As soon as Merlin finished speaking, the petals on the ground drifted in every direction, forming two layers of barriers made from a sea of flowers around him.
Sovell was enclosed within them as well. His dragon roars and the gale were confined inside the barriers, where petals were constantly torn apart by the wind, only to return to their original state in an instant.
Merlin touched his staff to the ground. A moment later, chain after chain woven from petals shot toward Sovell.
By then, Sovell's dragon blood had run wild, sending his mind into a frenzy.
But his keen instincts and the fluctuations in the air within the barriers were enough to tell him that something dangerous was rushing toward him.
Magical energy gathered in his dragon claws as he swiped forward.
Four swift wind blades instantly sliced through all the chains in front of Sovell.
After cutting through the chains, the wind blades hurtled straight toward Merlin. But with a single wave of his staff, Merlin turned those four blades into four rows of flowers.
Then Merlin chanted a short phrase in something unlike any human language. Thousands of chains emerged from the barrier of petals filling the sky and coiled toward Sovell's limbs.
This time, no matter how many wind blades Sovell unleashed, they were useless. The chains bound his limbs fast, and however hard he struggled, they did not budge.
Under this suppression, his dragon blood grew increasingly savage. Sovell's dragon horns had fully formed.
A thunderous roar burst from the white dragon boy's mouth. Wild wind blades slashed at the chains without cease, but barely made them ripple.
Was his mental state really this bad...? Of course. A seven-year-old child had witnessed that hell, and it was a hell he had created with his own hands.
Merlin considered this for a moment, set down Barghest, gathered his magical energy, and placed his palm over the top of Sovell's head.
The white dragon's roars grew ever more ferocious. Endless magical energy surged within the barriers, constantly blowing the surrounding petals away before they fell back into place.
Drip. Drip.
Hmm? What was that?
Merlin heard the sound of water dripping onto the ground and looked up. A moment later, he hastily retreated.
Why?
Merlin saw red droplets falling onto the ground beside Sovell. Directly overhead was a blood-red sky blanketed with dark clouds!
"Now this is trouble..."
"Untouchable Land of Fantasy" was an illusion of a sea of flowers that Merlin had created using his innate traits as an incubus.
More precisely, it was the mental landscape of Avalon preserved in Merlin's memories-in other words, a miniature Reality Marble.
However, this Reality Marble did not draw people's physical bodies inside. Instead, it gave tangible form to both parties' minds, replicating them within this world.
The first barrier concealed their figures and defended their physical bodies against attacks from outside.
Only the second barrier was the true Reality Marble.
Furthermore, their minds remained connected across the second barrier. Anything they experienced within it would also affect their physical bodies outside the second barrier but inside the first.
Time did not flow at the same rate inside and outside the second barrier. A day within it amounted to only a second outside.
Moreover, no Magecraft formula outside the barrier could interfere with or observe its interior. Hence its name, "Untouchable Land of Fantasy."
Yet now, from within it, Sovell was using the infinite magical energy supplied by his dragon heart to wrest control of the mental landscape from Merlin!
Sovell's body began to grow. The chains snapped, wings spread from his back, and a dragon's tail extended from his tailbone.
Before long, Sovell had transformed into a white dragon nearly a thousand feet long!
A rain of blood began to fall from the sky, and hills appeared around the white dragon.
Across the hills, people wailed amid countless corpses. It had become a true hell on earth.
And the white dragon seated at its heart was the master of that hell!
Dragon roars echoed through the valleys as the white dragon wantonly slaughtered the lives within them.
"That hell still haunts your heart, does it? In that case, I'll have to get serious..."
Merlin shook his head and spoke helplessly. Then a long Fairy Incantation flowed from his lips.
"▇▇▇▇▇▇,
▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇,
▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇,
▇▇▇▇▇▇▇,
▇▇▇."
Countless lilies spread outward from beneath Merlin's feet, covering the blood-soaked hillsides and the corpses.
A moment later, the hillsides and corpses were gone. All that remained were lily petals dancing across the sky.
Those lily petals turned into chains and wound around the white dragon once more. One, two, three... countless chains. Whenever one snapped, another immediately coiled around him.
The blood-red sky gradually returned to a clear blue. The white dragon's crimson eyes turned silver again and slowly closed.
Into these lilies, Merlin had woven all of Sovell's memories of his time with Artoria.
As long as Sovell's mind still held his memories of the lily girl, those memories would resonate with the flowers, forming dreams that suppressed his draconic nature.
Merlin drew a sword from his staff, held it horizontally before him, and slashed downward.
With that stroke, the landscape within the barrier split in two.
On one side was Avalon's sea of flowers, where Merlin stood;
on the other were the countless lily chains binding the white dragon.
Merlin picked Barghest up again, staring with a pained expression at the Reality Marble he had cut in two.
Those lily chains on Sovell's side were a full five years' worth of food reserves he had stockpiled!
To Merlin, dreams formed from the shared memories of the white dragon boy and the red dragon girl were as delicious as lovingly crafted desserts.
But to suppress Sovell's raging draconic nature, he had no choice but to part with his treasures.
The barriers dispersed, and Sovell and Merlin reappeared in the forest.
Barghest wriggled free of Merlin's grasp and ran to Sovell, rubbing against his lower leg as though trying to comfort him.
Before Merlin arrived from Avalon, Barghest had sensed negative emotions gushing like a fountain from Sovell's direction.
They included sorrow, guilt, anger, and pain, among others. In short, they had become a great stew of negative emotions.
Then dragon roars and fierce winds had swept toward her from Sovell's direction. Barghest had dug her little claws firmly into the ground to keep from being blown away, holding on until Merlin arrived.
"My dear apprentice, do you have any idea how close you came to causing a disaster?"
Merlin gave Sovell a smack on the head as he spoke.
Sovell had returned to normal now. All the dragon scales covering his body and his dragon horns had retracted, so Merlin could smack him without pricking his hand.
Sovell stood like a child who had done something wrong. Well, he was a child who had done something wrong. He kept his head lowered and said nothing.
"Hmm... never mind. Good thing I got here fast enough, or you would have turned this entire forest upside down.
"Back to the point, I've put a lock on you..."
Before you continue