"What the fuck! Why can't we just teleport?" Ernesto grumbled while crawling inside a small passageway. The only thing he could see was the bottom of an old-fashioned maid as Fetahaya crawled in front of him.
"I tried to teleport yesterday, but I was blocked and received an aftershock. It's quite painful for a dragon. What do you expect it would feel like if you, a human child, received it?" the dragon explained while still crawling.
"Whatever! Just hurry!"
After ten minutes of crawling, the two of them jumped off the ceiling and landed in a prison hall.
"Mmn. Why does this place look similar to the labyrinth under our castle?" Ernesto commented.
"You have a labyrinth in your castle!" The dragon perked up, as she was excited to know there was a new place she could play.
Ernesto just nodded his head and ignored the rest of the dragon's curious questions as he focused on observing the area. He has an accurate map and records in his mind. That was why he could differentiate between the two similar places.
Ernesto's heart beat wildly. The mixture of nervousness, anxiety, fear, and confusion why there was another underground prison under the Baron's house made his heart beat faster.
"I shouldn't be afraid. I am with a dragon. I shouldn't be afraid. I am with a dragon." Ernesto kept repeating these words to convince himself not to falter.
Suddenly, the dragon Fetahaya chuckled.
"What?" he asked.
"Kid, are you really that scared?" Ernesto glared at the now laughing dragon. "I might get jealous. How did a mere wolf scare you more than a dragon?"
"Ate Fe, I would be scared of you too if I knew you'd harm us," he seriously responded.
"Aaawww, that's sweet. How would you know I won't harm you?" The dragon glared at the child menacingly, then released her vicious aura, but it did not bother Ernesto at all.
"You are with me at every turn of my regression. You never fail to protect and love us; I have never seen you betraying us. I am grateful for that. Thanks." he awkwardly told the dragon, who stopped walking and felt weird with the child's appreciativeness and snorted in the end.
Minutes after their awkward conversation, the two reached the familiar huge stone door at the end of the hall, but the difference was that Ernesto detected nothing inside.
"Ate Fe, is there someone inside? I really detect nothing."
Ernesto should be able to detect anything with life, which includes weaker beings, but it would be impossible to feel the presence of a higher being who wanted to conceal their presence from him.
"Hmm. You do not have the experience of detecting beings from other realms?" the dragon asked him with confusion. It made her wonder internally, "How can a child who has great knowledge of magic and blessings from the gods not know about other realms?"
Fetahaya has to ask again to make sure. "Are you sure you remember every event you experienced at every turn of your regression?"
Ernesto confidently replied, "Of course," as he pounded his chest, remembering his failure and the painful deaths that followed.
"Child, including the earth spirit, if we were really involved with you, there's no way we never mentioned the other realms to you." Fetahaya thought that maybe the child's memory had been modified or altered by higher beings. "Would you tell me which force your regression powers came from? Who did you steal the powers from?"
"Ah, steal it from— wait, I know I stole this power, but... ugh." Ernesto held his head like he was having a headache. "The fuck? Why can't I remember?"
Fetahaya nodded her head. She concluded that there was someone playing with the poor child's life and memory.
Ernesto's head throbbed from just recalling a memory he never thought would be buried deep within his mind. He was confused and upset by the thought that someone else was toying with him. "Would you help draw out my memory?"
Fetahaya shrugged her shoulder as she said, "I don't know."
She then opened the massive door. "Don't force yourself, kid; let's think about that later; let me first show you how you'll see beings in other realms."
An empty room welcomed Ernesto, but not the dragon. "Child, can you concentrate and focus your detection magic in this area?"
Ernesto followed what the dragon instructed, but in the end, he detected nothing at all. The dragon let out a sigh. "Kid, how will you look for your enemy if you can't detect this type of being?"
Ernesto clenched his fist in anger. "Is this why I couldn't find Fenrir? not until he possessed Ndulou?"
"Don't worry, there is another way. Do you ever do a summoning?"
"Summon? Ah, I did it before."
"You did? What was it?"
"How? I summoned a pixie to help me heal Ndulou before.''
"After that, what happens?"
"What happened?" Ernesto rubbed his head and ended up confused. "What the fuck? Is my memory really not complete!? How didn't I notice this before?"
"You might have noticed it before, kid, but you end up forgetting it again."
"I will surely kill whoever played with my memory!" he angrily shouted.
"Okay, okay, now let's summon this being." Fetahaya pointed to the center part of the room, which was empty in Ernesto's eyes.,"Is he going to submit himself? Did we basically talk in front of him? Should I introduce myself first?"
"Don't worry, I already talked to him yesterday."
"You did? Would he agree to be bound to me?" Ernesto has no intention of binding a summon to anyone, but if it will help him be aware of other realms, he will do it once. There's a chance that Fenrir was hiding within that realm.
"He says he doesn't mind."
Ernesto felt iffy about the willingness of the wolf to be summoned.
He asked, "What is his name?" to proceed with the summoning, anyway. "Watson the blue wolf. Just imagine a regular wolf with blue fur."
Ernesto nodded. He cast a summoning circle and chanted runic rhymes associated with summoning that he had memorized a long time ago.
The whole prison became his domain, and he summoned the blue wolf. Minutes later, he slowly hears a wolf cry. He concentrated more and called out the name of his summon, "Watson the Blue Wolf! I declare at this present time your existence, your flesh shall serve under me, and my fate shall be with you. Submit to my blood and soul. Respond, if you would submit to this will and this truth. An oath shall be sworn here."
He pricked a drop of blood from his finger, and the summoning circle lit up brightly. He could also feel his energy and mana decreasing. His knees felt weak, but he still stood still. After the bright light disappeared, a chained blue werewolf appeared in front of him.
A half wolf and half-human said hello to him while smiling mischievously in front of him. The chained wolf has a lot of bruises and scars. He has bright, spiky blue colored hair — his hair is so lengthy that it reaches the floor. He also has amber eyes, as well as a sleek tail and furry ears. He has a huge scar on the right side of his human face, and despite having a childlike appearance, he has a muscular wolf physique.
Ernesto properly scanned the body of the chained wolf because he was topless and only wearing worn out black pants.
"Ate Fe? Am I not in trouble summoning him?" he asked the dragon anxiously. "By just looking at him, I feel like he would go around messing things up."
The dragon could not respond because the wolf laughed loudly after Ernesto's comment.
"Oh, please trust me, master. I also promised Sir Dragon that I would not cause any problems or destroy anything. I just wanted to be free from this chain. My bottom has been itchy for hundreds of years. How frustrating that I can't even scratch it."
Ernesto looked at the dragon for an answer.
"Good job, kid, for acquiring a new slave!" The dragon laughed, but immediately stopped because Ernesto looked at him forebodingly. "Well, I had researched that this wolf had been chained here because he had stolen a divine goblet and consumed it for himself. He cannot die."
Ernesto asked, "Immortal?" looking at the wolf.
"No, no, no, master, I will die if you burn me or dry out my blood."
Ernesto remembered the family heirloom that gave them the same powers.
"Is it okay to tell me your weakness?"
"What else could I lose? You are my master now."
Ernesto stared at the still chained wolf and then looked back at the dragon.
"Let's set him free first."
The dragon snapped her fingers at the same time the chains broke off the wall. A large vibration was felt below the ground, and they could feel a distortion of the surrounding mana. The half wolf, half human, stood up after being freed from the chain and immediately carried Ernesto.
"What the heck are you doing?"
The wolf tightly held Ernesto as he flailed to break off the princess-carry.
"Master, hold still. You used too much mana summoning me. I know you don't have the strength to run."
Ernesto could not react because the prison had crumbled.
"Wait! What will happen to Ndulou's house above?"
If the underground collapsed, the above mansion would be destroyed too.
"Don't worry, kid, you're with a dragon."
Fetahaya could not use magic inside the prison, but he could cast magic around the baron's house. He placed a barrier and a large stone boulder below the house so that it wouldn't be affected by whatever they were doing underground.
"Let's run first."
The dragon took the lead and broke anything that was in front of them that made them follow a straight path.
After an hour of running within a crumbling, huge underground prison, the three escaped into the forest near the Baron's house. The sun was about to set now, making the forest dimmer and more gloomy.
While still being carried, Ernesto looked at the hole that the dragon had made. The dragon then used earth magic to fill up the hole again.
"Now, now," Fetahaya called out to Ernesto's attention, "now that you have gained a great being as a slave, try to look at this forest." She enthusiastically pointed out the surrounding forest.
"Great being? Who?" He looked at the new servant he had gained, a wolf with the appearance of half human and half blue wolf.
"It's me, master," Watson the wolf announced proudly.
He was about to ask for details, but his attention was diverted by the wolf's shoulder.
"What the!" he rubbed his eyes with both of his hands. "Is the forest usually crowded like this?" The forest was now occupied by half-transparent beings that he had never seen before. "That is what the other realms look like. They appear half transparent to us because they belong to other realms, while we are seen as half transparent to their eyes as well."
"Why have I never discovered this before?" Ernesto's eyes were wide open in astonishment. The dark forest became a well-lit area because of the half-transparent beings that were leisurely talking and doing their own business inside the forest. He tried to touch one of the transparent beings, but his hand passed through like he had touched a ghost.
"Like I told you, you might know this but end up not remembering it; I don't know. If it is necessary to remember, but you need to—" Fetahaya could not finish her statement because of the beeping sound inside Ernesto's pocket.
"Excuse me," he pulled out the beeper-like communication device and read the message sent from Lucas. There was no other person who could contact him through this device. It was set only for Lucas to report any emergency regarding Ndulou.
Instantly, a frown appeared on his tired face.
"Ate, let's teleport back."
Fetahaya was confused and asked, "To where?"
"To the castle. Kuya is sick."