Autophagy

Chapter 34 - Dream Space! (16) | 34

"For the husband..." Isabel started talking. Song Lei gulped and waited for her to continue. "He isn't actually that dangerous," she said.

Song Lei raised one of his eyebrows.

"He had always been a wimp. I don't think he will pose much of a threat in the dream space. Still, be careful when you face him," she said.

Song Lei sat back on the bed and thought after closing his eyes, 'This information is important. It might give me some amount idea about their abilities.'

He got up from the bed and wore his backpack.

"You're going?" Isabel asked. Song Lei opted to nodding instead of talking and patted Mia on the head. She hugged his leg.

"Do you have to go, mister? Isn't it dangerous?" Mia asked with puppy eyes. Song Lei squatted while patting her and smiled.

"Don't worry Mia, I will come back," he said. He had already formed a very close relationship with Mia. Because they had been in the same body for some time, their souls had synchronized a little bit. Now, Mia was very attached to him because of this. Furthermore, as she was a ghost, the synchronization had much more effect on her.

Song Lei got back up again and left the room. The tentacles had multiplied again, just like before. He had to clean them off before reaching the staircase. Fortunately, the lower floor didn't seem to have these tentacles. After spending a few minutes cutting his way through the tentacle jungle, Song Lei managed to reach the stairs with a few cuts and bruises.

After descending the stairs, he chose his next target door and closed his eyes. After walking up to the door, Song Lei pulled the handle of the door and entered the room. Fortunately, this door's hinge was well oiled and it didn't make creaking noises.

After closing the door behind him, Song Lei opened his eyes. There was a corridor in front of him, this corridor was longer than the one on the upper floor.

'What? Did I accidentally enter another corridor? No... That shouldn't be the case. If that was it, the nothingness would cover here too. But there's proper floor here,' Song Lei thought to himself while tapping his foot onto the floor. 'That must mean that I'm in a room now. Just with a different layout.'

Song Lei started walking to the other end of the corridor while inspecting his surroundings. Unlike the other parts of the mansion, where the walls were almond-colored, this corridor had a different style. The walls were painted in dark green, giving off a suffocating atmosphere to them. There were carvings on the walls that Song Lei couldn't identify. At most, he could figure out that it tried to represent a god greeting its believers.

'Hmm...' Song Lei thought. He threw this information that he got into a corner of his mind and continued his journey. As he kept walking down the corridor, the carvings kept changing. The humans became more and more beautiful with each carving. Some of them were on fire while some of them were freezing to death but they didn't seem to care.

*Thud

'Ow..!' Song Lei shouted in his head. Fortunately, he managed to keep his voice in. For some reason, he had hit his head.

'There's a wall here...' Song Lei thought. There was something solid blocking his way. An invisible wall. He touched every part of it to figure out how to get through but couldn't manage to do so.

'*Sigh' he sighed. He closed his eyes to see whether it would help him get through the wall or not. Unfortunately, he was met with the cold hard wall again.

'I think I should leave this place and look for another room,' Song Lei thought. He turned back and walked up to the door to leave the corridor. But something really disturbing happened when he opened the door.

'What..?'

He saw the exact same corridor as the one he was in right now when he opened the door. What's more, is, he saw another person's figure's back at the end of the corridor, looking through another door.

'How does this even work? Have I been pulled into a mirrored room?' Song Lei thought to himself. He turned to look at the other end of the corridor to figure out what was happening. When he did so, he saw that the door was open and a figure was standing in front of it, looking backward.

Song Lei gulped and closed the door. The figure repeated his action and closed the door. He was left alone in the corridor.

'What should I do?' Song Lei thought. He had lost his way of getting out. He walked back to the invisible wall and touched the wall again. He tried to figure out the design on it.

'The same God from the other carvings seem to be still here but I can't find the humans,' Song Lei thought. He opened his eyes and started pushing every part of the walls to find a secret button. After trying for some time, he realized that he wasn't getting anywhere.

He opened the door again to properly inspect the figure. It seemed to be a fully humanoid, bipedal shadow. Although it had three-dimensional properties, Song Lei couldn't figure out its body shape just by looking.

'It looks like a walking black hole,' Song Lei thought to himself. As the figure was absorbing the light around it, it was fully black.

Song Lei kept the door open and walked backward to the middle of the corridor where the invisible wall was all the while keeping eye contact with the shadow. The shadow walked backward too and touched the wall in the mirrored corridor. When they both touched the walls in their respective corridors, Song Lei felt the invisible wall disappearing under his hands. He looked at his hands.

Song Lei's eyes widened as he shouted in his mind, 'What!?'

There were rapid footsteps coming from the other corridor. Song Lei quickly raised his head and saw that the shadow was charging towards the other door at the end of the mirrored corridor. When it reached and opened the other door, Song Lei heard the door opening behind him. The shadow was so fast that he couldn't react in time. The footsteps stopped behind Song Lei.

"Kneel down my slave...."