How do you make others obey you?
Kindness? Too illusory. Benefit? If you are not careful, it easily leads to betrayal.
The answer is emotion. When people are excessively afraid of loss, they often lose their reason. When they are happy, they rarely dig into the essence of a problem. Very few people train themselves to evaluate situations and maintain absolute calm. Humans prefer shortcuts. They rely on instincts, fast thinking, and emotions. They do not like to reflect deeply unless the issue is truly critical.
At such times, impression, emotion, benefit, and subtle interaction help elevate one's position. However, you must never present yourself as a superior being. Instead, you should appear either as a weaker person offering a solution or as an equal proposing a plan. As long as the plan is sufficiently reasonable and logical, and as long as words are chosen carefully to avoid triggering judgment traps, people will be forced into short term cooperation regardless of their reluctance.
Another extremely important factor was legitimacy.
Lloyd was the principal of Blue Light. Wellay and Will were professors. Other than the group in front of the sanctuary, no one else was aware of this event.
The third layer of false reality was extremely thin. It existed alone, unlike the first and second layers of reality which were stacked upon each other. If anyone else became aware of the demons, there was a chance they would remember them after escaping the false reality. Therefore, it was impossible to risk introducing more variables later.
Furthermore, they could not do anything more. Those who were unrelated would soon be affected by the Earth Demon. Informing them might cause even more side effects. Not everyone was necessarily a good person, and everything had already been calculated carefully.
Everyone present here had been chosen by Ron, and they would be clear headed enough to know whom they should listen to.
They should do so. Otherwise, they would either die in an instant or pay the price with tens of thousands of lives.
Within the third layer of virtual reality.
Above the city, among the clouds, a monster resembling a sea serpent was coiled into a massive sphere.
Suddenly, its blue diamond like scales cracked open, and the entire Leviathan exploded.
A rain of blood poured down through the clouds and then fell upon the bustling city below.
Phelion had escaped the trap set by Promet and Bucky. He was now searching for the Staff of the Blind.
At the city's sanctuary, Lloyd, Promet, Bucky, and Emma's group were already present, except for Wellay, who had gone deeper into the sanctuary.
Emma glanced around once and spoke.
"That is what I wanted to say."
She explained everything she could. Ron's plan, the objectives, the conjectures regarding the demons, and their goals according to Ron.
Three layers of reality. Terrorism. Demons. In order to survive and save as many people as possible, they had to trust each other.
The Mind Demon wanted to help. Its ultimate goal was to prevent Phelion from re merging with itself. By using the staff, Phelion could forcibly reconstruct another body through some means. When there was one body and one soul but two egos, they would be forced to merge into one.
The Heavenly Demon had gone mad. Two things were needed. The gifts of Julien and Kale to lure her out of demonization, but that could only occur in reality.
The Earth Demon had already been dealt with halfway by Ron in reality. The task of those present was to prevent the Earth Demon from spreading and escalating into destruction here while Ron began killing it from the outside. In addition, they had to use the white key to create life to balance the collapse of destruction coming from the third layer of reality.
As for the Demon Body, it was in a critical state, and someone was already taking care of it.
The Demon Body was the demon that had absorbed Heaven and created the barrier that blocked demons from reality. It was a demon that both existed and did not exist.
Emma had prepared everything. In her hands were spheres of light and items obtained from the survival battle.
Their plan was simple. Stall for time. After all, Phelion could not kill them.
By manipulating the terrain and relying on informational advantages, they would win.
But they did not know that Phelion would never come here.
He knew that it was meaningless now. No matter how much killing he carried out, it would be useless. The reason was that Ron's plan had never consisted of only one layer. There was always at least one other plan to restrain Phelion.
…
Outside, in the real world.
A series of bells echoed throughout the city. They came from the city center, where a massive clock tower stood.
This was something the nobles used to awaken terrorists on a daily cycle, ringing the bell once per day. However, due to Ron's interference when he used the treasure to create the second layer of false reality, the terrorists could not awaken because the layers of reality were too thick. Only when only the third layer remained could they wake up.
When the terrorists awakened, they found themselves seated within a massive arena filled with people who had collapsed into sleep.
Beside them, other terrorists could not awaken at all and seemed to have died outright. This was a dangerous profession, and death was only to be expected.
They stood up, struggling to move their stiff bodies after days of inactivity, and then saw figures approaching from afar.
Five figures. All different. All quite young. They walked leisurely, as if enjoying the space.
O sky, the leader of the terrorist group, stood up. His group was responsible for massacring civilians and preventing the collapse of the barrier.
But those five figures appeared to come from outside. Had the city's barrier already been destroyed?
The leader raised his fist and recited an incantation. A surge of energy was unleashed in the form of molten lava, scorching the surrounding area.
The other terrorists also charged in from multiple directions. Their tactic was to disperse, isolate individuals, then concentrate their attacks rapidly on a single target, rotating this process. Each target would be restrained by a minority and kept under surveillance.
But who were these newcomers?
"How boring. This outdated tactic. Don't you get tired of it?"
The five people separated from one another. A long haired black haired girl with her hair neatly tied was surrounded by dozens of men preparing to kill her.
She stuck out her tongue. Upon it rested a plump red cherry.
She spat the cherry out. It began to swell, spin, and transform into dozens of dark red threads.
They quickly wrapped around her, forming a deep red cocoon. One attack after another flew toward her.
They were stopped by something. A series of explosions erupted before the magical attacks could reach the cocoon.
Whoosh.
For a brief moment, the terrorists saw the sky.
A sky they would never reach again.
Hundreds of silver steel wires had sealed off the space around them, and those very wires had sliced their throats.
O sky stared at the scene, desperately attempting to unleash the most powerful annihilation attack he knew.
But he could no longer utter a single word. His throat had already been cut in half.
Boom.
An explosion erupted from the corpse, incinerating the unfortunate ones, those who were at least core level seven or above.
"Almost no effort at all," one of the five said.
Those five were the first tier of One Line. Five individuals from the headquarters.
The reason One Line rarely intervened directly in the inter academy terrorist incident was simple.
They were One Line's corpse cleaners.