After turning into a “half-undead”, Torras would occasionally feel his mind clearer than ever, which allowed him to remember random pieces of his past life that didn’t make much sense.
He knew that he owned a ship named “The Feral” and that his task was to get out of this dark realm by using this ship.
When he saw Angor heading to his precious ship, he immediately went to stop him. But his instinct of avoiding the strange weapon defeated his urge of getting home. As soon as he saw the gun, his body was escaping before he knew it.
Once again, they spent half a day playing chase.
Angor managed to catch up with Torras many times because Toby’s maximum speed was always faster. Yet he didn’t have any effective means of capturing an undead soul who could teleport away.
He felt his heart sink when Torras was heading to the familiar mountain range again.
Ughhh not this again!
Angor had made up his mind that if Torras hid inside the mountains, he would dig everything up and flip the land over if necessary. He no longer cared about leaving traces behind. With both Infinite Reticence and Crimson Aegis, he was confident that people couldn’t track him so easily.
Same as before, Torras saw his “safe house” and showed a delighted look on his human side. He never considered the possibility that Angor would bust the mountains open just to catch him.
Angor watched Torras going away but couldn’t do anything. He was already looking around to find a good spot to start digging.
But something stopped both of them.
Before Torras could teleport again and hide, another earthquake occurred. Unlike the brief earthquake, this one persisted for a long time and grew stronger to the extent of affecting the dimensional energy in the area.
Angor was surprised by it before he quickly realized that disrupted dimension energy meant hindering Torras’ teleportation ability.
As he expected, Torras had stopped moving in the air and was now looking at him in fear.
“What can you do now, huh?!” Angor grinned and was going to unleash his concentrated grudge for wasting so much time chasing after a slippery target.
If Torras couldn’t teleport, he wouldn’t even need Toby’s help. His “Night Skipper” boots were enough.
Cornered, Torras had no other choice but to confront Angor head-on. But all of his straightforward attacks were easily avoided.
Angor didn’t use Prelude to Elimination yet because he wished to use his white bullets to “purify” Torras and hopefully learn something useful about the island. He only needed to wait for a perfect chance to shoot the bullets.
In order not to miss any shot, he thought about trapping Torras inside his Church of the Deceased. But at the same time, he was also worried that if the earthquake suddenly stopped, Torras would be able to escape again.
This meant he had to end the fight as fast as possible. He didn’t have time to activate the trap now.
Another accident disrupted his plan yet again. It wasn’t the earthquake or anything from the island this time, but it was something from the sky.
Along with the booming noise of shaking lands, the deafening howl of a monster was suddenly heard.
It sounded a bit muffled as if the source of the noise was blocked by a wall. But the unruly rage contained in the noise still reached every corner of the small island.
Next, an unrivaled aura of something came down upon the island.
Both Angor and Torras stopped moving and trembled under the might.
While Angor could still move slightly since he was used to being suppressed like this, Torras was completely helpless—the soul had huddled into a ball at the corner of a mountain.
Angor slowly lifted his head to look above.
He already tried exploring the dark sky before. Just like the sea, he would run into a strange mist barrier if he flew too high, and he would find himself transported back to the starting point.
By that time, he was sure that this place was similar to a confined pocket dimension with no way out other than its designated exit—the teleportation array he found in a mountain cave.
But he just got a different idea. The roaring seemed to be blocked by a door or something, and that might be another exit that would take him out.
However... compared to the exit, he was more interested in the screaming monster.
He heard something similar during the previous earthquake, when the “unknown monster” also howled, albeit in a smaller voice. He almost couldn’t hear it at all when the voice was further obstructed by something.
But now... whatever was roaring put a lot of effort in it, and it wasn’t stopping.
More importantly, he knew this aura. He sensed the same presence when traveling past Silver Palm Isle on The Limpet. Roman even died because of it.
Leviathan.
The question was, why was he hearing the Leviathan’s howl, which seemed to be coming from behind a wall. Could he reach Silver Palm by going through it?
Or was this the same Leviathan at all?
Angor’s instinct told him that his theory was correct. The Leviathan that showed up at Silver Palm was a giant mystery by itself, after which he discovered more and more strange clues and puzzles that seemed to be connected to each other.
Previously, he thought the Leviathan went to the island to give birth or something. Now, however, he had a hunch that the monster was protecting this strange dimension.
As for what was special about this place... he had yet to figure it out. His only clue right now was the shivering soul beside him.
Since Torras couldn’t move, it wasn’t so difficult to send several bullets into his body now.
Upon receiving the second shot, the stable energy inside Torras quickly grew until Torras’ form began to falter and blink.
Without stopping, Angor unloaded all remaining bullets from his gun.
Torras lay sprawling on the ground and was twitching badly while puffs of black smoke were leaving his form.
While enduring the looming aura, Angor took out his Church of the Deceased, created a separate area inside, and placed Torras in it.
The earthquake, the howling, and the suppressive aura of a monster were all continuing and getting worse. Soon, Angor saw tidal waves, which were flushing inland and flattening everything in their path, coming from the dead sea.
The land buckled. The mountains toppled down.
He no longer wished to go after Lucas’ treasure. At this rate, the disaster was going to obliterate the entire island along with the teleportation array inside the cliff cave.
If the array was gone, his only way out was to go through the “door” in the sky, which meant he had to get past the Leviathan’s nose. In worse cases, there might be more entities waiting outside the door.
He was sure the entrance under the well was well hidden from both Song of the Deep and Summerdew Ridge, while the “door” at Silver Palm was probably known by a lot of people by now.
He decided to leave through the magic array right now, just to be safe. There was no point in finding treasures if he couldn’t survive.
He injected more energy into his boots, which slowly dragged him toward the cliff area.
While on his way, he suddenly felt the entire dimension going static for a brief moment, before everything became “alive” again, as if the place were an old machine that was newly powered up.
A single ray of light came down from the sky.
Finally, he saw a door-like entrance above him, which awakened the dead dimension by sending in light.
It should be worth celebrating for getting to see light in this horrible place, but Angor wasn’t in the right condition for that.
The light was soon obstructed by a giant eyeball that was peeking through the door. Vertical pupil, crimson iris... The single eye was directing its unconcealed hatred at the dark land below.
The Leviathan was here.