Sunders’ room was a cabin on the top level of the airship. It was the biggest room with the best view on the entire ship.
The demon falcon guided Angor here and flew off on its own, leaving Angor alone in front of Sunders’ door.
Angor pushed the door open and saw Sunders standing in front of a French window, and Flora, who was drinking wine at an antique-looking bar stand.
“Good morning, professor.” Angor bowed politely.
Flora chuckled. “How many times have we told you to get rid of the manners? Geez. You always remind me of Wallace.”
Wallace?
Angor looked at Flora with a puzzled expression.
Flora rolled her eyes. “Stop. Don’t ask me that. You will know him when you get back to Brute Cavern. An old bastard who’s up to no good.”
“Angor, I called you here to talk about your channeling method,” said Sunders in his usual low voice.
My channeling method!
Angor’s mind quickly tensed up.
“Are we going to the Nightmare Realm now?” asked Angor.
“Changed your mind? If so, I allow you to choose again.”
That sounded a bit cold.
Angor did not really regret his decision. He was just scared of something unknown and dangerous. He did not think about channeling method these days because he did not want to be shrouded in fear every day.
“I won’t regret.”
He was just… worried. However, he did not say it out loud. Angor knew that if he wanted to survive in this world, he had to “harden” his weak character.
“It’s a bold decision, and it’s a good thing. In the wizarding world, you either move forward and face danger or be pushed back to your starting point,” said Sunders. He walked to his desk, picked up a tube-shaped crystal and tossed it towards Angor before saying, “This is a dial meter to test your spiritual power indicator. Before we go retrieve the channeling method from the Nightmare Realm, you need to know your indicator first.”
Wizards could see the spiritual power indicators of mortals using spells. Sunders had already checked Angor’s condition, but people believed their own eyes better than other people’s comments.
Angor looked at the tube crystal and saw a curve moving in it. However, when he tried to take a closer look inside the tube, he felt dizzy all of a sudden.
“Don’t look in the middle. There’s a special spirit rune in there. It would become more violent as it approaches the end of the meter and could damage your brain,” Flora explained. She continued, “The correct way is to start looking from zero and slowly work your way upward. You will feel that dizziness becoming worse. When you finally can’t take it anymore, the number you’re looking at is your spiritual power indicator.”
Flora’s explanation was clear enough. Angor closed his eyes to wait out his dizziness. When he reached his best condition, he lifted the meter and began his first test.
He could clearly see a pale golden line starting from “0”. It climbed upward in an elegant and smooth curve. On “3”, the line slowly split into two and created two individual, natural paths.
When the two lines reached “4”, they began to give out many forks like a tree branch growing in spring. Some of the new forks made several twists and turns, then stopped growing.
Angor felt his eyes ache.
When the meter reached “7”, the two main lines became four. Four lines drew all kinds of crazy patterns in the crystal. Each time a new trail appeared, Angor felt as if something heavy was pressing against his chest and wanted to close his eyes right away.
Soon, the meter reached “9”—the highest possible number for mortals. Beyond this was a brand new world for talents.
Angor was about to faint now.
The four lines dashed past “10”. At this point, the entire spell pattern changed drastically. Instead of creating new branches, the lines became three-dimensional.
The lines intertwined with each other like DNA double helix structures and kept sprinting in a strange manner. Angor felt his sight spinning.
After a while, Angor could no longer see the meters. His eyes were still following behind the golden lines, but he did not know if it was himself or his instinct controlling them.
Sometime later, Angor’s view darkened and he fell to the floor. His face was pale. He felt like vomiting as if someone was stirring his brain with a stick.
“Reached your limit?” Flora’s voice woke Angor from “being brain-stirred”.
Angor flipped himself over in a daze and sat on the floor for a long time. Sunders did not rush him. The man found a cup of tea from somewhere and was taking notes using his quill.
When Angor felt a little better, he slowly stood up with the help of a table leg.
“Thirteen,” Angor revealed a bitter smile. His face was still pale.
People said wizards’ spiritual power indicators had little to do with what they could achieve, but Angor still felt defeated. Thirteen was just barely beyond a failure.
All talents and wizards were beyond ten. As Angor recalled, Sunders said that Easley who joined Tower of Hurricane had a spiritual power indicator of 23. That was ten points higher than himself, which meant Easley could train channeling method a lot faster.
If Angor did not wish to be left behind by Easley, he must choose a good channeling method which had a fitness of at least 20% for him.
“The indicator does not determine your future,” Sunders comforted him. He then changed the topic and said, “I said I’d tell you your talent once you become an apprentice. I didn’t mean to hide it. It’s because your talent is a little special, and I don’t know how far you can go. Still, I’m certain that your talent is related to the Nightmare Realm. Maybe we can find an answer over there.”
We?
Angor noticed his wording.
“You’re going too, teacher?” asked Angor.
Sunders nodded. “How can you find the channeling method book if I’m not with you?”
“Oh. Yes.”
Sunders smiled. “The Nightmare Realm is a particular world. It projects a reality and sends it into an imaginary form. This means that if we enter the place from here, we may appear in the sky, inside the same airship.
“To avoid something like that, and find the exact location of the book, we must possess a seed.”
“A seed?” Angor asked.
Sunders walked to Angor and put a broad hand on Angor’s bladebone. “This is the seed.”
Angor reached for his back where a woman with sutured face wounded him in a strange world.
“The wound on your soul is a seed. It can guide us to the place where you received that wound,” Sunders smiled again.
Where he received the wound? The Padt Manor in the Nightmare Realm! The seed would take him to the strange Padt Manor full of weird creatures and the sutured woman?
Sunders took out a glass vial. The bottom of the vial was covered in a small amount of blood which released a mild glimmer.
“This, is a seed too. It’s my blood, I spilled it when fighting a monster in the Nightmare Realm. The blood will bring us back to that place… where I saw the channeling method book.”