Sudden Attack

At the History Department of Backlund University, Cyril glanced at the office where only old Fells sat in his chair, lost in thought, and raised his hand to knock on the door.

Knock, knock.

"Come in."

Cyril stopped in front of the desk and looked calmly at the old man opposite him: "Professor Fells, did you want to see me?"

Old Fells didn't even move from his chair, but his tone shifted slightly:

"You skipped class again this morning?"

"Uh..." Cyril froze for a moment. He hadn't expected old Fells, who usually paid almost no attention to his students, to be so concerned about him—especially since there hadn't even been a lecture of his this morning.

After a brief hesitation, he nodded gently: "Yes, I was a little late this morning."

By a whole morning, that is.

Old Fells seemed to accept his explanation, skipping the topic entirely and saying instead: "I have prepared a gift for you."

"Ah?"

"Thank you, Professor, but there's no need for a gift."

Cyril looked at him in confusion, feeling that something was off about old Fells today.

Although old Fells didn't have a reputation for being stingy at the university, he certainly wasn't the type of professor to thoughtfully prepare gifts for students, especially since he wasn't one of the most outstanding or favored ones.

Old Fells ignored his refusal and, after speaking, leaned down to pull a face-down picture frame from the desk drawer.

The moment he saw the frame, Cyril suddenly felt a warning from his spirituality and instinctively wanted to flee.

He retreated several steps, but he was a second too late; old Fells had already turned the frame over, facing it directly toward him.

The front of the frame depicted a forest of dense, twisted, dark green dead trees. Above the forest hung a pale blue Moon that looked like an eye, peering down at the forest below and, simultaneously, at everything outside the frame.

Cyril's gaze inevitably locked with the eye in the painting. For a fleeting moment, he felt as if he were being watched from an infinitely high place.

When he came to his senses, he realized he was no longer in old Fells' office, but in a forest of twisted, leafless, dark green trees—the very forest from the painting.

World in the Painting!

He had been dragged into the World in the Painting again, and this time, it seemed that not only his spirit but his physical body had been pulled in as well.

After a moment of silence, he reached out to press against the air in front of him. A circle of pale blue radiance rippled from his palm, but the "door" he had anticipated never appeared.

"It really doesn't work?" Cyril lowered his head and sighed.

He had been trying to replicate his previous maneuver, using the Apprentice's Door Opening ability to create a gateway between the World in the Painting and reality, but he had failed.

He had a premonition that the problem lay within himself.

"Is it because last time it was only my spirit, so I could easily break free from the World in the Painting by relying on the level of my soul?"

"And this time, my spirit and body are not separated; the level of my soul is restricted by my body, or rather, do I not yet possess the ability to traverse dimensions with a physical form?"

As he muttered to himself, he saw a familiar figure rapidly taking shape among the twisted dead trees not far away—it was old Fells.

He held a black wooden cane in one hand and the top hat he had been wearing in the other. In his azure eyes burned an unconcealable madness and excitement.

"You are not Professor Fells!"

Cyril frowned at the figure that had suddenly appeared. Aside from the face, nothing about him resembled old Fells at all.

The man did not speak, walking toward him with a somewhat seductive gait. With every step, the colors on his body faded until he completely transformed into someone else.

It was a woman with brown hair and brown eyes, her features sharp. She possessed a dual aura of ferocity and affectation, her face painted with heavy, garish makeup, giving her the incongruous look of a noblewoman forcibly merged with a female bandit.

The top hat and cane in her hands had also changed, becoming a long blade stained with rust-red spots and a pitch-black revolver.

Cyril frowned as he looked at her, his memories flashing back as he recognized her.

Zoila Hernandez, leader of the Blood Axe Gang in the East District of Backlund, a Sequence 8 Listener who had gone insane after hearing voices from the stars.

This was a task Adam had assigned him previously, and he had even received the reward for completing it in advance.

He hadn't been very proactive about completing this mission, but he hadn't expected the target to come knocking on his door like this. He was starting to suspect that Adam was prodding him.

Cyril looked at the blade and gun in her hands, his teeth aching. If he had known this would happen, he would have kept skipping class.

He had come to school to attend lectures, not to brawl, and he wasn't carrying any weapons. As it turned out, he had just happened to run into a criminal who was armed and had marked him as a target.

Zoila Hernandez, having returned to her original appearance, didn't waste any words or movements. She raised the gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger in one fluid motion.

Bang! Bang!

The golden bullets struck a lightless Black Curtain, failing to stir even a ripple.

"Black Curtain" + "Escape Trick".

As a lower-tier version of a teleportation ability, the speed of "Escape Trick" was close to a short-range displacement. In the blink of an eye, Cyril used the cover of the "Black Curtain" to appear at Zoila Hernandez's side.

But he was met with a pitch-black muzzle; Zoila had seen through his trick and precisely locked onto his position.

Bang!

The moment the gunshot rang out, Zoila's body involuntarily leaned backward. The muzzle, which had been aimed at Cyril, shifted, and the bullet went wide.

Cyril breathed a slight sigh of relief. His move just now had been extremely risky. The owner of the painting had absolute control over the World in the Painting, so no matter how clever or spectacular his trick was, it couldn't stop her from locking onto him.

Especially as someone influenced by the High-Dimensional Overseer, the opponent likely possessed the ability to observe the true nature of the world, which heavily countered sequences like Trickmaster and Magician that relied on deceptive performances and precise operations.

Fortunately, the opponent was overly confident and lacked sufficient understanding of the Trickmaster's abilities, which gave him a chance to take a risk.

Taking advantage of the moment the opponent lost her balance, Cyril reached out his left hand and lightly tapped his index finger, sending a beam of frost-white, pale-blue light shooting out, aiming precisely for her eyes.

"Freeze!"

This trick was not powerful; it could only achieve rapid cooling, frost formation, or the creation of thin ice, but if the target of the attack was the most vulnerable part of the human body—the eyes—it could have unexpected effects.

To his surprise, the ray created by Freeze missed its mark.

After losing her balance, Zoila's body twisted into an incredible arc, dodging the ray that was about to hit her eyes, and she even swung a blade at him with a backhand motion while twisting.

Cyril dodged the long blade stained with rust-red spots at the first opportunity; his intuition was warning him that this blade was even more dangerous than the revolver in her hand.

...A magical item?

As the thought flickered through his mind, he saw a plume of smoke with a pungent sulfur smell surging out from where the blade had passed; this smoke seemed alive, surging toward him with great purpose.

Snap.

Cyril retreated while raising his hand to snap his fingers.

The black smoke surging toward him vanished into thin air, then abruptly reappeared around Zoila, completely enveloping her.

"Transfer Gas."

It was a trick he had always felt was useless, as it couldn't directly transfer air to suffocate someone to death, yet he hadn't expected it to come in handy now.

From within the black smoke that carried the pungent smell of sulfur, Cyril heard a coughing sound tinged with pain.

Zoila seemingly hadn't expected Cyril to be able to turn her own extraordinary ability back against her, and caught off guard, she inhaled some of the black smoke, suffering from the effects of the toxins and corrosion.

The next second, gunfire rang out once more.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Although the black smoke had caused some impact on Zoila, it had also blocked Cyril's line of sight, preventing him from noticing in time that she had aimed her muzzle at him again.

Relying on his spiritual intuition to warn him, Cyril managed to react, but he failed to dodge the bullets cleanly this time, taking one hit to the shoulder and another to his flank; the only thing to be thankful for was that no vital organs were injured.

"Hiss..."

Cyril gritted his teeth against the pain, constantly changing his position, not daring to pause in one spot for even a second.

He had originally intended to hide behind the surrounding dead trees, but they were like background props in this scene—they looked like they were right in front of him, but in reality, he could never reach or touch them.

"Damn it, Adam!"

With a moment of hesitation, he chose to call out Adam's name, but he received no response; it seemed that this World in the Painting did not interact with the spiritual world.