Chapter 847: The Quagmire of the Primitive Dream Realm
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 847: The Quagmire of the Primitive Dream Realm
It all happened far too quickly; no one could have reacted in such a split second.
Everyone seemed to daze for a moment. The instant they realized a crisis had descended, they hurriedly tore through space, preparing to flee the Expansion Realm.
"What in the world did those damned witches do?!" the cursing wizards cried out in terror as they stepped into spatial rifts.
The elves and Holy Angels followed suit, fleeing one after another.
Everything in the Expansion Realm seemed to be left behind. Once the wizards had caught their breath and calmed their racing hearts, they immediately began to vent their frustrations with a barrage of insults.
After venting his emotions, a wizard named Elton Claire looked at his familiar surroundings and suddenly realized he seemed to have returned to the Wizard Academy. Specifically, he was in his own Wizard Tower.
"I can't... I can't just let this go... Those witches actually dared to plot against us. Do they really think we academic wizards on the front lines are just for show?"
Elton opened the door and left the laboratory on the top floor of the Wizard Tower.
But the moment the door opened, a familiar figure appeared before him.
"Why are you here..." Elton froze for a moment. Seeing the familiar face, his anger flared instantly. "Weren't you with me at the Expansion Realm? Why did you come back early! Did I give you permission to return?!"
"Mentor Elton, we..."
"Don't give me excuses. I think you can forget about being a Tower Lord. Get out of my sight!" Fuming, Elton kicked the figure away.
However, even in his rage, he failed to notice that the person he had kicked didn't even have a scratch. As they watched the angry Elton leave, a bizarre smile crept across their face.
Elton walked toward the stairs. The staircase inside the Wizard Tower was a spiral, maintaining a vintage masonry structure that was overall quite dim. Every so often, a Wizard Tool with a constant-light enchantment was needed to provide supplementary illumination.
As Elton passed a window on the side of the stairs, he caught a glimpse of a dim corner of the academy outside. He still felt a lingering sense of dread.
It felt as though the familiar stairs were constantly pushing against his momentum, yet he still hadn't reached the floor he expected. Moreover... even though he was going downstairs, he felt a physical strain as if he were climbing up.
With his life level at the Transcendent rank, his physical strength should have been far beyond the point where walking up and down stairs would cause fatigue, right?
At that thought, Elton broke into a cold sweat!
Had another wizard set up a spatial-loop staircase spell in his tower?!
That was impossible!
Elton stopped in his tracks. After the initial shock, what followed wasn't fear, but fury! His previous reaction had been the instinct of someone who had just escaped death, but his anger stemmed from the fact that someone was using such a trick to play him. It was an insult to his intelligence.
Because... this was his Wizard Tower!
A Wizard Tower was a wizard's foundation, the absolute property of a Transcendent Wizard. Here, his authority over the tower was supreme.
However, when he tried to expand his power to resonate with the Wizard Tower, he suddenly discovered that his strength had weakened. Not only that, but no matter what he did, he seemed to have completely lost contact with the tower!
"This... this is impossible!"
In the face of the power he was most proud of, "reality" had played a massive joke on him.
He began to climb upward like a madman, desperate to reach the control center at the very top of the tower. Something had to be wrong! If something had happened to his Wizard Tower and he couldn't fix it quickly... he didn't dare imagine the consequences!
But no matter how hard he climbed, he never seemed to reach the end. An invisible pressure gradually built up in his heart, urging him to keep fighting desperately.
Until, at a certain moment, a thought struck him.
He could tear open a spatial rift!
He waved his wizard staff. Spatial tear positioning... spatial architecture positioning... spatial marker activation... After a series of maneuvers, he managed to tear open a rift with great effort. He had no time to wonder why his power had become so weak that even tearing space was this difficult...
Wasn't he supposed to be a Transcendent Wizard?
His instinct for real touch should have allowed him to feel the very texture of space...
But now, there was no time left to think. For some reason, he lost his balance and fell while passing through the spatial rift.
He slammed heavily onto the ground.
But when he lifted his head to climb back up, his expression finally changed.
He hadn't arrived at the top-floor control center; he was in the hall of the tower's middle-lower levels!
How could such a low-level mistake happen?
A formal Wizard Tower of a Transcendent Wizard was actually quite vast, with countless functional zones depending on the wizard's research direction. This meant the tower required a large number of apprentices to operate, and each level needed a Tower Lord to serve as a manager for the Transcendent Wizard who owned the tower.
At this moment, his pathetic state was witnessed by all these lowly wizard apprentices.
A sense of frustration and rage originating from deep within filled his heart. Something inexplicable was constantly magnifying the dark side of his soul.
"What are you all gathered here for! Are you planning a rebellion?!"
Elton scrambled up from the ground, shaking with rage.
But clearly, his roar didn't achieve the expected effect. These wizard apprentices, whom he usually ordered around and who never dared to complain, were unnervingly quiet today...
Why now, of all times!
Elton looked at the group of apprentices; their faces were becoming distorted and hideous...
Among them, he even saw people who shouldn't exist!
People he should have long forgotten in the corners of his memory—apprentices who had been turned into something neither human nor ghost because of one of his casual experiments... They crawled toward him in grotesque, misshapen forms.
"Mentor Elton... do you still remember what you did to us?"
"You lowly apprentices! It was your honor to become test subjects for a great Transcendent Wizard! What! Do you actually think you can resist me?!"
Elton's furious words were met only with the heartless mockery of the apprentices. Their appearances became even more twisted.
His own vision became increasingly abstract. Countless terrifying memories from his past pressed down on his cognition, leaving him no room to consider the rationality of the situation.
Everything was designed to sculpt the most terrifying images within Elton's heart, striking at his most fearful and fragile essence.
At this moment, where was the Wizard Academy?
Everything outside the Wizard Tower dissolved into flying bits of disordered information. Those "wizard apprentices" completely lost their current forms, transforming into bizarrely shaped dream creatures. Like a dense school of piranhas, they rushed forward to tear at the prey they were fixated on!
The illusion of the dream shattered completely before Elton's eyes.
There was no Wizard Tower...
His so-called escape was nothing more than a beautiful fantasy born after falling into the deeper layers of the Primitive Dream Realm.
And yet, even that fantasy eventually turned into nourishment to be devoured by endless dream creatures.
* * *
Such tragedies were playing out every second.
The "privilege" of being besieged by so many dream creatures was reserved for the Abyss Peak—the breakthrough point where the Primitive Dream Realm had descended.
However, the surging Primitive Dream Realm had poured into the reality of the Expansion Realm, affecting more than half of the territory. Even the Ninglan Territory, located far from the Abyss Peak, was impacted.
Fortunately, the shelters and regions affected there didn't face a massive influx of deep-layer dream creatures. At most, people's consciousnesses were forced into the shallow layers of the Primitive Dream Realm.
Only the shelters closer to the Abyss Peak faced the most severe conditions.
"Is this... the Primal Dreamscape Calamity?"
At this moment, Bev Alanna looked at the purgatory she found herself in. She was directly facing that patch of the Primitive Dream Realm. She felt a blur before her eyes, and then she appeared in this place.
"Heh... Hahaha! This is actually quite interesting!"
Bev Alanna clenched her fists and directly transformed into a massive black dragon, facing the monsters that were constantly swarming toward her.
These monsters were not only bizarre but also as numerous as a relentless tide. This was the perfect battlefield prepared just for her!
However, the more excited she became, the less power she felt she could control. Yet she remained entirely fearless, dismissing it as some debuff ability applied by the monsters.
"Come on! Bring more! You think I'm afraid of you?!" Bev Alanna shook off a monster biting the claw of her dragon form and unleashed a blast of dragon breath.
But the dragon breath, which usually obliterated everything, seemed to do nothing more than give the monsters a light exfoliation.
"Heh... Magic immunity? Then how about some classic mechanics!" Bev Alanna snorted disdainfully. Her dragon claws stomped the ground, creating molten cracks that radiated a dangerous aura. Her claws suddenly pulled a giant stone sword forged from molten rock out of the earth...
BOOM!
Using what Bev Alanna called "classic mechanics," this barely "handy" giant stone sword forcibly crushed the monsters.
Some even reverted to their original dream creature forms to flee, though Bev Alanna didn't notice.
The dream creatures were restless, yet they still didn't dare to step forward, as if waiting for this individual to fall into the deeper layers of the Primitive Dream Realm.
Meanwhile, the dream creatures that had previously bitten Bev Alanna left in disgust. This person... didn't produce a single shred of fear or any other negative emotion. More importantly... her essence wasn't the soul essence they craved... they couldn't achieve their goal of devouring her...
Since they couldn't eat her and she only brought endless trouble, many dream creatures followed their instincts and left the area.
"Don't run! Haha! It's my turn to show off—"
Before Bev Alanna could finish her sentence, she felt a hand rest on her shoulder.
"Calm down! Don't be impulsive!"
"Who's there?" Bev Alanna was still in the heat of the moment. She spun around abruptly, only to see a familiar figure.
"Old Mei? You finally showed up! Haha~ this place is so much fun!"
"If I hadn't shown up, you'd probably be dead by now!" Mei Lind looked at the reckless woman before her. She couldn't help but clench her fist and give Bev a sharp knock on the head.
"Stop playing! You're constantly sinking into the depths of the Primitive Dream Realm! Can't you feel your power weakening?!"
"Weakening?" Reminded of this, Bev Alanna calmed down slightly. "I thought those monsters were hitting me with debuff spells."
"Debuff? If there's a debuff spell, it's definitely on your brain! Grab my hand." Mei Lind irritably grabbed Bev Alanna, intending to leave.
After all, she was a Transcendent Witch who had entered the Primitive Dream Realm several times. Even without her Great Spellbook, she still possessed the power of her Great Soul Subject. Nowadays, the Great Soul Subject held a status as important as the Witch Subject; they were the two hurdles one had to cross to become a Transcendent Witch.
Bev Alanna let Mei Lind grab her hand and lift her up. Then, she spotted Bai Yu.
"Hey~ Xiao Bai!"
"Dean Bev, you nearly scared me to death just now." Bai Yu didn't move much. She was busy adapting to the current Primitive Dream Realm and didn't dare to be as reckless as Bev Alanna.
"See? I'm fine~ Haha! That was a total blast just now..." After her exclamation, Bev Alanna looked back at Mei Lind. "Old Mei, are we heading back to reality now? I really didn't feel a thing; I didn't even notice when I entered the dream."
"Back to reality?" Mei Lind's tone was sour as she snapped back.
"Huh?" Bev Alanna looked at Mei Lind, confused. "What do you mean? Is there something else we need to do in the Primitive Dream Realm? I know you guys like collecting data and materials—you've always done that—but I'm a witch who doesn't understand any of that. Shouldn't you throw me back first?"
"Dean Mei means we can't go back. At least, we can't find a way back to reality in the short term," Bai Yu clarified from the side.
"...Eh?"
After a few seconds of silence, Bev Alanna finally let out a confused sound. Her gaze toward Mei Lind became clear and vacant.
"We can't go back? What's the situation? Old Mei! Don't lie to me! You used to brag about how you could go in and out of the Primitive Dream Realm seven times without a scratch. We come in this time and you drop the ball?!"
"Drop the ball?! Was the Primitive Dream Realm I went to before the same as this one?!" Mei Lind rhythmically tapped Bev Alanna's head with her other hand. "And who was it that kept sinking into the depths just now?! Do you really not know what 'death' means?"
"Uh... ah? I... I did that?" Bev Alanna pointed at herself belatedly, seemingly realizing she had done something rather unfortunate.
"It doesn't have much to do with you. If you had been even more willful, you would have just gotten lost faster. Once we entered the Primitive Dream Realm... there was a ninety percent chance of getting lost. It was just a matter of when."
"So... one way or another, we're screwed? Old Mei... you're playing for keeps this time? What did you guys actually do? You didn't even give me a heads-up."
"Whether we're screwed... that's not certain yet. If all else fails, we can ask the Primal Witch to bail us out. But... I think we might be about to witness a miracle."
As Mei Lind finished speaking, her gaze shifted toward Bai Yu.