Chapter 111: 6.15 – Between the Lines

Robin immediately used [Visual Phantasm] to re-summon his illusory hands and open the book again. Well, maybe not immediately. there might have been a few moments—minutes—of hyperventilation and panic. Curses were serious business, right? But then, he was already cursed, so he thought he might as well see if he could get past the annoying thing.

Could he get more cursed? Might as well find out.

Robin paged through the illusory book quickly, barely glancing at the pages long enough to track his progress.

He slowed when he neared the spot the cure had last manifested, but he did not stop. He was committed, and part of him was daring the god to try and curse him again.

Robin reached the penultimate page before the curse. He flipped it, squinting his eyes in case the thing flared up again.

Nothing happened.

He flipped to the next page.

Still nothing.

Robin allowed himself a small flare of triumph. Apparently Urkhan or his priest or whomever had laid that trap hadn’t counted on someone being quite this foolish.

The more fool they!

Robin resumed reading. This section of the book went even more into depth about the secrets available to truly dedicated illusionists. At this point it ceased to be the story of a single individual in Tarin-Tiran, but rather was more a collection of lore and reminisces and scraps of older holy texts.   

The faith of Rhyth seemed to be rather tatterdemalion thing, even so far back as this tome seemed to date.

Small wonder, if the deity was truly as old as some of the legends suggested. And if the world was this strange assemblage of floating continent. Bards, illusionists, travelling performers, it made sense that a lot of Rhyth’s holy rites and practices grew from many sources, were a coat cut of a cloth of many colours.

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Robin read and read, ignoring the clench of his hungry stomach and the increasingly parched state of his throat. He needed to absorb as much of this knowledge as he could, while he could. There was no telling when a curse might interrupt him again, or he might be shunted out of the library by an irate Vryngylla.

He flicked away the notices of a free rank in Arcane Lore and Insight, of discounts to Deception, Sleight of Hand, and Cunning. These were more than knowledge, these were stories, and many of them were utterly absorbing.

They were also full of really good bad ideas. The anecdotes alone were a master class in trickery and deceit and madcap tomfoolery.

But the illusion lore here was key. While it didn’t give him all the pieces, there was a lot here. Enough that he was convinced he could eventually fill in the gaps, either with more research or with brute forcing his experience system and the interface to get him the powers he needed. The powers he wanted.

There were hints as to how to make illusions temporarily fully real. And unless he missed his guess, there was definitely a way to finesses various powers in concert to make some illusions more than fully real.

That was the real secret behind the ability the Queen of Air and Darkness had told him of. ‘The Mirror’s Revenge’ she had called it. Illusionists of the ancient world so termed it because it—in certain select situations—allowed illusions to exceed the reality of the real world, though they were still but phantasms.

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