Angor took the zoning crystals he prepared to the tunnel. Before getting to work, he couldn’t help but peek inside the nightmare tunnel with his extended vision.
Nothing. It was all dark.
“Maybe he’s gone?” He tried to comfort himself.
It should be good news to him. Yet for some reason, he felt disappointed.
Following the space coordinates he worked out the other day, he placed down the zoning crystals one by one while trying his best to concentrate.
With the help of Gondola, he soon finished distributing the crystals, some of which had to be suspended in midair.
Any monster or anything that showed up untimely from the tunnel could easily ruin his effort by disrupting the crystals. Fortunately, the tunnel did not attract any monsters from the Nightmare Realm.
He checked the shiny objects that surrounded the tunnel-like stars. Once he made sure every piece was in its rightful place, he lifted his right hand.
As the green sigils grew restless, a giant wave of nightmare energy gathered upon his right hand like a tornado.
Following the instructions in The Mystery of Nightmare Domain, Angor concentrated the energy into several small spots and shot them toward the zoning crystals.
Upon receiving the energy, the crystals began shining even brighter and illuminated the entire nightmare tunnel with their light.
“Now!” Angor moved his arm and pointed his hand in another direction.
All nightmare energy was immediately pulled into the green sigils, leaving his immediate vicinity empty.
“This is my chance. Please tell me I don’t need to study Black Requiem for real...”
One by one, the zoning crystals began releasing transparent threads that slowly connected with each other.
The process was not slow, yet Angor felt as if every second were an eternity.
To his great relief, it went smoothly. More pieces of crystals were now bound by the threads of each other, which was exactly what was described by the instruction.
This meant he successfully made his plan happen by using his right hand in place of Black Requiem.
Like a newly-weaved spider web, countless threads came into being and began spreading from the crystals until they covered up the entire nightmare tunnel.
It was time for the final step. The threads would form into a new plane barrier and completely separate the nightmare domain from the nightmare tunnel.
This wasn’t Angor’s job as he simply had to watch it happen. But in the meantime, he had to be prepared. Once the dream wasteland finally became an independent nightmare domain, he had to step up and claim it under his control before the domain drifted off and joined something else. In this case, if Angor failed to grasp it in time, the nightmare domain would slowly move toward the Dream Realm and be lost in it.
...
The separation process took over half an hour, which was a lot longer than the last time.
Anyone who came and bothered him right now could completely nullify everything he did up until this point. Thankfully, it did not happen.
As soon as the connection was removed, Angor felt the dream wasteland changing greatly. Everything went fake and ethereal as if the dream had become a more ordinary dream, where the dreamer could not fully grasp what was happening in it.
No doubt that the dream wasteland would join the Dream Realm and become another common drifting dream at this rate.
Angor sure would like to prevent that. Although it wasn’t time for him to act yet.
After being removed from the dream wasteland, the nightmare tunnel became a black hole that helplessly floated in place.
Anyone who entered the tunnel right now would end up somewhere between the Dream Realm and the Nightmare Realm.
Like before, Angor couldn’t see anything inside the dark tunnel. However, he believed he heard something from it. It sounded like a strong wind blowing over the entrance of a hollow cave or the low-pitched growling of an animal.
He simply stood in front of the tunnel and waited.
The zoning crystals floating around the tunnel suddenly burst into fragments one after the other before attaching onto the edge of the black hole and began to close it off.
Seeing this, Angor kept his best guard up.
According to The Mystery of Nightmare Domain, when the crystal shards were filling up the nightmare tunnel, the “main body” of the nightmare domain would soon show up.
As he counted 30 seconds in his mind, a glowing sphere suddenly rushed out of the black hole.
That should be the main body he was expecting. For a short period of time, the sphere would randomly float around the dream wasteland in its current shape. And when it disappeared, it meant the dream wasteland had fully merged with the Dream Realm.
As soon as Angor saw it coming, he leaped into the air and grasped the sphere without a second thought. With a swift move, he pressed the sphere onto his chest.
The book mentioned many risks for undertaking a nightmare domain, although Angor had enough reason not to worry about them too much.
When accepting his nightmare domain of a castle hall, the “bewitching illusions that might take him into an eternal slumber” never came. Sunders said that this might be an advantage brought by his Nightmare Form.
Angor expected to go through the same experience again by absorbing a new nightmare domain without meeting any trouble. And even if this wasn’t the case, he wouldn’t hesitate to accept the challenge for the sake of Jon.
The first thing he felt after “consuming” the sphere was unbearable itchiness around his shoulder bone. And it made him dizzy.
“Oh God... just like the last time.”
When Sunders helped him accept the “castle” nightmare domain, the itchiness was the only thing he suffered from before everything settled down. He thought he just had to endure a bit longer to achieve his mission.
But it didn’t go as he expected. Unlike the last time when he was put to sleep, he felt his mind clearer than ever.
He could tell that the sphere was roaming inside a strange place in his body. Like his mindspace and soul space, he couldn’t tell exactly where it was. But it existed.
The sphere was not the only thing he could feel. At the same time, he saw his old nightmare domain being in the same place.
The dream wasteland was bigger both in size and power. Telling from the examples provided by The Mystery of Nightmare Domain, the smaller domain would fuse itself into the new, bigger domain, thus allowing Angor to control a stronger and more potent nightmare domain in the end.
But this did not occur. The two different presences floated along each other peacefully.
Confused, Angor inspected the two different nightmare domains carefully.
“The ‘castle hall’ was originally an interlayer between the Nightmare Domain and the wizarding world, while the dream wasteland is between the Dream Realm and the Nightmare Realm...”
Perhaps these two nightmare domains were of completely different natures, and that they could not mix with each other.
As Angor feared that he would ultimately fail, he fully woke up from his trance and saw the glowing sphere emerging from his chest and was about to wander off again.
Desperate, he quickly used his right hand to capture it.