Angor saw everything around him going blurry before the world around him shattered into small pieces, which floated about and traveled back again, fusing into a different world. The narrow and simple room they were standing in became somewhere full of books and a mind-soothing smell.
Sunders remained still for a while to sense the familiar primal mana in the environment. He then quickly opened his eyes to check Angor’s possessions.
Angor had not opened his eyes yet, probably because his soul still needed time to fully merge with his body. Sunders saw some shapeless things in Angor’s hands slowly absorbing streams of energy with unknown origins before they finally gained physical forms.
Sunders couldn’t understand anything about the amazing art of creation. He felt as if he could receive unknown enlightenment just by looking at it.
Soon, each object carried by Angor had taken on their original looks. Daily necessities, magical plants, the ghoul corpse, and the bucket containing a monster’s residue...
He took everything back!
To Sunders, the true value of Angor’s Nightmare Form escalated even further. From here on, they could well consider the entire Nightmare Realm a rich treasure vault ready to be looted, as long as they could survive the possible dangers.
In fact, Angor already brought back quite a fortune, especially the corpse of a wizard-level monster—the Bloodrose Ghoul.
Today, there were very few known wizard-level monsters living in the southern wizarding region. And each time one showed up, it would attract countless hunters. A wizard-level monster was basically a moving treasure box. One could easily earn nearly a million magic crystals by selling its body parts, and this was without including the rarer components inside a monster’s body such as its bloodline and soul.
The Nightmare Realm was full of such monsters, which suggested unimaginable profit. Despite that, one couldn’t hunt the monsters wherever they wanted. This was because some of the more dangerous places like Nether City had legendary monsters or even stronger beings that dwelled within in those places.
They still needed to have proper plans for future expeditions.
Besides, Sunders wasn’t really interested in hunting monsters. He wished to find lost knowledge, such as Singularity Dispersive Meditation, as well as Mystery treasures.
He still remembered the brief encounter against the “fox harper” in Midnight Sovereign. Back then, the fox’s instrument was such a Mystery weapon, while the fox was only a wizard-level monster.
Sunders believed that what they had already seen of the Nightmare Realm was smaller than a drop in the ocean. To achieve greater goals, Angor had—no, THEY had to grow stronger.
To most wizards, the rank of “legendary” was unreachable. Yet in the Nightmare Realm, legendary monsters were so common that they easily became the prey of others.
...
While Sunders enjoyed the thoughts of their promising futures, Angor finally opened his eyelids, which revealed a pair of eerily crimson irises rather than his original ones.
“ARGH!”
Angor screamed and knelt on the floor as he felt unbearable pain crawling all over his body.
Every inch of his skin was seeping blood. In a matter of seconds, a large blood pool formed beneath him.
Sunders immediately used Truesight to examine Angor’s condition and ascertained the source of it—the strange right hand.
Without using Truesight, one could see Angor’s right hand slowly growing longer as each finger gained an extra segment compared to common human hands.
While under the effect of Truesight, Sunders also witnessed Angor’s muscles and nerves being torn down forcefully as they took on their new lengths. At the same time, streams of foreign blood were generated from this hand and slowly flowed their way into other parts of Angor.
It seemed the “new blood” was the culprit that caused Angor’s bleeding.
The process stopped very soon. Angor felt as if all of his strength were spent in the struggle, and he collapsed on the dark blood pool.
Sunders did not cancel his spell. He continued to watch as the foreign blood spread out before they disappeared into Angor’s own blood veins.
“A bloodline fused with him?” Sunders frowned at the strange sight.
Usually, one needed to go through three steps to accept a bloodline—injecting, attuning, and finally, fusing. What Angor showed just now appeared to be the final step. It wasn’t exactly the same, however, as someone who was fusing a bloodline would always create a small-scale omen like how Gourmet wizards created food mirages.
Also, it was commonly believed by wizards that every type of bloodline, either known ones or new ones, had to be extracted and diluted first before being injected into someone’s body. This process would include other supplementary materials that would facilitate a successful outcome. Yet the foreign bloodline born from Angor’s right hand did not go through any of the necessary steps before heading into Angor’s body.
Apart from wondering whether the bloodline fusion could succeed at all, Sunders failed to comprehend the absence of an omen. As far as he could see, the bloodline did not replace Angor’s own blood. Rather, it worked as an enhancement that strengthened Angor’s mortal blood and body.
Telling from how smooth the fusing appeared to be, Sunders assumed that Angor was very likely to digest the new bloodline without a problem.
Sunders could only think of one explanation as to why the unknown bloodline caused zero negative effect to Angor’s body—the bloodline was originally Angor’s own.
“So that long-haired man I saw was really Angor’s own projection in the Nightmare Realm?” Sunders mumbled to himself.
Angor’s condition stabilized not long after. The bloodline fusion finished without leaving any noticeable side effects.
More importantly, Angor did not receive any bodily changes.
Fusing with a monster’s bloodline would more or less grant someone strange body features, such as horns or wings, or to shift gender like Hookdick.
Sunders also experienced such changes after injecting the bloodline of a Rosegold Nightmare—a monster native to the Nightmare Realm, which went well with his Nightmare Form. Because of this, he had several sharp bone spikes growing on his back. In normal circumstances, he could hide them just fine under his clothes. However, when he decided to fully unleash his bloodline power, all the enlarged spikes and burning black flame would easily turn his image as a gentleman into not so gentleman-like.
Sunders was not a Karabit who were usually fond of dissecting people for academic reasons. Yet right now, he still felt something that urged him to cut open Angor’s body just to enrich his knowledge.
However, he didn’t do it for real since Angor was apparently more valuable when alive and breathing.
“Now get up,” Sunders said as he tossed a simple healing spell. Under the powerful curing effect, Angor’s pale face gradually regained its original vigor.
Angor opened his eyes and immediately looked at his right hand without minding the lingering pain that was still troubling the other parts of his body.
His right hand had stopped growing. At the moment, it looked exactly like the strange right hand he gained inside the Nightmare Realm. Putting the strange glowing green marks and the extra size aside, all five fingers looked delicate and slim as if they belonged to an experienced pianist.
Angor would admit that the smooth and bright skin would easily cause the ladies to be envious of him.
But this was not his hand.
Before they came back, he was hoping that everything would revert to normal once he arrived back at the wizarding world.
The truth proved otherwise.
While silently mourning his lost hand, he suddenly remembered another important matter that he had yet to check.
What would my soul look like right now? Will it still have my normal hand or this bigger one?
The question was like a pest gnawing on his brain. Without minding Sunders’ presence, Angor immediately chanted Spirit Mantra and ejected his soul.
He felt like crying in joy when looking at his tinier but lovely hand that was still attached to the right arm of his soul.
Oh, thank goodness my soul remained “loyal”...
Sunders ignored Angor’s hopping soul and returned to his desk. “Your soul is fine, but there’s more than one ‘transmutation’ on your body. Look again.”
Confused, Angor slowly shifted his gaze from his right hand to the blood pool on the floor where his body remained.