Raven Illusion

Looking around, White tried to find if anything or anyone was close to him.

'I can't lose focus for even a single second,' White thought as he kept his vigilance to the limit of what his mind could afford.

*Ding*

[Perception has increased by one point due to training ]

White's sight, hearing, touch, and even what people called the sixth sense all increased at once, the increase was nowhere near massive but it was enough, enough for White to notice.

Feeling something standing behind him at a dark corner of the mill caused White to turn around immediately.

'Whats that' White thought as he stared at the unknown thing in the corner, it had yet to show its form though White felt like it was looking at him directly.

"Who'se there, or should i ask what you are?" White finally said outloud as he faced the entity.

An eerie childlike laughter was heard this time in comparison to the old raspy voice inside of the spiral library.

"I am but one and the same, I am the one who keeps thy curse, i am thy raven" The childlike voice said as it started to spread all around the room.

One moment, the words were comming from the shadowed corner; in the next, it was from the ceiling, from the floor, or even from outside the grain mill.

"What is it that you want? Is this another test of yours?" White asked as he kept turning his head towards where his senses detected the entity.

The eerie, childlike voice was heard once more.

"Thy test this time is to find thy true one." 

The voice was only heard from outside the mill this time.

'Find the true one?' White wondered as he headed outside the mill slowly, once he arrived outside once more, he saw what the test meant really.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of ravens, were swirling in the air or even sitting on the grass field.

'I have to find the true one? Does that mean that only one of these ravens is real, or does it mean that all of them are real, but only one of them is actually a raven?' White thought as a shiver went through his back.

'Does that mean that these things could actually be some horrifying monster that'll just gobble me up?' White thought as he furrowed his brows and kept looking around.

The eerie child voice was never heard any more from the point White had come out of the mill.

No matter how hard he looked, White could notice no discrepencies in the ravens looks. what was unusual about the whole thing was the fact that every single raven was the exact same.

'It's like they're all clones of each other; even in the same species of birds, there are small mutations or differences in looks, just like how humans' appearance changes from person to person,' White thought.

*Sigh*

Deciding that no matter what he did, he could find no clues while looking at the ravens, White decided to head back into the mill and see if he could find anything, even the smallest clue would be like having a water in the desert for White at this point.

Looking around inside, White saw the same things he had seen earlier, nothing seemed to have changed from when the voice appeared and he went outside to look at the ravens.

'Alright, I guess the only way to do this is to get better at perceiving things, just like I only noticed the entity when my perception leveled up,' White thought as he headed outside once more and sat down on the grass field.

Closing his eyes, White tried to concentrate his entire mind on his other senses, hoping to sense even the smallest change in his surroundings.

White sat down there for hours, feeling nothing but the flap of the ravens and their feet walking around in the grass field.

*Ding*

[Perception has increased by one point due to training ]

All of a sudden, the noise the ravens were making cleared up immensely.

it felt like hundreds of the ravens weren't even there anymore.

Opening his eyes, White still saw all the ravens but he could tell which ones were'nt real anymore, it was like an instinct inside of him telling which was fake and which wasnt.

There were still hundreds of other crows, however, that had yet to be identified.

'It works' White thought as a grin overtook his face and he quickly sat down once more, closing his eyes again.

After a few more hours, another notification came to his mind.

*Ding*

[Perception has increased by one point due to training ]

Once again, the number of sounds he heard massively thinned.

There were only tens of ravens that he still couldn't identify.

*Ding*

[Perception has increased by one point due to training ]

Finally, after what felt like an entire day, White managed to level up his Perception again.

*Growl*

Whites stomach grumbled.

'I have to finish this quickly. The longer I stay in this place, the worse off my condition is, and at the end of the day, I still need to kill Krabat,' White thought as he got up on his feet.

Opening his eyes for one final time, White started walking towards the ravens in front of him.

As he walked, the ravens turned to look at him.

Unlike normal birds, however, none of them moved or got spooked away.

White continued walking, walking straight toward his target.

Finally, after a minute or so, White arrived in the middle of the ravens.

All around him, they were watching his every move with black beaded eyes.

Crouching down, White took one of the ravens in his hand.

*Skreeeehhh*

That simple motion made all the ravens around him release a massive cry as they all turned to black dust and dissepeared with the wind.

All besides the one in White's hand.

The raven in his hands turned its head at a one hundred-eighty-degree angle and looked at White.

"Thy has passed thy test. Thy is allowed to meet thy Krabat," The raven said as it slowly dissolved into black grains of sand.

The sand, however, kept multiplying and multiplying until it managed to cover White's entire body.

When the sand disappeared from around him, White saw that he had changed locations once more.

'This time, it's a wooden cabin?' White thought as he looked around, confused.