Dusk, who was behind Ragnar, looked at Lyra with an expression that seemed to say, "Are we that close to him? I didn't know anything about that."
Lyra responded with a long roll of her eyes, as if to say, Can't you tell he's playing with us? although she kept a very serious expression.
Ragnar forcibly suppressed the urge to attack Number Three and said in a deep voice, "Stop joking around. You should know what the consequences will be if you continue like this. Don't think that what you did that day on the mountain went unnoticed. If I tell Marcus about it, you know what the consequences will be, right?"
Cain was momentarily taken aback.
He knew that his actions on the mountain peak would not withstand careful analysis. If someone thought about it a little, sooner or later they would discover that there was something strange about that so-called Number Three.
But... what did that have to do with him now? He had never cared much about the church's opinions. If he really were the true Number Three, that would be another story. But he was a fake Number Three. He had no reason to worry. Moreover, his current strength made Marcus and the others no longer a threat.
Therefore, Ragnar's warning meant nothing to Cain.
"Well, well, that really sounds troublesome. But... if you truly want to tell Lord Marcus, how about I give you the chance to tell him yourself?" Cain said.
He pointed to a rock behind the four and raised his voice. "Lord Marcus! There's no need for this subordinate to go out personally to invite you, right?"
Hearing this, the expressions of Ragnar and the others changed abruptly. All of them turned at the same time to look at the rock behind them.
If Marcus was really there, added to Cain, who was supposedly his subordinate, plus two unknown people, the safety of the four would be seriously threatened.
And deep in their hearts, they truly believed that Marcus might be behind them.
With Marcus's powerful psychic power, it was not impossible for him to conceal his presence and reach that place. Moreover, they had always suspected that the fact that Number Three had sought them out so directly concealed something strange.
Now it seemed even more likely that everything was part of one of Marcus's plans, although they did not know the real reason. It undoubtedly had a lot to do with the Pokémon they possessed.
What they forgot was something crucial: if even they themselves did not know whether Marcus was there, how could Cain know?
Cain had arrived much later than they had, and they had already carefully investigated the surroundings to avoid falling into one of his traps.
The four turned around in unison, gripping their Poké Balls tightly, ready to act.
This left Cain and the other two behind them momentarily stunned.
Did these four people... have brains or not?
Even Brad and Catherine, who did not possess such strong psychic power, knew perfectly well that Marcus could never be there. Cain had simply pointed at random, intending to play another joke on them and make it clear that he did not care in the slightest if they went to "report" him.
If he dared to do something like that, he clearly had the necessary confidence.
But the perfectly synchronized reaction of the four told Cain that they had all believed him.
This was, in a way, the classic case of "being too clever and ending up fooling oneself." They thought so much that they ended up clouding their most basic judgment.
The possibility that Marcus was there was deeply rooted in their minds, because it was precisely what they feared the most.
Although Marcus was no longer as strong as before, he was still superior to any of the four. Added to Cain and the other two, they truly felt that they had fallen into a trap.
And yet, by turning their backs to Cain in that way, they immediately aroused the interest of someone who had originally only wanted to joke around.
Four perfectly exposed backs!
Ahem... no! Four completely defenseless people!
Cain admitted that when he arrived, he had seriously considered wiping out the four of them in one go and directly taking the Eeveelutions they possessed. It would have been a definitive solution.
But that thought lasted less than a minute before he dismissed it.
After all, he had already defeated one in a frontal fight and another through a surprise attack. Even if they lacked much real experience, they should have learned something and not repeated the same mistake.
When he arrived, although the traps and ambushes they had prepared seemed almost ridiculous to him, at least they indicated that they had prepared and would not fall again to a surprise attack.
But people... people always end up doing one or two surprising things.
Those four backs made Cain's eyes heat up... so much that he felt a strong urge to act.
All of this happened in just an instant. Cain's thoughts spun at full speed and, in less than a tenth of a second, he made a decision.
As the king of surprise attacks, letting such a perfect opportunity pass would be a disgrace to his name!
Go for it, damn it!
Not taking advantage of an advantage is foolish!
In that instant, Cain completely changed his plan.
Plans exist to be modified; otherwise, how could one adapt to the situation?
"Darkrai!" Cain's deep voice echoed beside the shadow at his feet.
Darkrai understood immediately.
A mass of shadows emerged from Cain's shadow and split into two. One of them, slightly smaller, shot out from Cain's position toward the backs of Ragnar and the other four at lightning speed.
With Darkrai's current strength, his speed was terrifying. And as a Dark-type Pokémon with enormous experience, he knew perfectly well how to avoid the perception of psychics.
Without the slightest hesitation, for Darkrai, wherever Cain's will pointed, everything was an enemy. And before an enemy, he did not care whether it was human or Pokémon.
His black, sharp claws were even more dreadful than the scythe of death, capable of reaping lives in an instant.
"Damn it!" Ragnar roared inwardly.
In the brief instant when he sensed the danger and instinctively activated his psychic power to protect himself, he discovered that it had no effect against the enemy's attack.
No—more than not blocking it, his psychic power vanished like snow under the sun before it even made contact.
At that moment he understood the truth: the Pokémon attacking them was of the Dark type, and moreover, an absurdly powerful one.
They had trusted too much in the strength of their psychic power. Although they had always been on guard, they were still ambushed.
All because of the immense fear that the name Marcus inspired in them. That fear made them instinctively turn around, giving Cain the perfect opportunity.
And that fleeting opportunity was seized by Cain with impeccable precision.
It could not be denied that reaching this point was due, on the one hand, to Darkrai being powerful enough at that moment, and on the other, to the innate advantage that Dark-type Pokémon have against psychic abilities.
(End of chapter)