Like a miniature milky way, the dazzling stripe moved closer for Angor to witness its magnificence.
He constantly had his spirit expanded. But just like before, he could not sense the stars and glitters as if they didn’t exist. At least not in the same dimension where he stayed.
The strange energy must have affected the current realm in some way since it could be perceived by eyesight. Though he currently had no way of looking into the structures of the Alien Eye, so he had to stay put and wait.
The Alien Eye must have detected the plane fusion across the inter-plane tunnel. Knowing this, Angor was glad that he did not actually return to the wizarding world too early and let everyone see the artifact.
Also, it seemed that the Alien Eye was actively draining a certain type of energy from the plane fusion even if it was pretty far still. Perhaps the artifact desperately needed this for some reason.
“But what is it trying to do? It took Jon to this world. Does this mean it can send Jon back to his home or another world when it collects enough energy?”
He never felt so worried about holding onto such a wonderful and potentially dangerous item before. But he’d also admit that he would like to visit Jon’s home when he had a chance.
According to Jon, the Alien Eye showed up on Earth out of the blue, so it probably didn’t mean to bring people there. Angor just realized that he would have to study the Alien Eye sooner or later in order to control it so that he didn’t accidentally throw Jon into an even further place.
He feared that the Alien Eye might “start up” on itself once it gathered enough energy, so he wondered whether he should take it away from the portal right now.
He didn’t have to do that because the “silver stripe” was already vanishing after the connection was maintained for about two minutes. Slowly, the Alien Eye stopped glowing and quieted down.
“Thank goodness I’m not going to crossover into another world like in those novels. Wait, what is—”
The Alien Eye suddenly began to pulse with a faint light that added an eerie theme to the dark cave.
“Is it slowly taking in the energy it absorbed? Or... is it sending a message?”
The legendary explorer, Feinwerder, mentioned many bizarre creatures in his book, one of which was a monster firefly who used its “signals” to communicate with its partners. Later, Feinwerder discovered that the fireflies possessed enough intelligence to invent a comprehensive language system no less complicated than human speech. Instead of verbally speaking, they used their “light” to talk.
The problem was, even if the Alien Eye was talking, it was unlikely for Angor to understand a thing.
He shook his head and was going to put the pendant back to its original spot when the ground suddenly shook.
It was clearly not an ordinary earthquake because he just heard the deafening roar of some kind of monster coming from the distance. To make it worse, the source of the sound came right from the center of the Windsay Valley.
“But isn’t this place supposed to be safe??”
Out of instinct, he looked around for a way out, only to remember that the cave he was staying in only had one exit. Going that way would undoubtedly expose himself to the monster waiting outside.
Or perhaps—
He glanced at the inter-plane portal, only to notice that it was gone.
Did the portal fail again? But the professor is still there!
Threatened by two problems at once, he desperately worked his brain to think of an idea.
He reached out a hand to cover the restless Alien Eye so that the pulsing light didn’t keep annoying him. But as soon as he touched the object, the light intensified until it became blindingly bright as if he were holding onto a bomb about to explode.
He didn’t have time to do anything because he had lost control of his body. Precisely speaking, he could no longer feel his body.
Terrified, he found his spirit floating away from the cave, through the ceiling, and in an unknown direction. At the same time, he felt his thoughts slowing down. The anxiety of getting separated from his professor, the sense of crisis when threatened by a monster... everything was gone. He couldn’t even tell how long he had been drifting.
This was until he reached a glowing barrier that stopped his advance. The barrier was radiating energy, which looked to be the same thing absorbed by the Alien Eye.
The energy slowly covered up his wandering consciousness and pulled him through the barrier like squeezing through a jelly wall. In the next second, he felt an exploding surge of knowledge diving into his head. He was woken up from the suspended state, and he felt even more thirsty for the unknown wisdom presented to him.
Like a piece of blank paper taken by an artist, he wanted to read and embrace everything around him.
He still had his old memories. He was Angor, but slightly different.
He should be getting either excited or terrified when unexpectedly taken to this unknown place, yet he was incapable of any of these. He couldn’t find any of his emotions working as though this particular function was not taken along when his spirit was stripped from his body.
He felt calm. Exceptionally calm. He did not, or could not, care about the peculiar situation he was in. He even felt this unknown place to be somewhat familiar, that he should have come here a long time ago.
He was unable to physically sense anything. Other than this, he was fine. He could reach his mind space, his soul, and his spirit. But unfortunately, he couldn’t actually channel mana out of his mind space and unleash cantrips.
Following either an unknown guidance or his own will, he moved forward. Something told him that the strange energy that took him here was waiting for him.
He wasn’t walking or flying. Instead, his spirit pushed forward as he wanted it to. Wherever he wanted to be, he was there.
Slowly but surely, he came in front of a chunk of glowing energy. Well, he couldn’t see it. But he knew it was there.
Without asking any questions or wondering why he was here in the first place, he patiently waited beside the energy source. Perhaps the energy wanted something from him, or perhaps it invited him here for no reason at all. Again, it didn’t matter.
People had known many mighty presences that tended to do either good or terrible things without meaning them. Angor was here to find out what awaited him.