Jebra remained speechless for a while.
He became a level-3 apprentice not long ago. Telling from the common practices displayed by other apprentices with similar potential, he expected to get stuck for two or three years before breaking his limit and reaching the next phase, or one year, if he was REALLY lucky.
But he definitely wasn’t expecting to make it happen so early. When casting his “bubble camouflage”, he paid extra attention to the mana flows in his body and was sure the increase in strength was real.
He wasn’t good enough to actually break the limit yet, but... he felt close enough. At this rate, he didn’t need much meditation and training to become an intermediate level-3.
After getting over the uncontrollable joy that overwhelmed his mind, he began to seriously consider how this had happened.
Half a day ago, when he was casting his camouflage to stalk Angor, he was sure his mana level was still at the elementary phase of level-3. There was no way he gained such a giant boost out of nothing within 12 hours.
He slowly looked up and checked the cloud of mist. That must be the reason.
“That dream... or was that an illusion? I wasn’t myself back there. I was a helpless fisherman who died in a storm in a minute.
“Then there was that music... there’s something about it.”
He suddenly felt strange energy signatures that suggested strengthened water elements.
Following the source of the power, he saw all the mermaids and mermen on the giant turtle had closed their eyes. They then woke up again one after another, and every one of them showed their own confused look.
“That-that was horrible... How was I spooked by a storm like that?” a merman muttered.
So they went through the same thing... Jebra thought.
The exceptional energy signature wasn’t caused by the merman guards. It was the princess alone. As Jebra watched her slowly opening her eyes, he felt all the water elements in the area flustering again.
Jebra knew that the mermaid could somewhat control water elements using her voice, but not as proficiently as this. She wasn’t even singing just now—she awoke the elements around her just by moaning slightly.
In order words, her water-based ability had been greatly powered up.
This had further proved it for Jebra that the strange music was very special and potentially beneficial to them all.
He looked at the mist cloud passionately and hoped to hear the music once more, which never happened.
After another hour, the alchemy omen Jebra was looking forward to finally occurred. Heavy moisture rose from the sea and completely covered an area of a thousand square kilometers under impenetrable fog, which appeared even worse than the foggiest areas at Devil’s Water.
While the mermaids and mermen only considered it as another bad weather, Jebra easily noticed the particular energy in the water flows that suggested an alchemy omen.
“This might be an item related to water...” Jebra pondered. “Why is the omen so large though? Is he crafting a high-tier item? But... isn’t he making a music box?”
Putting Angor’s new creation aside, Jebra would really like to know how the strange music helped him and the mermaid princess gain new strength. A part of him wanted to go up there and seize Angor’s music box immediately, because it might be where the music came from. Yet he couldn’t. For one, he wasn’t confident enough in taking the item from Angor’s hands. And secondly, offending an extremely gifted alchemist like this didn’t sound like a good idea.
Jebra forced himself to give up on this terrible plan. He just earned a good impression from Angor not long ago by paying resources. He couldn’t ruin all of his effort so fast.
Well, unless... he could claim the item and end Angor’s life right here.
Again, he shook his head and gave up. Not mentioning Angor’s skills, Jebra wasn’t sure he could defeat that strange seabird flying around Angor’s position. Even if he could use the advantage of his natural abilities to win the fight, the bird could easily get away using the sequence of gravity.
No matter how he saw this matter, maintaining a good relationship with Angor seemed to be the better bet.
“I can just find him later and ask for a music box. Heh,” Jebra concluded.
However, he didn’t wish to talk to Angor so straightforwardly because Angor would easily notice that he had been a stalker.
“It would be better if I learned about the music from elsewhere...” Jebra looked at the mermaid princess and grinned. “That guy got his new idea from that mermaid. Knowing him, he’d probably offer a token of gratitude to her later. If that’s the case...”
...
In the sky, Angor had already died many times in the alchemy omen. He wasn’t expecting the omen challenge to be the same illusion he just created.
He was now standing in a dark place while facing two doors; one locked and one open.
As soon as he saw these doors, he knew what he should do—he must step into the open one and overcome whatever was alive inside, then the locked door, which was supposed to be the final exit, would open up for him.
There was a golden clock shaped like a sun floating above the doors, where its single arm was slowly turning in a circle.
Angor got this feeling that if he allowed the timer to make a full turn without completing the challenge, the strange dimension would disappear, deeming his new creation as a failure.
As for whether he could leave the challenge in one piece in that case... he didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out the result.
Once again, he walked into the opened door and became the helpless fisherman on a boat who had to find the miracle in the storm and get home alive.
As the maker of the illusion, Angor knew about everything the illusion wanted him to do. He had to find the goddess who was supposed to roam somewhere on the raging sea and end the story.
But until now, the only ending he could reach was always death.
The music box he crafted was, in fact, used for completing the challenge. Yet just like Jebra, entering the illusion had erased most of Angor’s memory. He knew his mission, but he had to start from zero and rely on himself.
The challenge tested his will to survive, his courage without his supernatural powers, as well as the conviction to stay calm in a deadly situation. Of course, he also needed his luck in order to find his target without guidance.
A moment later, he was thrown back to the door after he died again.
He saw a strange light on the sea this time and went for it, but a bad move caused him to fall off his boat and embrace the darkness below the surface.
Again and again, he successfully approached the source of light but failed somewhere on his way.
As the clock’s arm was well beyond the midpoint, his patience quickly ran thin. Upon realizing this, he sat down and took some time to soothe his mind instead of fruitlessly running into the challenge with an agitated mindset.
He entered the door when feeling better and managed to maneuver and find safer routes among the tidal waves this time. Yet there were soon obstacles that couldn’t be bested by one’s wit, which killed him again.
“Darn it. Must I depend on pure luck then?”
There was no way a mortal fisherman could hold on in the deadly storm while looking for some goddess unless he was lucky enough to start somewhere really close to his goal, meaning, being extremely lucky.
Angor was beginning to feel really depressed for digging his own grave. He shouldn’t have added so many disastrous elements in his illusion, only to taste them later. And he should’ve placed the goddess at a fixed spot rather than letting a turtle carry her around!
But he also knew that he couldn’t really control his actions in his “mad state”. He had no choice.