“A Mysterious Realm?”
Jenkins stood up with a sigh and walked out of the room, stopping before the only door that remained closed—number two. Mrs. Kopoler’s soul was clearly terrified of this place, refusing to go anywhere near it.
Jenkins took a deep breath and kicked the door open. Beyond the gaping doorway, the entrance to the Mysterious Realm stood quietly, radiating an endless white light.
“Just as I thought... I remember now. It seems my eyes can’t perceive the entrance to a Mysterious Realm from a distance.”
He had actually discovered this last time when he entered a Mysterious Realm to rescue Miss Stuart, but he hadn't had another opportunity to encounter a fully formed entrance since, so he hadn't given it much thought.
But now, everything was probably clear. The cause of it all was this very entrance. Its appearance had inflicted severe mental trauma on all the residents of the second floor of this apartment building.
In Room One, the Leviathan family’s young son had started creating those horrific drawings, perhaps even becoming vaguely aware of the problem’s source.
In Room Two, the solitary Howard Link had vanished without a trace, but it was highly likely he had wandered into the Mysterious Realm, never to be seen again.
In Room Three, Schultz the reporter had been subjected to whispers and murmurs, which drove him to become obsessed with occult research. Although his studies were based on falsehoods, he was ultimately lured into the realm. The final entry in his journal, “I understand. I’m coming,” confirmed his fate.
From this perspective, the tragedy that befell Mrs. Kopoler’s family could be attributed to the entrance right in front of him.
With this thought, he glanced back and saw Mrs. Kopoler standing fearfully in the hallway, but her terrified expression soon melted into sorrow. She finally stepped through the doorway, walked past Jenkins, and went straight into the entrance.
Jenkins stood rooted to the spot, at a loss, but he had absolutely no intention of entering that Mysterious Realm. Now that he understood what had happened here and the threat of the malevolent spirit was gone, the correct course of action was to let the Church handle it.
Nodding to himself, he turned to leave, only to hear the distinct sound of shattering glass from behind him.
He spun around suspiciously to check. The room’s windows were intact; the problem was with the space surrounding the Mysterious Realm. A dense web of cracks spread through the air like a shattered spiderweb. At the same time, the white light at the center of the realm began to dim, as if something were about to emerge.
“Because no one has passed through for a long time, the Mysterious Realm is about to collapse, and the material world will gain one or more Mysterious Objects.”
This was the truth behind the phenomenon. Although Jenkins had never witnessed it himself, he had heard Papa Oliver speak of it more than once.
Now that the spatial fissures were visible, it meant he had at most a minute before the contents of the Mysterious Realm burst into the material world and collided head-on with a not-so-speedy Jenkins. And even if he managed to escape, he would have to face the reality that the city now had one or more active Mysterious Objects.
But Jenkins still hadn’t made up his mind to enter the realm.
As he wrestled with his thoughts, the writer failed to notice he was too close to the entrance. The spatial cracks were still spreading outward and had, without him realizing, reached his side.
An immense suction force erupted from the entrance, and before the man could even retreat, he was pulled in. As he tumbled into the endless white light, he only had time to fling the cat from his shoulder. Before Chocolate could even land, Jenkins had vanished completely from the material world.
The cat let out an aggrieved meow at the entrance. It actually quite enjoyed these interesting adventures with Jenkins. After its cry, it saw that the collapse of the entrance had paused. It flicked its tail, bypassed the shimmering portal, leaped out the window, and darted off in the direction of the Sage's Church.
A familiar dizziness, accompanied by the usual phantasmagoria of light and color. Even now, Jenkins was still not accustomed to this forced spatial transfer. Perhaps his body was still not strong enough, which was why he couldn't stop himself from leaning over and dry-heaving the moment his feet touched the ground.
It was a truly awful sensation; he was forced to once again savor the taste of his fermented lunch.
He lifted his head. He was alone; Mrs. Kopoler’s ghost was nowhere to be seen. The sky overhead was gloomy, occasionally split by flashes of black lightning. He was clearly in a forest, where the bushes and branches were twisted into terrifying shapes. A gravel path stretched straight ahead, disappearing into the distant trees.
It reminded Jenkins of the boy’s drawings; the forest in them had been just as eerie.
He felt unwell, something that had never happened before when entering a Mysterious Realm. Perhaps it was because this place was on the verge of collapse. Jenkins understood that even with the different flow of time between the realm and the outside world, he didn't have much time left.
He turned his head to see a similarly terrifying and dense black forest behind him, but there was no path. It seemed the gravel road began right at his feet. An old beggar in a straw hat was huddled at the edge of the path, strumming an instrument Jenkins didn't recognize. When he saw Jenkins notice him, he looked up.
Jenkins groaned softly. An owl’s head sat perched atop a human body.
“A new guest? Welcome to Windbell Path.”
He spoke while plucking the strings, but his skill was clearly inferior to the minstrel Jenkins had met in a tavern in Ruen.
“What do I have to do?”
Jenkins asked cautiously, feeling a bone-chilling wind blow from the dark, deep forest. It felt as if something was watching him from within the dense thicket.
The forest was utterly terrifying, more so than anything he could have depicted in his fairy tales. The path was only dimly lit, and even with his monocle, Jenkins couldn't see far. But he could feel danger lurking in the shadows.
“Walk down the path. The exit is at the end,” the beggar said.
“You mean this path at my feet? And by ‘walk down,’ you mean in this direction?” Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by novel_fіre.net
He pointed ahead to confirm, wary of any verbal tricks.
“Of course, young man. Walk on.”
The owl-beggar strummed his instrument and sang loudly, his voice like a broken gong that somehow harmonized with the howling, gloomy wind.
Jenkins tossed a small coin. It struck the rim of the beggar’s broken bowl, bounced onto the grass, and rolled twice before coming to a stop.