As soon as Leon learned the true value of a Demeter, he refused to leave her at Padt Manor right away.
“There’s no way we have what it takes to keep it. Maybe it’s okay when you or Miss Eureka is here, but she, you, and I will always leave one day, by which time the Demeter will bring the family quite the risk.”
“I’ll temporarily put her here then.” Angor considered and said, “Later, I might take her away or use an illusion to hide it. I’ll decide what to do then.”
In the end, Angor made up his mind to plant the Demeter here. Not in the soil, but on top of a small piece of “cloud dirt” he handily crafted, which was the same component used for sustaining the floating islands in Brute Cavern. In this way, he didn’t have to sever the Demeter’s roots when removing her.
By combining the cloud dirt and a proper amount of earth he found outside Grue Town, he successfully created a tiny floating island to keep the Demeter above the manor while also leaving a simple illusion to conceal her from people’s views.
The Demeter had been silently weeping ever since Angor saw her. But as soon as Angor placed her into fresh soil, a delightful smile that perfectly fitted her stunning look came upon her face.
Even her feathers that looked a bit dim and unkempt before slowly grew clean and brighter, further adding to her image of the “Goddess of Spring”.
Both Angor and Leon watched the Demeter displaying her splendor in awe, which was still not the end of it.
In the next second, new sprouts shot out around the Demeter and began to emanate the aura of life into the environment. The aura wasn’t very strong, but it still covered up the entire Padt Manor.
Within a matter of seconds, the Milkberry Tree visibly gained extra size, while the flowers around it also took on more vivid sheens.
The miniature plants in the Krakok settlement also gave birth to new branches and blossoms rapidly, turning the newly-built Krakok home even more lovely.
Leon took several deep and pleasant breaths as he felt the very air in his lungs almost invigorating.
“She’s still recovering. When she reaches her full size, the power will reach every corner of Grue Town, including the farmlands in the suburbs, by which time you’ll never have to worry about food shortage,” Angor said to Leon, who was still dumbfounded.
“She’s not fully grown yet?? Man, I wish I could keep her here, but…”
Leon shook his head while descending from the floating island by using Angor’s Gondola.
“I know the wizarding world is amazing, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen something like this. Now I can’t wait to go there and find out more.”
…
That night, the servants in the manor held a feast with the Krakoks to celebrate the wonderful blessing they gained today. Even though they couldn’t see the Demeter, they knew it was probably Angor who made it happen.
Angor, however, didn’t join the thrill. As the others sang and danced to their hearts’ content, he silently left the manor and traveled away from Grue Town.
He was going to Waterford, the city he used to love the most when he was young.
The Waterford today was a lot quieter and more peaceful compared to what he could remember of it. At least he could no longer see starving homeless people wandering around the city.
The main city district was still bright with many shops open for night business. However, this wasn’t his destination—he was heading to the western area where the biggest prison in Waterford was located.
The “Black Sands” prison was home to many criminals, most of whom were waiting on death row. Angor planned to use these people as test subjects and try out “reality dreams”.
Without other known ways to rescue Jon, he at least needed something to prevent Jon from vanishing from this world. Keeping Jon’s consciousness in a dream was still better than letting him die completely.
Everything Freud suggested until now was hypothetical. Now, Angor was going to do hands-on experiments.
First and foremost, he had to make sure whether he could maintain someone’s full memory and personality in a dream after that person was killed.
It wouldn’t make much difference, but he still preferred doing such tests on these villains rather than hurting innocent mortals he caught off the street.
Would deep sleep and light sleep affect the results? Would the dream be cut off immediately when someone died?
This was about Jon’s future. He would like to be absolutely certain of the outcome.
He reached the bottom-most level of the prison. He then deployed a simple “mist illusion” as his temporary testing ground and immediately began.
The first prisoner he found was having a typical nightmare where this man was being chased by a group of bloody females of different ages, who madly wanted to get their revenge on him.
“A rapist, huh? Well, this sucks…”
He still didn’t know how to kill someone while “dream walking” yet, so he found some help by controlling another prisoner in the area as his killer.
Unfortunately, the first test ended up as a failure. When the “test subject” was chopped to death, he briefly woke up and caused the dream to shatter.
“So I can’t let them feel it?”
He found a second target and used some nightmare energy to block this man’s sense of pain.
It seemed to be a success at first when the prisoner was left in his dream for a while without realizing that his body had perished.
However, without the support of an active mind, the dream bridge quickly crumbled, which meant Angor could no longer enter the dream again nor could he find out whether the dream was still happening.
There might be ways to find a dream without locating its dream bridge, which… clearly wasn’t something he could learn right now.
He took some time to go over more prisoners while noting down everything he needed to know, such as how well memories were kept in different types of dreams.
While at it, he accidentally discovered several “innocent” prisoners who were actually framed by someone. Instead of killing them, he made some adjustments to the roster to point out the wrongful accusations.
The entire prison was in an uproar by the time he finished his work. However, he wasn’t going to care about what happened next.
He was quite satisfied with what he learned at one night. Regrettably, there wasn’t one single subject who had a lucid dream, so he didn’t learn any useful things about it.
Could lucid dreamers retain their complete consciousness after bodily death? Since Jon was having a lucid dream, Angor had to know the answer to this question.
If even a tiny part of Jon’s awareness or personality was damaged or lost, Jon would no longer be the same man as before.
