Chapter 2962: Hyper Realistic Illusion?

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Southern Region, Blossom District, Sky Blossom City

"Something’s wrong... really, really wrong." Seraphina’s voice trembled as panic flared in her eyes. Dread, pure dread could be heard in her voice. For someone as composed as her, that alone was enough to alarm everyone present.

Since realizing something was amiss, she had secretly been using her grimoire’s contact list to verify her suspicions. One by one, she contacted people she knew. Those she once believed to be her subordinates, allies, and acquaintances. Every single one answered, none dodge her calls as they did back in the capital.

That alone wasn’t enough to terrify her, just suspicious. After all, she was still a Heatsend, they wouldn’t completely burn the bridges. It was what came after

Their voices sounded normal, too normal. They laughed when appropriate. Questioned her when appropriate. Even complained about trivial matters exactly as they usually would. There was no stiffness, delay, or obvious flaws.

Nothing unusual, at first glance, they appeared completely real. Yet Seraphina couldn’t shake the unease crawling beneath her skin. So she began testing them carefully. Subtly, she wove blatant lies into her conversations. Inserted contradictory statements. Added meaningless filler and fabricated events, as bait. The kind of bait that should have exposed them.

But it never worked, not once. Whenever she lied, they corrected her. When she contradicted herself, they noticed. When she tried leading them into conversational traps, they either effortlessly navigated around them or directly pointed out the inconsistency.

Their responses were flawless, too flawless. And that was precisely the problem. Real people were supposed to fail somewhere, a delayed response, repeated phrase, missing memory, anything. Yet she found nothing.

The first seed of doubt had been planted the moment Aqualas admitted she could no longer summon Ocean World. Her suspicions deepened when the teleportation cards failed. And with each passing moment, that suspicion slowly transformed into certainty.

An awful certainty. One so terrifying she had barely dared think it aloud. Because if she was right... Then the implications were horrifying. Seraphina slowly lifted her head. Her eyes swept across the familiar sky, the familiar blood storm clouds, the familiar city, the familiar people. Everything looked exactly as it should. Nothing was wrong, absolutely nothing.

Yes, everything was as it should be, but it didn’t bring her relief, she couldn’t shake this eerie feeling that everything was wrong. The more she thought the heavier her breathing grew.

A terrible thought surfaced in her mind. One she had desperately tried to reject. But now she could no longer deny it. They might not be standing in the real world at all. They might all be trapped inside a hyper-realistic illusion deployed by Southern Hope.

Based on the information Seraphina had gathered on him, the theory was frighteningly plausible.

After all, Southern Hope was the creator of the VR Universe. The greatest illusion the Card World had ever witnessed. An immersive vertical reality featuring multiple unique realms, each with their own lifeforms, rules, and power system.

An illusion complete with its own simulated life forms with their own culture and customs. A place where billions of illusionary creatures could live, learn, work, and coexist as though they were living genuine lives.

Until recently, feats of that magnitude were believed to be the exclusive domain of transcendent beings. Yet Southern Hope had accomplished it as a mere card apprentice, allowing all the card apprentices to access his miraculous creation just by equipping a F-rank card.

To many, it was a miracle of creation. To Seraphina, at this moment, it was evidence. Terrifying evidence that she might be right about them being trapped in a hyper realistic illusion.

If someone could create an entire virtual universe capable of fooling billions... Then creating an illusion capable of fooling three Supreme beings no longer sounded impossible.

Facing a card apprentice of that caliber, Seraphina wouldn’t have been surprised if this entire situation since their arrival in the city turned out to be one elaborate fabrication, because nothing was going her way since she stepped in the city.

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For all she knew, the real Southern Hope and Petra might not even be here. Perhaps they were standing before them who were trapped in this false reality.

Watching and laughing while the three of them ran in circles inside a carefully crafted cage, blindly fighting one another exactly as intended. The thought alone made Seraphina’s skin crawl. Because it meant every conversation, emotion, defeat, might have been engineered from the very beginning.

Her hands trembled slightly. Not from fear alone. From frustration, anger, helplessness. The sheer possibility of it all left her seething. Part of that anger was directed inward, at herself. As a veteran who had survived countless wars, she was someone who prided herself on foresight and strategy, yet here she was, potentially being toyed with by a brat who was technically her great grandson-in-law.

"Sera, what’s wrong?" Veerott asked in concern, assuming she was talking about Aqualas’s critical condition. But to his utter dismay, she glared right past him and shouted at their opponent, "All of this is one big illusion, isn’t it? Are you having fun? Are we just puppets entertaining you with our struggle? How dare you! I demand you either kill us right now or let us out of this damned illusion!"

"An illusion?"

Everyone present muttered under their breath, wondering what on earth Seraphina was talking about.

"Wyatt, what is she on about?" Petra asked.

A sudden chill hit her as she, too, began sensing the surrounding rule power and soul energy—it felt familiar, yet completely strange. Her innate ability to separate truth from falsehood was incredibly strong, but it wasn’t sentient; it wouldn’t be of any help to her if she didn’t even know what she was looking for in the first place.

"You have a sharp intuition," I said to Seraphina with a gentle smile.

Honestly, having the Hive Spirit answer every single call she made to the outside world had been a bit of an overkill. The mere fact that she had stealthily made so many calls proved she had already caught on. But as for her assuming this was an illusion? I guess that was just a more convenient explanation she could come to than the truth: that I had completely replaced their reality with mine, sealing them inside it.

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