Telling from how all the Mystery energy came from the strange droplets, Angor thought it was finally time for the Mystery item to show up.
He wasn’t expecting to see the animal here.
Precisely speaking, the “puppy” did not fully come into being yet. It was the water droplet that was slowly turning into the animal’s shape, while the gray droplet inside the water droplet represented the source of Mystery energy, which was now inside the dog.
“This is... a Mystery soul?!” Angor was shocked to feel something familiar yet again.
Is this dog actually the Mystery soul brought by Yorkshire, and all the Mystery energy I sensed came from it?
But on second look, Angor noticed that the dog appeared too different compared to the Mystery soul outside Dark Castle. When crafting Prelude to Rebirth, the soul that appeared in the sky above Dark Castle looked like a deadly devil straight out of hell, while this puppy... not so much.
However, the Mystery energy released by this spotted puppy felt deeper and massive.
Back at Dark Castle, the Mystery soul shaped like a devil only existed in the sky for a short period before it went into Angor’s revolver. He wondered if this dog was going to dive into something nearby. Or could a Mystery soul exist without a “container”?
He couldn’t tell since he didn’t know much about Mystery items yet.
Perhaps, Mystery souls could wander around on their own just fine, or perhaps they could even gain self-consciousness. He just needed to wait and see.
Slowly, the puppy’s form became solid, and the droplets could no longer be seen. Angor would have considered the animal as an ordinary pet dog if he had not witnessed the amazing phenomenon earlier.
He slowly approached the animal and poked it.
The puppy stirred and opened up its twinkling puppy eyes, in which Angor saw his own reflection.
Then the puppy tilted its head as if it was trying to remember Angor’s face.
“Are you the Mystery soul?” Angor tried to ask.
The puppy tilted its head to the other side while its tail wagged so fast that it looked like a propeller.
Angor shook his head helplessly.
He thought the distant voice he heard earlier was actually this dog speaking to him. But it seemed quite impossible now.
Before he could do anything else, everything around him froze up as if time stopped moving.
Next, he saw the bright space around him breaking apart into fragments, including the puppy, which also shattered like a mirror and disappeared.
When he could think clearly, he found himself back at the absolute darkness again, while Toby was still nudging his neck.
The Mystery energy was gone. There was only unending emptiness.
“Was that a dream? Or... was that an illusion created by some Mystery being?”
He did not know the answer, but he clearly remembered every single detail of this “dream”, and it felt pleasant.
“Woof!”
He suddenly heard a bark, which sounded so loud and staggering, as if a hundred dogs were calling from all around him at the same time.
Next, he felt himself being “spat out” by the puppy. He then saw the buildings of the outer city around him.
The animal that just released him was crouching beside him while wagging its tail happily as if it was a trained dog waiting for a treat.
Angor wasn’t sure how to approach the strange dog anymore. He did not feel hostility from it, but this did not help him understand its intentions in one bit.
Was it truly a Mystery soul? Or was it actually a Mystery item that looked like an animal?
He shook his head and looked around to see where the dog had taken him to.
It seemed like he was sitting in the middle of a crossroad. The street lamps were lit, but even if there was light, he knew too little about Sleepless City to tell where he was. Every building looked the same.
But something else helped him ascertain his location. When he looked up, he saw the black vortex right above his position.
According to what he heard, the vortex appeared at the center of the dome-shaped barrier above the outer city, which meant he was probably at the city center right now.
“Hey, Toby, is Lady Greya awake?” he asked Toby.
Toby shook his head and made a “wing gesture” to ask whether he should wake Greya up instead.
Angor shook his head. “No. We’re going to find Nausica now, let her rest.”
He asked because he thought Greya could tell him why the outer city looked so empty. But on second thought, he decided not to, since Greya had been trapped inside the teleportation hall for a long time, which meant she probably didn’t know much more than him.
One of his major tasks for coming here was to rescue Greya for Toby’s sake. Since Greya was sleeping in Toby’s Snowy Feather and looked rather safe, Angor’s next objective was to search for Nausica, and maybe dispose of Hookdick while he was at it.
As for Sunders... With the “blood sphere” in hand, he believed Sunders would have no problem finding him if the gentleman meant to, so he didn’t need to worry about being separated from his teacher.
Before he could go for the sky to check the landscape around him, he felt something dragging him down by biting his trouser cuff.
He had no idea what this puppy wanted from him, but he decided to wait and see since it might be the “Mystery soul”, something potentially powerful. While it was true that the dog didn’t do harm to him yet, he would like to get rid of it as soon as possible.
The puppy did allow him to get so close to Mystery power just now, yet Angor didn’t really enjoy being swallowed. To be safe, Angor would keep an eye on the strange animal or at least keep his distance.
It seemed the puppy did not want him to leave. After biting his pants, it ran to a corner of a random building and barked at him.
Apparently, it wanted Angor to follow behind.
Angor considered and complied.
His irises shrank when he saw what was beyond the corner.
People. Lots of people.
A huge crowd of citizens was looking toward one direction, while Angor could only see their backsides. Their abnormal “wriggling” suggested that they were all possessed by parasites.
“I can’t find many people in the city because they all came here?” Angor muttered to himself. “But why are they so quiet? Aren’t they going to sing and praise someone?”
The puppy nudged his ankle and interrupted his thoughts.
Angor looked down and saw the animal putting up that “rub my head, please!” expression again.
“You wanted to bring me to them?” Angor considered and asked Toby to take out a blood-stained stone he collected outside Brute Cavern’s office building. “Can you tell if someone related to this blood is here?”
The puppy took a sniff and barked at one edge of the crowd.
“Really?” Angor was at a complete loss now. Was this dog dumb or pretending to be dumb? Did it plan to take him to this place all along?
Whether Nausica was here or not, Angor decided to go look among these people since there were so many of them, which meant there was likely someone he knew.
As he approached the crowd, he once again felt it extremely strange that none of them were making any sound. No singing, no dancing.
Are they just here chilling then?
Angor stopped moving when he finally saw someone not far from him “dancing” by twisting his limbs and torso to weird angles.
Using the faint light provided by a street lamp nearby, he saw the dancer’s lips moving as this person praised their queen.
But he couldn’t hear anything. The entire area was deathly silent.
Speaking of street lamps...
There was a lamp right next to him, which was burning on the body oil extracted from a particular monster shark, which helped the lamp stay bright for several years without the need for extra care.
The light did not reach very far, but it did a decent job of repelling darkness in its surrounding area.
However, there was a small patch of shadow on the ground about two meters from his position. There was no other obstacle in sight, yet the light was blocked by something, something that could deflect the course of light yet was invisible to human eyes.