Chapter 1352: Chapter 1352

"Mr. Hood, you should just rest. I'll pass this information to the Church—I have friends there, you know. Leave the search for Mr. White Cat to me. If he's trapped in a Mysterious Realm, I think I can find the entrance and go in after him... It's definitely dangerous, but someone has to do it. Besides, the Church might even act faster than me."

Jenkins held up a hand to stop Mr. Hood and started to rise, but Mr. Hood called him back. He then shuffled unsteadily to the second floor, returning a while later with a finely crafted wooden box, which he handed to Jenkins.

"I can't be of much help in my current condition. Take this with you; I'm sure it will prove useful."

Jenkins opened the box, revealing a ticket that looked vaguely familiar.

"B-11-5-2305, [A Ticket Home]. It's one of the few items that can bring someone out of a Mysterious Realm. Unlike the equally famous [Mr. Prankster's Toy Car Ticket], this one is completely harmless. There's only one, but I think it should still be of some help in rescuing Mr. White Cat."

"This will be a huge help."

Jenkins exclaimed in surprise. He hadn't expected Mr. Hood to possess such a rare item.

"If you find Mr. White Cat, remember to check if he still has the [Magical Conch]. He keeps it with him for emergencies, so I think he should be holding on for now. If he still has it when you find him, then combined with this ticket, the chances of you both returning safely increase greatly. I'll wait here for your return, Mr. Candle. About today's events..."

"We were too careless. We never expected it to turn out . I wish you the best of luck!"

Leaving Mr. Hood's house, Jenkins immediately returned to Ruen. From there, he contacted Nolan and reported everything he'd learned from Mr. Hood to Miss Bevanna, passing it off as a result of his own divination.

Miss Bevanna was stunned that Jenkins's "divination" could be so precise. But since Miss Audrey had vouched for him, she simply marveled at his extraordinary talent in the art.

Even though the Church had begun to act, Jenkins didn't just wait for news. After handling his duties at the church, he took a Church carriage back to Dolores's estate. He briefly explained what happened to the young women waiting for him, told them to get some rest, and then returned to Nolan with his cat.

Now that he had the ticket from Mr. Hood, even entering a Mysterious Realm to rescue Mr. White Cat wouldn't be that dangerous. Jenkins decided he had to do his part.

For safety's sake, he didn't ask Alexia to come to Nolan to help. However, before he returned, the petite woman gave him a small, glowing blue cube. It was a device specially made by Alexia for finding the entrances to Mysterious Realms.

While using it might present some challenges, it was certainly better than having Jenkins wander the city and trust to luck.

It was now the early hours of the morning. The city had fallen silent, with only the streetlights flickering on the main roads. The number of patrols was even greater than it had been in the evening, likely due to the intelligence Jenkins had provided. Now, every team of ordinary people was paired with an Enchanter, since ordinary people would have trouble seeing a Mysterious Realm's entrance even if they came across one.

Riding his unicorn with his cat, Jenkins flew through the sky, deciding to search from east to west. His luck, however, was abysmal. Just as the clock struck midnight, he inadvertently flew straight into the Doomsday Illusion.

Sometimes, one's luck is simply that awful. Jenkins stumbling into the Doomsday Illusion at such a critical juncture was a prime example.

Just moments before, the unicorn had been carrying him in a low flight. After entering this decaying, apocalyptic world, they were forced to slowly descend because of the realm's inherent rules against flight, landing on someone's rooftop. The source of thɪs content is novel※fire.net

In the distance, an enormous yellow moon seemed to have settled on the horizon. Jenkins glanced at it and then quickly averted his gaze, lest he go mad from staring too long.

He let the unicorn leave first, then held his cat and looked at the apocalyptic scenery for a moment, pondering his next move. He could actually leave immediately using [Real Illusion], but the problem was, his cat couldn't. Jenkins would never leave Chocolate alone in such a dangerous place. So, after waiting a good while with no sign of returning to reality, he climbed into the building through a window and started walking toward the clock tower in the city center.

This was a version of Nolan City blended from various past apocalypses. The weakest but most numerous monsters were creatures with grotesque bodies, skilled in close combat, that turned to soot and dissipated upon death. These monsters were incredibly strong, and their skin, fused with their clothes, was tougher than military-grade armor plating.

The best way to fight these creatures was with long-range spells. Unfortunately, in this perilous apocalyptic world, such spells often attracted even more monsters.

So Jenkins could only engage them in close combat, which basically meant trading blows, their weapons clashing with a constant clang. Jenkins believed his swordsmanship would improve by leaps and bounds after this. When he returned to Nolan and resumed Miss Bevanna's combat lessons, she would surely be impressed.

Jenkins also considered searching for traces of the Mad Poet in this world. However, he had recently surmised that the hero who killed the Mad Poet had likely succeeded in ascending to godhood. This meant that epoch did not end in an apocalypse, so he probably wouldn't find any clues about the Fifteenth Epoch here.

As for the reason this world was always in darkness, he had learned that before his final duel with the Titan. This place represented the final apocalypse of the epoch when the ancient Titans vanished—the fireless age when the sun disappeared below the horizon.

As for the other apocalyptic phenomena besides the soot monsters and the vanished sun, Jenkins could only hazard a guess that the yellow moon represented the primordial moon of the long-vanished material world. Legend had it that the moon was devoured by the Devouring Moon Spirit Cat. And the Devouring Moon Spirit Cat, like the Ouroboros and the Scarlet Ephemera, was a Beast of Calamity that appeared at the end of each epoch—the embodiment of all that era's sins.

Something similar would of course appear at the end of the Eighteenth Epoch, but Jenkins currently had no idea what it would be.

He fought his way past monsters, occasionally forced to take detours to avoid them. By the time he reached the clock tower in the city center, half an hour had passed. He climbed it, breathless, and found the old man in the same spot. The man held out his palm to Jenkins, a mouth opening in its center, and asked a question that stunned him:

"The day before yesterday, what did you do to this world?"