Angor noticed Sunders’ words, “Wait for me to come back”.
He’s leaving?
“Professor, I read some books about the Nightmare Realm and I still haven’t learned anything basically. What kind of world is it?”
It did not matter whether he was leaving or not. To Angor, getting to know the Nightmare Realm was most important.
Hearing the question, Sunders remained silent for a long time, before slowly speaking, “The Nightmare Realm… is a very peculiar plane.”
There were many complicated and contradictory emotions flashing in his eyes.
“No one knows the nature of the plane. It can reflect any reality and make people believe that what they’re seeing is fake. But when you look closely, you will instead find something real in there. The plane has its own rules, and no one can tell right from wrong in that world.”
Those words were even vaguer than books.
“I still haven’t learned any details about the Nightmare Realm. But I can tell you that most of what I achieved today came from the Nightmare Realm. It took me hundreds of years, and I’m still circling around the edge of the Nightmare Realm. You see how much value this very plane holds now?”
A mighty wizard famed across the entire southern region made his name just by circling around the edge?
“However, the opportunity is accompanied by danger. Or rather, you find more danger than opportunity,” said Sunders. He stopped and looked towards Angor.
“I think you already know about such danger. You ran into the nightmares yourself, did you not? They put you in a dying situation, twice. And somehow, something helped you survive.”
Angor was a little surprised at how Sunders suddenly directed the topic at himself. He knew? Dying situations?
But how could he not remember something like that? Angor recalled the 14 years of his life. He was born into a noble family and shared a good relationship with his parents and brother. His family was not big but was still a dominating one in Grue Town. As the youngest son in the family, Angor walked his life smoothly without running into much trouble.
Besides, why would Sunders know about such incidents anyway?
“You forgot? The rabbit hole illusion weaved by the monster in the Nightmare Realm, and the woman with a sutured face?” Looking at Angor’s puzzled look, Flora rolled her eyes, “You said those yourself! Now you need us to remind you?”
Rabbit hole… and the sutured woman!
It suddenly came to him. During his “wonderland travel”, he DID fell into danger twice. However, he always thought what happened during his talent test was an illusion, so he never took it seriously.
His life was in danger?
And that place which looked exactly like Padt Manor was the Nightmare Realm?!
If so, Angor could understand Fein Werder’s words about the Nightmare Realm in his book Wonder World —The reality is projected into imaginary and gives birth to the truth.
The “fake” Padt Manor with a strange atmosphere was the “projected reality” while the Padt Manor in the real world was projected into the Nightmare Realm.
Many of his doubts could be explained this way. But… what did Werder mean by “projected into imaginary and gives birth to the truth”?
Sunders spoke, “No one could explain anything about this plane. I said it could reflect all realities. Here, it doesn’t mean the world we live in. ‘Reality’ refers to worlds with sapient life forms living in them.
“When I entered the Nightmare Realm for the first time, my landing point had a giant, silver pyramid standing there. I didn’t have any idea at the time. After many years, I participated in one of the plane expeditions towards another plane where a tunnel still wasn’t established. No one ever entered it before. People only discovered the greyspace barrier between the plane and the wizarding world. As the expeditionists, we were the first ones to step into the plane.”
Sunders sighed, “Do you know what was the first thing I saw in the brand new plane?”
Sunders’ expression already gave Angor an answer.
“Yes. The giant silver pyramid I saw in the Nightmare Realm several years before the expedition,” Sunders let out another deep sigh. He then said, “I thought I stumbled into the Nightmare Realm again, so I prepared to warn the other wizards to retreat because you could never be careful enough when dealing with something related to it.
“But later, the place proved to be somewhere else. An ordinary plane, without any resources or even fertile dirt to plant food. The only thing worth noticing was a sapient creature called Half Golem. It was a good sample for wizards who are interested in life form experiments.
“This is only one example, and may not be enough to prove that the Nightmare Realm can reflect all worlds with sapient creatures. However, after I had some discussion with the other wizards who also entered the plane before, they all had similar experiences. So we got a conclusion, that the Nightmare Realm has the ability to project realities with sapient creatures in them.”
Listening to Sunders, Angor thought in his mind.
Following the convention in the academy field to make bold assumptions and careful verifications, there should be a precondition for this conclusion, or rather, an assumed condition. For example, to make a projection of a certain world required the fact that a sapient creature from this world entered the Nightmare Realm before.
“We cannot explain the Nightmare Realm easily. Your experience this time might be both a challenge and a destiny to you,” said Sunders.
The talk about the Nightmare Realm ended here. Sunders did not comment much on Angor’s choice. Angor even felt that he was wrong about how Sunders was plotting something. Maybe he would be completely fine if he chose to sell himself to Brute Cavern or create his own spirit model. Then again, it was too late to think about that now. He had already given his answer…
Goode removed all dishes from the table and asked the other servants to bring some baked pastries and milk.
The milk was specially prepared for Angor. He tried very hard to conceal his particular taste, but it seemed he did not do a good job at it. Goode would bring him milk or milk-made products every day.
Thank goodness Goode was the only one who knew this secret—
“You like milk? Still a kid, for sure,” Before Angor even finished his thought, Flora grinned at him while drinking a glass of unknown, blood-red liquid.
Angor was speechless.
“In that case, you should drink more. A child grows faster that way,” Sunders commented in all seriousness.
Angor gulped and tried to retort, “Actually, I could use some other drinks.”
Sunders ignored that. He turned to Goode and ordered, “Maintain all cows in the ranch for Angor.”
“As you wish, master,” Goode replied.
Angor was… even more speechless.
…
“You saw the thunderclouds today, right? What do you feel?” Sunders was still talking in his plain, emotionless tone, but Angor got a feeling that there were less indifference and more friendliness in it.
“It was strange. The thunderstorm persisted from noon till now. It was so big. Almost covered the entire Devil’s Water.”
“Heehee. Did you not realize there was only lightning but not a single raindrop in the entire afternoon?” asked Flora as she raised her glass full of liquid in the color of blood.
“That’s right.” Angor did realize it. There was no rain at all.