“Then where did those monsters come from? Can you say it wasn’t you who brought them here?” Twilight questioned, furious.
Angor stammered. He did not know how to explain this one, and he was not supposed to tell people about anything about the Nightmare Realm.
“As I said, don’t ask things that you shouldn’t know anything about,” Sunders interrupted.
Twilight tried to hide her discontent in front of Sunders as she asked, “Then who’s responsible for the death of our guards??”
“Go to whoever killed them,” murmured Angor as he hid behind Sunders’ back and searched around for Toby’s whereabouts.
“You might not be the one who killed them, but you caused everything. You must give us an explanation,” Twilight sounded more serene this time, and Sunders did not retort again. She was right about how Angor started all.
There was no law system in this world, yet wizards tended to obey social rules according to where they were. Phantom Island had its own rules, same for the Auction House. Those who broke such rules had to be punished, and Sunders would agree to let his student answer for this one.
“How did they die anyway? What kind of explanation can I give?” Angor felt wronged now. He just saved everyone’s life!
“Angor, is it? I’ll tell you since Twilight might not be in the right position to do so,” said Lydia as she joined them and stood in front of Angor. Her flame-red witch robe shifted around her charming aura.
“If you’d be so kind, Lady Lotus,” Angor said. He saw Lydia in person only for the first time. But he knew her voice since this woman fell into verbal competitions with Flora many times during the auction.
“As far as I can see, these three dug their own graves.”
Lydia’s first comment immediately aroused rage among the entire Twilight Guard team.
“What? You believe otherwise? Ha! We didn’t fight with them, but we’re not blind. I assume people can all see what happened back there,” Lydia explained while winking at Sunders. None of her gestures worked though since Sunders never even cast an eye at her.
“Dumb asshole,” Lydia muttered to herself before continuing. “Let’s see… How did this man die? Shot by the weapon held by that clown card. As you can see, did those cards attack the people who left them alone?
“And these two. Funny, now I think about it. They attacked the teacups and were killed by their own attacks that were reflected back. Those cups never did anything.”
Maybe because of the disappearance of the plane passage, the teacup band and toy soldiers were still here but had slumped to the ground in sorrow. They were not playing music or marching in rank now. They just sat there like defeated kids who had their toys taken away.
“So you see,” Lydia kept on. “Maybe the little handsome boy started the incident, but these people caused their own death.”
A number of wizards nodded to agree. They all had some injuries when fighting with the cards and dragonflies. But on careful thought, the monsters did not seem hostile at all. It was Twilight who initiated attacks first.
Which meant Lydia was quite right.
Sunders also realized what happened now. He did not see how the guards got themselves killed since he was talking to Angor inside the mist.
“If so, my student had nothing to do with this,” Sunders concluded without listening to Twilight.
Twilight took a deep breath and struggled over the decision whether she should keep pursuing the matter in front of Sunders.
“Good… good! I admit that my guards died for themselves, but what about attacking my auction? He broke the rules of the auction house AND wasted everyone’s time!”
Twilight was going to gain support from the bystanders when Lydia stepped up again and disappointed her.
“Yeah, the boy did interrupt the auction. But I don’t think he wasted our time. Rather, I quite enjoyed the show. I wouldn’t mind watching two handsome guys for a little bit longer.”
Lydia had completely forgotten about how she supported Twilight’s decision of executing Angor.
Some of the wizards nodded again.
“Nothing serious happened to us, and it proved to be fun. Yes, I don’t mind spending several minutes watching such a fascinating occasion,” said Kooper as he smiled and nodded to Angor.
The remaining wizards all agreed just to show respect to Sunders.
Twilight clenched her fists harder, yet she did not dare to vent out her rage for real. The wizards were no weaker than her, AND they were all long-term customers of the auction. There was no way she could offend them here. Besides, Sunders stood in front of the little brat like a solid wall and blocked all methods she could use.
“As for interrupting your auction, I’ll tell him to do something about it,” Sunders spoke in a plain tone.
“Something? What exactly?”
“He’ll pay you, according to the existing regulations of your auction.”
“A hundred thousand magic crystals, and we’re even,” Twilight thought for a moment and gave her price.
“Hundred thousand?? You may as well go rob a bank!” Angor poked his head from behind Sunders and protested.
Sunders pushed Angor’s head back. “Good. I’ll let him send the crystals in half a month. It’s settled. No one shall mention this incident again.”
Angor almost cried. How was it possible for him to collect that kind of money?!
“But-but… I saved…”
Sunders glanced at him. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Lydia walked to Flora. “See that? Discrimination.”
Flora rolled her eyes.
“Oh? I see your skeleton is a lot better now,” Lydia suddenly pointed out.
Flora looked around and did see Little Red in a better condition. It had those flames in its eyes sockets turn into smiling crescent shape. When Angor looked this way, Little Red took out a rose from somewhere and reached out with a trembling skeletal arm toward Angor.
“Hey, Little Red!” Angor happily joined Flora and accepted the blood-red rose. He put the rose in his chest pocket and hurried to another direction where Dave and Prome lay unconscious against a wall.
He quickly found Toby being held carefully in Dave’s hand.
Angor took Toby in his own hands and sensed the bird’s body temperature. The beam wound was slowly disappearing, which meant Prome already did something to help.
However, Angor feared that Toby’s wound would require more treatment than that. He returned to Sunders and begged his professor.
Sunders sighed and said, “You know, I wasn’t planning to save you there, but you still dragged me here by your daring conduct. I’ll let it pass this time. Only this one time! Next time before you do something, think of the consequences!”
The gentleman took Toby over and cast a wizard-level healing spell which patched Toby’s wound up drastically.
After making sure the bird had stable vitals, Sunders passed Toby back to Angor. The creature was still unconscious.
Angor was somewhat glad about this. Being unconscious meant Toby could not cause more trouble for now.
“Did you close the passage?” Sunders looked at Angor’s shoulder wound, which was still bleeding.
“As you ordered,” Angor chuckled. “Not only that, but I also managed to trick the wizard-level toy owl into going back. Oh right, where’s Fox and Froggy?”
When he realized Sunders was giving him a puzzled look, Angor quickly explained, “Fox is… the red fox with a harp and the green frog is called Froggy.”
“Huh. You know them well,” Sunders mocked.
“I have to join them to learn how to shut the passage!” Angor remembered how everyone saw his terrible performance and felt embarrassed again.
“They vanished. I’m afraid they already left the Nightmare Domain. Not sure if that’s going to give us troubles in the future.”
“They left? What about… them?” Angor pointed to the teacup band and toy soldiers.
The teacups responded to his gesture by yelling loudly, “Where are you, my queen??”
They sounded like children crying in sharp voices.
…
After some more hubbub, the wizards all realized that none of their attacks worked against these creatures. The attacks only bounced back at them. Also, it seemed the toy soldiers could drain energy from the attacks into their weapons and then unleash that power against whoever wanted to harm them.
“Leave these things to me. I’ll think of something,” Sunders said in the end.
By this, Sunders also prevented anyone from seizing the creatures for their experiments.
“Mister Sunders, how do we get out? Is it still dangerous?” Kooper asked politely.
“No. We’ll leave soon enough.”
Sunders sent a voice transmission the Angor next, “You created the Nightmare Domain, and you should be the one who’ll take it under your care.”
“My care? What does that mean?”