When the explosion of colliding magic power rang out once more, Mimosa even felt the passing airflow lift her hair. She instinctively turned her head, but saw nothing.
Clearly, in her perception, the sound just now had seemed to come from right beside her ear. It had felt so real, yet when she actually looked with her own eyes, she could see nothing, as though it had all been an illusion.
But she knew it could not have been an illusion.
Not long ago, she had still been together with her companions, yet they had all been separated when the other side deployed its Nest. If an illusion truly existed, then it had to be the current reality of her teammates disappearing, not the sounds and airflow she had sensed.
Even knowing that, however, she remained powerless against the current situation.
She could not see her teammates, nor could she see the enemy that had been right before her eyes. It was as though she had been thrown into a parallel world. Although the scenery around her was the same as when she had arrived, everything else felt utterly wrong.
She extended a hand and wrapped it in magic power, then cautiously touched the tree trunk. The sensation at her fingertips told her that this really was a tree that existed.
Then what exactly was happening to her now? Had she been sent into another dimension highly similar to reality? Had some kind of visual deception been cast upon her? Or had she simply suffered a cognitive impairment?
What was the other side trying to accomplish with this? Was it simply stalling for time? Or was it trying to pick them off one by one? Perhaps while she was slowly searching around here, one of her companions had already been