He raised both of his hands.

He connected his mana directly to the thick white mist still floating around the cavern. He drained almost his entire mana pool in a single massive surge, funneling the energy straight into an advanced illusion spell that combined with an intermediate mind spell.

The effects were instantaneous.

The intruding soldiers suddenly stopped shooting at his assassins. They lowered their weapons, looking completely confused.

Then their eyes turned a bright, bloodshot red.

They raised their weird wooden sticks and aimed them right at each other.

In less than a minute, the disciplined strike team turned into a chaotic, bloody mess. They shot their own comrades at point-blank range and people died quickly. A few men managed to resist the illusion, fighting back the madness with gritted teeth, but they were quickly gunned down by their brainwashed friends.

Lorcan casually walked forward through the carnage. He stepped over a bleeding soldier and looked down at the last few survivors.

"You made the wrong choice coming here." Lorcan taunted them. "If you wanted to hire us, you should have gone through the proper black market channels. Dropping in uninvited gets you killed, you know?."

He waited for one of the dying men to beg for mercy ,to say something, or even yell at him for being a monster.

But nobody spoke.

Instead, the dying soldiers on the ground just vanished.

They literally faded into thin air while the blood around them disappeared. The dead assassins dissolved into nothing and the white mist floating everywhere was gone.

Lorcan blinked.

He looked around the massive cavern.

His men were perfectly fine and they were still wearing their skin-tight black gear. They were still fighting each other in the stone cave, practicing their weapon arts.

There were no dead bodies, there was no strike team, and there were no weird wooden sticks.

Lorcan checked his own body, only to see that his mana pool was completely full. It was almost like he had not cast a single spell.

A heavy, suffocating feeling pressed over him and he realized exactly what just happened.

’Illusion and Mind Magic...’ Lorcan thought, his hands actually shaking.

There was a master mage lurking somewhere nearby. Someone whose knowledge of illusion and mind magic was so incredibly advanced that they made a fourth-circle specialist like him look like a total amateur.

This mystery mage had seamlessly blended a mind-invasion spell with an environmental illusion. They completely hijacked his sensory perception before he even realized he was under attack.

Lorcan thought back to the fake fight that happened in his head. He had felt genuine fear and he had felt the massive kinetic impact on his shield. He had felt the mana drain from his body when he cast his spells.

It was all perfectly simulated inside his own head.

And the most terrifying part? He had been trapped in that hallucination for several minutes without a single alarm bell going off in his brain.

’If they wanted me dead, my brain would be a mush and blood would be dripping down from my ears...’ Lorcan realized quickly.

There was absolutely zero chance of winning this.

He could tell that he was completely outmatched and he could not fight an enemy that could pull him out of reality like it’s a piece of cake.

His survival instincts screamed at him to bow to this person and Lorcan trusted his survival instincts more than anything else.

He turned to his men. "Keep training."

He did not explain. He just pulled his black cloak tighter around his shoulders and slowly walked toward the main tunnel exit.

He walked along the dark tunnels until he finally stepped out of the cave system. He stood at the base of the mountain and looked out over the forest in front.

A large group of people was slowly approaching the hideout.

Lorcan spotted them immediately and it was the exact same strike team from his hallucination.

A hundred and fifty men wore the same, dark leather armor and they carried those exact same wooden sticks.

At the very front of the group stood a handsome guy wearing crisp, clean clothes. He clearly did not belong in a dirty mountain pass. That was Adrian.

A cute silver-haired girl stood right beside Adrian, holding his hand casually.

Three other people walked a few steps behind them. A female knight in heavy armor, another women wearing cream colored robes and a guy who matched her outfit option. These two had similar features, which meant that they were siblings.

But he wasn’t the only one who spotted them.

The moment Lorcan stepped out into the open, Adrian’s group spotted him too.

The soldiers moved instantly. They raised their weapons, snapped into a tight firing formation, and aimed directly at Lorcan.

Lorcan slowly raised both of his hands into the air as he held a large cotton cloth that was completely white.

He knew what those weird sticks could to do him thanks to the illusion he had seen. His mana shield could barely stop one of them and if all of them attacked at the same time, he knew that he’d have multiple holes in his body.

Adrian raised a hand. "Hold your positions. Do not shoot yet."

The soldiers froze but their fingers hovered right over the triggers.

Adrian did not take a single step forward and instead, he just looked at the cloaked man standing at the cave entrance.

"I know you are extremely skilled." Adrian said. "And I am not here to fight you. I came here to recruit you and your group, to work directly under me as my exclusive assassination unit. My name is Adrian Sterling and I’m the Baron of Oresfall."

Lorcan stared at the man in front, and then he just started chuckling.

"Sure." Lorcan said with a grin on his face.

He looked over the group. His eyes scanned the heavily armored female knight, the siblings, the handsome leader, and finally, they rested on the tiny child holding his hand.