Chapter 53 - Changes in the Moon Realm

Chapter 53: Changes in the Moon Realm

“How are you going to save her?” Vincent asked anxiously.

William looked down at Liliana, who was tortured by the Nightmare to the point of moaning in pain from time to time, and replied,

“I know a total of three methods of awakening the souls in the Nightmare Swamp and bring them back to Currere.”

“Three?”

Vincent sounded pleasantly surprised.

“One is to use Lion’s Heart on her to let her break free from the Nightmare on her own, and the other is to slowly guide her soul back to Currere with Soul Guidance. However, these two methods take too long. There are pressing matters at the Holy Sepulchre, and we can’t spare so much time now. As for the last method, we need to find the Lunar Monster who pulled her soul into the Nightmare Swamp, so…”

“So?” Vincent asked nervously.

William took out a Soul Storage Crystal and said, “I plan on going straight to the Moon Realm and bringing her soul back.”

William remembered that in the game, he had done a quest to save all the villagers who were dragged into the Nightmare Swamp. If he were to guide each and every soul—hundreds of them—that quest would probably have made him blow a gasket.

However, it happened when the Moon Realm invaded the Vic Continent on a large scale. All kinds of Moon Realm portals attached to the Moon Realm rifts were everywhere, so he went to the Moon Realm and came to the Nightmare Swamp. He then brought back all the villagers’ souls in one swoop.

Of course, it was later learned on the forum that the village was a place that the developers specially created for players to grind their proficiency of Illusion and Necromancy spells, but that was all in the afterword.

“Head straight to the Moon Realm?”

Vincent looked at William in confusion and asked, “Then how do you get there?”

The World Shell’s obstruction of the Moon Realm and Currere worked both ways.

Unless a practitioner of Moon Realm magic opened a channel through a contract with a Lunar Monster or found a stable Moon Realm rift, living beings in Currere couldn’t enter the Moon Realm either.

As for these two methods, the former was impossible from the other party’s attitude toward the Moon Realm. As for the latter, how could a stable Moon Realm rift be so easy to find?

Upon hearing Vincent’s words, William turned around and looked at the portal that led to the Astral Observatory. His eyes were filled with helplessness and self-deprecation.

“Isn’t that it?” William sighed and said.

“What do you mean… Wait, are you saying…”

Vincent immediately understood what the other party meant, but he found it difficult to accept.

Can it be that the Astral Lighthouse is essentially a Moon Realm rift?

But how is this possible?

If that were the case, what are all the magic chanters under the Astral Laws? Not only is their lifeline in the hands of the Astral Council, but it is also in the hands of the Moon Realm’s Void Sovereigns?

What is the original goal of the Astral Laws?

Vincent didn’t dare to think further…

William ignored the shocked Vincent. Instead, he walked to the wooden bed, picked up Liliana, who was still in the Nightmare, and walked towards the portal.

Only then did Vincent speak to William as if he had woken up from a dream.

“Wait… Wait a minute. The magical fluctuations at the Astral Observatory are too strong. Will you explode from the interference if you pass through the portal like this…”

So now you realize that it’s dangerous to use a portal when there are magical fluctuations? I didn’t even have the chance to remind you just now, so why did you pass through the portal?

William rolled his eyes slightly and said, “You don’t have to worry about that. The medium for me to open the portal is Void Crystal. As long as I don’t use lightning spells above the Master level to bombard the portal, there’s basically no danger.”

Void Crystal?

Vincent didn’t pay much attention to the appearance of the medium used to open the portal in his haste to save his daughter. It was only at this moment did he realize what it was.

The six azure-blue gems were slightly smaller than chicken eggs. They constantly stirred spatial ripples as they floated.

He subconsciously glanced at the blue gem embedded in the ebony staff in his hand that emitted the same spatial ripples. It was the same as the six gems—his was just much smaller.

It’s really a Void Crystal…

Vincent was speechless.

In the Dragonspine Mountains of Storm Province, there would occasionally be an extreme weather phenomenon called thunderstorms. Thunderstorms didn’t refer to ordinary thunderstorms, but lightning that fell like rain and blasted everything within a few kilometers into a charred land.

After the thunderstorm phenomenon ended, if someone was willing to risk their life to head there in a timely fashion and was lucky enough, they might be able to find a small amount of blue dust called Void Salt before it dissipated.

Void Salt was essentially congealed lightning. It was the spark that the Father Holy Spirit sent flying from the sky. It was also a top alchemy material. Basically, all lightning-element rituals needed such materials.

As for the Void Crystal, it was a product of refining a large amount of Void Salt. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that it was priceless.

It was the spell medium that all magic chanters who focused on lightning spells dreamed of the most. Its affinity for lightning magic had reached an unimaginable level.

Even an ordinary person without any magical power talent could cause quite a bit of lightning phenomenon just by throwing out Void Crystals.

The Void Crystal embedded in Vincent’s magical medium was about the size of a pigeon egg, but this could already be considered the best lightning-type medium.

This staff was a thank-you gift from Duke Simon five years ago after he negotiated a huge trade and export agreement with the Duke of the Storm Province.

Now, the person in front of him took out six egg-sized Void Crystals and used them as a casting medium for the portal?

Calling this a waste was not enough to describe the other party’s actions!

“What are you waiting for? Come over quickly.”

After William passed through the portal and returned to the Astral Observatory, he turned around and shouted at Vincent, who was still in a daze.

Vincent came back to his senses and immediately walked over. He happened to see the other party squat down and lay Liliana on the ground.

Seeing that he was already here, the other party waved his hand and dispelled the portal. The six Void Crystals flew back into his pocket.

“Is there anything you need me to do?” Vincent forced his gaze away and asked.

William pulled a few strands of hair off Liliana’s head and replied,

“Just guard her body here. I’m just snatching a soul from the Nightmare Swamp. I’ll be back soon.”

As he spoke, he wrapped the strands of hair around his fingers and got up. He walked to the Stranger Constellation map and pressed his hand on it.

Vincent asked worriedly, “Aren’t you afraid of being hated by Her when you go straight to the Lord of Nightmare’s domain to snatch a soul?”

As the Lord of Nightmare, Zamara wouldn’t find it a violation of Her philosophy of ‘reality is a lucid nightmare, and nightmares are a confused Currere’ if a soul pulled into the Nightmare Swamp woke up independently.

However, it was another matter if an outsider rushed in to snatch a soul. That would make the Void Sovereign feel that Her authority was being challenged.

The Lord of Nightmare was an extremely petty existence even among the Void Sovereigns.

Therefore, Vincent posed the question uneasily.

However, William only smiled and said, “It’s fine. It’s not the first time I’ve offended that b*tch anyway. It’s nothing.”

Before he could finish his sentence, the star map William was holding emitted a red and black light. He was instantly sucked in.

…

The moon was a mirror that reflected the sun’s light.

The Moon Realm was also a mirror.

It hung high in the sky, reflecting all the thoughts of Currere.

Every laugh, every scream, every trace of guilt, every tinge of anger… All their thoughts would interweave and echo in this domain before magnifying into an endless storm that swept in all directions before finally filling the emptiness in the sky.

Amidst this strange change, powers of the same nature gradually gathered, forming countless Moon Realm domains that represented different concepts.

Among them, a total of 13 Moon Realm domains formed independent countries. This was because the concept that formed them was so deep and entrenched that it was enough to make the power gathered from the overlapping echoes powerful enough to shake Currere itself—the source of their voices.

And that was the domain of the 13 Void Sovereigns.

After stepping into the rift between Currere and the Moon Realm, William felt an unprecedented pull. Everything his physical senses sensed kept changing.

Compared to Currere that turned into a stable reality upon landing, all the physical laws in the Moon Realm were pale lies. It was even to the extent that the things here didn’t have a fixed form.

William was a human who lived in the material world after all. Even though his willpower was at maximum, he couldn’t adapt to the rapidly changing environment.

He had been to the Moon Realm many times in-game, but the experience was completely different from this time.

The method the developers used to let players experience the Moon Realm’s change was basically to first play a video that could make a light-sensitive epileptic die on the spot, then play an audio that was enough for people to have nightmares for days.

William felt the crazy changes in the Moon Realm. It was more than a hundred times more exaggerated than the presentation in-game.

But soon, all forms began to stabilize in William’s eyes, turning into orderly objects.

It wasn’t that the Moon Realm had been fixed, but that William’s will had been fixed.

In the Moon Realm, the body was only an accessory. Only will was eternal.

In other words, in the Moon Realm, any construct he believed to be the truth would appear that way to him.

Although this “self-belief” could only roughly affect his understanding of another party’s appearance and couldn’t truly change the other party’s scale and depth, at the very least, it allowed him to act normally just like in Currere.

William was floating under a stirring storm. Beside him, a huge pipe made of pure magic passed through the storm and led to a dark red star in the distance.

This was the magic power circuit that connected Thorn City’s Astral Lighthouse in Currere to the Stranger Astral World.

This place was actually no man’s land in the Moon Realm—it had yet to be under the rule of any Void Sovereign.

William was surprised.

He originally thought that a Void Sovereign would definitely incorporate the World Shell into ‘Their’ domain after a magic power circuit that led from the Moon Realm to the Astral World was opened. After all, that was the best way to invade Currere.

He didn’t expect it to be built in a neutral area.

Why didn’t the Void Sovereign come over to snatch this excellent place?

William still remembered the two Void Sovereigns—the King of Deathblood and the Ruin Demon God—who symbolized annihilation and destruction back then. To fight for control over the Moon Realm rift in the Scar of Sorrow, they beat each other’s brains out in the Moon Realm.

Back then, he took advantage of the fact that the two of them were mutually injured to lead the Doomsday Watchers in their counterattack and push back the battle line.

But why didn’t they compete now that there was a Moon Realm rift?

William thought for a while but couldn’t figure it out. He could only give up.

After all, he lacked key information.

Moreover, his goal for this trip wasn’t to investigate.

Therefore, William left a Teleportation nexus near the rift and flew up.

In the Moon Realm, one could fly as long as one’s willpower was strong enough and one firmly believed that one could fly. They didn’t even need to use magic.

With William’s willpower, it wouldn’t be too troublesome for him to establish his domain in the Moon Realm, let alone fly or teleport.

Of course, the troublesome thing was that the Void Sovereigns would come looking for him later.

The Moon Realm’s sky was extremely lively. There were ownerless scattered spirit bodies everywhere, and many of them couldn’t even take form.

William ignored them and continued flying higher.

He passed through the network woven from prophecies, leaped over all kinds of advice, pushed away the pain that had frozen into wax in front of him, then fanned away a few balls of burning anger that wanted to attack him.

Finally, he transcended everything and flew to the highest point of the Moon Realm.

Of course, the Moon Realm didn’t have a concept of the highest point. William had only arrived at a place where he could see the overall terrain of the Moon Realm.

There, he saw the 13 countries.

Among them were ruins with ashes fluttering, a lifeless cemetery, a constantly surging lake, and a furnace filled with flames.

Compared to a thousand years ago, the domains of the 13 countries were larger, and the power contained in them was greater.

Even from afar, William could sense the terrifying aura.

How did this happen?

They weren’t as powerful a thousand years ago when they invaded Currere, William thought.

However, this question only lasted for a few seconds in his mind.

It was meaningless to come up with random guesses without enough information. The most important thing now was to save Liliana.

Therefore, William’s gaze locked onto a foggy swamp.

Then, he relaxed his mind and fell in that direction, allowing himself to plunge into the foggy swamp.