114 Illusions

With this, she drafted a plan to improve Yukio's healing abilities while also increasing everyone's vitality to the max. For every Reaper they encountered and fought, they would disable and bring to Yukio so he could help them improve their vitality. Once Yukio had maxed out the vitality of each person, he would be in charge of helping Rose continue to heal.

What did it mean to have vitality? It meant that every person on this team would become practically unkillable! If it normally took a person 100 hits to die, now it would take them 300 or 400 hits to die.

Everyone began treating the Reapers like grinding monsters in a game. They would all bring their Reapers to Yukio who would transfer their life forces over. It was a win-win situation.

During the gap periods while everyone else was off killing Reapers, Yukio focused his attention on healing Rose. While a number of the more fatal injuries had been healed by his initial outburst of energy, many of her wounds were still around. She also had a number of internal injuries that were left unresolved. There were so many injuries that Yukio wasn't too sure where to start.

Because he wasn't able to isolate individual organs to heal, he could only take the slower route of healing the body's overall immune system and health which would indirectly increase the healing rate of Rose's internal injuries as well.

Aida later learned of this issue and prepared a medical lesson plan for Yukio. In order for him to become an effective healer, he would need to learn more about the human body. Ideally, he would have a teacher, sadly they didn't have that luxury in the apocalypse. She made a mental reminder to herself to "borrow" a doctor the next time they came across a capable one.

That situation occurred later on in time though. At the moment, Aida was observing everyone's fight and saw that they had fallen into position and were hunting well, so Aida took Xiao Ai with her and left after saying goodbye.

Yukio waved his goodbye as she was moving out. He also called out a reminder, "Big sis! Bring me back a pretty plant!" His left arm glowed green in affirmation to the statement as well.

Aida almost tripped when she heard this. Usually people would say "good luck" or "stay safe" when an individual went out on a hunting trip, but Yukio only requested a plant. This demonstrated how much faith the team collectively had in Aida and her abilities. Particularly in the children's eyes, she was invincible.

As Aida ventured deeper into the city, she continually scanned the area. Her goal was to find some suitable mental gems for Light to absorb, preferably one that was level 2. While it wasn't clear exactly what the difference between having a human absorb a level 1 vs a level 2 gem would be, she was confident that there was some sort of difference and benefit to absorbing the stronger one. The only question was with regards to whether the person's body was strong enough to withstand a high leveled gem.

She also kept an eye out for gems that suited the elements of each person on the team and other level 2 Reapers. Another observation she made after absorbing numerous gems is that absorbing the same type gem is far more effective for improving one's own abilities. Additionally, since she upgraded to level 2, the level 1 gems didn't seem to have much of an effect in terms of improving her powers. It seems only Level 2 gems would be useful for her from now on.

Using a wide range scan, she carefully dodged other Variants hunting groups and looked for auras with unique colors which would signify unique abilities. Soon, she found her first target. Bringing Xiao Ai, they headed towards their first target.

As they approached this target, they noticed something odd going on. All the Enraged in the area seemed to have fallen onto the ground, writhing. Aida quickly deduced that it had something to do with the abilities of the Variant they were about to fight.

The two of them approached slowly and carefully, ready to react at a moment's notice. However, as they inched closer and closer to the target, there was still no reaction. The Reaper didn't react to their taunts nor did the surroundings seem to change. Aida bit her lip and walked closer.

At that time, something strange occurred. Their surroundings began to distort and the two of them found themselves in free fall. They were falling into an abyss with the ground nowhere in sight. Both Aida and Xiao Ai didn't panic at this sudden change, instead they were astounded.

Xiao Ai even exclaimed in an excited tone, "Wow! Mama, this looks so cool, it feels like an advanced VR experience."

Aida nodded and focused her attention on her surroundings as well. While they didn't panic, they still had to find a good way out of the situation. They couldn't allow themselves to remain unguarded for long.

She attempted to grab onto a ledge nearby, but her grip seemed to just grip air instead. Down below, the ground had finally appeared and seemed to be fast approaching. If they were to hit the ground, she wasn't too sure what the consequences would be but it was likely they wouldn't be able to come out of it unscathed..

Taking in a deep breath, Aida closed her eyes and concentrated. She began to feel the surroundings with her body, hoping to understand what was actually going on. Much to her surprise, she couldn't feel anything beyond the wind whistling past their body as they fell deeper and deeper into the abyss. If not for the fact that she had voluntarily walked into this illusion in preparation for a battle, she would've believed that she had actually fallen into an abyss. Even her scan had been successfully tricked by this illusion.

If the illusion skill was employed correctly, it could potentially be extremely powerful. The skill could easily trick any human into doing something they hadn't intended to do given enough context and understanding. This skill could potentially be a very useful skill for Light to acquire in addition to his empathic abilities.

Returning her thoughts to the current situation, she had determined that the only way to escape the illusion was to kill the Reaper. Unfortunately, she didn't know where the Reaper was and couldn't afford to attack blindly in case she injured her precious Xiao Ai who had zero defense.

The only way is to take a gamble.