Wait... was it really Angor who took the item from Silver Palm? I have been providing the wrong clue to others?
Jebra didn’t find this to be possible before. For one, Angor did stay at Ferran during the activation of the dimension entrance. According to Haku, Angor was doing an “alchemy seclusion” at that time.
“But... the item went missing as soon as he disappeared from our view. Why? Could it be that he had been waiting to leave Ferran Land to test out the item?”
His suspicion grew heavier until he found it VERY necessary to check on Angor more carefully.
With this in mind, he immediately summoned his abyss whale to send a message to his teacher. But when he failed to reach Flunza for some reason, he told his whale to talk to Sliv instead. To be precise, he sent the message to Sliv’s mount, Brigitte, who was supposed to be still watching over Devil’s Water for the moment.
Since he didn’t confirm his suspicion yet, he only asked Sliv to get in touch with Flunza and find help from a Prophet to directly check whether Angor possessed that Mystery item.
Soon, Sliv got back to him by using a long-range communication tool invented by Floating Mech City that was capable of establishing “real-time” conversations.
Jebra quickly slotted two magic crystals in his device and accepted the call.
“Mister Sliv, everything I told you was uncertain because there are many of Angor’s actions I can’t explain yet. This is why we need a Prophet to help us examine the details,” Jebra spoke into the transmitter politely.
Sliv held his chin.
“No need for that now. Since you sensed Mystery energy from his position, I’d say it’s definitely him we should go after. You shall go and stall him right now. I’ll also use a plane passageway to head there.”
Jebra nodded. He wasn’t sure he could catch up with Angor’s speed, but there should be no problem with Sliv’s help.
“Got it. I’ll go to Saint Sem right away.”
“And remember to keep your abyss whale outside. I need it to locate your position.”
Jebra nodded and summoned his whale in its full size which was enough to cover up most of the sky above Freighting Town. Luckily, there weren’t many people to look at it at midnight.
While Jebra was heading toward Angor’s position, Sliv quickly summoned a plane passageway and dived inside. He was planning to retrieve the Mystery item first before reporting the matter to Song of the Deep so that he could earn more credit, and hopefully, amend some of his mistakes for losing the item.
What they didn’t know was that their action had helped Angor avoid more suspicion because a Prophet who got “blocked” by Crimson Aegis would only further confirm Angor’s “crime”.
Sliv still needed some time in his plane passageway travel, but Jebra arrived at Saint Sem City earlier, which was not very far from Freighting Town.
Unlike Freighting Town, the capital city with over a million population was just as lively as when it was day, as most of the cultured folks preferred finding their “artistic inspiration” in the middle of the night.
Jebra’s giant whale soon became the center of attention. Almost immediately, the invasion of the monster was known by the entire city, and everyone had stopped in their tracks to look upon the terrifying presence that would bring an end to their nation.
Some of the citizens had completely forgotten about their gentle visage of civilized artists and were screaming madly like scared little girls.
Inside a brightly-lit chamber in the royal palace, Angor was casually inspecting a whelk at his seat while two more people—Freud and Neya—were sitting at the other side of the room, chatting and exchanging their stories.
But unlike Freud, Neya would occasionally cast several uncertain glances at Angor as well as the item he was holding.
The whelk appeared as an ordinary black whelk one would find on a beach. However, this one was made prettier by several bright yellow spots and a crescent-shaped mark that looked like stars and the moon in the dark sky.
The particular look of the whelk was the reason why Neya took it from the “confiscated items” found by her knights.
She never thought that it was a Mystery item. Even though the Dream Whelk was regarded as a rather useless item, it still sold for 10,000 crystals at Sky Auction several years ago. To Neya, the money was something she’d never earn normally in her entire life.
When the rightful owner of the whelk showed up in the palace along with a famous alchemist, the court wizards tried to resist with the help of a hundred guards who were mostly supernatural humanoids. But against Angor’s illusion, they instantly became helpless victims ready to be maimed.
Since neither reason nor strength favored her, Neya had no choice but to step into the open and hand the Dream Whelk to Angor while unwillingly offering her words of flattery to leave a good impression.
Of course, she felt greatly annoyed upon learning that she just lost a Mystery item. However, she still found the outcome to be acceptable. News regarding Angor’s achievement already reached the Land of Revelation. To Neya, offering the whelk to such a genius to gain his trust was a good deal.
Besides, she couldn’t use the whelk anyway.
Meanwhile, Angor had been using different types of energy on the whelk to see which one could activate the item. According to Freud, the whelk had to receive “energy of dreams” to show its true effect. But Freud could no longer do such a thing as a dead soul, and there was no way Angor could study how to control “dream energy” any time soon, so Angor had to use what he could and hope for a result.
He had tested through ordinary elemental energy, illusions, and even “gourmet energy” produced by a piece of Mana Bread, which all ended up as a disappointment.
As he believed the item would stay useless in his hand for a long time, he was more than glad to see a reaction when he applied nightmare energy onto the whelk.
Putting the connection between Dream Whelk and nightmare energy aside, he would like to try out what the whelk could do, and more importantly, witness its Mystery properties up close so that he might learn something.
“It only works on dead objects, right?” Angor asked Freud. The whelk was pulsing with special energy ripples that suggested the presence of a Mystery treasure.
“Yes.” Freud nodded. “Any object as long as it isn’t considered to be a life form. The dream effect does not work on humans, but it CAN help you sleep better, somehow.”
Angor looked around the room and set his gaze on the round table in front of him.
“Let me try this...” He muttered as he moved the whelk closer to the table.
Following Freud’s instructions, he sensed Mystery energy completely covering up the table, before it vanished, leaving no noticeable results behind.
“Did I succeed?” He gazed at the table which was... still a table.
“Yes, you did.”
“Do I have to, like, start dreaming and check if anything’s going on? Will the table show up in my dream?”
Freud shook his head. “You can’t see it like that.”
“Why?”
“A dream belongs to a special realm that we do not know how to reach yet,” Freud explained what he learned during his apprenticeship as the “dream reader”. “Ordinary dreams are made of fragments of your memory, and they are not consistent enough for us to investigate. Occasionally, people come up with ‘consistent’ dreams when they sleep. Yet... no one had ever succeeded in entering the realm of dreams freely. There’s so much we still don’t know about dreams.”