The moment he saw this scene, Hewn Lambis instantly broke free from that state of calm, clearly realizing that he had fallen into a trap and had already been affected to some extent.
Without hesitation, he hunched his back slightly, and his body began to swell noticeably.
His pupils immediately turned into vertical slits, shifting from pale blue to golden yellow. On his face, the backs of his hands, and every inch of exposed skin, scales as gray-white as stone grew out.
With a ripping sound, the white shirt, black vest, suit jacket, and straight-leg trousers he was wearing all tore apart, revealing the dragon scales beneath.
In an instant, Hewn Lambis transformed into an abnormally massive monster. Except for his head, which still maintained human form, the rest of his body had completely mutated, like a gray-white dragon that hadn't fully evolved or matured yet.
The dragon bore two grayish, leathery wings on its back. Its limbs were relatively thick, and the gray-white scales on its surface were engraved with complex, three-dimensional mysterious symbols. These symbols extended inward into the flesh and outward into the surrounding void, as if interwoven into something that did not belong to the real world. The mere sight of them caused mental derangement, twisted thoughts, and one's spirit body to be contaminated with all sorts of seemingly heartfelt urges, making one wish to tear or destroy oneself.
This was the incomplete Mythical Creature form of the Spectator pathway!
For demigods of other
Woo!
All the thoughts in Hewn Lambis's subconscious domain boiled over. They churned, differentiated, and pushed out the implanted and modified parts of his consciousness one by one, dissolving them into nothingness.
Woo!
A violent wind sound surged around the gray-white dragon Hewn Lambis had transformed into, seeming to come from both reality and illusion.
Carried by a certain will, it swept in all directions. Any living being caught in it inevitably fell into various abnormal states. Some stood frozen, trembling all over; some blindly and irrationally fled to the corner of the garden; some lost control of their bladders, their legs giving way weakly beneath them; some directly fainted, falling into unconsciousness; while others displayed a fanatical expression, becoming followers of the dragon.
This was the qualitatively changed "Dragon's Wrath" originating from a Mythical Creature. It had evolved from simply being "deterrence" into a multifaceted "Mental Deprivation"!
Taking advantage of the "Dragon's Wrath" sweeping the surroundings, Hewn Lambis's will, combining with his thoughts, transformed into countless illusory and sinister versions of himself. From the Sea of Collective Subconscious, invisible to the vast majority of Beyonders, they rapidly approached Gehrman Sparrow on the rooftop and
— As a "Spectator," he could already tell the attacker was Gehrman Sparrow just from the faceless image and aura!
At this moment, Audrey, following the results of the discussion Above the
"I can't see anything, I can't hear anything…
I can't see anything, I can't hear anything…"
She was doing this to avoid mental abnormalities or even direct loss of control from gazing upon Hewn Lambis's Mythical Creature form.
However, this also prevented her from "seeing" and sensing that one of Hewn Lambis's mental projections had already approached her Mental Body from the Sea of Collective Subconscious.
But all of a sudden, in Hewn Lambis's "eyes," the island of consciousness corresponding to the golden-haired, blue-eyed girl disappeared, vanished.
Audrey, on the other hand, felt a warmth on the surface of her body, as if she had returned to the sunlit ground from a cold, dark cavern.
She quickly canceled the hypnosis and opened her eyes. She saw the sun in the sky piercing through clouds that weren't particularly thin, scattering brilliant radiance. And in this golden, clear feeling, autumn flowers were quietly blooming, beautiful and peaceful.
Audrey looked around somewhat blankly, not finding Hewn Lambis, nor Gehrman Sparrow, nor that massive crimson moon.
This gave her a feeling that everything she just experienced was merely a dream.
"What an incredible ability... The battle of two demigods might not even disturb a single petal," Audrey muttered silently to herself, then calmly withdrew from the garden, retreating to the corridor connecting it to the house.
She was afraid that her presence would make Gehrman Sparrow hesitate, affecting his battle.
In the hidden world, one of the avatars Hewn Lambis had split off also simultaneously arrived at the island of consciousness of Gehrman Sparrow beneath the crimson moon.
He was just about to set foot upon it and open the gates of that Mental Body to manipulate the opponent's subconscious, forcing him to act against his own will, when he discovered that this illusory island standing in the Sea of Collective Subconscious was completely dead. No thoughts floated, no ideas flashed—it was completely unassailable.
Puppet! A marionette! Hewn Lambis made his judgment in an instant. Combined with the intelligence he had gathered before, he gained a deeper understanding of Gehrman Sparrow's situation.
He wasn't surprised, nor did he feel disheartened. Instead, he gained more joy and confidence. For a demigod of the Spectator pathway, this allowed them to easily distinguish between a marionette and the true body, greatly diminishing Gehrman Sparrow's strongest ability.