Now that Angor thought about it, he got his hands on the Dream Whelk but never used the item much, because each time he did, he would attract someone’s attention, meaning, wizards who were drawn to the whelk’s Mystery aura.
Since he just got a new idea about how to use the whelk, he planned to get to it immediately.
As a precaution, he took the dead body of the prisoner who managed the “true lucid dream” earlier and headed all the way into the far wilderness away from Moonwater City, before taking out the Dream Whelk.
After making sure he couldn’t sense anyone in his detection range, he injected a trace of nightmare energy into the whelk and aimed it at the corpse.
He was more than glad to see the body “responding” by sending another energy ray back at the whelk.
“Got it!”
He quickly channeled Dream Walk and saw a dream bridge floating above the corpse.
He didn’t know what to expect from the dream of a dead body, so he asked Toby to guard him before moving toward the dream bridge.
And he immediately knew something was off.
The strange wilderness, which would come into his view every time he went for people’s dreams, did not show up. He intentionally remained at the dream bridge for a while, but he did not see the empty wilderness.
“Am I wrong? It has nothing to do with my nightmare energy... It only appears when the target is alive?”
He then decided to move on while trying to recall what kind of dream this prisoner was having before death. As he remembered, this man was standing on top of a large mountain while “painting” a new world at his free will. There were the Sun, flourishing trees, and running water... until Angor killed him before he could create any human partners.
That mountain was a pretty impressive landmark. Angor believed he could easily find the prisoner if he headed there.
He could not. The whole dream was different from what he saw earlier.
The sky was gray and dim. Only several patches of weeds were growing on an empty, colorless wasteland.
Upon entering the dream, Angor ended up on top of a lone corpse lying in the open.
It took him a moment to realize that this wasn’t the prisoner’s dream, but the “empty wilderness” he expected earlier.
There was nothing around to look at, and since he was fixed to the corpse and couldn’t move around, he had no choice but to quit.
“So I can’t re-enter his dream by using his dead body? His physical form must have been cut off from his dream upon death. But... whatever is that place?”
In his previous Dream Walking attempts, he could always see the wilderness but without stepping in it since he couldn’t freely wander off the dream bridge. Was it the Dream Whelk that allowed him to go there?
He decided to try something new.
He found a random rock from the ground and used the Dream Whelk to “hypnotize” it. Then he “Dream Walked” into the rock’s dream.
He couldn’t see anything. While being together with the rock, there were thick grasses around that completely blocked his view.
He tried again by using a bigger stone this time.
As he thought, the stone had appeared at the same wasteland. It seemed the Dream Whelk did take him there.
He left the dream again and took out the Church of the Deceased from his bracelet so that he could check Freud’s research notes regarding this subject.
In an article called Bits and Pieces of the Dream Whelk, Freud recorded many details he knew about the item, including its usage, its supposed effects, either proved ones or theoretical ones, as well as many unknown potentials Freud predicted from it.
Angor finished the notes with a confused look.
During Freud’s career, he carefully noted down everything he saw when using the Dream Whelk. He had been to different places like caves, mountains, volcanoes, and floating lands in the sky. There was one time when Freud entered a “strange wilderness” too, but that one looked a lot livelier compared to the one Angor just saw.
“Maybe I did too few tests and accidentally bumped into the same place?”
He spent the rest of the night trying out different objects he could find to see their dreams.
It was always the same wilderness, which was not mentioned in any of Freud’s references.
“The whelk displays different results in our hands? Is it because I’m using nightmare energy to activate it?”
He now had a hunch that the lifeless wasteland he always saw might be an “appendage world” that existed alongside the Dream Realm, like how different planes had appendage planes. His nightmare energy was most likely the cause.
And if his nightmare energy actually created that strange world, maybe he could control and shape it as he liked, which was exactly what Freud wanted to achieve.
“Ugh. Guess I really need to talk to Freud again.”
Since it would take him a few days to get to the Land of Revelation, he planned to head back to Padt Manor and explain his schedule to Leon and Jon.
Under the shimmering moon, he looked at his Gondola and suddenly stopped moving, as something struck his mind.
In Bits and Pieces of the Dream Whelk, Freud did mention pulling vehicle items into dreams, in which case the vehicle could move just fine.
“Can I go around and see more of that empty place if I use my Gondola in the dream?”
However, he had to pull his Gondola into a dream while it was powered up. Otherwise, it would remain as an immobile object like everything else.
...
After Angor promised Toby extra dried fish in their next meal, the bird agreed to be Angor’s temporary driver.
“Move the boat however you like, as long as you don’t bump into things.”
Gondola ran on the energy of magic crystals, so Toby needed only to take the wheel. As soon as Toby learned how to drive the boat properly, Angor activated the Dream Whelk and used it on Gondola.
Freud was right. Gondola was moving in the dream. However, it could only keep heading in a certain direction without turning.
Angor didn’t mind, however, as this was enough to help him see more of the wilderness.
About an hour later, Gondola ran out of power and crashed into the ground, and that was when Angor was kicked out of the dream.
One hour wasn’t much. With that speed, Gondola could probably travel across the entire Goldspink Empire and reach the neighboring country.
Yet Angor didn’t see anything worth noticing in the dream. The same wasteland persisted from start to end. Everywhere was flat without rises and falls. Apart from the random grass and low bushes that all looked the same, the whole place was deathly desolate.