My Second Life Is A Heroic Power Fantasy - Chapter 177

She felt a mixture of emotions bubble up inside of her. First, the crushing sense of still being trapped and the horror that brought. Second, was a sense of relief that she had figured it out and now had some small degree of control over what happened next. Third, she felt anger, both at herself for being so willing to accept something so obvious, and fury at Rawgh’faz for still continuing to manipulate her and warp her reality. It was getting to the place where she couldn’t trust anything to be real.

Which is exactly what he was hoping for. He wanted to make the idea of her being rescued or escaping seem utterly impossible, so that even if she did have a genuine opportunity to do either, she couldn’t take it because she’d believe it was just another trick.

She had to hand it to him. It was clever. Sick, and twisted, but clever.

She stood and watched the bird sing above her as she contemplated what to do next. The very fact that the illusion hadn’t ended when she’d realized what she just had told her that either the shaman didn’t have access to her thoughts, or was intentionally not reacting to them. She suspected he could take memories, and insert experiences, but her inner monologue was inaccessible to him. If it was, then as far as he was concerned, she had no idea that this was another deception.

That was good. That gave her room to decide what to do next. The question was, what exactly was she going to do next? If she made it all the way to where Jack and Rose would be, it was basically guaranteed the current illusion would end again. If she did anything out of the ordinary, or drew attention to her believing it to be unreal, it would also immediately end. What was less obvious was where she would end up when it did. Or, if she would actually be back in reality at all instead of yet another illusion. She had to think of a way to be able to determine objective reality to let her know what was real, all without giving it away to the shaman while he was still digging around inside her mind. If she did that, then she might be able to prepare an actual escape for real. Or maybe even fight back.

But how she could do this escaped her. She couldn’t even be certain that if she tore his throat out with her bare hands that he was actually dead and she wasn’t just dreaming that too. But she was lucid. And fully aware of what was happening. That in and of itself meant she had a chance. It may not be much of a chance, considering the state her actual body was probably in, but a small chance was better than absolutely no chance at all.

Then the thought occurred to her for the first time- if he was inside her head, then by default she would in some ways be inside his. If she was inside his, perhaps she could turn things around on him inside his own head. Perhaps she could find a way to break his mind in return. If she could make the illusion fight back against him, or collapse under her own control without him being aware of the cause, then she would know for sure that she was free.

But how could she do that? The only way that would be possible is if she knew how to alter things inside it. And she didn’t.

But really, how hard could it be?

She watched the bird flit to another tree before continuing its song. As she looked at it, she intentionally thought to herself “no, that’s strange, the crest on its head should be gold, and not red.”

As she watched, the small tuft of feathers atop its head gradually shifted in color until they were the color of wheat. Which meant she could control the parts of the illusion that were generated from her own mind.

Perfect.