Hill stroked his chin for a moment, then narrowed his eyes and smiled... He had remembered just the thing.
Back when Falan and William were making those illusion crystal balls, he had made a few himself... Nothing as elaborate, of course, since he couldn't watch them himself.
They mostly featured natural hazards... getting trampled by an elephant, swallowed by a giant python, or simply falling into a volcano's lava.
Oriana and the others had smashed most of them when he used them to tease them back then, but a few of the lower-grade ones had survived.
Hill cast an invisibility spell on himself, stepped out of the carriage, and slowly circled the lawn... A row of white marble rose from the ground in his wake.
The guards posted by the roadside turned in surprise... A three-meter-high wall now stood behind them, without so much as a gate.
"Time to rest." His gentle voice reached their ears. "No visitors. You may leave."
Before they came, the Ster Family guards had been warned again and again: if the gentleman inside told them to leave, they were not to hesitate.
They bowed at once, strode around to another lawn, mounted the horses waiting there, and rode off at speed.
Hill raised an eyebrow. The Ster Family had gone up another notch in his estimation.
He glanced at the blue moon already risen into the sky and the stars glittering overhead, then sealed four illusion crystal balls into the four walls.
Then he returned to his carriage in high spirits, activated the soundproofing array, and promptly fell asleep.
Hill woke with the morning sunlight and cheerfully opened the carriage window... then felt even more cheerful at the sight of a dozen or so black-clad figures sprawled on the ground, groaning.
There were even two