Chapter 394 : Dreamscape Drifting

Saul walked out of the dormitory next to Byron’s without any expression on his face.

He first returned to his own room, repacked his barely unpacked luggage, slid a note under Keli’s door, and then, without any hesitation, moved into the room next to Byron’s.

That evening, the Third Rank apprentice who had been forced to move out, and whose name Saul still didn’t know—timidly knocked on Saul’s door.

He had some belongings he wanted to retrieve.

Saul, in a rather good mood, decided not to make things difficult for him and let him in to collect his things.

The Third Rank apprentice entered without daring to look around. He only went straight to the bedroom and the desk, gathering a few necessities.

However, just before he left, his expression suddenly stiffened. Moving stiffly like a puppet, he walked up to Saul, who was leaning against the wall with arms crossed, opened his mouth, and mechanically spoke a sentence:

“There are traces of spellcasting, but the defensive formation in the dormitory hasn’t been damaged.”

After speaking, he woodenly returned to where he had been standing, his expression then flickered into a brief confusion before returning to that cautious, meek demeanor. He continued gathering his things and headed out.

Just as the door closed behind him, a silver butterfly drifted out from his eye, laughing playfully as it flew to perch on Saul’s shoulder.

Throughout the whole scene, Saul had simply stood there, arms folded, watching the act unfold before him.

After the Third Rank apprentice left, Saul pushed himself off the wall and walked to the center of the room.

“You didn’t startle him, did you?” Saul asked. This was the first time he had allowed Penny to cast freely.

“Don’t worry, Brother Saul! I didn’t alter his cognition—just had him play out what he most wanted to do next, that’s all. And he won’t remember a thing, hee hee hee.”

Saul nodded, choosing to trust Penny.

After all, nightmare butterflies were notoriously bizarre in the legends. If a fully matured one could easily deceive true wizards, then even if Penny’s strength hadn’t fully recovered yet, dealing with a trash Third Rank apprentice should be no problem.

Besides, even if the apprentice somehow noticed Saul had tampered with him, Saul wasn’t worried.

In the Wizard Tower, Saul was known for his caution. Testing a Third Rank apprentice wouldn’t reveal his true intentions.

After all, Saul hadn’t instructed the apprentice to actually do anything.

“Alright. For now, they probably won’t send anyone else. Too much probing would only expose their own guilty conscience.”

Picking up his pack, Saul headed out. “We’ve stayed here long enough. Let’s go to the Second Storage.”

Penny, seeing Saul’s renewed energy, was also happy, though she couldn’t quite understand how Saul had so suddenly pulled himself out of his grief and anger.

Was it possible that Saul’s sadness and rage when facing the news of Byron’s likely death had all been an act?

“What are you thinking about?” As the diary’s owner, Saul could naturally sense the complicated emotions of the diary’s captive.

Penny didn’t overthink it and directly asked, “Brother Saul, why aren’t you sad anymore?”

Closing his dormitory door behind him, Saul maintained his cold, expressionless face and quickly headed toward the East Tower.

“I already told you. It was too clean. That’s not how a room where someone just died should look.”

When Saul had seen Byron being dragged away by the manipulators, his body devoid of life, he truly believed Byron was dead.

But after two separate investigations of Byron’s dormitory, after confirming it was the crime scene, Saul had found not a single trace of Byron’s soul fragment.

Someone else might have assumed they simply failed to find the soul of the dead, but Saul had the diary’s help to collect Byron’s soul, and even then, he had found nothing. Not even a scrap.

The diary couldn’t have missed anything.

This planted a seed of hope in Saul’s heart.

“Senior Byron is likely in a state where his soul and body have separated,” Saul recalled the last time he saw Byron and the behavior of Lokai and Jero beside him. “They probably wanted to secretly move the body to cover up his death. They might not even realize that Byron’s soul hasn’t dissipated. So Byron might still be out there, like me once, wandering as a soul. Just whether he escaped on his own, or was captured, that’s the question.”

Even with just a toe’s worth of thinking, Saul could tell that Byron’s situation right now was definitely bad.

He had to find him as soon as possible.

But Saul knew that every move he made was being watched closely. If he too obviously searched for Byron’s soul, he might inadvertently expose Byron to the enemy.

Right now, Saul’s plan was to use soul separation to search for Byron.

But soul separation wasn’t foolproof, and its range was limited. He might have to separate multiple times in different areas, which was dangerous.

At that moment, Penny suddenly flitted around in front of Saul’s eyes, fluttering her wings.

“Brother Saul! Penny is really good at finding people!”

“How will you find…” Saul started to ask, then guessed, “You want to search through dreams?”

“Exactly!”

Finding someone’s dream was much subtler than finding their existence directly.

“But… can you really slip into dreams freely inside the Wizard Tower?”

“Hee hee hee, I’ll need to borrow your strength, Brother Saul.”

“How?”

“Brother Saul, although last time I mistakenly led you into an elf’s consciousness world, you still safely came out and even benefited from it,” Penny said carefully. “Your mental energy has become even more stable, more resistant to contamination. I can now transform into your wings and let you personally conduct a dreamscape drift. I think if Byron sees you, he’ll definitely approach on his own.”

Saul was immediately tempted, though he had never entered someone else’s dream before.

It sounded too fantastical.

“Even though my contamination resistance is stronger, dreamscape drifting is still dangerous, right?”

The nightmare butterfly fluttered its wings, “It’s true that in dreams you might encounter things we can’t explain or resist… but Penny’s really good at running away! I’ll definitely get Brother Saul out safely!”

Penny then patiently explained the principle of dreamscape drifting to Saul.

By then, Saul had already reached the massive bronze doors on the first floor of the East Tower. He looked at the towering, eerie bronze doors and slowly pushed open the left one.

“Alright. Tonight, we’ll give it a try.”

He made up his mind, but they still had to wait for the right time.

At night, when the most people were asleep and dreams were strongest, their search range would be at its widest.

One boy, one butterfly, entered the Second Storage Room. Saul first checked Hayden’s condition, confirming that the guy’s spirit was still stable. Then he quickly pulled out the gray matter notebook Byron had given him.

Although Saul had also obtained gray matter, he hadn’t had the time to study it deeply. After getting Byron’s gray matter notes, he hadn’t tried brewing anything either, since they’d been preparing for the Elven Valley trip.

Now that Byron had left him a clue with the word “Gray,” gray matter was the first thing Saul thought of.

Before he could find Byron’s soul—or find out what had become of it—he needed to be ready.

At the very least, he had to figure out why Lokai and the others had targeted Byron.

Materials were abundant at hand. Saul quickly followed the notebook’s guidance and brewed the gray matter potion.

“Judging by its properties, it seems to have been successfully brewed. The nature isn’t too problematic either—it matches the notebook’s description, enhancing spirit body strength.” Saul carefully stored the brewed potion. “But at the same time, Senior Byron didn’t completely understand gray matter’s composition either.”

Saul tapped the table lightly with his fingers.

Penny flew above the vial, looking rather bored. She had no interest in these things.

The only thing that truly excited her was the Veiled Crystal Essence, but Saul was very strict about how much she got. Penny now only hoped to help Saul more in exchange for more Veiled Crystal Essence.

Seeing Saul once again deep in calculations, Penny aimlessly circled around him.

On her third lap, “whoosh!”

Suddenly a black shadow stretched from behind Saul’s neck and lunged straight for the silver butterfly.

Penny didn’t even have time to react. When she noticed the black shadow, all she saw was a gaping mouth shaped like a flat plane, lined with jagged teeth.

“You again!”

Penny barely got the words out before she was swallowed whole by the black mouth.

Saul turned around and exclaimed in surprise, “Little Algae, you’re awake?”

Little Algae looked innocently back at him, its mouth still puffed up comically.

Saul’s heart skipped. He immediately looked toward where Penny had just been.

There was no silver butterfly there anymore.

The nightmare butterfly hadn’t phased back out through Little Algae’s head like it had before.

Saul immediately stood up. “Little Algae! If something’s in your mouth, spit it out!”

Little Algae gave a mighty puff, and a saliva-soaked silver butterfly splattered onto the floor.

All of Saul’s earlier tension from studying gray matter was utterly broken by the scene before him.

As Penny’s pitiful sobs filled the room, Saul, both astonished and delighted, said:

“Little Algae, you can actually touch a nightmare butterfly now!”

(End of Chapter)

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