The edge of the fountain was constructed pretty high, Angor could not see the water while standing on the ground, so he jumped into the air and watched the fountain from above.
There was not much water in there. It barely covered the base of the fountain. Misty vapor rose from the surface. The “pee” of the statue rushed into the water, bringing up sprays of water and some shifting waves.
Angor did not see anything special on first look. The water seemed… water, and the fountain base was made of clean, white bricks, which was clear to observe. Angor slowly moved around to the other side of the fountain and noticed something.
At the back of the peeing statue, on the pedestal, there was something that looked like a door handle.
Is there something hidden inside the pedestal?
With that question, Angor moved to the base of the statue and pulled the handle-like object.
As he pulled it out, a cave entrance about one and a half meters high appeared in front of Angor, just beyond the water level. The cave was totally dark. Angor used his flashlight and saw stairs inside.
He widened his eyes when he realized the stairs were leading upward instead of down.
Imagine a moderate-sized statue with stairs under it, which pointed “up”. There should be a way up there, but Angor circled around the statue without finding such a way. The space above the statue was empty. The stairs led into an unknown space, a road to heaven and beyond, not bounded to anything.
Angor would have questioned his sanity if he was still the boy who believed in Jon’s science education. However, after being nurtured by Sunders’ books, Angor began to understand certain mysteries.
“Space manipulation. A tunnel between spaces, maybe?” Angor considered.
He stared at the unknown passage and wondered if he should go inside.
This was the only thing worth exploring now, and of course, Angor itched to check it out. But he was alone, and he did not know if it was the exit toward the wizarding world. If he went in there now, he might miss Sunders.
However, if he stayed here, he had to suppress his curiosity as best as he could. Angor saw many things during the days in the Nightmare Realm. If the channeling method book was beyond this path, he could go for it and record the book using his tablet. Sunders mentioned that the book was something special that one would not be able to memorize. Leaving the Nightmare Realm meant forgetting the content of the book. If Angor could record it now, he did not have to worry about that.
If Sunders came, Angor could no longer use his tablet or record the book. Well, if the book which troubled Sunders for centuries was really behind the stairs in the first place…
Stepping through the door might lead Angor out of the underground maze and caused him to miss Sunders.
This was why Angor was hesitant to go in.
He clenched his teeth. In this cruel wizarding world, he would never grow stronger if he did not take any risk and move forward. In the fierce competitions between wizards, someone had to perish. Only those who were daring enough to walk the raging waves could find their way out.
Thinking about this, Angor got rid of his hesitation and crouched into the entrance under the statue firmly.
The door was low, and Angor thought the path inside was narrow too. Strangely though, once he stepped onto the stairs, it became quite spacious.
Angor could not even see the ceiling of the passage, nor the side walls. There was only endless darkness. The flashlight could not pierce through it. The stair beneath Angor’s feet was the only thing that existed.
He walked for about ten minutes without reaching the end. Angor silently counted his steps. If the length of the stairs worked like everything outside, he should already have left the underground maze.
Another two minutes passed, Angor saw light ahead. He squinted his eyes and looked up. There was another small wooden door, which was left open. There was a light shining down through it.
Angor walked to the door but did not enter it. Instead, he peeked behind the door.
He thought this door was the final exit. He was wrong. The stairs did not end here. Using the light from the door, Angor clearly saw the stairs kept whirling upward into the unknown darkness. The wooden door was only a stop in the middle.
Angor lowered his head and looked inside the door.
It was a middle-sized room behind the door. There were some light tubes similar to those found inside the maze, which brightened the room like daytime. Angor saw many objects in the room.
Beds, desks… Someone must have lived here.
The small door did not allow Angor to see the entire room. Still, he did not see any traces of monsters, so Angor decided to move in. Maybe the channeling method book was right here.
Angor bent down and stepped through the door. He also looked behind to make sure the stairs did not disappear.
It was unnecessary. Nothing changed inside or outside the door. The stairs were still there, and the door remained open.
Angor relaxed and began searching the room.
The room was small and the furniture took up a lot of space. They were simple, hollowed wooden works, so Angor could easily see if anything was hidden in them.
The only thing that could contain stuff was the bedstand. The drawer had a lock on it. Angor was happy that he took younger Sunders’ dagger, or he would have a difficult time trying to break the lock.
The dagger did quick work prying the lock off.
When Angor pulled the drawer open, a rotten smell released by something that did not see light in a long time came out. Angor frowned and looked inside. There were clothing and a green booklet in it.
Angor reached for the clothes. It instantly became dust and dispersed in the air.
The booklet had some worm damage on it, but it was not serious. Angor picked it up carefully and put the booklet on the desk.
A line written in an unknown language was on the cover.
Angor flipped it open and saw the same characters inside. He never saw such language before, but from the annotations on several pages, Angor believed the booklet was a diary or something similar.
The pages had a different amount of content on them, but there were identical annotations on their headers. They could be dates.
A diary he could not read… It should not be the special channeling method Sunders said. Angor still recorded the booklet. Maybe he would have a chance to decipher the characters in the future when he got back to the wizarding world.
Who knew? This was the Nightmare Realm, the booklet could contain something interesting.
Once he was done, Angor left through the door without taking the time to put the booklet back.
Not long after he walked away along the stairs, the green booklet on the desk slowly disappeared, and the broken lock on the drawer returned to its original state as well. If someone would come here and open the drawer again, they would notice everything in there went back to its position before Angor came. The clothes did not turn to dust, the booklet rested in the drawer just fine… As if everything in the room was frozen in time.