This was like another version of the "Guess Which Hand" game Kain had shown her, but instead of two hands and a stone, it was three bowls and a small ball.

Mera realized that the biggest difference between this game and "Guess Which Hand" was the item-hiding stage. In the "Guess Which Hand" game, Kain would put his hands behind his back to choose which hand to place the stone in, forcing Mera to rely on "clues" he provided afterward to guess which hand held the stone. And those clues could be completely faked by Kain.

In this girl's game, the process of hiding the ball in the bowl was done in the open, in front of Mera. The clues the girl left were also impossible to fake because Mera had an objective basis to compare them against. Thus, Mera was confident that she could use the girl's gaze to determine which bowl the ball was in without fear of being deceived as she was with Kain.

"The left one, her left," Mera proudly pointed to the overturned bowl with lightning speed, as if she had just chosen randomly without thinking. The girl's reaction was one of great surprise. However, when she flipped the bowl over, there was no ball underneath.

"Huh?" Mera's eyes widened in confusion and shock.

How... how was that possible? She had guessed correctly, hadn't she?

While Mera was still in a state of existential doubt, the girl behind the counter timidly spoke.

"Hey... you, you've actually passed the test, if... if you don't mind..."

"No interest. Let's go, Mera."

Kain cut the girl off, pulling along the still-gaping Mera. The girl pursed her lips, clearly wanting to hold Mera back, but didn't dare to anymore as Kain led Mera away.

"Dammit, how did I get tricked again?" Mera fumed once she came to her senses.

It was clear. Kain had previously prepared her for the "Guess Which Hand" game, which made Mera, even if she didn't think she was that smart, at least believe she wouldn't be fooled by such easy tricks anymore. That's why she paid attention to the "challenge your intellect" stall. She also wanted to show off a little in front of Kain, to see how much progress his "student" had made.

Who knew, Mera would guess wrong.

This was like a splash of cold water to Mera's face, throwing a bit of her self-confidence right into the Adia River.

"How embarrassing. I announced my guess so loudly and clearly, and it was completely wrong..." Mera covered her face with her hands, then reached out and tugged on Kain's sleeve, her expression crestfallen. "Hey, Kain, am I hopeless when it comes to intellect?"

"No, you just need time to adapt." Kain reached up and patted her head comfortingly. His strong, somewhat rough fingers ran through her smooth hair, making Mera feel a mix of comfort and pleasure. Still, she couldn't help but ask him again, unwilling to give up. "But how could she trick me? It was so obvious..."

Mera explained her thought process at the time, the reason she chose to use the stall girl's gaze as a clue to pinpoint the ball's location. Kain nodded as he listened. "Actually, your reasoning makes sense. You weren't wrong."

"But your frame of reference was off. She didn't trick you, at least not in the way you think."

Mera tilted her head, a question mark seemingly appearing over her head. Was Kain saying that the girl at the stall hadn't tricked her, but still tricked her?

Kain gave a wry smile at Mera's slightly foolish expression and began to explain from the beginning.

"Deception is something that only happens in our perception, but sometimes it isn't just a flawed interpretation of reality performed by a deceiver."

"It can be an objective distraction."

"An objective... distraction?"

"Yes, do you remember what I once said about the limits of perceptual attention?"

"I... I think so." Mera recalled. He had indeed mentioned this when he defeated Cody. It was about how although we take in all kinds of information, our minds only process a fraction of it.

"Because the girl's game completely revealed the method of hiding the ball in the bowl, you were naturally drawn to those images and scenes and tried to analyze them."

"However, the ball wasn't in the bowl from the start. The image you received was just trying to build a false reality, which then planted false information in your head. So even though she didn't actively control the information source like I did with you, the fact that your initial data was wrong meant your guess was incorrect."

Mera was astonished. "But I clearly saw the ball being covered by the bowl!"

"Yes, and that's the distraction," Kain continued to explain.

"In reality, that ball wasn't a solid object. It was soft, and likely elastic. I noticed it the moment she picked it up and held it. Even if it's not metal, when holding a hard, round object, people will unconsciously place their fingers or palms to support the bottom of the sphere.

"Kain... I don't really understand."

"For example, if you were to hold an apple, how would you hold it?"

"Like... this?" Mera imagined it, and just as Kain said, she realized she always held the apple with her palm as the main support and her fingers as side props. It wasn't that Mera couldn't think of other ways, but that they had been unconsciously excluded from her mind in favor of the "optimal" method.

Seeing that Mera understood, Kain continued.

"You've probably noticed that the girl wasn't very good at hiding her reactions, right? So, her action of holding the ball was a genuine one. However, it's very difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to control every single behavior like that, so this is a reliable source of information."

"Therefore, I inferred that her way of holding the ball horizontally, pinching it with just two fingers on either side, was because the ball was very light. It wouldn't slip and fall even with few points of support. At the same time, light often implies soft and hollow, but the ball didn't deform when she held it, which proves that it's elastic enough to maintain its original structure."

"And that's how she tricked your eyes, Mera. Did you notice anything strange the moment the girl placed the bowl down to cover the ball?"

"At that time..." Mera began to recall. The girl at the stall placed the ball on the table, then behind the ball, she placed an inclined bowl, ready to cover it. Mera finally started to realize something was strange.

From what Kain said, Mera realized that no action was random. This led her to a deduction.

Normally, if she were just covering the ball with a bowl, it would be a simple action. But following the girl's previous action of "holding the ball," wouldn't the way she covered the ball also be a "subconscious priority choice"?

But the truth was the opposite. Instead of covering the ball naturally, she took three steps: first, she placed the ball; second, she placed the uncovered bowl behind the ball; and third, she covered it.

If this wasn't a subconscious priority choice, then it must be something she consciously and actively chose for some deeper purpose.

A thought flashed through Mera's mind like a bolt of lightning, connecting with Kain's comment that the ball was soft and elastic, not hard. All the clues came together, and she realized why she had lost!

Mera turned to look at Kain, and he nodded, as if he had already guessed what she was thinking. In fact, he verbalized it for her.

"Yes, you must have realized it now, haven't you? The reason this game needs a soft, elastic ball, and the reason it requires a series of manipulations when preparing to cover the ball, is all to get the ball out of the bowl before you guess."

"When she tilted and covered the bowl like that, she deliberately made the edge of the bowl at the bottom press against the back of the ball. As the bowl came down, that bottom edge moved, pushing the soft and elastic ball backward, so it slid out from under the bowl and into her palm as the bowl was fully placed down."

"It's very hard to detect. Because the ball is elastic, in that very brief moment when your view is clearest, which is also when the bowl's bottom edge first touches the ball, it still retains its round shape, so your mind doesn't notice. As that moment passes, the bowl comes down more and more, obscuring your view. You only saw a vague, round shape under the bowl, completely unaware that by the time the bowl was fully in place, the ball was no longer there."

"Your action of observing her gaze to the left wasn't wrong in terms of behavior, just the destination. She wasn't looking at the bowl on the left; she was looking at her left hand, which was hiding the ball."

Kain exposed all the tricks of the game.