Chapter 5: Illusion of Despair
"Hm?"
Hearing Izuna's voice, the sludge monster finally remembered there was another person here. It turned its head and stared directly into Izuna's eyes with curiosity.
"Is that your Quirk?" the sludge monster sneered with obvious disdain. "Pink eyes?"
Seeing this, a faint smile appeared on Izuna's lips.
To dare stare directly into the Sharingan… only someone completely ignorant would do something like that.
"Kid, go ahead. I'm waiting," the sludge monster said mockingly. "Let's see what kind of ability you have."
The contempt in its eyes only grew stronger.
"Why are you still standing there?! Why aren't you hiding?" Bakugo Katsuki shouted angrily. Seeing Izuna ignore his warnings made the irritation in his chest burn even hotter.
Izuna didn't respond to Bakugo. Instead, he stared straight at the sludge monster.
"You want to see my ability?"
"Fine."
"As you wish."
In the next moment—
The world in front of the sludge monster suddenly shattered.
The raging flames vanished instantly. The streets around him became silent and empty.
"Where did everyone go?"
This time, the sludge monster felt a trace of panic. He tried to hide it, looking around for any sign of a living person.
"I once heard about an experiment conducted somewhere overseas," Izuna's voice echoed from every direction like a ghost.
"Stop playing tricks and come out!" the sludge monster shouted, twisting its body and searching everywhere.
But there was nothing around him.
"You tell me…" Izuna's voice entered the sludge monster's mind. "If a person were trapped in a dark, silent place… how long could they endure it?"
Hearing these words, the sludge monster felt a chill run down his spine. At the same time, regret began to creep into his heart.
He shouldn't have been so reckless earlier.
At the very least, he should have figured out what Izuna's ability was before provoking him.
"Hmph! I don't believe you can hide everything forever!"
The sludge monster kept trying to reassure himself, repeating over and over that the surroundings were only temporarily concealed and that everything would soon return to normal.
"To be honest," Izuna said calmly, "I'm curious too."
"Let's use you to test it."
In the darkness, the three tomoe in Izuna's Sharingan rotated slowly.
In an instant, the surroundings were swallowed by absolute darkness and dead silence. There was no trace of life anywhere.
At first, the sludge monster behaved normally.
With no one around to speak to, he began talking to himself, muttering meaningless nonsense that even Izuna couldn't understand.
After about eight hours, his behavior began to change.
He started crying from time to time, as if paranoia had begun to set in.
After thirty hours, he could no longer endure the silence. He wandered around aimlessly, even slamming himself into walls.
But this place was nothing more than an illusion.
No matter how violently he crashed into things, no injuries would appear.
Of course—
The pain remained.
After forty hours, the sludge monster began hallucinating. His mind was on the verge of collapse.
He screamed endlessly. When he couldn't find a wall to crash into, he began smashing his head against the ground.
"Tsk… only forty hours?" Izuna's figure slowly appeared within the darkness.
"I even prepared another gift for you."
The moment the sludge monster saw him, it was as if he had seen salvation itself. He rushed forward and tightly grabbed Izuna's leg.
"Please! Let me out! I was wrong! I really was wrong! Please—!"
On the brink of complete mental collapse, the sludge monster no longer cared about anything else. All he wanted was to escape.
The sooner the better.
Hearing this, Izuna crouched down with a gentle smile.
"A gift shouldn't go to waste."
"Whether you like it or not, you're getting it."
"Wha—"
Before the sludge monster could react, his body was suddenly bound to a cross. He couldn't move, and his Quirk had completely stopped working.
The darkness disappeared.
Everything around them turned into a world of crimson red, with a blood-red moon hanging in the sky.
At some point, Izuna appeared in front of him holding a delicate crimson dagger.
"Originally, this gift was supposed to last three days," Izuna said while lightly twirling the dagger in his hand.
"But judging by your condition…"
"You probably won't last that long."
"So I'll shorten it to one day."
Normally, ordinary weapons couldn't harm the sludge monster.
But this was Izuna's illusion.
Here—
Everything was decided by him.
"Puff!"
"AAAAHHHH!!!"
The dagger pierced directly into the sludge monster's body.
No blood flowed out, but the overwhelming pain instantly caused his eyes to turn bloodshot.
The sludge monster remained trapped in the illusion for almost three days.
But in the real world—
Only a single moment had passed.
When he returned to reality, the sludge monster collapsed onto the ground and fainted.
At that moment, he finally realized how beautiful the real world was.
"Huh?"
Bakugo Katsuki stared in confusion when he saw the monster—who had been fighting fiercely with him just moments earlier—suddenly collapse.
Remembering the conversation between Izuna and the monster earlier, Bakugo turned toward him.
"What did you do?"
Right now, only the two of them had the ability to fight the sludge monster.
Which meant Izuna was the most suspicious.
In fact, Bakugo was almost 100% certain Izuna had done something.
At that moment, Izuna's eyes had already returned to normal.
He glanced at Bakugo briefly before turning away and walking off.
"Nothing."
"I just let him get some sleep."