Chapter 2697 Original Location <TOC> Chapter 2699 Man in the Jar
Translator: SumTLMan
While the Sovereign of Wisdom marveled at the Opulent Nightmare Domain, the Black Count looked unsurprised. Although he did not know the underlying principle of the Nightmare Domain, he had once witnessed Sanders releasing the Black Tower Nightmare Domain.
The Nightmare Domain that Angel released now gave him precisely the same feeling as the Black Tower Nightmare Domain, they clearly came from the same source.
Countless people had studied Sanders’ Black Tower Nightmare Domain in the past, including the Black Count himself, yet ultimately gleaned no results. In the end, everyone could only regard it as some unique illusion spell belonging to Phantom Island.
The only ones who might still be studying the Black Tower Nightmare Domain would be that group of Wilderness wizards from the Rat Ant Underground Society. They fancy themselves Sanders’ arch-enemies, so naturally, they want to scrutinize everything Sanders can do, though in reality, Sanders has never even deigned to look their way.
As for researching the Nightmare Domain: In years past, the Black Count once secretly tricked Sumesh into coming to the Noah family’s land to study his Deep Abyss Nightmare Domain in private, but was nearly dragged by the shadows in the Demon Abyss into some mysterious rift.
Afterward, the Black Count even asked his old friend Rhine about the Nightmare Domain. Rhine did not answer directly, only giving a very clear piece of information: “Only people from Phantom Island can use this thing. And as of now, only Sanders can wield it perfectly; the other Nightmare Domains basically originate from portions that Sanders cut off.”
At that time, Angel had not yet been born, so Rhine’s words were correct then. But now, of course, the answer is different.
Returning to the present, the Black Count, after conversing with Rhine, lost interest in studying Nightmare Domains.
Whenever he now observes a Nightmare Domain, he merely glances around, not to research its deeper logic but rather to guess at its particular effects.
Sanders’ Black Tower Nightmare Domain embodies suppression, imprisonment, and the power of a blood moon.
Sumesh’s Deep Abyss Nightmare Domain is highly offensive, fighting through demonic shadows.
By contrast, the effect of Angel’s Nightmare Domain is not yet clear to the Black Count. It looks exactly like a normal aristocratic hall, with a lavish main lobby, a curtained-off meeting area, a bar for mixing drinks, and a piano corner under a single beam of light.
If the Black Count were not so familiar with the distinct aura of Nightmare Domains, he would have genuinely believed this was just an ordinary illusion.
“So, this is Angel’s Nightmare Domain?” the Black Count wondered silently. It does not seem to focus on control or offense, then what exactly is it?
As he pondered, his gaze briefly landed on a long table sitting forlornly off in a corner.
Candlelight on the wall illuminated reams of paper stacked atop that long table. The ink bottle beside them was already nearly empty, and even the quill stuck in the ink had lost a few vane bones.
“Could that be Angel’s workstation?”
Musing on it, he found it genuinely plausible. Angel is an academic wizard, more concerned with research than battle. And a scholar conducting research certainly values the setting in which he works.
It must be said: This place is perfectly fine as a research environment.
The Black Count chuckled inwardly at the thought. The people of Phantom Island are indeed entertaining. Sanders likes to imprison and suppress people within his Black Tower, while Sumesh summons a swarm of demonic phantoms at the slightest provocation, and Flora raised a pink skeleton inside her Nightmare Domain.
By comparison, Angel seems far more normal.
After confirming that this Nightmare Domain did not carry any special effects, the Black Count floated leisurely onto Vai’s shoulder, motioning him to go sit by the long table in the next room.
“Aren’t we inside the Earth Rampart? Will walking around remove us from it?” Vai asked worriedly.
“It’s different,” the Black Count explained: “At this moment, your state can be considered both illusory and real. If you’re attacked, you are like a phantom image. But when it’s safe, you’re physically present here.”
In other words, under Angel’s manipulation, their current state remains fluid: they can transform from true physical form into illusion at any moment and return to the Earth Rampart.
This, in fact, is Angel’s application of illusion, shifting seamlessly between illusion and reality in perfect accord with his will.
However, this applies only to Vai, Kael, and the others, because they are still inside the Earth Rampart for safety reasons. Angel lets them remain in a condition in which they can detach themselves from the Nightmare Domain whenever they wish, reverting to reality.
But Angel, the Black Count, and the Sovereign of Wisdom are wholly enveloped within the Nightmare Domain. To leave, one must either have Angel remove the Nightmare Domain or forcibly break it.
From this, the Black Count felt admiration for Angel. His reasoning was thorough: he allowed those within the Earth Rampart to perceive their conversation without forcing them into direct contact with the Sovereign of Wisdom. It was a perfect twofold compromise. Someone else might have been able to do this, but would not have gone to the trouble of considering everyone else’s safety and perspective.
Upon learning that they could leave freely, safety assured, Vai breathed a sigh of relief.
Following the Black Count’s suggestion, he arrived behind the curtain.
A few people had already taken seats at the long conference table: Angel and the Sovereign of Wisdom sat at opposite ends, facing each other from a distance. Others sat along the sides. The seat at Angel’s left was purposely left open.
Evidently, that was reserved for the Black Count. But since the Black Count rested on Vai’s shoulder, Vai had no choice but to sit there himself.
As soon as Vai sank into the chair, which was slightly soft, he heard a series of string-plucking sounds drifting over.
Looking up, he saw a teacup, pale gold with speckles and shaped so that the handle resembled a harp, wobbling toward him.
This pale-gold speckled teacup not only extended a slender, porcelain-like hand to strum on a little harp, but also rested itself docilely in Vai’s hand, offering him the cup of tea shimmering with a golden glow.
Bemused, Vai glanced over at Angel.
Angel said: “Go ahead and drink. It’s their token of goodwill.”
“Their… ‘goodwill’?” Vai didn’t quite understand, but Angel’s words made him a bit excited.
Had he just gotten special treatment?
That excitement, however, didn’t last long. Looking around, he noticed that everyone had been served a teacup, each capable of performing music, filled with steaming tea.
That dashed his fleeting fantasy that he was being singled out by his idol…
Yet after a moment of disappointment, Vai perked up once more: upon closer observation, all the other teacups seemed to have odd tempers.
For instance, the teacup in front of Daus was a bright pink one clutching a baton. Already displeased by the delicate pink, which clashed with his “macho” image, Daus was further annoyed that any time he tried to take a sip, the teacup refused and instead whacked him with the baton.
Meanwhile, Kael was greeted by a teacup with a miniature hand drum. The drum-playing teacup did not attack him, it simply focused wholeheartedly on drumming, ignoring Kael’s attempts to drink.
As for the Sovereign of Wisdom’s teacup, it was the strangest yet: a poetic harp teacup, the only one possessing a mouth. It sang incomprehensible verses even as it plucked intense harp chords.
The Sovereign of Wisdom made no move to touch it, since, although the dark green tea smelled enticing, it was hardly compelling enough for him to bother.
The Black Count, having no mouth, hadn’t attracted any teacup at all.
Observing all this, Vai suddenly felt better. At least his teacup allowed him to take a sip.
So he took a taste of the tea glowing with golden light.
Overall, it was a bit bitter, not exactly delicious, merely ordinary tea, enough to quench thirst, but hardly a must-try.
Even so, trained manners prompted Vai to finish every last drop, after which he reflexively said: “Thank you,” only to recall a beat later that he was talking to a teacup. Gratitude might be wasted on it.
While Vai sat there frozen in embarrassment, the pale gold harp teacup played a brief, lovely melody for him, then gracefully withdrew.
“How did you like the Golden Night Flower Tea?” Angel asked, walking to Vai’s side.
Out of courtesy, Vai replied modestly: “It wasn’t bad.”
Angel smiled and cast him a meaning-laden look: “Well then, you’re rather fortunate.”
He did not elaborate. Instead, he turned toward Daus in the distance.
Because Daus had already begun to lose his patience: he clutched his stinging arm while complaining loudly to Angel: “May I smash this teacup? It’s awful! It won’t even let me have a drink, and now it hits me!”
Angel answered: “Do as you wish. But if something happens, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“What do you mean ‘something happens’? What’s going to happen?” Daus asked, perplexed.
Angel merely smiled at him in silence.
That stare made Daus’ hair stand on end. Angel rarely speaks that way, and if he does, it could genuinely signal danger.
Mulling that over, Daus muttered more curses but refrained from moving against the teacup. Instead, he conjured a defensive spell around himself and sat in frustrated silence.
Seeing Daus humbled like this, Vai felt a private glee. Had it been during one of their past adventures, he would have openly teased him, but with both his lord and his idol present, he wisely held his tongue.
“Lord, what’s with these teacups?” Vai asked the Black Count: “They’re rather adorable.”
Daus cut in irritably: “A-dor-a-ble? Adorable? I dare you to say that again while looking at my teacup!”
He tried to shove the pink teacup over to Vai, but the rosy teacup apparently fixated on Daus and refused to budge.
At that moment, Angel interjected: “These teacups were drawn by your distinctive traits. The pink one specifically took a liking to you; no matter where you try to move it, it will come back to you.”
“My traits? What do you mean?” Daus asked, suspicious.
Angel shrugged: “Hard to say. I got these from a certain mysterious place. Usually, they just sing and dance. But when they meet someone whose traits match them, they may serve tea to that person.”
“Anyway, you’d be wise to dismiss them properly when you leave. Otherwise, you might run into trouble.”
“What do you mean, ‘run into trouble’?” Vai asked, ever the attentive listener, for Angel’s words piqued his curiosity.
Angel replied vaguely: “I’m not sure exactly what might happen. Maybe they’ll strip away your fighting skills. Maybe they’ll make you unlucky for a while. Maybe they’ll just cling to you like burrs…”
He spoke with feigned mystery, exaggerating the matter.
In truth, while these few members of the “Teacup Band” have indeed developed some rather peculiar abilities after prolonged nurturing, they certainly don’t rise to the extremes Angel described.
Stripping away fighting abilities? Yes, they might make your arms so tired for one minute that you can’t properly wield your weapons.
Making you unlucky? Sure, they might sneak off and recruit other living “instruments” to dump a bucket of cream over your head.
Clinging to you? Well, they’re certainly doing that right now.
All told, Angel was simply indulging his sense of mischief.
But from Daus’ perspective, Angel’s ominous hints might hold some truth.
Next, Vai followed up: “What do you mean by ‘dismiss them properly’? Did I dismiss that harp teacup a moment ago?”
In return for Vai’s continued earnestness, Angel happily offered a few more details: “Yes. Essentially, ‘sending them off’ just means drinking the tea they offer.”
“That sounds straightforward enough,” Vai noted.
Angel cast a cryptic smile: “It does, doesn’t it? But here’s a secret, I can tell you that the harp teacup brews the worst-tasting tea of them all. If you’d said it was awful or spat it out, the penalty would have been to get your tendons pulled out and made into harp strings. So, your luck held. Or you could say your etiquette training served you well.”
Vai, whose politeness had caused him to unthinkingly praise the tea’s flavor and finish every drop, breathed a sigh of relief upon realizing that it had spared him an unpleasant fate.
Then his gaze fell on Kael and Daus, eager to see how they would dispatch their teacups.
Still half in doubt, Daus made no move. Kael, on the other hand, trusted Angel wholeheartedly, or at least dared not show any skepticism.
Yet, as Angel explained, to send the teacup off, one must drink the tea inside. How was Kael to manage that when the little hand drum teacup focused solely on beating its drum, showing no inclination to serve him tea?
While Kael stared glumly at this predicament, everyone watched the Sovereign of Wisdom, seated opposite Angel, suddenly say a few words to the poetic harp teacup. The teacup promptly brought the cup to his lips, poured the emerald tea for him, then dashed away at once.
What had the Sovereign of Wisdom done?
Everyone turned to him in bafflement.
The others’ attempts to obtain tea had at least followed some pattern, but the Sovereign of Wisdom’s teacup was busily reciting cryptic verses like a wandering minstrel, and yet he managed to drink it first?
How?
The Sovereign of Wisdom did not respond to their collective glances, but the Black Count spoke up with an explanation:
“That poetic harp teacup seemed to be speaking nonsense, but it was actually posing a simple linguistic association puzzle. In the end, as you saw, the Sovereign of Wisdom answered perfectly.”
He paused before adding: “Angel mentioned that these teacups picked you all by virtue of some characteristic. So consider your own traits to figure out how to drink your tea.”
Angel nodded repeatedly at the Black Count’s words. As expected, the Black Count had instantly discerned the trick.
The Sovereign of Wisdom’s characteristic is “wisdom,” and so the poetic harp teacup sought to test it. Plainly, it had overestimated its own intellect. Having been trounced by the Sovereign of Wisdom’s superior intelligence, it practically fled in defeat.
Why did the harp teacup test Vai’s manners? Angel wasn’t certain, but maybe the harp teacup guessed he was the only one who would praise the flavor of its brew…
With the Black Count’s prompt, both Daus and Kael soon secured their tea.
Kael’s case was simplest: his trait is “focus.” The hand drum teacup was wholly absorbed in drumming, and because Kael didn’t interfere with the performance, he merely leaned over and drank the tea from behind. The drum was never distracted.
Daus’ puzzle was equally straightforward: solving the baton teacup’s riddle required humming along to the baton’s conducting, matching the rises and falls in pitch. Yet the baton teacup was a bit half-baked, and as soon as Daus managed to follow the melody even roughly, the test was cleared.
Daus felt embarrassed. He had been reluctant to hum due to the sheer awkwardness of it, but Angel’s warning about these strange teacups weighed on his mind. If there was even a sliver of truth to that threat, ignoring it would be an unthinkable risk.
Hence, in the end, Daus braced himself and mumbled through a few lines, finishing hastily.
All these little tea trials lasted less than three minutes, yet they markedly eased the tension in the room.
Chapter 2697 Original Location <TOC> Chapter 2699 Man in the Jar