Warlock Apprentice

Chapter 2022: Chapter 2023: Mushroom Garden

When those hands that passed through the wall embraced him and leaned back, Angel felt as if he had bid farewell to the light and fallen into the lightless deep sea.

All around was a silence shrouded in darkness.

Everything in the world was in silence, except for his body, which was continuously falling to the ocean floor like a whale fall.

And in this dark world, there was also a pressure similar to that of the deep sea, rendering Angel’s body uncontrolled, restricting his spiritual power, and even the strength to turn his head to see who was embracing him vanished.

He could only let himself follow a guiding force, continually descending.

This feeling of being out of control in the darkness, Angel would have expected to be terrible. But unexpectedly, there were not many negative feelings in Angel’s heart; instead, he felt very calm.

Even the tension from the earlier assault at the doorway was soothed by this boundless darkness, becoming tranquil and serene.

Perhaps because his emotions were calming down, Angel began to be more mindful and amplify the details of his surroundings.

The first thing he noticed was the hands embracing him from behind. Although he couldn’t see who was holding him, Angel could feel that the force of the embrace was very gentle, so much so that it could be described as ”tender”.

However, there was one thing that puzzled Angel: throughout the embrace, the other party kept loosening and tightening the hold now and then.

Angel could feel that the emotions conveyed from behind changed with the embrace’s looseness and tightness. Sometimes excited, sometimes hesitant, sometimes worried, sometimes hesitant.

Because the emotional fluctuations were so intense, Angel couldn’t decipher the exact meaning of the other party’s emotions, but this speed of change was perhaps the fastest he had ever encountered among all the Nightmare Realm creatures.

Yes, Angel could confirm that the other party must be a Nightmare Realm creature. This was not good news, as the speed of emotional changes indicated it was definitely not a low-intelligence creature.

Facing a high-intelligence Nightmare Realm creature, Angel wasn’t sure if he could muddle through.

As Angel pondered in his mind on how to use rhetoric to muddle through when facing the other party head-on, a bright light suddenly appeared beneath his feet.

The appearance of the light signified that the fall into darkness might soon reach its end.

The next moment, he felt as if he had crossed through a ripple-like boundary membrane. Upon entering the membrane, the rich Nightmare Realm aura instantly enveloped him.

He was still descending at this moment, probably not having reached the ground yet. But unlike before, the previously sluggish body had regained its ability to move autonomously.

With the shackles gone, Angel immediately turned his head, wanting to see who was behind holding him.

However, the Nightmare Realm creature behind him seemed to be playing hide and seek with him, darting right as he turned left, and left when he turned right.

Angel suddenly realized that his spiritual power was no longer restricted, so he directly manipulated it to look behind.

Yet, just as Angel’s spiritual power emerged, the person behind let out a sharp scream, as if turning into a wisp of blue smoke, speeding away into the distance.

Angel only had time to see a figure in a dress disappearing into mid-air, before the person vanished.

With the person’s disappearance, and without their support, Angel swiftly plummeted from mid-air.

Upon landing, Angel used his spiritual power to sense behind him, still unsure of who had embraced him earlier, wanting to see if any pheromone traces were left behind.

However, there was nothing, completely clean.

He found nothing wrong with his own body either, as if the other party’s sole intention was merely to bring him to this strange little garden.

Not even having seen the other party’s features, he just knew that the person might be a woman... Nightmare Realm creatures rarely looked human, so feminine might be a better description?

No matter what the other party’s gender is, Angel now only feels a head full of questions.

Nobody could possibly answer these questions now, so Angel could only sigh, deciding to put other matters aside temporarily and scout the surroundings first.

At least to determine whether he was safe or not.

The ground was damp fertile soil, surrounded by layers of towering mushrooms, looking like a fairy tale mushroom forest. However, when Angel fell from the high sky earlier, he roughly checked the surroundings and found it more of a small garden under a dome than a mushroom forest. Here, the ”flowers” were naturally the colorful mushrooms.

A garden filled entirely with mushrooms of various sizes, with no other plants in sight.

If Angel encountered this outside, he might have been surprised enough to study it. But here, considering it’s the Nightmare Realm creatures’ domain, encountering a mushroom forest or garden doesn’t seem too surprising.

At least Angel wasn’t too astonished by the all-mushroom environment, as he even mused whether the mushroom-loving Regina witch from the Research and Development Institute might willingly venture into the ruins, knowing there was such a mushroom garden. After all, from what Angel observed, many of the mushroom species were unfamiliar, beyond known ranges.

Apart from tree-like giant mushrooms, there were clumps of smaller mushrooms by the rocks, but Angel hadn’t seen any other plants.

As for dangers, his spiritual senses didn’t detect any, but the specific situation was still difficult to ascertain.

Apart from examining the specific environment, Angel was also sensing the Nightmare Realm aura in the air. Upon entering, he felt an extremely dense Nightmare Realm aura; now, immersed in it, the sensation was even more intense.

Even with just one breath, a large amount of Nightmare Realm aura was absorbed by him, prompting the Magic Vortex to transmute rapidly through a mysterious power.

Angel believed that if he cultivated in this place, it would probably be as swift as when he practiced near the channel in Poclades.

However, Angel knew he couldn’t possibly stay here to cultivate now.

His foremost goal now was to leave the ruins and return to reality.

As for how to leave, the first method Angel thought of was using The Gate of Void.

However, although The Gate of Void could be opened, it couldn’t be pinpointed to the previous channel.

”From the concentration of Nightmare Realm aura, coupled with the inability to use The Gate of Void to leave, there’s no doubt that this is indeed inside a semi-plane,” Angel mused, knowing that The Gate of Void could only traverse the same world, while a semi-plane has barriers between dimensions, making it impossible to cross using it.

This meant he was now inside the ruins, and the only way to leave was to make his way to the outside of the ruins.

However, not to mention whether he could find his way out of the ruins, he wasn’t even sure of his current location within the ruins or how to leave.