Phantom Island. Inside Sunders’ study room.
Flora was talking to Sunders while flipping a rose in her hand.
“I think Angor noticed us when he came down from The Savage. I don’t understand how though.”
Sunders pointed at the red reaper, “If you can hide the red reaper somewhere deeper, he won’t find you anymore.”
“So he saw Little Red?” asked Flora. She finally realized it. As a Nightmare Form, Angor was able to see the reaper.
“Aren’t you going to study something? Why are you here?” Sunders asked Flora.
Flora revealed a sweet smile as she said, “I saw Angor yesterday. He asked me how to find spirit power faster.”
“Oh?”
Sunders put down his quill and looked at Flora.
Flora asked, “Professor, you know that the boy can easily do it by using his potion. Why didn’t you tell him so?”
Sunders stayed silent. He did not tell Flora about the strange wall at the end of the Glutton Flower Tunnel. Instead, he said, “Angor’s mind is too impetuous now. Using the Potion of Austere Night won’t help him for certain.”
“Really? I was impetuous too when I drank the potion,” said Flora.
“You felt hurry because you had been stuck at a bottleneck for too long. However, Angor has not achieved his first step yet, so he has no need to be impatient. So did you tell him about using the potion?” said Saunders.
Flora shrugged, “Of course not. Not when my dear professor decided not to. But Angor looked so edgy, so I asked him to go find the Elder of Books.”
Sunders was quite surprised at that. He muttered, “Good for him if he gets to meet the elder. But I don’t think he’s going to find an answer.”
Countless people in the south pursued all kinds of answers from the Elder of Books, and only a handful of them was satisfied. The Elder of Books was only willing to help a few selected people.
Flora chuckled as she said, “Suppose the elder decided to help the boy, I think the old man will simply chase Angor away once he heard the question.”
…
Angor left the library in disappointment.
The Elder of Books only answered his first question. When Angor tried to ask about Toby, the elder just waved a hand and teleported Angor to the outside.
Angor returned to his house and took out the glass of Potion of Austere Night from a secret slot in his training room.
The beautiful liquid wavered in its transparent container.
Should he drink it? Once he did, he would probably exhaust all of his spirit potential, which meant he would no longer be able to improve his spirit again. But if he did not do it now, he would need way more time to find his spirit power.
Angor closed his eyes as he thought over his choices.
His professor suggested not using the potion because of the strange wall in the Nightmare Realm, which for some reason, increased his spirit limit by two points. If the wall could keep doing this, it would be better for him to keep the Potion of Austere Night for now.
Speaking of the wall… Angor recalled the elder’s words… He could quickly locate his spirit power if some kind of fluctuation came up. It would not matter if it increased, decreased or did not change his spirit in the end.
Angor thought about his recording in the tablet. When he tried to imagine the pattern on the wall, even though the pattern in his mind did not have a beginning point yet, he still felt great pain,
Maybe the pain meant his spirit power was changing?
Thinking about this, Angor decided to take out his tablet to test it out. If he could create a fluctuation in his spirit in this way, then he would not need the potion.
His hologram tablet was still hidden inside his pocket watch. Angor never figured out how this thing followed him into the Nightmare Realm. But since it successfully captured all the images, the boy decided not to worry about this matter.
He found the recording about the strange wall quickly enough.
The surface of the wall looked aged and ancient. Faint light streams flowed inside the gaps on the wall, combining into a complicated and giant picture.
Just by looking at the pattern on the wall, Angor could already feel a terrible and indescribable fear.
Trembling a little, Angor watched the recording carefully and began drawing the pattern in his mind…
He picked a random spot as the starting point. Then he followed the curves, strokes, roundabouts, and junctions… The shining pattern slowly appeared inside the dark space of his mind.
When a tiny part of the pattern was created in his mind, Angor’s eyebrows twitched.
He disregarded it and kept drawing.
The twitching grew stronger with time, and Angor started to sense an uneasiness. Soon, he felt the spot between his eyebrows swelling. It was as if strange energy was gathering inside his pineal gland.
Angor did not know if he was sensing spirit power, so he simply kept going while trying to capture where the strange feeling was coming from.
When the second part of the pattern was finished, Angor tried to combine the two parts together but an unknown terror suddenly shrouded Angor’s body.
He felt like someone who lost his way in the middle of a swamp, and that he was struggling in a deadly mud without anyone around to help him.
His only way was down… into the bottomless swamp.
Next, endless darkness and agony descended onto his body.
His soul was screaming in pain as if it was trying to tear up its vessel from the inside.
Angor remembered such a feeling. He fainted because of it in the Nightmare Realm. The next thing he knew was that his spirit power increased when he woke up again.
He realized this might be his chance; a chance to find his spirit power.
He was a mortal when he was inside the Nightmare Realm. He was still a mortal but now, he was a mortal who had begun to learn the channeling method.
As he kept drawing the pattern in his mind, Angor also began imagining the model built using the Singularity Dispersive Method . He diverted his concentration away from the pain, focusing only on finding the spirit power.
Trying to find a needle during an unlit night was a difficult task. But finding a lighthouse in the dark was a lot easier.
During Angor’s previous meditations, he tried to find his spirit power blindly. Now, with the strange pattern as a medium, which stimulated his spirit power to run wild inside his soul, the power appeared brighter than a lighthouse in the night.
The pain kept worsening until Angor realized his brain could not take it anymore.
He immediately stopped his imagination and calmed his mind. The two parts of the pattern that he had already drawn slowly shattered and disappeared into the depth.
With the pattern gone, the spirit power which was drawn out whirled around in Angor’s mind and was about to vanish.
Angor was drenched in sweat now. With all of his spirit exhausted, he felt faint. But he held on. He knew that if he rested now, the spirit power he triggered using so much effort would hide into nothingness soon.
He had to strike the iron while it was hot. Angor forced his brain to work again. To “attract” the spirit power, he began to imagine the spiritual model according to the channeling method he read.
Usually, this was no easy task. But it was a lot easier now that his spirit power already showed itself because of the strange pattern.
Angor only had to follow the instructions in the book slowly and tame the power, thus ironing his own name onto the spirit power.
From now on, Angor only had to imagine the spiritual model again to draw out the power. Once he completed building the model, and with the help of mana, Angor would be able to activate his spirit power for certain.
Knowing this, Angor sighed in relief.
He slowly opened his eyes again. Yet before he could lift a hand to wipe the beads of sweat off his face, he felt dizzy and his eyes rolled back before he collapsed on the floor.