Chapter 552: Soone’s Right Hand
Angor woke up only to see endless darkness. There were strange whispers going off right beside his ears.
What are they talking about? Or... are they humans at all? I hear growling...
He felt sothing familiar. It was as if he just went through the sa experience not long ago, yet he couldn’t rember when. Or rather, his whole mind was too chaotic for him to think properly.
When he saw a small light spot in the distance, he stood up and followed it out of instinct.
As he moved closer to the light, the whispers grew louder and more unified as if thousands of different individuals of different races were trying to explain the sa word in different languages.
They made his head ache.
He reached his goal—a strange door that existed alone in the dark.
Or... is it a mirror?
He changed his mind because he saw soone inside the “door” looking back at him. He couldn’t see the reflection very clearly. The stranger was wearing different clothes, while their hair was longer than Angor’s.
Yet sothing told him that he was looking right at himself.
Two different ideas fought inside his disturbed mind and sohow convinced him of the impossible.
“Are you... ?” Angor decided to ask.
There was silence.
Angor carefully lifted his right hand and moved toward the door. He wished to confirm whether he could touch “him”.
Following Angor’s move, “he” also reached out a hand.
Two hands slowly connected in the middle.
“It’s so cold...”
The first thing that ca to Angor’s mind was that the other one’s hand felt like ice.
This strange feeling was also familiar to him. He believed he put his hand on sothing similar recently.
“What is that?” soone suddenly asked him.
Angor thought the man in the door was the speaker. Before he could reply, he saw the darkness giving way to light, while all the whispers slowly stopped. At the sa ti, the “door” shattered to pieces.
He opened his eyes and saw sothing black looming in front of his face.
It was Sunders, who was wearing that signature black gentleman suit.
Where-where did that mirror go? Angor panicked a little.
Then he saw Sunders smiling for so reason.
Angor slowly looked down and noticed that Sunders had grabbed his right wrist while his right hand was still trying to catch the air.
He then shook his head and looked around. It seed he was lying on a bed inside a room he couldn’t recognize.
Was that a dream?? So while “dream-walking”, I moved to touch- Wait! Did I do sothing funny to Sunders?!
Angor couldn’t imagine how he could carelessly “stroke” the body of a formidable and strange-tempered wizard. He desperately prayed that his professor wouldn’t punish him by chopping his hand off.
“I-I... There was this weird dream, sir! I didn’t an to touch—” Angor retracted his hand with a start.
Sunders raised an eyebrow. “Pull yourself together. What is it that you’re reaching for?”
“Um, you?”
Sunders’ expression grew dangerously funny.
“I an, the air! Since there’s nothing in front of ... right?”
Sunders shook his head and put on a more serious look. “Take your ti and think again.”
“But there’s not... wait, I think I caught soone’s hand in my dream.”
Angor felt that his mory was still blurry. However, several details were coming back.
“Who is it?” Sunders looked at Angor’s right hand with a stern look.
Following Sunders’ hint, Angor checked his own hand as well.
His irises shrank.
Starting from where Sunders was gripping at, his entire hand was... not his hand anymore.
Compared to his left hand, his current right one was longer. To be precise, each finger on his right hand now had an extra segnt.
He tried moving the hand and imdiately saw sothing green glowing around it.
What in the-?
He did more tests and noticed that he could control this strange hand just fine. On the other hand, it seed that he couldn’t do anything to the green lines floating about. There was nothing wrong as long as he didn’t mind the alien looks of it.
“You’ll have ti to get used to it later. Now tell , whose hand were you reaching for?” Sunders interrupted Angor’s body experint and asked again.
“I... don’t know. It’s soone in the mirror... or a door. I can’t even make out their gender.”
“Long, blond hair?”
“It’s long, but I can’t tell the color. The clothes seem pretty expensive, but I don’t know the exact colors either. Did you see them too, professor?”
Instead of answering, Sunders questioned Angor about his previous experience, including his journey so far in Witch’s Town and what the strange dream looked like.
Angor did not withhold anything. He told everything he could rember, including the terrifying old witch.
Sunders remained quiet for a mont to digest what he just heard.
“You believe the man you saw in this ‘door’ was you?”
Angor nodded.
Sunders rubbed his temples. “When I arrived at the cottage and found you, there was another man beside you who was obscured by so mist or shady effects. I saw his blond hair, but his hair was a lot longer. His form dissipated as soon as I moved closer.”
“You didn’t see his face either, sir?”
“No. But I saw him taking your right hand. Or, I saw him trying to fuse with your right hand.”
“Eh, fuse with my hand?!” Angor lifted his strange hand again. He understood none of what Sunders was talking about.
Does it an “he” affixed this bizarre hand on ? But why? Where did my old hand go?
Angor tried clenching the hand into a fist and succeeded without a problem. Also, there seed to be a strong power hidden inside the hand, but it felt... foreign.
He squeezed so hard that he saw several blood veins pulsing on his right hand.
Blood? But my soul did not have blood!
“You finally noticed?” Sunders grinned. “Your right hand is ‘real’ now.”
“Really?!” Angor quickly lifted his left hand and checked.
Everything on him still suggested that he was in his “soul form”, except for the foreign body part he just gained.
A terrible realization struck his mind.
What about my real body back in reality? Did my body grow a wrong hand too?
He failed to remain calm as cold sweat covered his entire body, or at least he believed so, as his soul couldn’t sweat.
“Don’t take my words to your heart yet. I might be wrong,” Sunders spoke up again.
“What... do you an, professor?”
“There’s another possibility that the strange character was pulling your right hand, your REAL right hand, into Nightmare Realm from the wizarding world. We had to get back first to confirm what really happened, and before we can, do not use that new hand.”
Sunders glanced at the green marks flying around the hand and felt sothing terrifying troubling his mind. He couldn’t sense any energy signature from it yet, but sothing told him that they should be very careful when “handling” Angor’s newly grown body part.
Angor nodded and slumped on his bed, not sure of what to do. Losing a hand was quite a heavy blow to him.
“I have another assumption.” Sunders continued when he saw Angor in such a low spirit, “Perhaps you never lost your hand. This one is also YOUR hand, just looks different.”
Angor looked up at his professor, confused.
“You ‘felt’ that the man in your dream was you, no? Maybe you were right. That man is Angor, a projection created by Nightmare Realm.”
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