Yorkshire?
Angor immediately remembered someone.
But he had no idea why Sunders would want to know about someone completely irrelevant in the situation.
To Angor, this name didn’t mean too much. It referred to someone he had almost forgotten.
“I do, sir. But I don’t know if it’s the same person you’re asking about.”
“Tell me who you’re thinking about. Is it someone from your family?”
Angor nodded and before he could answer, he felt his right hand becoming heavy.
In the next second, a strong wind began to blow inside the narrow room. It didn’t take long before the wind grew so deadly that a small cyclone had covered up the entire room.
The wind easily snuffed out the candle and put them back into complete darkness. They could not see or hear anything apart from raging current sweeping past their ears.
“What’s going on, Angor?” Sunders called through their Spirit Bond, a little anxiously.
“I don’t know! Where did this wind come from?”
“This is not wind. It’s... an energy storm! An ener-om, centered-you—” Sunders’ spirit power connection was getting unstable.
“Energy storm?!”
Angor knew what that was. This was usually caused when a stable energy source collapsed on itself for some reason.
Energy storms were atypical abnormalities in the wizarding world. It often happened when the balance of primal mana or elements was disturbed.
The Devil’s Water was constantly invaded by deadly weather just because of the existence of unending energy storms. It was rather easy for fierce natural climates to keep causing energy storms if the environment was already unstable.
The strength of an energy storm was determined by how stable the energy source originally was, and the amount of energy it held.
Sunders probably meant to say that the current storm was “centered around Angor”. Yet Angor had no idea what he did to cause it. Was the energy around here so fickle that he brought a disaster simply by showing up?
No way!
Thankfully, he was standing right inside the “eye of the storm”, and the storm did not harm him yet.
The ceiling of the simple stone house was soon hurled away, while the cyclone in the house raised into the darkened sky.
While twisting and bending, the cyclone reached all the way to the dome barrier while stirring up all the dark energy in the outer city. It continued on until the darkness slowly grew thin.
“The nightmare energy around us just collapsed, not primal mana.”
Angor suddenly heard Sunders speaking right next to him. The gentleman’s top hat was blown off to somewhere, exposing his short, grayish-green hair. His suit had tears all over them, probably caused by the razor-sharp energy surges.
In the dark, Sunders’ eyes were twinkling brightly as he gazed at Angor’s right hand.
“Your hand has absorbed wandering nightmare energy in this area, which then caused a ‘hollow’ and facilitated an energy collapse.”
While speaking, Sunders grabbed Angor’s wrist and lifted it above their heads.
Following the movement of Angor’s hand, the extended cyclone in the sky also swayed left and right.
“So... it can absorb nightmare energy... but where did the energy go?” Sunders muttered to himself.
It was when his hand was taken by Sunders did Angor notice that he couldn’t control his hand at all. There was a strange feeling coming from his right hand, and it was flowing back into his body.
Following the direction of the flow, Angor reached his mind space.
“Uh, professor? My mana pool is growing. The energy is rushing into it!” Angor panicked when he saw an obvious change in size in his mana pool within a minute.
If one needed to further determine the “phase” of an apprentice of a certain level, the apprentice could be in one of the four possible phases—new, median, senior, and finally, limit-capped.
Angor should be a new level-3 apprentice right now, but this thing that was happening now was rapidly pushing the capacity of his mana pool toward the median level, and it was still going.
And he was terrified.
An overgrown mana pool without a proper foundation could easily break apart, and there was no way to repair it!
Sunders was planning to further observe the strange occurrence so that he might work on a new subject on the spot. But he decided otherwise and unleashed his spirit power as soon as he heard Angor’s words. “Don’t resist. I’ll take you into the gravity garden again.”
Soon, Angor found himself being carried away from the raging energy. The peaceful sight of Sunders’ gravity garden slowly appeared around him.
Toby saw Angor returning and quickly went to greet him. Although the bird decided not to act too affectionately when he saw a second gentleman standing nearby.
Angor tried to examine his mana pool and noticed that it had indeed grown for at least 15%, which usually required half a year to achieve.
He did not find any flaws in the rapid growth yet, which was exactly what made him worried.
While Angor was anxiously checking his mind space, Sunders was gazing at his right hand with a tight frown.
Previously, Sunders thought the strange hand was a giant nightmare stone used for replenishing nightmare energy to something or enhance nightmare illusions. But it just absorbed external nightmare energy and nurtured Angor’s mana pool, which was unheard of.
This didn’t make sense. Someone’s mana pool had to absorb primal mana, and nightmare energy was a completely different form of energy. This was not compatible.
“Is there something unusual in your mana pool?” asked Sunders.
Angor shook his head. “It’s bigger now, and... no, I can’t find anything wrong with it. But I can only look at the outside of my mana pool. I’m not sure if the inside of it is damaged.”
A mana pool gained size and capacity by constant meditation training through which it accumulated more mana. Angor didn’t believe that proper growth could happen so fast without causing any problem. He was afraid that his mana pool was forcefully enlarged like how a water tank was filled with too much water. The pressure of its content might bust it open at any time.
He couldn’t tell by looking at it.
Sunders saw his student growing panicked and chuckled.
“Fifteen percent isn’t that large. Stop scaring yourself. You’ve always been a different case. Do you remember how you turned from level-1 to level-2 so fast?”
After getting pushed into a nightmare tunnel by Twilight, Angor managed to meditate a lot more efficiently, which helped him attain level-2 within a month. He never considered it as anything special because that plane passageway was probably something extremely rare.
Now that something similar happened again...
“Nightmare energy can hasten my training?” Angor asked, surprised.
“Heh. Frankly speaking, I don’t know. Whether true or not, this doesn’t work on me.”
“Even if it’s true... such power isn’t mine. It’s alien...” Angor lifted his right hand and did not feel any better.
“That attitude is not wrong. Only strength gained through effort is truly your own. However, this shouldn’t prevent you from seeking ‘shortcuts’ when you can find one. As long as you can comprehend how the foreign power came into being, it won’t be difficult to master it. Otherwise, it might become a giant obstacle on the path of truth.”
Angor slowly nodded despite being unsure of whether he was safe.
Sunders shook his head and chuckled again. Angor was the only apprentice he ever met who looked so unhappy about having more strength to command.
“Now open up your mind. I’ll look into your mana pool.”
While still a bit distressed, Angor complied as he welcomed a gentle spirit feeler into his mind space.
Sunders’ examination finished soon.
“... I didn’t find any problem. The foundation is fine and steadfast as it should be. Remember Maya’s words? Your right hand will not bring any serious crisis upon you.”
Angor sighed in relief.
“To make sure,” Sunders continued, “we are to keep an eye on it from now on. Once we settle everything in Sleepless City, we shall go to the abandoned village you mentioned last time. We need to find out whether the nightmare energy in that particular tunnel can affect your right hand in any way.”
The first thought that came to Angor’s mind was that they might run into Akeso, and he didn’t know whether it was a good thing.
Sunders didn’t notice Angor’s worried expression as he was pondering over something at hand. “I can’t let you out for now or you’ll cause more of those energy storms...”
Sunders found the mystery hidden behind Angor’s Nightmare Form getting bigger and bigger. Every time the boy stumbled into something related to the Nightmare Realm, strange things would always happen.
“... Ahem, I should think about those things later. Back to our first question, Angor, who is Yorkshire?”