After being spooked by unexpected ghosts and whatnots for many times, Tulu thought he was brave enough to hold his pants against such a thing now.
He was wrong.
As soon as an ice-cold hand went on his shoulder, he felt his heart halting for a moment. And before he could turn around to look at who patted his shoulder, his eyes rolled up.
“Oops...” Angor watched as Tulu fainted on the floor and wondered if he should use an entrance test, like the “death chamber matches”, to recruit. And if such a method was too dangerous... how about a spooky house challenge?
Of course, he didn’t let Freud out just to scare Tulu again. Besides, Freud’s soul looked just like when he was alive. Perhaps Tulu had always been on edge since they came to the orphanage, and Freud’s “greeting” was the last straw.
Freud was also getting embarrassed to see such a thing. He did not float straight through Tulu’s body just to be considerate, but it seemed he still caused a similar consequence.
“Well, Mister Padt?” Freud shrugged.
Angor used Hand of Spell to carry Tulu onto a table nearby. “Doesn’t matter. Consider this another of his apprenticeship lessons.”
Freud would like to ask who Tulu was since he never saw him before, but before he could, a small figure rushed to him and hugged his leg.
“Mister Dison!” Alda cried at the top of his lungs even though he couldn’t produce tears as a soul. “You finally came back to us!”
Freud gently put a hand on Alda’s head. He then shook his head.
Angor looked at Sunny and saw the girl as excited as Alda.
“Alda, Sunny... I’m back.” Freud said something after a long silence.
Sunny immediately broke down, and her original stubbornness was nowhere to be found.
Freud wished to move closer and comfort Sunny as well, but he stopped moving at the edge of the blood array and looked at it with knitted eyebrows.
Compared to ordinary souls, Freud had gathered powerful soul energy to be considered strong. Even so, he knew that he should not touch whatever was coming from the strange blood.
“What is this thing, Mister Padt?” Freud showed a doubtful look as he wondered if it were Angor who placed it here.
“No idea.” Angor shrugged. “I called you here hoping that you can tell me something.”
Freud suddenly got a bad feeling about the whole matter, which was soon confirmed when Angor explained what had happened just now.
“As claimed in our agreement, I’ll set you free as soon as we achieve your end of the deal, which... did not happen,” said Angor.
Freud lowered his head to consider something. “Hold on, Mister Padt, we might still find a solution for this.”
He then looked at the center of the blood markings where Sunny was trapped. “Tell me, Sunny, who did this to you and took the box away?”
“Mister Dison, I-I can’t sense your body. Are you perhaps...?” Instead of answering the question, Sunny just realized something and was looking at Freud in disbelief.
“Aye. I’m dead. Guess we’re of the same kind now.”
“But... but what about your dream?” Sunny glared at Angor again. “Did YOU kill Mister Dison??”
Angor didn’t reply. Instead, he sent a powerful aura to Sunny’s way, which immediately pressed her onto the floor.
This was when Sunny realized that this seemingly harmless man was way deadlier than any of the intruders who came earlier.
“Rightful suspicions and false accusations are different. Be careful with what you say,” said Angor casually.
Freud wished to intervene, but he decided not to when he noticed that Angor’s power was a LOT stronger compared to when they were at the purification garden.
Angor simply canceled his power and told Freud to talk to Sunny since he never intended to “kill” Sunny’s soul.
“No, it wasn’t Mister Padt. On the contrary, he’s my savior.” Freud briefly explained his situation to Alda and Sunny. “We can talk more about it if we have time in the future. Now back to my question, who locked you here, Sunny?”
Sunny took several heavy breaths to recover from Angor’s pressurized aura. “I don’t know their names. They were all like, wearing really thick armor. It was a man with golden armor who drew this thing on the floor.”
“You didn’t see their faces?”
“No...” Sunny shook her head. “They all had helmets.”
“Did you see anything worth noticing on their armors?” Freud continued.
“They were shiny. And there’s a mark of something, a ring made of tree leaves, I think? And there’s this thing inside the ring...”
“A silver-colored bird with really long legs?” Freud finished Sunny’s description for her.
“Yes! I saw a tall bird in that mark!”
By now, Angor knew that Freud recognized those people, which meant they did have a chance of getting the Dream Whelk back.
“Mister Padt,” Freud said as he turned away from Sunny, “I’m pretty sure it’s the order of the royal knights.”
“Royal knights? Are they mortals or supernaturals?”
“The knights themselves are mortals who serve the Central Empire as the most loyal guardians. But... there might be other forces in the Central Empire that involve several apprentices. The so-called ‘court wizards’, as I heard last time. They use this name to display their superiority to other mortal countries.”
“A mortal emperor has business with supernatural apprentices? Just like the Goman King...”
“This is different.” Freud shook his head. “The Goman Kingdom has enough strength that makes it equally powerful as some of the wizard organizations. But here, the Central Empire can only hire lesser, hopeless apprentices who can do nothing elsewhere.”
“I see. It’s still impressive for a mortal empire though. We can count how many of them can pull off such a relationship with one hand. Or two.”
“It’s actually a bit more complicated.” Freud showed a strange look. “Those court wizards are all apprentices from the Tower of Hurricane. In other words, the Tower of Hurricane sent a bunch of apprentices to watch over the Central Empire. By the way, there was a real wizard from the Tower of Hurricane who once belonged to ‘court wizards’. But he’s already dead.”
“Tower of Hurricane...” Angor repeated that name. “You came from that place, right?”
Freud nodded. “Now that you mentioned it, I joined the Tower of Hurricane only after someone among the court wizards discovered my talent. Damn. If what I guessed is right, the b*stards received a message from the Tower of Hurricane that I’m dead, so they came to my old home to search for valuables. That’s how the Dream Whelk got stolen.”
“Which means this is hopeless for us. We can try going after random supernaturals but definitely not people from the Tower of Hurricane. I’d assume they already handed the item to their HQ.”
“No, Mister Padt. I guess you already know that it’s always difficult to ascertain the true effect of a Mystery item. Before this happens, the whelk is only... a whelk. They took it probably because they saw it as some kind of special material. I’d have overlooked its true effect as well if I didn’t accidentally trigger the item with my dream-reading ability. As far as I know, there’s no one from the court wizards who knows how to read dreams. On a side note, I never told anyone from the Tower of Hurricane about the Dream Whelk.”
Angor frowned. “You mean they kept the whelk at the Central Empire?”
“Very likely.”
Freud gave Angor a meaningful look with obvious intentions—he wished that Angor would go to the capital and take the whelk back.
Angor chuckled. “As I remembered, you mentioned that you kept the whelk at ‘somewhere absolutely secure’, and our agreement didn’t involve me taking it from others by force.”
Freud showed an embarrassed look. “But the court wizards are only a bunch of weaklings, and there’s no way they can stop you, Mister Padt.”
“Of course I can do that. But again, that isn’t exactly what we agreed upon. You promised that I would receive the item without unnecessary trouble.”
“I...” Freud considered. “I’m afraid I never went through any soul training while I was alive. If I’m to get it back for you, I might have some problems dealing with them if I run into level-2 apprentices...”
Angor would not give up either since he still wanted to obtain the Dream Whelk.
“This is easy. Let’s amend our agreement.”