His first instinctive thought was to dismiss the threat, treating it as another attempt at shaking his resolve.
But it was impossible for him to ignore the fact that this might just as well be a legitimate message, sent by their pursuers who had finally caught Murray.
For two entire minutes, Mir sat frozen on the mattress, trying to conjure up an appropriate plan. This entire time, he sensed no other illusory traps taking birth in his mind. It was as if the disorientation he had felt during his meal hadn't actually been related to a hallucination attack at all.
That was indeed possible. He was fatigued, both mentally and spiritually. Occasional bouts of weakness would hardly be an unusual occurrence in his current state.
Mir exhaled and implemented plan A. With shaking fingers, he typed a reply.
[ I am too injured to move, and may transform into an abomination any moment now due to my recent consumption of contaminated meat. Give me a few hours to recover. ]
Before clicking the send button, he attached a picture of the burnt Glutton Boa with the message. Hopefully, this would buy him some time if this scenario wasn't a part of the hallucinations.
Half a minute later, another message popped up from Murray's account. It contained no text, only a picture.
Murray could be seen clearly in the frame, unconscious. Someone was holding his right hand up. Mir felt a rush of blood being pumped out of his heart as he noticed the two missing fingers on Murray's hand. The stumps were bright red, bleeding like an overfilled cup.
This was the result of his reply.
His palms grew sweaty. The sheer fury coursing through his body and mind was like a black fog, threatening to overtake every bit of his rationality.
Bloody images began to form in his thoughts, each of them consisting of ways he could yank out every finger of this unknown man.
Mir's breathing grew heavy. He felt incapable of making a decision at this point. What if his next move indirectly dealt further damage to Murray?
Gritting his teeth, he picked up his diary and wrote a new wish.
"I retain my rationality in the face of the most intense emotional upheaval."
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The moment he wrote the sentence, he felt the bloody images, the imaginary scenes of vengeance beginning to disappear.
His nervousness, panic, and anger receded like a tide, bringing out the focused, detached, calculative part of his personality.
He felt like he had been transported to an exam hall, where the questionnaire was trying to test his creativity through rigid scenarios.
Fingers steady, Mir typed another reply, fully aware of the possible consequences.
[ Seems like you're a pretty terrible negotiator, retard. It's amusing to see that you thought I would sacrifice myself for my brother who's as good as dead now. But since you want to play, I'll play this game with you. Let's see whose resolve is stronger. ]
Writing his message, he shot a video of himself tearing out two pages from the red diary and burning them on his campfire.
Attaching the video to the text, he sent the message and returned to eating boa meat. He had more than one reason to do so.
Firstly, he had no idea whether the interaction he was having right now was real or inside an illusory world of his own fears. But if eating the meat made him undergo a mental attack right now, it would point to the conclusion that the interaction was very much real. Although, he wasn't sure if it was possible to have a hallucination inside a hallucination, it seemed unlikely for something so insidious to happen when he had barely started his journey to the peak of the Evolution Standard Scale.
The general consensus was that the lower the viral activity inside your body, the lesser the intensity and power of the hallucinations would be upon consumption of contaminated food. The only exception to this rule was a circumstance where an unevolved, ordinary man consumed extremely high-grade contaminated food, for example, the flesh of a grade- 3 creature.
The mutant genes and strengthened viruses inside such flesh would be too powerful for an ordinary person to handle. The hallucinations such flesh would induce would be too hard.
According to countless experiments done on criminals and desperate volunteers, the survival rate of such a circumstance was zero.
The meat Mir was eating belonged to a grade- 1 Glutton Boa. There was little chance for it to create such a powerful hallucination. So as long as he found himself being mentally attacked, it would mean that until then, everything was happening in the real world.
Secondly, the only way the current him could ensure that the diary's influence on his mind remain effective was to keep consuming contaminated food. The diary was like a leech, eating away at the virus inside his body to keep its functions active. The more infected he was, the better its influence on his mind would be, and the stronger his chances of survival would be.
This was virtually a paradox. The only way for him to become a transcender was to fully infect the entirety of his body, all of his organs, and as many of his cells as possible. But he had to use the diary to ensure that each time he consumed contaminated food, he didn't end up losing control...which was entirely counterproductive to his main purpose.
While he ate voraciously, he kept an eye on the screen of his communicator. Five minutes passed in silence before the other party replied.
[ That must be the fake diary you've carrying around. Do you think we're idiots? ]
Mir chortled and quickly typed another message.
[ Oh sure. You're free to think whatever gives you peace of mind. But like I said, you've proven yourself to be a retarded negotiator. Do you think I value a sacred artifact over the life of my brother and mine? Yes, from my point of view, you have the greater chip in the bargain. But from your point of view, I hold the greater chip. I'm curious to know how these two exaggerated values compare. Does the Ravensworth Family have the nerve to suffer so many losses for something that I can ruin without batting an eyelid? Do you dare to push me to that point and take on the responsibility for their losses? Haha. ]
Returning to his food, Mir finished the entire midsection of the snake and threw it away, feeling stuffed to the brim. Drinking up the last drop of water in his bottle, Mir prepared himself for the hallucination. He had eaten enough to increase the viral activity inside his body by a huge margin. There had to be an unprecedented reaction to such consumption.
If the last ten minutes were a hallucination itself, only then would there be no extra hallucination attack.
But much to Mir's horror, he soon felt his mind becoming enveloped in the familiar pressure of emotions pushing for a chance to dominate his thoughts. It was just like the first time he had drunk the Purplevein Honey.
So it was true. Murray really was in trouble.
Mir quickly closed his eyes. He didn't want this hallucination to mix itself with reality. The situation was already complicated enough as it was.