage was even more difficult than obtaining a Rare-ranked skill.
Its price in the Shop would also be so astronomical that purchasing one was unimaginable.
At the level of the Tower of Beginnings, there were not even missions that rewarded Skill-Embedded Items.
“How did you obtain this…?”
“I was fortunate enough to draw an Item Ticket during the previous mission… Please, spare my life!”
Occasionally, Completion Rewards included various Tickets instead of Points.
An Item Ticket possessed an extremely low probability of granting a Rare-ranked item with an embedded skill.
However, the odds were at least ten times worse than those of obtaining a genuine Rare-ranked skill.
“Good grief.”
I quickly took Hermes’ Shoes from him.
I had assumed he was merely someone fortunate enough to possess two Rare-ranked skills, but he was practically a Treasure Goblin.
“There is no need to weigh my options.”
“Th-then…!”
“Yes. Stand up and walk toward the others over there. Tell them that I sent you.”
“Th-thank you. Thank you very much!!”
With tears in his eyes and hope that he had survived, he walked unsteadily toward the people clearing away the corpses.
[Mana Charge: 100%.]
BANG-!
Before he could turn around, I cleanly planted a Mana Bullet into the back of his head.
“You will not have felt any pain. Goodbye.”
The head above his neck disappeared almost completely.
Since I had obliterated it in a single shot, he would have died before he could feel anything.
Even so, he might have considered the outcome unfair, so I briefly explained my reason to his corpse.
“You betray people as naturally as you eat.”
Far more had occurred than during the first Defense.
Nevertheless, the Stage 2 Defense had ended with considerably fewer casualties and in far less time.