Lucy, her heart burning with excitement, followed Percival with light, giddy steps, but someone suddenly grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.
The sudden force ripped her hand from Percival’s. Her eyes widened when she saw herself crouching to attend to her shoes.
"It’s my laces," the Lucy before her eyes explained to Percival. He squatted, holding her gaze in his eyes while tying her loose shoelace.
’What in the world?!’ Lucy was about to take a bold step forward and stop this lie playing out before her eyes, but a palm wrapped around her wrist and pulled her back.
Again?
It was at this moment that Lucy realized she didn’t know who pulled her back. She was so shocked by the fake pretending to be her while Percival just acted like the real her wasn’t standing behind them.
She turned her head, her eyes glowing with mana and rage. She would give this person a solid piece of her mind for messing up such a great moment.
Confusion flickered in her eyes when she saw the man. He wore a wooden, featureless mask. One eyehole was open, and on the other perched a butterfly, its wings wide open like a book.
That butterfly couldn’t be real. On proper scrutiny, one could tell it was carved. This was an impressively intricate yet somehow grounded mask.
His white hair, stature, and the gentle flicker of emotions in that eye she could see through the open eyehole, made her shoulders drop.
A name slipped out of her lips. "... S..now?" It was a soft whisper, said with a confused face. Lucy wasn’t sure. Was this Snow, or was she mistaking another man for him?
"... It’s me," said the masked man. That voice overlapped with his scream of anguish that certain night when he knelt at the entrance of his house, before his slaughtered family.
The strength she had put into her arm to pull it out of his grip crumpled. All her guard dropped.
"We should find Percival. We can talk later."
Lucy’s brows came together. What? "Percival is just there. Why should we—"
"That’s not Percival. I also have to be concentrated to keep that illusion reacting properly. It won’t take long for that thing to discover the truth, especially when they’re far into the water."
"What?!" Lucy snapped toward Percival, who was already in the speedboat with the illusion of her. That man... wasn’t Percival?!
"I’ll explain to you what’s going on, but not here," Adonis whispered.
"And how am I sure that you are real?" she asked.
"Well, I won’t put you in a spot where you would have to start doubting reality. That could expose the whole thing."
"The. Whole. Thing?"
"You’re in a town overtaken by monsters, Lucy. You can’t see it because all of you are in an illusio—" He paused as a tall man walked past them.
Lucy frowned, staring at the man. She could see a man, but Adonis could see crimson shadows dancing off him. What kind of man had a protruding snout filled with fangs, digitigrade legs, a long tail, and stood over eight feet tall in his shadow?
There was no sun, but he was adept at illusions and spotting strange things after becoming one with Snow.


VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABEL
Comments
The readers' comments on the novel: Others Summon Dragons, I Summon Legendary Knights