Sunders glanced at Angor, grinning. “Who said anything about an inter-plane portal?”
“Eh? We’re not using that portal to go back?”
Angor thought they were going to return to the wizarding world in the same manner. Before leaving the Overwatch Base, he even asked a union guard where the nearest inter-plane portal was located. According to the guard, they needed to use a tunnel in the depth of the Lightless Mountain to reach level 2 first.
“No, we’re not.” Sunders shook his head in denial.
“Then... why are we coming here?”
“There’s a particular area around the Lightless Mountain where the dimensional properties in the environment are stable. That’s what we need to teleport back to the wizarding world.”
“We’re reaching the wizarding world directly??”
As far as Angor knew, only the Moonfrost Union was capable of transporting people and resources between his home plane and Abyss Plane because they controlled the necessary portals. With Monkey’s great mission occupying so many wizards and critical travel routes, the union was unlikely to allow an individual or two to use the portal.
Angor suddenly realized what Sunders might be planning. They both received “Section Ephemera” from Greya’s restaurant several years ago. That thing could surely help them open up a tunnel to the wizarding world.
Sunders nodded when hearing Angor’s guess. “That’s correct. Of course I’m not begging the union to do me the privilege, so using the Section Ephemera is our best shot. I believe the plane fusion at Parmigi Highlands is approaching its end. By spending the Section Ephemera, I’ll get back what I lost from elsewhere.”
Sunders never planned to get involved in the plane fusion if not for Angor’s matter. Even so, he would be glad to use such a chance to give it a try. While the foreign plane might already be swept clean by wizards who explored it earlier, he could certainly try to dig further.
Angor, on the other hand, suddenly got a bad feeling upon hearing Sunders’ merry plan. When he returned to Brute Cavern from the Old Earth, he immediately set out for the Abyss to look for Sunders and to avoid the plane fusion. He was worried that, if Sunders took him back to Parmigi Highlands so early and approached the area affected by the plane fusion, his Alien Eye might “go off” again.
Unlike Jon’s condition, he never intended to reveal the secret of the Alien Eye to anyone, not even Sunders. Jon told him that, if the artifact could take someone from the Earth to the wizarding world, it could probably do the opposite. They couldn’t afford to let a wizard detect the presence of the Earth and plunder it for resources like how they usually treated the new planes they discovered.
Jon once made it clear that he would rather die in this foreign land than endangering his home. For the sake of Jon, Angor would make sure the Alien Eye stayed well-hidden no matter what.
However, if what Sunders said was true, the plane fusion did not fully come to a conclusion yet. If the Alien Eye was taken there now...
“No more tarrying, we should go.” Sunders stood up. “We’re not far from the stable section I said. If we move quickly, we’ll get there within two hours.”
“Sir-sir. Can we rest a bit longer since, you know, the outside looks pretty safe right now?”
“Looking safe is the biggest problem for us.” Sunders put on his white gloves without stopping.
The dark and quiet sky outside the cave somewhat made him anxious. When coming here, the road was full of monsters who did not give them any second to relax. Something was definitely not right.
Angor found it too difficult to make up excuses and sighed. Helpless, he extinguished their campfire, put Toby into his pocket, and stepped out of the cave behind Sunders.
“This is the calm before the storm, I’m afraid,” said Sunders. “Learn to get out of your comfort zone once in a while, especially here.”
Angor obediently followed Sunders but without paying much attention to Sunders’ lectures because he had too many concerns troubling his mind, such as how to convince Sunders to depart after the plane fusion fully ended.
Sunders suddenly interrupted him, “I said there will be a storm, no? Here it is.”
Angor quickly looked up and saw a group of winged demons closing in.
These weren’t grand demons, but they were still pretty strong among their rank. They could defeat careless wizards if they meant business. A full team of them should be enough to keep a truth-finder busy for a while.
Thinking about this, Angor was actually glad that they now had a reason to remain behind. For the first time since he came to the Abyss Plane, he hoped that they would encounter monsters. Even better, if the monsters were just at the right level to stall Sunders without actually hurting them.
“Professor, I have my Infinite Reticence on!”
He meant to tell Sunders to ignore him and go deal with the demons.
To his surprise, Sunders shushed him and sent him a Spirit Bond. “Quiet, they haven’t seen us yet. Stay behind that rock and don’t move.”
But he always sent every enemy to the hereafter by force! Why would he change his way now?? Angor couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
Sunders saw his suspicious look. “As I said, some sort of great danger is haunting the Lightless Mountain, but we just can’t see it. We must get out of here as fast as we can manage.”
Angor moaned. It seemed he was going to be disappointed.
He certainly couldn’t mess up by luring the demons to their position. He had no choice but to wait patiently until the “storm” passed.
About ten minutes later, the demons left their view, after which Sunders quickly ran in their designated direction at full speed.
Later, Angor realized that those winged demons were far from being the “storm” at all. They saw way more powerful enemies such as mid-level demons and even a few grand demons who were at the same level as Sunders. If they were to confront these creatures, Sunders wouldn’t have time to protect him all.
Angor silently cursed himself for being so naive.
So many enemies would be difficult for Sunders to handle even if he got an equally strong partner or two. Evading was indeed their best choice.
Now it was clear that Sunders’ prediction was right, that an unknown threat was hidden at the Lightless Mountain.
In the end, it took them half a day to travel across the route and reach the “dimensionally stabilized” area—the Windsay Valley. Despite being called a valley, the area was actually pretty wide. It was as if somebody excavated a piece of flat land in the middle of the mountains.
The area looked rather beautiful too. There were all sorts of fruit trees and water canals. It would make a perfect spot for building a settlement.
“The Windsay Valley is often used by wizards as a teleportation hub,” Sunders explained as he took Angor to the northern edge of the area, where a hidden entrance to the underground was found. “When Samantha had to teleport to Skyward Island, she used this spot as well. You rarely find monsters here, so people can use this place to rest up if necessary.”
The entrance took them to a wet, underground cave full of traces of human constructions, probably done by people who planned to camp. Nobody actually built a settlement here because there were too many powerful enemies native to level 3 that were always wandering around the nearby areas.
“The entrance we used is the only way out. There are no other passages ahead of us, meaning, nothing will surprise us here. We shall use the Section Ephemera right here.”
Angor nodded. He couldn’t alter Sunders’ decision now. He only hoped that Sunders did not take them straight to the Parmigi Highlands.
“Sir, the dimension around the Parmigi Highlands must be disturbed at this moment, maybe we should set the destination somewhere farther, like the Yaley Principality?”
“There’s no need. No matter how big an area the plane fusion covers, Brute Cavern will be sure to secure the territory of the organization. We’ll head to Windmill Town.”
Windmill Town was the closest human settlement around Brute Cavern. Telling from the map, it belonged to the Darkivil Empire. However, it was in fact administered by Brute Cavern.
“Al-alright.” Angor desperately tried to come up with excuses that explained the Alien Eye, if the artifact did display unusual properties when they got back.