It had been almost a month. When Angor finally saw his professor again, the gentleman was enjoying the sunlight on an armchair near a window with his legs crossed.
Sunders’ clean and tidy suit didn’t look much different from what he usually had. The same went for that pair of black leather boots, white gloves with lace trimmings, a traditional top-hat, and a short walking cane.
But Angor noticed something wrong as he approached his professor.
Sunders had his hat worn in an uncomfortably weird way that the brim completely hid his eyes, and Angor could only see the man’s nose bridge and what was below. And when Angor got close enough, he saw a single strand suspended beside Sunders’ ear.
He thought it was the chain on Sunders’ monocle, but then he realized that the strand appeared to be too dark, and it wasn’t metal.
“I’m here, sir,” he said in a small voice.
Sunder spoke without looking up or revealing his eyes, “Sit down. I’m going to check your illusion items, and while I’m at it, you can tell me how you made them. I’m not asking about your crafting progress, but your mindset and other conditions when making them. I need to see whether the different forms of manifestations have anything to do with these factors.”
Angor nodded.
Sunders spoke again without moving, “You have something to say, no?”
“Um, yes.” Angor wanted to ask how Sunders had been doing these days, but he suddenly found it difficult to bring this up, so he changed his mind. “I studied Narda’s Vision, sir, and checked the crystal I received from Spotty.”
Sunders gave Angor a surprised look.
When he did, Angor suddenly grew too astounded to talk when he finally looked at his professor’s eyes, as well as a terrible scar that connected the gentleman’s forehead and cheek, while going through his right eye.
Sunders was wearing a black eye patch that covered his eye. The black strand Angor saw earlier was, in fact, the string of the eye patch.
“Professor, your eye—”
Sunders casually removed his top hat and placed it on the desk, allowing Angor to better look at the jagged scar that was pulsing with ominous energy.
“A small cut that I got in the Nightmare Realm,” said Sunders as he ran a finger along the edge of the scar.
From the simple words, Angor wondered what kind of savage fight Sunders went through.
The scar was still bleeding slowly. As Sunders spoke, another drop of fresh blood was traveling down his cheek.
“The energy residue makes it hard to heal,” Sunders explained.
Angor more or less understood why Sunders remained inside the study for a month. The scar suggested that Sunders was in a bad shape upon returning.
“What’s inside the treasure vault, sir? Did you run into monsters?” Angor tried to ask.
Sunders stayed silent for a while before speaking, “I saw nothing.”
“Nothing? But your wound—”
“That’s the biggest problem. I was hurt by ‘nothing’.” Sunders let out a bitter chuckle. “At least now, I’m sure that area is not an outer section. As for whether it belongs to the core... I don’t know for now.”
Sunders waved a hand to stop Angor from asking more. “We shall speak of it next time. I already noted the coordinate. I’ll return the wooden lock to Irisa later, and you no longer have to worry about the Crimson Crown.”
Angor nodded to comply since there was no way for him to change Sunders’ mind in this matter.
“Are you going to be okay? I mean, that wound...”
“The scar is healing, but very slowly. As for my eye... I told Flora to help me look for a new eye that I can use.”
Sunders looked a little depressed. He would like to keep his hazel eyes because such color was the signature iris color of his family, but he didn’t have a choice right now.
“Enough about me. As far as I know, Narda’s Vision isn’t something you can learn in such a short time. Rumor has it that the commonly acknowledged number one alchemist, which is ‘The Fool’ Muse from Floating Mech City, also spent one month studying this cantrip. I see you’re just as talented as him.” Sunders put on his hat again. “So, what did you learn about the crystal?”
Despite the compliment, Angor knew that he fell much behind master alchemists like Muse and Mithra. He could progress so fast all thanks to his axes of the universe and hologram tablet.
Of course, he wasn’t going to tell his secret to anyone.
“I can only see uncertain results from this crystal. But judging from these, and added with my own theories, I think your conjecture is correct, sir.”
“My conjecture?”
“It contains inheritable soul-related power.”
As soon as he said those words, Angor could no longer hear the sound of insects and wind around the mansion—Sunders had taken him into the Gravity Garden.
“Be careful with such words.” Sunders looked rather serious. “Anything you say outside can be monitored by the ‘strings of the world’ or the ‘wheel of fortune’. And are you absolutely sure?” Sunders took the crystal in his hand and looked, but he could see nothing other than faint energy pulses.
“I’m sure about the ‘inheritable’ part because all the different results had this in common.” Angor considered his words before continuing, “As for the soul-related power, I inferred it from what I saw in Sleepless City. One of the results also mentioned this.”
Sunders knew that his student killed Hookdick, after which the strange dog absorbed Hookdick’s soul sequence, which meant Angor’s theory was sound.
“I see... But again, do not do anything reckless before learning the exact nature of the power.” Sunders returned the crystal to Angor.
Even if they had not reached a solid conclusion yet, they both realized how powerful the puppy was since it could produce potent power-up items for others to exploit.
Sunders was not the type to regret his decisions, but now, he was truly feeling regretful—he should have taken the spotty dog at all costs.
“Soul-related power...” Sunders pondered. “Whatever it is, Ness can tell us. Let’s go and see this old friend of mine.”
Without tarrying, Sunders took them out of the Gravity Garden. Meanwhile, Angor noticed that Sunders just used a small trace of nightmare energy to mask that scar. To outsiders, Sunders’ face now looked as graceful as ever.
On their way to the Valley of Souls, Angor tried using Narda’s Vision on the five demon falcon statues so that he could see how the cantrip worked on illusion items with manifestations of Mystery inside.
A moment later, he returned the items to Sunders with knitted eyebrows.
“How did it go?” Sunders asked while relaxing at a comfortable spot on the Gondola.
“I... I only saw one variable out of the calculations.”
“Then this ‘variable’ should be the unknown manifestation we’re looking for?”
Angor nodded slowly. “It should be. But it was strange. For items with few variables, Narda’s Vision can always give me the exact result describing what the item does. However, there’s only one variable for each statue, and I got no such result.”
“So this single variable prevented your calculation from reaching the correct result? Now that we know nothing about the illusion items, they might hold more value than we thought... or the opposite.”
This meant the manifestations of Mystery were even more “mysterious” than Spotty’s crystal. For the crystal, they at least figured out a general result that suggested its properties. Yet they knew little about the manifestations, which meant anything was possible.
I wonder if more experienced alchemists can tell me something... Angor thought to himself.
He did not have much time to think about it because Ness’ Valley of Souls was already in sight.