Chapter 2009: Chapter 2009

The map marked the fifth location at a low altitude, very close to the ground. It pointed to a house in an alley, but the building was empty.

Jenkins glanced around and discovered the concentration of spirit was not where the map indicated. Instead, it was about forty feet up in the air, slightly to the east.

After confirming his eyes were not deceiving him, he figured the followers of the God of Rituals must have provided an incorrect location.

"Still, the result was quite precise. Even if it were not him here, another Saint would have noticed the discrepancy. A quick flight upward, and with a bit of luck, they would have sensed the true location, just as he had felt the anomaly moments before."

As the thought crossed his mind, he considered summoning his unicorn to carry him into the sky. But it was still raining, and the unicorn’s coat would get soaked. It reminded him of how Chocolate, his cat, always burrowed into his arms in this kind of weather. The unicorn probably would not enjoy flying in the downpour either.

So, he decided against calling the little beast. Instead, he took out a stool, sat on it, and flew steadily upward. There was a risk of being seen, of course, but the heavy rain and the eerie, lingering gray fog made it highly unlikely that anyone would lower their umbrella to gaze at the sky and spot him.

"If a Mysterious Realm happens to open right above me as I’m flying up, I’m definitely going to curse someone out loud."

He mused to himself, holding his umbrella as he continued his ascent. His luck held; no such dramatic development occurred. There was nothing in the air, and Jenkins had to double-check the location with his eyes before halting his flight.

The spirit and psychic energy gathered at this fifth location surpassed the previous four combined. According to the information from Magic Miss’s associates, this was one of the most crucial nodes for a large-scale ritual. One piece of evidence was its close proximity to the black tower.

As Jenkins stared at the tower, Chocolate poked its head out from his collar, looking around as if searching for something.

"What are you doing? Get back inside. You don’t want to catch a cold."

Chocolate had never been sick, at least not since Jenkins had taken him in. And while Jenkins could now cure an ailment like the common cold in an instant, his instinct to care for his pet remained.

Chocolate twitched his nose, sniffing the air erratically. Jenkins knew the cat’s sense of smell was extraordinarily keen, almost a unique ability in itself, so he mimicked the action, taking a deep whiff.

First, he caught the distinct dampness of the rain, followed by the smell of the gray fog that permeated Nolan. But there was nothing unusual about either scent; they were perfectly ordinary.

"Did you sense something?"

He asked his cat again. Chocolate nodded, answering with a meow. Unfortunately, even now, Jenkins could not understand Chocolate's thoughts. He could only surmise that the cat had once again perceived something out of the ordinary.

Under these circumstances, he did not dare risk probing the spirit gathered by the ritual with his own psychic energy. He even flew a little farther away to put some distance between himself and the area.

"Since I have no idea what's going on, I might as well test it."

With that thought, he pointed a finger to the sky:

"Let lightning strike!"

A brilliant white flash seared the air, and a massive pillar of lightning struck down from above. A deep, rumbling thunderclap followed a moment later from high in the heavens, but only after a huge "hole" had been torn in the sky.

The summoned lightning passed through the ritual node, its power seeming to shatter some kind of balance. An irregular chasm appeared in the air, like a shattered mirror, and inside swirled a kaleidoscope of fantastical colors.

This was clearly not a Mysterious Realm, nor was it a simple case of the material world's spatial barrier being blasted apart. Rather, something that had been hidden was having its disguise ripped away. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novel-fire.net

Considering the slight discrepancy between the node's actual location and the one provided by Magic Miss's friends and the Church, perhaps the true purpose of this ritual was more than just offering more power to the Difference Engine.

Magic Miss had always been exceptionally competent. Though her fees were high, the research she conducted had never produced any major errors. But anyone could fall victim to a low-probability event, especially when dealing with that machine of immense computational power.

Jenkins now had two options: approach the hole in the sky and deal with it himself, or stay put, signal the Church, and wait for them to handle it.

He was not one to take unnecessary risks; his nature had always been cautious, so he naturally chose the latter. Just as he was about to descend to the ground and use the triangular sigil to contact the Church, he heard a strange sound by his ear, like shattering glass.

He turned to look back and saw that the hole torn by the lightning was expanding outward. Amidst the phantasmagoria of colors, something enormous, like a whale, flashed past within, giving Jenkins no chance to grasp its true form.

Before he could give it more thought, a scorched, sallow hand abruptly reached out from the jagged, polygonal edge of the rift, gripping the side. It was followed by a dull, yellowish humanoid body, which appeared sideways in the opening.

There was no need for hesitation now. As he threw on his black robe, a cackling black shadow materialized behind him. Accompanied by a bizarre series of chimes, the Twin Demons arced through the rainy sky, hurtling straight toward the rift.

A deafening explosion left a black, flower-like stain on the air. It seemed that after Jenkins had become the World Tree Seedling, all his other Savior abilities had grown stronger. He attributed this to the refinement of his soul and body.

The exploding Twin Demons successfully blasted the terrifying, sallow humanoid back into the rift, but the impact also made the already expanding hole even larger.

Suspended in the air, Jenkins twitched his nose. He caught the scent of burning tobacco, its source clearly the massive rift. But before he could make his next move, sallow hands appeared once more at the edge of the hole—dozens of them this time.

The humanoid monsters clung to the crumbling edges of the opening like spiders. They looked like flayed aberrations, their raw muscles exposed, but the flesh was a sickening mix of scorched yellow and black.

"What in the world are these things?"

More and more of the humanoid monsters poured from the rift. By the time Jenkins summoned his sword from thin air, the creatures swarming the edges were already preparing to leap down into the city.

A ring formed from two brilliant white flashes of light precisely sliced through the monsters attempting to leave the rift. They left no corpses upon death, instead dissolving into puffs of yellow smoke that carried the stench of burnt tobacco before dissipating into the air.

Jenkins, sword in his right hand, slashed at the opening. Confirming that it only made the rift grow larger, he pointed his left hand at the falling rain and commanded:

"Ice Solidification!"

A blast of white frost radiated out from him and his high stool. The puddles on the ground below froze first, and then the rain falling upon the ice began to build a pillar, rising higher and higher.

Like a growing ice tree, it eventually reached the sky, sealing the rift within the pillar. The ceaseless rain caused the column of ice growing from the ground to look as if it were holding aloft a gigantic, icy sphere.

Though it did not completely stop the rift from expanding, it at least prevented the monsters inside from getting out for the time being.

While Jenkins was doing this, three figures flew over from the distance. They were demigods from the Orthodox Church, though none of them were familiar to him.

"Excuse me, have you seen Jenkins Williams?"

They did not ask about the current situation first, but instead searched for Jenkins. He was the one assigned to handle this node, so he was supposed to be here.

"Williams? I have," Jenkins replied. "But first, you need to tell me what this thing is."

Jenkins pointed at the rift inside the sphere of ice. Its temperature seemed to be quite high, as it was already melting the ice from within.

"We just received a report. This... thing hasn't just appeared here..."

The middle-aged man in the lead spoke. He was Mr. Jaeger, a demigod from the Church of War and Victory. He was a slender man, but he exuded an exceptional fortitude.

"But your handling of it is the best we've seen so far. We don't know exactly what it is yet, but it's most likely a passage connected to the Dream Realm."

The Astral Plane and the Shadow Realm were real, existing spaces with substance, energy, and spirit. In contrast, the Mirror Realm and the Dream Realm were mere extensions born from the perceptions of intelligent life in the material world—worlds that possessed no true reality.

The world in the mirror and the world of dreams, while far more real than a simple illusion, fell far short of true existence. The Mirror Realm was based on the real world as a reference, whereas the Dream Realm was based on the ephemeral landscape of dreams. Therefore, compared to the Mirror Realm Jenkins had once visited, the world of dreams—influenced by countless different perceptions—was far more illusory, far more unknowable.

In fact, while a few researchers acknowledged the existence of the Mirror Realm, almost no one believed the Dream Realm was real.

"The Church believes that hidden behind the real space where Nolan City exists, there is a vast world woven from dreams, and the power accumulated within it is terrifyingly immense. This ritual was very likely connected to it. When we shattered the nodes, we inadvertently tore a breach in the thin barrier between the two worlds. Those monsters, and that light, are all products materialized from dreams... If I may ask, where did Jenkins Williams go?"