Toby ran off to hang out with the Moonlily Fairy, leaving Angor alone in the ice room.
Jon did not appear too different from before. His vitality seemed balanced enough, and that slight smile around his lips never stopped.
“Sighhh...” Angor shook his head.
He thought about telling Jon the dream wasteland, but he changed his mind. He would like to make sure he could actually keep Jon’s consciousness first. He couldn’t get Jon’s hope up and then fail the experiment in the end. Jon probably wouldn’t blame him, but it would still haunt his conscience for a long time.
He simply remained in the ice room and silently looked at Jon’s sleeping form.
For now, he would not enter Jon’s dream and disappoint him.
A while later, he left some Akeso’s blood for the Dream Weaver to eat, before he stepped out of the room.
Auri, who was dressed in a summer maid uniform, was waiting for him outside the door with an expectant look.
“Sir...” Auri looked sad for some reason.
“What’s wrong? Where’s my brother?” Angor wasn’t surprised to see Auri because he already sensed her coming. He kept heading outside while Auri followed closely behind.
“The viscount is out for training. Um, sir, can you please, I mean, take me with you when you leave home next time? I’m supposed to be your personal maid. My job is to take care of your living.”
Angor suddenly stopped moving, causing Auri to bump into his back.
The maid rubbed her nose with an even sadder look.
Auri looked ahead and noticed Angor was now giving her an earnest look. She quickly looked down, blushing.
“Auri, look at Miss Eureka. Does she need anyone serving her by her side?” said Angor.
“But I’m just—”
“Wizards spend most of their prolonged lifespan being alone. Of course, they sometimes need servants and assistants. However, wizards are selfish and egoistic souls. When they want a servant, they would like someone absolutely loyal, someone without a free will is even better. These servants will help the wizards do all kinds of dirty things, including murdering people.
“Trifles in daily lives like eating and sleeping are the least of our concerns. Most of the time, we can take care of such matters with only a small trick.” Angor put a hand on Auri’s head and released a stream of gentle magic, removing some sweat and dirt from Auri’s body.
Auri was almost crying now.
“I don’t mean that you can’t be helpful,” Angor continued. “You’re the only one in the entire manor who can cook meals as good as Jon’s.”
“I-I’ll prepare some fried rice for you right away, sir!”
Angor nodded and saw her leaving on hurried steps as if she were escaping from something.
He could tell that Auri wished more than being his maid, but since he wasn’t planning on spending time on love affairs yet, his only choice was to reject her.
Many wizards in this world tended to indulge their mortal lovers temporarily, only to ditch them behind when they continued to go after their distant ambitions, leaving their admirers in eternal sorrow.
Back at Floating Mech City, Angor heard a rumor that the city master, “Neo Beast” Lawson, had a mortal wife who came from Evory. Melantha was their child. But later, Lawson took Melantha away to Floating Mech City, leaving his wife at Evory and never visiting her again.
In Angor’s view, rejecting Auri’s goodwill would undeniably hurt her feelings, but this was still better than keeping her hanging until something else forced her to give up after many years. Auri was always his friend during his childhood, and he would like to see her enjoying a peaceful life of a mortal, instead of blindly following a supernatural and perhaps welcoming a bitter end.
While heading back to the manor castle, he suddenly heard Eureka’s voice coming from afar.
“That was rude. You dumped a young lady and used my name in your excuse?”
“I apologize if I offended you, Miss Eureka.” Angor looked at the sky, where he hid the mini floating island behind an illusion.
“That’s not necessary. But do you HAVE to let her down so straightforwardly?”
“May I know your opinion, Miss Eureka? How do I respond to her better?”
“Tsk. He’s just like Mister Phantom Master, if the rumors are correct,” Eureka mumbled in a small voice that Angor couldn’t hear. “Teacher and student, huh?”
“Nah. If it’s Mister Sunders, then no woman would be brave enough to step up and confess,” Brulee commented.
“You’re right.” Eureka nodded. “I saw Sunders once. He’s the kind of man you want to stay really far from. Unlike Angor...”
Angor stood there for a while, and when he didn’t hear anything else from Eureka, he continued to head back to his room.
He expected Eureka to keep an eye on him while he checked out Jon. He wasn’t happy about it, yet he couldn’t do anything about it either.
Thankfully, Eureka had no idea of any of the secrets he wished to keep from people. Even if Eureka’s spirit was fine, she wouldn’t be able to discover the dream wasteland.
The first thing Angor did upon returning to his bedroom was checking the Soft Larva nest. The illusion around the nest was fine, which meant Eureka did not come to bother it while he was away.
When he reached a spirit feeler into the nest, he noticed that apart from dead eggs and the particular one he kept away from the others, all of the eggs had already hatched. Currently, a large swarm of Soft Larvae was worming slowly, and they looked quite creepy.
He wasn’t interested in the common larvae, however. After making sure there wasn’t any trouble with them, he looked at the separated compartment in the nest.
The last time he was here, he left a small bowl of Akeso’s blood for the egg, which was completely dry.
The egg had grown bigger. It now looked almost thrice as big as common larva eggs. Also, it had put on a pale yellow color, which made it appear like a golden bean of some sort.
“Is that really a Soft Larva?” He never read anything about Soft Larva eggs that looked like this before.
Although the book collection in his tablet wasn’t exactly all-inclusive as to offer enough material about these worms. For now, he could only keep the particular egg fed and see what happened in the future.
Again, he left enough blood for the egg to “drink” and left the nest alone.
Next, he was going to enter the dream wasteland and see if he could talk to Freud. Perhaps Freud knew something about Soft Larva.
His starting point upon arriving at the wasteland was still among the building complex. He saw Freud standing at the entrance of the cathedral while holding a priest robe, who also saw him and almost dropped the clothes out of surprise.
“Sir, you came! Are you still—”
“I’m back at the Old Earth,” said Angor. “It seems our physical locations don’t matter. We can come here from anywhere.”
“I knew it! This place remained fine and intact even after you left. I don’t think your distance is limitless though. I wonder how far you can get before this place begins to lose it. Will it be fine if you go to another plane?”
“We might need to be careful about it. It’s already good enough if I can still come to you anytime when I’m all the way back at the Fey Continent.”
“Yeah...” Freud held his chin and paced back and forth. “Then there are lots of things we can do with this accessibility. I need to start a new project about this...”
“When you have time. I have something to ask. Do you know—”
Angor stopped talking when he heard strange noises coming from a small house nearby. It sounded like metal pieces grazing each other.
Using his “nightmare vision”, he looked inside the house and saw an aged woman with white hair and a kind look who was sharpening a metal stick against a grinding wheel.
“You invited her here?” he asked Freud while pointing to the said house. In this “safe zone” he determined, the Dream Gate would not alert him when foreign entities were taken inside.
“Yes, sir. That’s Tayla, the chief clothier working for the Silverheron Clan. She retired and lived a reclusive life in Freighting Town.”
“But what’s she doing here?”
“I mean to use her as a test subject, to see if I can keep her consciousness from vanishing when she dies.”
“You can find some criminals from the prison for that purpose.” Angor frowned. As far as he could see, the old woman was an innocent citizen.
“That used to be my plan, sir. But if I do that, I’m not sure I can regulate them when I can’t use any wizardry power. You told me that your teacher is a terminal patient, right? Tayla was in a similar condition.”