The moment the bees sensed the existence of the honey, their entire swarm went nuts. A fierce buzz broke out as they hurled themselves at him.

Facing the sky, Mir felt tiny. In every direction, he was surrounded by the bees. This didn't seem like an illusion at all. The chains of logic added up perfectly. With their queen dead, it was obvious for the bees to try and find a new queen, be it from the eggs of the queen or in another hive.

It would be natural for many of them to migrate over to other hives. But now that they had found one of the culprits behind their queen's death and the loss of their honey reserve, Mir did not doubt that he'd face a similar fate as the corpse they had found earlier.

But even as the bees rushed at his face, a second realization hit him while considering whether or not this could be an illusion.

The sight of the corpse today had unsettled him greatly. The impact must have given birth to a new fear, a fear of dying that way, in so much pain and suffering.

And this new fear was being used to make him move, to make him fall in line with the formula for uncontrolled mutation.

So Mir ignored the horrific sight, the frightening sounds, and the urge to save himself by making a move, by running to safety. Even as the bees clashed against him, and Mir felt stinging pain across his body, making him scream, Mir still didn't budge. His body and mind were telling him that all of this was real. It was happening. He was about to be killed gruesomely. He needed to move. He needed to run like his life depended on it. He couldn't rely on anything to help himself out of this predicament! His body was his only resource! Maybe if he grew longer legs, or if he managed to gain the ability to jump higher, or if he could grow claws to climb trees, or if he could grow a layer of thick biomolecular armor over his skin...he could be saved!

Mir felt like it would be easy. Even under the assault of the pain of being stung endlessly, he felt an itch crawling below his skin that would allow such mutations. Just one thought, one permissive thought, and he'd be safe. He wouldn't be assaulted by the pai-

Mir flat-out refused to entertain the idea further.

Why would he let himself mutate if this was just a hallucination? Even if it was real, he didn't want to die as an abomination.

Anger coursed through his veins, for a second forcing him to consider that if this was real, his stupidity and rigid thinking would get him killed. There was still a chance-

Nope. Not happening. Not gonna mutate. Never!

"Mir!"

A hand slapped him in the face, bringing a different kind of stinging pain. Mir suddenly found Murray crouching in front of him, surrounded by the swarm of bees. But the bees seemed to be ignoring him.

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"Snap out of it! You stupid idiot! I told you to keep your eyes closed! Why didn't you listen?! If you can hear me, it's an illusion! It's not real! None of it-"

Mir put up a hand to stop him. Murray froze.

"I know it isn't. I didn't give in to its manipulation. But I have to say, man, I was not prepared to deal with how real this seems."

Murray sighed in relief and fell back on his butt, taking a deep breath.

"If you keep your eyes open while the hallucinations take place, your real vision and the vision caused by the hallucinations become merged into one. It's way easier to deal with these hallucinations when you know you've never opened your eyes and so whatever you see, it has to be made up."

"Makes sense. I can still see a lot of bees around us, flying and trying to sting me. The pain behind the stinging is receding now, though." Mir looked in every direction, marveling at how seamlessly the illusory bees had fit into reality...well, his perception of reality.

"Seems like the diary works well for this purpose. The bees must have scared the shit out of you today. You never told me what happened after you ran to the stream. Was it too bad?" Murray said inquisitively.

"Bad? You almost got me killed, man. That stream is fucking infested with freshwater octopuses! I didn't even know there were octopus species that could live in freshwater!"

"Octopus?" Murray sounded dumbstruck. After a second, he shook his head and said, "I don't know about any octopuses, but I do know that there are some fish that have grown tentacles due to their mutation. Are you sure you saw it correctly?"

"...Fish...with tentacles?" Mir fell silent.

Yeah, that was probably the creature that had attacked him underwater. But being attacked by a fish and being attacked by an octopus felt like two entirely different concepts. One was scary, the other one, maybe a bit comical, but not scary.

"Whatever, man. How long is this illusion going to last? I can still see a lot of bees around us."

Murray scratched his head.

"I don't know. It depends on your mental fortitude, spiritual growth, your viral compatibility, susceptibility to the hallucinatory attacks, the vividness of imagination, the extent of fear that you may have towards certain things. These episodes last differently for everyone. You, for example, spent over half an hour, shaking and groaning in pain. Father Vincentious told me that the first time they let me eat mutant meat, I passed out for only ten minutes or so before jumping up, fully recovered. But now that I've been eating that stuff so much and so frequently, my episodic fall into hallucinations has grown longer, stronger, and much more real than before. It gets too horrifying these days, sometimes. I die a painful death pretty regularly. But my mental fortitude has also grown powerful enough to not be too bothered by the hallucinations."

Mir felt rather overwhelmed. Judging by Murray's account of his experience, the first time of being pulled into the hallucinations should not have been that difficult. Murray hadn't even received the help of the diary, relying only on formal training from the Church to overcome his fears. Granted, Mir had fucked up by opening his eyes during the hallucination attack, but even then, it shouldn't have been so difficult, so realistic.

Was he just a natural coward, or had the diary's interference changed the difficulty level of the hallucinations?

"Now, keep guard around me. I might make some, err... sounds. Clamp my mouth shut in case it attracts anyone to come over to check."

Mir stood up and entered full alert mode, eyes and ears straining to take in every detail around their surroundings while Murray took a swig from the bottle.

Half a minute later, Murray began to breathe deeply, sweating profusely, groaning occasionally like he was being put under torture by someone.

After the first minute, the groans got louder. Murray began to curse, yelling sentences like 'I'll fucking obliterate you!', 'Damned hoax!', 'I should be the one to live, not you!', 'You monster!' and such, making Mir wonder what the hell this guy was hallucinating about.

His hallucinations sounded even more complex than Mir's. But that was to be expected. With the increase of the extent of infection, the hallucinations would grow in terms of intensity and influence.

It wasn't easy for one to reach the peak of the evolution standard scale. Many people chose to stop when the level of illusions got too hard to overcome. Until now, Mir had assumed that those people were just weak in terms of mental fortitude. But the fresh experience made him understand the risks.

Not everyone with potential could reach the transcendent stage. Otherwise, among the millions of humans in the city, few would remain ordinary, because human beings had a very high degree of adaptability, a natural flexibility in terms of genetic changes brought by the virus. Almost anybody could potentially mutate into an abomination, but few had the ability to contain their desires and suppress the hallucinations to guide the path of their mutation towards planned routes.