Chapter 1025 The Gaze Beyond Time and Space <TOC> Chapter 1027 The Phase Plane
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Translator: SumTLMan
Subsequently, he must have succumbed to unconsciousness, oblivious to everything that transpired thereafter.
However, observing his present situation, it seemed as though he was rescued by someone. Where did the prior Abyssal Wind Dragon disappear to?
Angel hesitated momentarily before he opened his mouth and queried, “Who are you? Was it you… who saved me?” His voice had transformed into a deep, hoarse tone, absent of its usual clarity and imbued with a sense of tearing strain. Speaking felt exceptionally strenuous.
Angel forcefully propped himself into a seated position.
His movements roused the shadowy figure, who had been seemingly dozing off against a stone by the other side of the fire, to slowly open their eyes.
As the figure sat upright and the firelight illuminated their profound countenance, Angel was momentarily stupefied.
He had initially perceived the figure, with their tall stature, slightly darkened skin, and short hair, as a man. It was only after they sat upright that he realized this was a woman of exceptional appearance and temperament.
Her stature was elongated, easily exceeding two meters, which accentuated the length of her legs. Combined with her bronze-hued skin that appeared slick and glossy, she was a sight to behold.
Much of her body was exposed, with only the vital parts shielded by teal-black scales. For some reason, those scales triggered a sense of familiarity within Angel.
Her hair was ocher, cropped short, and her visage radiated a wild beauty. Especially her pair of heterochromatic eyes, one blue and one red, lent her an additional layer of mystery.
Upon closer examination, the woman’s features significantly deviated from that of a human’s.
She bore symmetrical horns on either side of her forehead, sharp, smooth, and shimmering with a faint glow.
The peculiar familiarity stirred in Angel again. Could she be an indigenous inhabitant of the Abyss? Or, perhaps, a half-demon? After pondering for a moment, Angel asked once again, “Who are you?”
The woman on the other side cast a cool glance at Angel and responded, “As expected of humans, ignorant and nonsensical.”
She did not actually speak; the familiar mental message directly surged into Angel’s mind. Concurrently, as she ‘spoke’, the surrounding aura coalesced into a mist, forming the visage of a ferocious dragon behind her, flickering in and out of visibility.
The familiar mental message, the equally indifferent tone, the dragon head formed from mist… combined with the horns on her forehead and the scales shielding her chest. A thunderous boom resounded in Angel’s mind as if a box of memories had been thrown open, and a gigantic, terrifying entity filled his entire train of thought.
“You… you’re the great Wind Dragon?” Angel said with a tremble, voicing a possibility that left him stunned.
The woman’s face remained cold, “Human, you may call me Fafnir.”
Her lack of denial confirmed his suspicion. Could it be that the woman in front of him was a manifestation of the Wind Dragon?!
“Lady Fafnir,” Angel called out, his voice quaking with trepidation, “Was it you who saved me earlier?”
Fafnir, maintaining her emotionless visage, replied without hesitation, “What makes you think that I, Fafnir, would save a human?”
Angel scratched his head. He remembered bleeding profusely before he lost consciousness, thinking he was on the brink of death from blood loss. However, upon waking up, aside from muscle soreness, there were no symptoms of severe blood loss. Moreover, even the bloodstains on his body seemed to have disappeared.
Toby was still unconscious, and there were no other creatures around. Angel couldn’t think of anyone other than Fafnir who could have saved him.
However, Fafnir’s demeanor suggested an extreme disdain for humans, hardly the picture of someone who would have saved him.
In the end, all Angel could do was shake his head, leaving his questions unspoken.
“Honorable Lady Fafnir, I wonder…” Angel had a myriad of questions he wished to ask. He wanted to inquire about their current situation, why Fafnir had taken a human form, and how to cleanse Toby from the contamination of misfortune. Yet before he could articulate his thoughts, a sudden intense itch shot through his back.
Involuntarily, he gasped and collapsed onto the ground, squirming much like a fish washed ashore.
Angel reached to scratch the itch, only to find it growing more intense with every scratch.
He had never before experienced such a peculiar sensation of itching; it was a deep-seated itch that seemed to penetrate his bones and soul, causing extreme discomfort.
“Drop your right hand.” A cold mental command suddenly echoed in Angel’s mind, quickly dominating his thoughts.
Subconsciously, Angel let his right hand fall away from his back. The itch subsided a little, becoming more bearable, although it was still present within his threshold of endurance.
The itching sensation lasted for about two to three minutes. When Angel finally managed to endure it, he found that Fafnir was looking at him differently.
Fafnir’s unusual eyes had been reflecting the blazing fire before them, but all of a sudden, Angel caught a glimpse of a green light reflected in her eyes.
Baffled, Angel gazed upon his reflection mirrored in the verdant luminescence within Fafnir’s eyes. His own visage, perhaps?
Guided by this thought, he extended a mental tendril to investigate behind himself.
Emerging from the tattered remains of his robe, a glowing, vine-like rune formation, the color of fresh leaves, climbed steadily into the air. Approximately half a meter long, it sprouted from his right shoulder, just surpassing the height of his own head.
From an alternate perspective, it appeared as though he carried on his back a luminous vine. Uncharacteristically lively, this vine swayed to and fro in the wind, scattering a shimmering rain of green light. Even his golden hair was dyed a faint green, resembling a luminous cap of foliage.
Angel wasn’t unfamiliar with this vine-like green rune. Before he had lost consciousness, he had felt this rune extending outward, seemingly resonating with another across the span of time and space.
At that time, his heart throbbed with such intensity. An overwhelming sense of dread, as though agreeing to the proposition would mean dancing with death itself, incessantly gnawed at his thoughts.
In desperate resistance, Angel had managed to retract the vine, but to his dismay, it had regrown?
“It seeks to detect stable spatial energy and open a planar passage. Human, you would be wise to retract it,” Fafnir advised, her voice cold as ice.
“How do I retract it?” Angel asked instinctively.
His question was met with a fierce gust of wind, lifting him off the ground, spinning him around, and finally casting him several meters away, crashing against the side of the pit.
Angel slowly slid down the pit wall, his focus shifting towards the sound emanating from Fafnir at the fireside, “Foolish human, don’t speak to me until you have retracted it!”
There were many questions Angel wished to pose to Fafnir, but under such stringent rules, he had no choice but to devote his efforts towards retracting the green rune on his back.
With repeated attempts came repeated failures. Time slowly eroded under this cycle.
Throughout this process, Fafnir chose not to revert to her draconic form, opting instead to lean against the cave wall. Despite appearing to be in slumber, her mental faculties remained sharply focused on Angel across from her.
Unable to dare a close inspection of the true nature of the green vine, she could only observe discreetly from a distance as Angel wrestled to control it.
What, in essence, was it? How did it connect to the green runes etched on the human’s right hand?
The emerald vine seemed to grow on the man’s back, yet Fafnir suspected this was but a facade. Where the vine extended, lay a presence both mysterious and unknowable.
Angel’s training had borne fruit, at least to a degree that he could gradually subdue the green vines back onto his own back.
However, he proved incapable of banishing the vine from the wound in his soul. The most he could achieve was to attach it to his back, forming an elegant green rune tattoo.
Furthermore, this restraint could not be discontinued, for once lifted, it wouldn’t take long for the vine to rebound. Just as before, although it only grew half a meter long and appeared at most like a decoration… In the Wizarding World, there were many who fancied unusual body adornments.
If its purpose was purely decorative, Angel would naturally be unconcerned. However, it would absorb Angel’s already scarce soul power. The more it absorbed, the faster it would grow uncontrollably, potentially extending up to ten meters or more.
Hence, he now had to exercise dual control, suppressing it at all times and places.
This resulted in Angel feeling as if an additional constraint had suddenly been imposed upon him.
Already during his Great Barrier phase, he felt out of sync with the outside world. Add to that the need to suppress the green rune, it was as if he had shackled himself, the twofold oppression leaving Angel struggling to adapt.
After a long while, once certain that the green rune was no longer proliferating, Angel finally returned, trembling slightly, to the fireside.
No sooner had he settled back by the fire than Fafnir, “resting” across from him, opened her distinctive eyes. One green, one red, they observed him devoid of any discernible emotion.
Angel had expected Fafnir to inquire about the earlier green rune, but to his surprise, Fafnir didn’t pose a single question.
In the mind of Fafnir, curiosity about the green vines was undoubtedly enticing, as was the yearning to comprehend the previous encounter with an entity that gazed from beyond the fabric of time and space. However, she wouldn’t inquire, nor dare to venture such questions.
Once upon a time, her overpowering curiosity had led her to invite the wrath of an attendant of the unparalleled Demon God, prompting her to flee in disarray back to the surface world, where she lay dormant for hundreds of years.
Just an attendant of the Demon God was a force beyond her control, not to mention the entity behind the green vines, which was likely on par with the Demon God, if not even surpassing him in power.
Therefore, Fafnir dared not probe too deeply, knowing that ignorance, in this case, could be her bliss.
“Honored Lady Fafnir, I have successfully restrained it. Might I request to ask a few questions?” Angel sought Fafnir’s permission with pleading eyes.
“Humans, you truly are troublesome.”
“I go by Angel,” Angel said faintly.
With cold disinterest, Fafnir retorted, “A mere human, yet you want me to address you by your name?”
“My lady, I didn’t mean it in that way,” Angel quickly clarified.
Seeing Fafnir’s expression gradually calming down, Angel didn’t dare to further poke the sleeping dragon, so he tentatively inquired, “Lady Fafnir, could you perhaps tell me how to lift the curse of misfortune from Toby?”
Toby was still unconscious. Even though Sanders had confirmed and Angel himself had visited Toby’s dream realm, they both knew that Toby was merely on the brink of “entering the calamity” rather than experiencing it. Logically, Toby shouldn’t remain in this state of unconsciousness.
The reason behind Toby’s prolonged slumber might be tied to the aura of misfortune that seemed to have clung to him from somewhere unknown.
Chapter 1025 The Gaze Beyond Time and Space <TOC> Chapter 1027 The Phase Plane