Chapter 2674 Deep Sea Wood <TOC> Chapter 2676 Second Level
Translator: SumTLMan
The Sovereign of Wisdom listened and nodded, seeming to agree with Angel’s words, but he was no longer as astonished as he had been at the beginning.
“Just from these clues, you can already think about the magic formation’s energy nodes. Your ability to make connections is impressive.”
Angel smiled and walked straight over to the low bedside cabinet. While searching through it, he said: “Besides that, I have another guess.”
The Sovereign of Wisdom narrowed his third eye slightly: “Oh? What guess?”
Angel said: “Energy can’t arise without cause. Since this place is an energy node of a magic formation, where does that energy source come from?”
When the Sovereign of Wisdom heard this, he paused for a moment before continuing: “Where do you think it comes from?”
Angel opened the low bedside cabinet and took out a small wooden box that was quite exquisitely made, also crafted from Deep Sea Wood: “Generally speaking, most magic formations draw their energy from magic crystals. But if a large-scale magic formation is fixed in place for long-term operation, relying solely on magic crystals might be fine for a short while; yet once time stretches on, the consumption would be terrifying. At that point, the question of energy cycling comes into play.”
Angel opened the wooden box, glanced inside, and then continued: “For a magic formation on the scale of these underground sewers, there’s no doubt they would consider an energy cycle. How to create such a cycle and solve the energy problem depends on whether we’re talking about when Nightfall City was thriving or after it fell into decline.”
“In its prime, this underground area was heavily populated, which naturally brought in a great deal of profit. At that time, even using magic crystals as constant fuel was a case of income exceeding expenditure. So, for the flourishing Nightfall City, there were many options to deal with an energy cycle, and it wasn’t a major issue. We can set that aside for the moment.”
“As for after the city went into decline, how would the underground sewers maintain the magic formation’s energy cycle? From my observations, I suspect the highest likelihood is that the cycle came from the life force provided by magical creatures. The tainted energy of the sewer bred a great many beasts; the fights and deaths among those beasts then fed back into the magic formation.”
By now, the Sovereign of Wisdom had withdrawn his smile and was watching Angel intently.
Angel went on: “Of course, there could be other ways to keep the energy cycling, but I personally favor the idea that beasts provided life force. Otherwise, if the magic formation were so capable, it could have easily wiped out all the monsters in the underground sewers, why let them remain and multiply?”
“If the external magic formation could use monsters to supply life force as part of its energy cycle, why couldn’t the Hanging Prison Stairs do the same? Even during Nightfall City’s prime, for the city’s residents, the beings imprisoned here were all serious criminals. Letting them contribute whatever remained in them before they died would simply have been their ‘just deserts.’”
“That’s why I suspect the local energy source must have been provided by the criminals who were once held here. They wouldn’t have volunteered, of course: they were forced to become ‘energy donors.’”
“And in this particular chamber, large amounts of Deep Sea Wood were used to make the furniture. Not only is that for channeling energy, it also indicates that whoever used to be imprisoned here was tied to nature in some way. Possibly a nature wizard, or perhaps some extraordinary being full of nature power.”
At this point, the Sovereign of Wisdom finally spoke: “Your reasoning seems to have logic on its side, yet much of it rings hollow. Where exactly do these guesses come from, and how did you link them together? You have no solid evidence.”
“But strangely enough, your final answer is very close to the truth. I’m rather curious: how do you keep guessing correctly every time?”
Earlier, the Sovereign of Wisdom had believed Angel to be a new star with strong backing, a sharp mind, and remarkable abilities. Yet in front of him, it should still have been difficult for Angel to hide that underlying immaturity. Though Angel was concealing something, the Sovereign of Wisdom thought it would not be too hard to see through his tricks.
Now, however, Angel had suddenly become cloaked in a layer of unreadable fog.
The Sovereign of Wisdom did not actually care about Angel’s conclusions; he cared about how Angel was arriving at them. And also whether Angel was truly of the Noah bloodline. If not, why had he come here?
This sudden loss of control over the situation made the Sovereign of Wisdom feel a faint sense of unease.
“‘Guesses arise from the place, connections arise from the object,’” Angel said quietly: “That’s the basis of my conclusions.”
Guesses arise from the place? By “place,” did he mean the underground sewers, or the stinking gutter?
Connections arise from the object? By “object,” did he mean Deep Sea Wood?
The Sovereign of Wisdom frowned. He had the feeling Angel was just being evasive, but he had no way to prove it.
After a moment of silence, the Sovereign of Wisdom asked: “What’s your name?”
“Why do you suddenly want to know my name?” Angel looked at the Sovereign of Wisdom suspiciously, but the other did not explain.
Angel pondered: “I don’t know who you’ve linked me to in your mind, but my identity probably won’t match any of the names you’re imagining.”
With that, Angel stopped looking at the Sovereign of Wisdom. He stood, patted the dust from his hands, and turned to Kael: “We should get going. The Wood Spirit isn’t here.”
Kael snuck a glance at the Sovereign of Wisdom. Seeing no objection, he hurriedly said: “Lord, there are still plenty of places here we haven’t checked.”
Though the room wasn’t large, it would still take effort if one wanted to sense every inch. And Kael had noticed Angel only carefully searched one spot, the wooden box inside the bedside cabinet, then looked nowhere else, deciding they were done. Kael found that puzzling.
“This used to be the cell of a criminal from the nature system, and that criminal ended up being drained completely by the magic formation. The Wood Spirit would surely sense that. Even if this place is safe now, given the Wood Spirit’s temperament, it still wouldn’t stay here.”
After all, sympathy among similar beings runs deep. The Wood Spirit also wouldn’t know whether the magic formation had changed its source of power. If it hadn’t, wouldn’t staying here risk falling into the same trap that befell the nature element criminal?
Seeing Kael still looking perplexed, Angel simply turned to the Sovereign of Wisdom and asked: “Sovereign of Wisdom, have you ever found the Wood Spirit here in the past?”
The Sovereign of Wisdom replied: “Since you’ve already ‘guessed’ it, why bother asking me?”
Angel shrugged, then silently mouthed “See?” to Kael.
“Let’s go.”
With the Sovereign of Wisdom tacitly confirming his words, Kael no longer objected; he followed Angel out.
Meanwhile, Daus walked over to the wooden box Angel had inspected so carefully. Curious, he peered inside.
“I saw how meticulously you looked just now. I thought there’d be something good in there, but there’s nothing.” Daus came back to Angel, muttering in a low voice.
“Because the wooden box is made from Deep Sea Wood, it’s been blessed by its energy-conducting properties and preserved for a very long time. The items inside had no such luck,” Angel said: “Time has taken them all away, along with those forgotten stories.”
“Forgotten stories?” Daus was momentarily startled, then scoffed: “You talk as if you actually know that story.”
Angel merely gave a faint smile without answering, though he sighed inwardly.
He truly did know that story.
Or rather, the Sovereign of Wisdom’s points of confusion had all been explained by what Angel had learned from that story.
…
Not long ago, Angel had gone to the Wilderness of Dreams to meet Cecia. While there, he asked about the state of the broken lower levels and raised several questions about other matters in the Hanging Prison Stairs.
Although Cecia did know quite a bit about major events in the Hanging Prison Stairs, she had only general knowledge. When it came to smaller details, like exactly how each level was set up, she knew very little.
Yet Angel himself knew a great deal about those details.
Because in the Nightmare Plane, Angel had visited most of the rooms in the Hanging Prison Stairs back when he was still just an ordinary person. The only ones he never entered were the derived spaces. As a mortal at the time, it was normal that he couldn’t find the entrances.
So Angel possessed quite a few of these details, but he…did not understand many of them.
For example, on the first level of the Hanging Prison Stairs in the Nightmare Plane, Angel had once found a thin booklet.
Originally, that thin booklet lay in a wooden box within a low bedside cabinet, which in reality had long been eaten away by time, whereas a “projected copy” still existed in the Nightmare Plane.
Angel recorded the booklet’s contents on the holographic tablet, but he did not recognize a single character written in it. Even a Language Proficiency trick didn’t help identify them. So, although he had such details, he was at a loss as to what they meant.
During their discussion about the Hanging Prison Stairs in the Wilderness of Dreams, Angel happened to recall that little booklet, so he reproduced it with illusions for Cecia to identify.
Ultimately, they confirmed that the text was in the Uisus language.
Cecia gave Angel a rough translation of the text, which allowed him to learn what had happened in that first-level room…
Just as the Sovereign of Wisdom said, Angel’s so-called “deductions” had clear gaps in logic. That was because he was working backward from a known conclusion, weaving the cause and effect afterward.
The prisoner once held on the first level was indeed a nature element wizard from the elemental branch.
The thin booklet in the wooden box was actually his diary.
Every entry brimmed with hatred and resentment, all because of what Angel had just described: he was treated as an energy source, with the energy in his body siphoned day and night to feed the magic formation.
Over and over, day after day, year after year. Eventually, this nature wizard was utterly “devoured.” On the last page of his diary, his final testament, he recorded his remorse, his love and loathing, his helplessness, his guilt, and his lingering hopes and regrets.
Before long, Nightfall City fell to ruin.
No one ever saw his diary. As time marched on, it was buried and forgotten, crumbling into dust, never to be discovered.
If not for the twist of fate that let Angel see the diary’s projection in the Nightmare Plane and record it with the holographic tablet, perhaps no one in the world would ever have known that nature wizard’s story.
Initially, Angel didn’t pay much mind to the story.
After all, from start to finish, the wizard never mentioned his own name or the reason he’d been imprisoned. Angel couldn’t tell if he was good or evil.
But when Angel actually arrived in this cell and saw that everything else had rotted away while the Deep Sea Wood remained pristine, he found himself recalling the wizard’s repeated lamentations, drenched in blood and tears.
Time shows no mercy, and those people, events, and objects left behind in its wake rarely get another chance.
It wasn’t so much that Angel felt heartbreak over the scene as that he took it as a moment to reflect on his own future.
Would he, too, be buried by time in the end?
Angel hoped not, but who in this world can escape time’s verdict?
Could the power of truth do it?
While Angel stood there in a daze, he suddenly heard a low voice murmuring in his ear: “Why not take that thing out? Maybe you can fish a little and lure the small fry to take a bite.”
Snapped out of his reverie, Angel saw Daus beside him, incessantly winking and throwing him looks.
Judging from Daus’ expression, Angel understood exactly what he meant.
Since Angel suspected the Wood Spirit used to be that staff, why not conjure the staff to try luring it out?
Angel hadn’t done so before simply because, in any case, they’d end up returning eventually. He planned to wait until it became clear there was nowhere else to go, when they had to double back, before producing the staff. That way, he could put off revealing his identity for as long as possible.
But now he realized there was no need to keep it hidden. The Sovereign of Wisdom had probably guessed that Angel wasn’t from the Noah family, so it no longer mattered whether he showed the staff or not.
With that thought in mind, Angel didn’t hesitate any longer. He took out the four-in-one ornament from atop the staff head, shook it once, and let smoke spread out around him.
When the smoke dispersed, a black staff shaft appeared beneath the ornament.
The ornament at the top of the staff was physically real; the staff body had been materialized through illusion. The staff’s overall appearance matched precisely the one shown in that painting Butler Goode had seen at the Iguro Family estate.
Angel took out the staff and said nothing further. He simply headed toward the stairs.
Behind him, the Sovereign of Wisdom stared in surprise at the staff that had suddenly appeared in Angel’s hand.
He found the carved pattern on the grip vaguely familiar, especially the coat-of-arms-like emblem on it, he was sure he’d seen it somewhere before.
While trying to recall this, the Sovereign of Wisdom followed Angel back onto the staircase.
Angel once again measured each step toward the second level, but this time his pace was much faster. It took under three minutes to see a new platform.
Yet when everyone, aside from the Black Count and the Sovereign of Wisdom, arrived on that platform, they all froze.
Angel, too, was momentarily stunned.
Because the platform had none of the doors they had expected, only the staircase winding upward.
So, was this not really the second level, but rather some midpoint platform? As they stood puzzling over it, Angel turned to stare into the dark void off to one side.
Daus asked curiously: “Is there something over there?”
Because of the illusion realm, even if they tried using their mental power, they couldn’t sense anything outside. All they could do was rely on their eyes. Daus saw nothing unusual, so he spoke up.
“It looks like there might be a path this way?” Kael ventured.
As he spoke, Kael walked to the edge of the platform. He hesitated a moment, then took a step into the emptiness.
He didn’t fall. He was standing solidly in midair.
Daus’ eyes lit up: “There really is a path!”
Thanks for the chapter!