Lord of The Mysterious Realms Chapter 831

Whatever the sealed face said next was lost to the distance; Jenkins could no longer hear it. He activated Cat's Grace and bolted upward, but even at this speed, it was impossible to escape before the place was destroyed.

It had taken him a long time to descend the winding stone staircase. Even accounting for the time he’d spent observing the murals, there was no way he could reach the top in under a minute.

This was likely the first time Jenkins had ever pushed Cat's Grace to its absolute limit. He eventually abandoned his suitcase entirely, dropping to all fours and scrambling directly up the walls.

The movement was anything but "graceful," yet it looked remarkably feline. He absolutely could not let himself be buried here. While it wouldn't kill him, getting dug out could take months.

Perhaps it was a side effect of using Cat's Grace at full power, but Jenkins seemed to gain a cat's instinct for danger. As he ran, he felt a threat looming from the distance, even before the chain of his pocket watch had a chance to vibrate.

Less than a second later, a seismic wave surged up from below, sweeping through everything. A series of sharp cracks echoed from all sides of the tunnel.

The collapse began eleven seconds after the first tremor, and Jenkins hadn't even made it halfway. Rubble rained down from above, and the entire passageway seemed to be contracting inward.

After another failed attempt to sense the Real Illusion, he swung an arm and shattered a chunk of rock overhead, only to be immediately pinned by a cascade of larger boulders. In the final moment before being completely buried, he decisively swallowed the mouse transformation candy he had received from the candy benefactor.

His body began to heat up alarmingly. From the outside in, his clothes, everything in his pockets, his skin, and his bones all contracted inward. The pain was so unbearable that Jenkins blacked out for a few seconds. When he came to, the gray Jenkins-mouse immediately scurried upward.

"Oh, it looks time I'm really..."

Before he could finish his thought, an agile shadow tumbled down from above, landing right in front of the little gray mouse. A cat opened its jaws, gently scooped up the even smaller mouse, and tossed him onto its back. After confirming that Mr. Mouse's tiny paws had a firm grip on its fur, it shot up the passage at an even greater speed.

Riding on the cat's back, Jenkins suddenly felt the urge to cry. He had never imagined he would one day be saved by a cat while in the form of a mouse. But even this speed wasn't enough, not nearly enough. Not only would his rescuer fail to get the mouse out from underground, but it might also lose its own life in the attempt.

But that was just Jenkins's own assessment. As they moved, he noticed two golden hairs fluttering behind Chocolate's ears. Then, one of them abruptly vanished.

The instant the hair disappeared, the surrounding scenery began to distort, and all matter dissolved away. A thick darkness enveloped the cat and mouse, and the warmth from their bodies was rapidly siphoned away by the void.

Jenkins recognized the extremely advanced ability. It was a method of rapid travel that involved teleporting oneself into the Shadow Realm and then returning to the material world. The barrier to learning it was surprisingly low, but using it was incredibly dangerous. One misstep, and the user could be trapped in the Shadow Realm forever, without even a body to be found.

As if breaking the surface of water, the cat and mouse re-emerged into the warmth of the underground. They were now in the abandoned mine shaft just before the entrance to the stone stairs. The massive boulder that had blocked the path had crumbled in the earthquake, so Chocolate raced along the now-clear tunnel toward the exit.

It seemed to know the way instinctively, never hesitating at any fork in the path. They even overtook miners who were also fleeing the earthquake. The men stared in astonishment at the young cat running out from the depths of the earth, and were even more surprised to see a panicked-looking gray mouse riding on its back.

Chocolate didn't slow down after bursting out of the mine shaft. Outside the pit was a quarry in the northeastern outskirts of Nolan, and the cat shot straight through it. Bathed in moonlight, they sped past fields that had caved in from the earthquake, past a small country town where houses had collapsed, past the fog-shrouded suburbs of Nolan, and past crowds of people who had run into the streets to escape the tremors. Fınd the newest release on NoveI[F]ire.net

Many people noticed the frantically running cat and the mouse on its back, and more than a few began to wonder if it was a hallucination brought on by the earthquake.

Chocolate ran all the way to the main entrance of the Sage's Church before finally stopping, letting out a panting meow. But it didn't let Jenkins dismount. Instead, it darted straight into the sanctuary. The guards at the gate all recognized the cat. And while the mouse clinging to its back was certainly strange, they didn't try to stop it.

The earthquake had apparently been quite severe. Priests and nuns within the church were preparing to go out and provide disaster relief. The cat dashed through the crowd, drawing gasps of surprise, before finally arriving at the door to Miss Bevanna's office.

The door was not fully closed, leaving a small gap, and Chocolate deftly slipped through it.

Inside the office, Miss Bevanna was standing beside her desk. The large book she always carried was flipping through its pages at an incredible speed. A golden divine luminescence shimmered between her hands and the book's cover, its glow even outshining the gaslight.

Hearing the noise at the door, she frowned and looked over, only to be startled when Chocolate suddenly leaped onto her desk. The cat, with a complete lack of manners, planted its paws right on the pages, stopping the book from turning.

The cat let out a soft, melodic sound.

"Jenkins is here, is he? The Sage be blessed, I'm glad he's safe. But today's combat lesson..."

She trailed off mid-sentence, her eyes finally landing on the somewhat malnourished-looking mouse on the cat's back.

The mouse seemed to be gasping for air. It tumbled off Chocolate's back and staggered onto the desk. The cat immediately pinned it with a paw and began batting the poor creature back and forth, just as it would with its Life Pearl.

"Is that a gift for me? I'm sorry, Chocolate, but I don't like mice."

Miss Bevanna declined politely.

Chocolate meowed again, batted its paw at the mouse as it tried to scurry away, and even gave it a lick.