Under Angor’s instructions, Toby kept flying for half an hour. Meanwhile, Angor opened a folder to look for information related to plane passageways.
Everything that was explained looked similar to what he assumed—that he had to know about a space coordinate in order to escape the tunnel in one piece. In most cases, a plane passageway only had one viable way that led to two points. Wandering around and relying on luck was very likely to get him nowhere.
He considered and opened another different folder.
It contained a book that he recorded in Sunders’ library when they were on the cloud whale— Fantastic Treasures and Where to Find Them (10th Anniversary All-in-One Edition).
It was a magazine published by a magazine office located inside a Wizard Fair called “Archaic Rivershore”. Monthly release. Angor was reading a volume they published to celebrate their 10th anniversary. The front page of the book even declared that the book was specifically gifted to Mister Phantom.
Angor looked through the index and quickly found what he needed:
[Section Ephemera: a non-existent creature of unknown origin. Rumor has it that it is related to Candy House, an organization administered by Fairytown. The Section Ephemera held such great value that every single piece of information regarding its presence will attract a great many wizards. It has a unique property that establishes a new two-way passage inside a stable plane. The passage was only single-use, but it can achieve a lot of different goals in the hands of capable wizards…]
Angor carefully read the explanations, hoping that his Section Ephemera could help him escape.
However, the book only said that the creature worked in a “stable plane”, not a stable passage between different planes. Besides, Angor’s plane passageway was only relatively solid. Without the protection of the world’s consciousness, the tunnel could easily crumble if anything went wrong.
He sighed. It seemed he couldn’t use the Section Ephemera properly here.
Toby kept flying toward where the nightmare aura felt thicker. They would take a rest every now and then, where Toby would sit inside Angor’s pocket and have a snack. But they would immediately fall down again, albeit not very fast. In order not to lose track of the nightmare aura, Toby only rested for several minutes each time before returning to being a pilot.
About another half day passed by as they continued their seemingly endless journey.
Before Angor completely lost hope of their chance of survival, he finally saw something shining in the direction they were heading to.
…
Inside the inner auction hall of Twilight Auction House.
“What’s the matter, Angor?!” Sunders called anxiously. “Damn it. His signal vanished!”
The gentleman grimaced hard. There were many possible reasons for one to suddenly disappear from his “radar”. Considering Angor’s condition, the most probable conjecture was that Angor somehow entered the nightmare passage!
Sunders stomped and jumped down from the monster nest. Then he dashed toward the outside at full speed.
“Where are you going, Sunders?!” Devildare endured another hit from Froggy and noticed Sunders’ action. “Hey wait, there are two Sunders?! But the other one is black…”
Sunders called back from a distance, “Angor’s in trouble. I’m checking him out!”
“Angor?” Devildare also put on a grim look. What about the nightmare tunnels if something happened to that boy?
Sunders already read Devildare’s mind. “The tunnels are already closed!”
“But you can’t leave me here!” Devildare yelled, “And-”
Who’s that “black” Sunders?
Devildare didn’t get to ask the question because Sunders already vanished from his sight.
Devildare growled and looked around. He saw the harp-wielding fox still alive. The animal was wounded a bit but nothing too serious.
However… the harp was still here!
As they speculated, this item might be a Mystery-level weapon!
And Sunders just, left it here? To help his student?
“So the rumor is correct. His new student is really special to him…”
But what exactly happened over there? Devildare suddenly got a bad feeling about it. There was one terrible possibility that lingered in his mind, and he hoped it was not the case.
…
Since the tunnels were closed off, the mist covering Twilight Well was also disappearing rapidly.
Sunders hopped among the buildings quickly and grew more and more worried as he watched the mist growing thinner and thinner. In the last second, before he lost contact with Angor, the boy sounded relaxed, which meant whatever happened was very serious.
According to Fox, Shava was “her grace” to the monsters. This meant “Shava” was a really important figure in the Nightmare Realm. Maybe someone powerful in the core regions of that place.
This was why the dragonflies would never harm Angor.
But something got Angor in the last second. It was obviously not the nightmare monsters who did it, which only left the possibility that someone else ambushed him.
“Such a pity. It seems my beloved disciple has been murdered… He cannot provide his body to my experiments now,” a low voice came from beside Sunders.
Sunders looked around and saw the “younger version” of himself, who had black eyes and crimson pupils.
“Return. You can’t show up in front of ordinary folks,” Sunders said as he reached out a hand and released a tiny vortex which “absorbed” his other self.
…
Soon, Sunders reached Lady’s Juice. As he expected, no one was here. There were no traces that indicated a fight.
Sunders’ eyes shone with the light of “Remove Delirium”, a level-1 spell, which looked through the history using information that remained at the scene.
But he got nothing. There was no useful lead.
The entire Lady’s Juice was clean. No energy ruptures, no foreign hormones.
It was exactly the cleanliness that told Sunders that someone plotted against Angor.
But who the culprit was didn’t matter for now. Angor would still question if Twilight attacked him, yet Sunders would not—killing an innocent wizard or two wouldn’t make a difference now.