Chapter 1466
Darkness and frost descended; the yellow desert had become a seamless stretch of black, merging with the sky. Outside Heather City, it was pure apocalypse. Here, ordinary mages could not survive—anyone below a mage, stepping beyond the city, would be doomed, let alone endure an entire night.
At Heather City's walls, many numb-faced people gazed at the apocalyptic landscape outside, unable to suppress their fear. One by one, they quickly retreated from the walls.
Leon walked down the street. No one looked at him, no one cared. Yet, sensing that Leon was a mage, people instinctively avoided him. Mages were the strongest here, but even so, no one paid them much attention...
Mages had to leave Heather City to hunt, to search for anything that might still be useful. Many places could only be reached by mages; only true mages could travel beyond the thirty-kilometer perimeter of Heather City.
But every day, mages left Heather City—and many never returned. There were plenty of such stories in Heather City. No one knew if they’d survive to see tomorrow...
Leon stared expressionlessly at the lifeless Heather City, suddenly realizing that Northend World was already dead. What remained was just a corpse. Everyone here was waiting for their final release—they’d all lost hope. Northend World had lost hope too...
At this point, whether true destruction had arrived or not—there was no real difference...
The chubby kid clung to Leon’s shoulder, playing dead—utterly terrified. His first time out on a mission, and he’d already encountered Leon’s terrifying enemies, then followed him into the deep layers of the Realm of Nightmares, witnessing a world on the verge of collapse. Even the numb, lifeless faces of ordinary people around them seemed to exert a crushing pressure on the chubby kid.
The chubby kid pretended to be dead, unmoving. Leon couldn’t be bothered to deal with him. Following the main road, Leon walked to the heart of Heather City and gazed up at the colossal Sanctuary Tower, carefully studying every detail. He’d examined it before, but back then, his perspective was nothing like it is now.
Back then, I’d read plenty of books, but had no real experience. My skills were barely those of an apprentice alchemist, and my mage rank couldn’t advance—nor could my alchemy.
Now, seeing the Sanctuary Tower again—a seemingly simple mage spire, over a thousand meters tall—I realized its technology once represented the peak of Northend World’s golden age. Yet even so, this Sanctuary Tower isn’t truly complete...
Sensing the Sanctuary Tower’s energies, Leon knew its power was spent. In a few short years, when its last light faded, Northend World would be utterly destroyed.
The Sanctuary Tower’s surface was covered with countless runes, now all dim. Leon could see most runes had lost their power and become useless.
If those runes still worked, the Sanctuary Tower wouldn’t be limited to protecting just this lonely island of Heather City. Daytime was somewhat better—at least the surrounding twenty or thirty kilometers stayed calm. But when night fell, the city wall divided two utterly different worlds.
After watching the Sanctuary Tower for a while, Leon turned away. The key to building such a tower was the design itself. As long as the materials were sufficient, most of the construction wasn’t all that difficult.
Leaving the Sanctuary Tower, Leon headed to Heather City’s desolate library. Now and then, a person or two would come searching for some information, but they’d leave quickly after finding it. Most of the time, the vast library was deathly silent.
This was the greatest treasure left from Northend World’s peak—a repository of tens of thousands of years of distilled wisdom. But now, it was just a pile of forgotten junk.
The old spellbooks had lost all their magic, reduced to ordinary tomes. Once-mighty incantations became useless scraps no one bothered to read.
This library was built to give Northend World a chance to rise again after the apocalypse. Many top experts left their legacies here, hoping someone would inherit them one day.
Sadly, Northend World couldn’t escape final destruction. But the knowledge left behind wasn’t useless—at least Leon found it useful, and maybe he could even stave off the apocalypse. That was meaning enough.
Gazing at the desolate library again, Leon stood there, dazed, for more than ten minutes before finally entering.
He opened one dust-covered book after another; their magic had completely faded. Tomes that survived millennia were now fragile, like ordinary paper left too long—press too hard, and they’d tear.
If not for the utter desolation—no ants, no mice—these books wouldn’t have survived intact at all.
Randomly flipping through a book, Leon found familiar content. The memories had sunk to the deepest recesses of his mind; even if he tried, he couldn’t always recall them.
Now, though, he could read them again. After checking a few pages and confirming everything was as he remembered, Leon began searching for records about the Realm of Nightmares.
There were simply too many books—tens of thousands of years' worth, even after all the culling and condensing, it was still a staggering number. From arrival to destruction, Leon spent over seventy percent of his time here reading. As he advanced from apprentice to mage, he needed less sleep and spent more time reading. Even so, it wasn’t until a year before the true apocalypse that Leon finished every book here—some he studied, others he just skimmed.
Even the books he only skimmed—those memories had settled deep in his mind, usually unreachable. But here, in a world spun from his own mindscape, they appeared as books once more.
Finding a specific book he’d once read for leisure, out of twenty years’ worth, was no easy task. After narrowing it down, Leon spent three days before locating the one that mentioned the Realm of Nightmares.
It was a thick tome, half a meter tall, with only a small section about the Realm of Nightmares. Guided by memory, Leon quickly found the relevant pages.
After reading about the Realm of Nightmares, Leon’s face looked grim.
The book described events from other planes, special places—naturally, the Realm of Nightmares was included. When Leon first read it, he’d treated it like a novel. After all, the endless planes meant nothing to Northend World’s apocalypse.
He’d read it for leisure, skimming through. Remembering even the gist was impressive; there was no way he could recall every detail.
At the time, he was just a low-level apprentice mage—he couldn’t have memorized it all. The only things he focused on were those he could use immediately.
As his power grew and his soul strengthened, sometimes old knowledge would surface from the depths of memory. But most of it sank too deep—even at the Sky Rank, Leon couldn’t retrieve it all.
Now, reading the most detailed account, Leon’s face turned slightly green.
Entering the deep layers of the Realm of Nightmares meant facing a world projected from one’s own mindscape. Everything here was a reflection of the mind—almost nothing existed outside those projections.
To leave, you had to escape this mindscape—find something that did not belong here. That was the key to leaving, the switch to the door.
But what exactly was that key? It was different for everyone—there was no fixed answer.
The way to find it was to search the most crucial places in your mindscape—often the places you’d spent the most time. The key was hidden there.
It might be a tiny crack in the wall, or a slip of paper, or even an ant...
Leon closed the book, looked around, and couldn’t help but rub his forehead—head throbbing.
No doubt, the key to leaving this mindscape was in this desolate library—maybe even inside a book...
A mindscape can’t be a perfectly sealed world with no way out—everything here comes from Leon himself. So, there must be an exit, and a way to find it. That much is certain; only the time spent searching varies.
He’d read every book here before, so there was a baseline. Leon could find the book that didn’t belong, or content in a book that wasn’t supposed to be there.
It took him twenty years the first time—now, even if it’s faster, it’ll probably still take half as long...
Plus, with this chance, all those books he once read for leisure—now he had to read them properly.
Leon shook his head, gave a bitter smile, and started pulling books from the front of the shelf.
Thankfully, once you’re in the deep world, there’s no rush. Time in the mindscape is like swimming in your own memories—completely separate from the outside. No matter how long you spend, it’s just a nap to the real world.