Angor still felt bad for what just happened to him, but the outcome wasn’t too bad—at least he could forget about repaying Jebra’s “token of friendship” from now on.
Moreover, the incident helped him cleanse his name because Sliv just proved his guiltlessness with that Detect Truth spell.
“Are you alright, Mister Padt?” Freud asked when he saw Angor deep in thoughts. “You were hurt by Mister Sliv’s power, no? I saw you vomiting blood...”
He never knew that Angor was pretending it.
“I’m fine. Do you know about Sliv?”
“Sort of.” Freud nodded. “I heard a lot about him back at the Tower of Hurricane. He’s ‘Sorcerer of Big Fish’ Sliv, a master of Summoning and Sea Manipulation. The fish under his feet is one of his summoned creatures. It’s named ‘Brigitte’.”
“‘Sorcerer of Big Fish’...” Angor carefully kept that name in his mind.
Freud thought and decided not to ask what happened between Angor and Sliv. The answer probably did not concern a dead man like him.
Swiftly, Gondola took them back to Freighting Town. When they arrived back at the orphanage, Angor used his spirit to sense the illusion and found Tulu sprawl-sleeping at Alda’s playground with a terrified expression, probably having a bad dream. The small soul of Alda was sitting on a rocking horse nearby while curiously observing the illusion around him.
Angor stepped into the illusion and suddenly stopped moving when he noticed that an illusion monster he deployed around one of the entrances was no longer there.
The whole illusion around the orphanage was well and intact, apart from several illusion nodes that created a “flying face” ghost, which had been destroyed.
It should be at least a level-2 apprentice who could break his illusion nodes, which meant Alda, Sunny, and Tulu couldn’t have done it.
“Jebra...”
Angor felt his mood worsening when he once again thought about his shady stalker. Now that he would act more carefully, he decided to keep his spirit feelers activated so that he could detect anything hiding around him in time.
He was now certain that Jebra was following him to look for clues about Lucas’ skull. He was also wondering what happened to the skull. When he was escaping from the dark island, both the Leviathan and “God of Seas” Flunza were watching over the place. Who was so brave as to steal the skull under their noses?
Other than being curious, Angor had decided to completely stay out of this matter since it had nothing to do with him. He did wish to find out which lucky guy had inherited the great treasure, but he wouldn’t go after it anymore.
He heard footsteps coming from the orphanage building and saw Sunny, still in her bright red skirt and holding that sharp putty knife, floating toward Freud.
“Mister Dison!”
Freud put a hand on her head and smiled gently.
Angor sighed and would like to return to the matter at hand. “You have ample time for get-together later. For now, follow me, Freud.”
Without minding Tulu and Sunny, Angor deployed his Nightmare Domain and pulled Freud inside.
Sunny was a bit annoyed when Angor took Freud from her, but she had no choice but to go away because she had no hope of opposing Angor.
Inside Angor’s Nightmare Domain of an elegant castle, Angor and Freud took their seats and looked at each other, while the other nightmare creatures, including the musician teacups, toy soldiers and a rainbow dragonfly, had their fun in various ways, either away from Angor or on Angor’s head.
At first, Freud thought this was another of Angor’s illusions. But then he found it hard to believe that all these lively and frisky creatures could be the result of an illusion.
“Is-is this place real or...” Freud failed to hold back his question.
“It’s both real and fake.”
Freud didn’t understand the odd answer but didn’t question further. He only thought that Angor didn’t want to tell him.
The truth was, even Angor wasn’t sure whether he could consider the Nightmare Realm or the projected monsters to be real.
“Where we are is not important, let’s talk about you.” Angor sat upright and looked at Freud in the eyes. “I have to leave the Land of Revelation soon. Before doing so, I need to settle something with you. Back in the purification garden, I promised to set you free as soon as I got the Dream Whelk. It’s time to fulfill those words.
“You’re free to go.”
Freud showed a puzzled look as he no longer knew what he should do. He had lost all purposes of life when he died. Resting in Angor’s “illusion room” while reading the fiction books had helped him forget about his condition somewhat. By writing research papers for the Dream Whelk, he was trying to find a new goal for his life, or afterlife. But he had yet to determine a future goal for real.
Now that Angor granted him freedom, he was at a loss of what to do.
“You don’t look happy about it?”
Freud showed a painful smile and explained his concern.
“Your future?” Angor knuckled a table nearby. “I’ve seen some of your papers and saw you’re interested in taking over someone’s body. That seems to be a good direction. With a new body, you can either begin your life anew or continue with what you were doing before.”
“But it’s too hard to find such a body that is 100% in tune with my soul. Not to mention that I need to take someone talented to pick up wizardry. It’s already unlikely to find new talents these days, so you see...” Freud shook his head and chuckled.
“Unlikely, but not impossible, right?”
“Yeah. I’ll probably spend the rest of my afterlife traveling everywhere while looking for such a body. And I need to constantly spend time recovering soul energy while at it so that I don’t vanish too soon. I wonder if I can succeed before I perish again.”
Unlike Greya, who was already a powerful truth-finder wizard, an average apprentice like Freud would have a very hard time taking over someone’s vessel.
“Mister Padt... can I stay with you?” Freud suddenly asked.
“You know you won’t be ‘free’ in that case, no?”
“I meant to finish my ‘Dream Whelk Project’ for real, Mister Padt. I’d like to keep at it. Something tells me that I can achieve greatness if I go down this path.”
“That’s your ambition for the future?”
“I don’t know, but I got the feeling that I’m supposed to do it.”
Angor gave Freud a meaningful gaze. “Do you really think it’s possible to combine dreams with illusions?”
Freud wanted to say yes but did not, because he didn’t have proof.
“As I said before, your theory is fascinating but unlikely. Compared to this, have you read the book I gave you earlier?”
Angor was referring to Lucid Dream. A lucid dream meant a dream during which the dreamer was aware that they were dreaming and could somewhat control the dream to a certain extent. When Freud mentioned performing alchemy practice in dreams without consuming alchemy materials, Angor immediately thought about “lucid dreams”, which would help with his alchemy attempts greatly should they make this happen.
But again, he didn’t see any means of mixing his illusions with the Dream Whelk at the moment. By giving Freud Lucid Dream, he hoped that Freud could find new inspirations from the book and come up with something new.
“A lucid dream isn’t hard to achieve for wizards who study dream-related arts, Mister Padt. I... once attempted working on a lucid dream using the Dream Whelk. But no, it didn’t go well.”
“Why?”
“It’s too random. When I put an item to ‘sleep’ and manage to enter the same lucid dream as it, I can never find where to find the item in the dream.”
“Then why do you think dreams can work with my illusions?”
“Because you’re the creator of an illusion, Mister Padt. You can control everything in an illusion, and if you can figure out how to do the same when hypnotizing an item, you’ll be able to set up what is going to happen in the dream. Such dreams will be more useful than many of the known Mystery items out there!”
Angor shrugged. “This is all pointless unless we can find where to start.”
“Not exactly, Mister Padt. I just thought about an idea we could use.”
“What is it?”
“I once said that you can only use ‘dream energy’ to activate the Dream Whelk. But... you just used something I didn’t recognize to make it happen in Neya’s room. I didn’t ask about it when Neya was looking, but now, can you tell me what you used back there?”