Angor felt all the hair on his neck stood up and slowly turned around.
There she was, Eureka, looking at him with an intrigued smile.
Angor silently moaned in his mind. Last time he took out the whelk, it was “Sorcerer of Big Fish” Sliv who came and almost attacked him.
And now Eureka.
He wondered if this item was cursed in his hand or something.
Of course, he was fully aware that the root of the problem was his lack of strength. If he were to become a wizard, using Mystery items in the open would no longer attract curious wizards. At least not so easily.
“Is there something you need at such an hour, Miss Eureka?” Angor tried to sound both respectful and antagonistic.
Eureka didn’t mind his attitude and directly looked at the black whelk on Angor’s desk. “Wait a minute. I think I saw that from somewhere before?”
“What you’re thinking is correct, ma’am.” Angor picked up the whelk to let Eureka have a better look at it. “I can sell it to you for 20,000 magic crystals if you are interested.”
“I see. It’s the ‘Whelk of the Dreaming Coast’, huh?”
“The one and only.”
Eureka’s lips twitched as she turned to leave. “Don’t let me see that junk again.”
Angor saw her disappearing into the dark and snickered.
“Junk, you say?”
If Freud’s hypothesis were true, the whelk would probably tower above all known Mystery items when it came to value and versatility, while those who regarded it as “junk” before could only curse their own thoughtlessness.
Even though nothing bad happened, Angor was still unhappy that Eureka was constantly monitoring him.
He cleaned up the broken glass and sat back in front of his reading desk. For now, his only choice was to be modest and endure all the unfair treatment.
He unleashed his nightmare domain to continue studying Dream Walk, and this time, he was using his own nightmare energy.
...
After Angor’s tablet showed him the result of a spell model after computing for half a month, he decided to try building the model in his mindspace for the first time.
There were several requirements for someone to study a cantrip, including fully understanding all the necessary knowledge beforehand and spending lots of time and trial and errors to find the perfect spell model that fitted with their mindspace.
Angor was doing something a little bit different this time. After experimenting on the Dream Whelk using his nightmare energy, he made sure that the nightmare energy could replace dream energy in many cases. This had granted him a huge advantage. By applying nightmare energy to his mind and body, he could “pretend” that he was talented in manipulating dream energy, thus making it easier to construct the model of Dream Walk, similar to how other talents were born to effortlessly learn certain arts.
The tablet already reached a result that suited his axes of the universe rather well. He only had to get to it.
In the worst case, he might suffer from magic backfire, which was manageable since he had lots of potions and medicine for repairing damaged mindspace. The backfire caused by a failed level-2 cantrip would put him in bed for several months at best.
He certainly couldn’t spend two years learning the cantrip by normal means. If his attempt failed, he would make up his mind and give up for now.
He was not so confident when building the frame of the cantrip model since he was far from being a professional dream reader like Freud. He proceeded this way just to see whether he could bypass the restriction by using nightmare energy.
Knowledge was not mandatory when it came to learning low-level cantrips. For example, the summoner he killed—Ghoul Whisperer—didn’t seem to be anyone who loved reading. That man was talented in summoning, and it allowed him to summon a Heart Gorger with ease.
Of course, there were no such shortcuts for more advanced cantrips and spells.
He had finished building the first section of the cantrip model, which went smoothly without crumbling.
Excited, he continued to work on the second part, the third... until the thirty-sixth. The model didn’t require too much effort to sustain, and his mana reserve was more than sufficient.
Besides, using nightmare energy to build cantrip models wasn’t something new to him.
By adding the finishing touch, he successfully readied the model of Dream Walk, or in this case, “Nightmare Walk”, in his mind space.
By using his hologram tablet and his nightmare energy as tools, along with his determination to take a dangerous risk, he made the achievement at an unbelievable speed.
This cantrip was only a weak one among all the cantrips he learned so far, but he never felt so nervous and gratified for his success before.
He checked the flawless cantrip in his mindspace with a hearty smile, then moved to a tiny bed on his desk, where Toby was sleeping.
Casting the cantrip on Toby did not leave any visible effect or wake the bird up. But in Angor’s view, he saw a black passage extending all the way into Toby’s form. It was the “Dream Bridge”, according to Freud’s description.
Meanwhile, Angor felt an extra “sensor” growing on his forehead, which felt quite similar to how spirit feelers worked. He simply needed to reach this sensor inside the Dream Passage to see Toby’s dream.
Just like his soul soil and mindspace, the “dream sensor” didn’t appear to be anything that physically existed in reality. Even so, he could freely control it at his free will.
Upon reaching the sensor ahead, the “Dream Passage” grew wider in his view until his point of view approached a glowing exit like leaving through the entrance of a cave.
He expected to see food or something similar in Toby’s dream. He wasn’t prepared to end up swimming in a sea of smelly salted fish AS Toby.
He couldn’t escape from the horrible experience since he no longer had control of his “body”. The gray wings on the sides suggested that he had clung onto Toby like a bug, just like how Freud explained. In this state, he would travel together with the owner of the dream and see everything, but without being able to communicate or interfere with the dream in any way.
“Guess this is not surprising.” He looked at all the bird feed around him again.
He prepared to leave since there was nothing else to look at here, but before he could, he suddenly felt the world around him trembling.
A giant appeared in front of Toby. And before Angor could see who it was, he heard the towering figure speaking in a familiar voice, “Toooooby...”
Toby happily moved ahead and landed on the giant’s shoulder, which allowed Angor to recognize the thick strands of blond hair on the giant’s head.
It was him. Well, it was “Angor” in Toby’s dream world.
While Toby lovingly nudged “Angor”‘s face, the real Angor silently left the dream and canceled his cantrip.
It wasn’t pleasant to look at himself from such a viewpoint. In fact, if he had time for it, he could clearly count how many facial pores there were on his skin from the said viewpoint.