Chapter 486: The Inverted City

Saul finally understood where he was being held.

Earlier, when he tore off the bedsheet only to find nothing on the bed, he had suspected there was someone hidden in the pile of sheets on the floor.

But he hadn’t expected that the one hidden there… was himself.

Which meant…

Saul could now see a black shadow coiled around him through the white bedsheet, about to tighten.

“Penny!” Saul called out again.

“Brother… Saul…”

Penny’s voice still sounded as distant as if it were coming from the edge of the heavens. But the moment Saul heard her, the grotesque black tendrils tore through the sheet—then vanished into nothingness.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself still lying on the bed. Beneath him were a flat bedsheet and a mattress of moderate firmness.

He jumped off the bed at once, but the entire bed remained completely still.

Saul could still recall the moment of his heart racing just now.

“Was I dreaming just now?” he asked, clutching his chest. “At first, I still remembered I was a wizard, but once I was pulled beneath the sheet, I seemed to forget all of that. Whether I was struggling underwater, smothered by the sheet, or curled up inside it, I never thought of using magic to get out of the situation.”

“Besides calling for Penny, I forgot every means of protecting myself.”

Saul’s face darkened slightly.

He didn’t know if this dream had any deeper meaning—or if someone had tampered with his mind.

Then he suddenly noticed that the surroundings were unnaturally quiet.

He looked up and saw that the room was empty—only he was there. And on top of that, he felt a faint discomfort but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was wrong.

“Something’s off. This is still a dream!” Saul immediately activated his mental power, attempting to wake himself up.

But he quickly realized that while both his mental and magical energies flowed freely, he still couldn’t wake from the dream.

He tried several more times but remained in the same place.

“Looks like this dream isn’t simple. Was I attacked by someone?”

The diary in his mind was still present.

Saul let out a breath of relief.

Even if someone had invaded his dream, there was no way they could fabricate a diary like that.

He opened the diary before him, flipping to the only page still occupied—Herman’s.

[Master? Did something happen?]

Through the diary, Herman could see the outside world, but he instantly noticed something was wrong.

[Master! Master! Y-you…]

“What did you see?” Saul knew Herman must’ve noticed something strange and pressed him urgently.

[Master, y-you’re… upside down!]

“—Hiss…” Saul drew in a sharp breath, goosebumps erupting all over his body.

At that very moment, with Herman’s reminder, Saul finally realized what had been bothering him all along.

He was upside down!

No—wait!

Saul looked around.

It wasn’t just him—his house was upside down as well.

Everything had looked normal at first, which is why he hadn’t noticed that his own orientation was inverted.

He took a few steps and immediately felt that gravity was off. Even the sensation of his clothes rubbing against his body felt wrong.

It was as though something was actively helping him maintain an upside-down position.

“Penny!” Saul called again, suspecting that Penny’s voice had sounded so far away earlier because she hadn’t entered this strange dream.

“Brother Saul.” Penny’s voice was still distant, but this time, a bit clearer.

He had apparently broken through some kind of barrier just now.

There was no one else in the room. Saul grew increasingly curious as to why his room had become inverted.

He slowly approached the window and looked outside.

Below the building was pitch black.

When Saul looked down into the darkness, he seemed to see something silently growing and slithering within it.

He leaned halfway out the window, holding the frame with one hand, and cautiously looked up.

Above his head, where the sky should have been, now lay a land ablaze with pale flames.

The gravity on that land seemed to function normally. The flames surged upward. The ground was cracked and barren, with not a single blade of grass. Only pale fire burned fiercely, fed by unknown fuel.

At the boundary where the white flames met the earth, Saul occasionally spotted charred remnants.

Those were likely scorched remains—no longer recognizable.

“As I thought, my instincts were right. I am upside down—or rather, I’m being suspended upside down.”

Realizing this, Saul used a flight spell to lift himself off the ground, then steadied himself against the window frame as he floated out of the building.

Once outside the room, he could see the world more clearly.

The entire city was inverted. From the base of every visible building, Saul could faintly see plant tendrils and vines wrapped tightly around them.

The streets had vanished—every building had been suspended—or rather, bound—and hung upside down in the air by the thick vines.

Narrowing his eyes, Saul looked down at his own feet, and sure enough, he saw tiny curled green buds sprouting along the surface of his shoes.

Compared to the massive, coarse branches wrapped around the buildings, the vines on his shoes were delicate and fresh, pale green with hints of new life.

Saul freed a hand. A Lesser Flame Orb appeared in his palm and, in the blink of an eye, shot downward toward his feet.

As the flame brushed past his soles, the tender buds withered instantly—twisting, blackening, and crumbling to ash.

With the vines beneath his feet scorched and destroyed, the eerie pulling sensation vanished at once, and gravity reasserted itself.

The sudden shift in gravity caused Saul—still mid-flight—to plummet toward the ground. Had he not been gripping the window frame, he might’ve experienced a full-on free fall.

At that moment, he felt something crash into him. His vision blurred, and the inverted city, the burning land overhead, and the giant plants all vanished.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw several faces staring at him.

A silver butterfly, metallic and gleaming, struggled to crawl out from between those faces.

“Thank goodness, Brother Saul, you’re finally awake.”

Penny was just about to land on Saul’s face when someone else got there first.

“Master, uuuuh, are you alright?” Ann’s pale, corpse-like face lunged toward Saul’s chest.

Outside the diary, the consciousnesses still used the corpse bodies from the Wizard Tower as vessels. Since those bodies were dead, they lacked the fine motor control of the living.

Especially in their faces—normally, they had almost no expressions.

But this time, Ann’s face was teary-eyed, and despite her unnatural complexion, she looked just like an ordinary girl.

Saul supported Ann by the shoulder and sat up, discovering he was still on the bed.

His mental power swept the surroundings—the details of the room were clear, and the auras from the other consciousnesses were steady.

This time, he was finally out of the dream.

With the Nightmare Butterfly present, someone had still managed to tamper with his dreams?

If someone had truly manipulated his dream this time, then the person behind it was no simple figure.

Saul’s expression grew serious. He stood up and carefully inspected himself—no wounds.

Then he looked up at the three figures in the room, “From your perspective, what just happened?”

It was Agu who responded.

Though he hadn’t been the strongest in life, his deep knowledge and stable soul made him the de facto leader of the four.

“Master, right after you fell asleep, your magical fluctuations suddenly dropped to nearly imperceptible levels. The Nightmare Butterfly immediately realized you might’ve been attacked in your dream. But when it tried to enter your dream, it couldn’t get in.”

The silver butterfly landed on Saul’s hair and added to Agu’s explanation. “To be precise, I couldn’t find you in your dream. But thanks to the great diary, there was still a faint link between us—so I could still hear your voice calling me over and over. I kept trying to pull you out of the dream, and just now—I finally succeeded!”

But upon hearing this, Saul shook his head. “Based on my experience, I think I was kicked out of the dream.”

(End of Chapter)

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