The little Night Hawks drew closer.
...What were they going to do? Take revenge for that... Great Night Hawk? But what could they... possibly do?
Hope closed his eyes and found that the black figure was still there. Even though there was no light left, Hope could still make it out in the darkness.
But he hadn't closed his eyes to avoid looking at it.
Because his thoughts were blocked, it took longer to picture something in his mind, but it wasn't impossible.
When Hope opened his eyes, he found himself half a meter away. Uncertainty had worked as usual.
Neither the Night Hawks nor the shadow had interfered with Uncertainty.
Since that was the case, Hope stopped panicking. His thoughts were still a mess, but being able to use Uncertainty at any time to escape gave him some sense of security.
Hope stayed where he was, wanting to see what the Night Hawks were up to.
He didn't have to wait long. Almost as soon as he had the thought, a breeze swept by and the flock of Night Hawks was right in front of him. They were scattered and disorderly, changing their poses and positions at will.
Hope tensed, on guard. In his mind, he had already pictured Old Williams House's living room. If the Night Hawks showed any sign of attacking, he would teleport beside the grandfather clock in an instant, then use it as a waypoint to return to Whateley House.
But he soon realized there was no need to be on guard.
The Night Hawks flew over Hope. Their noisy cries made his dizziness even worse, and his back felt as if it were being roasted over a fire. The shadow grew a little darker.
But the Night Hawks didn't stop for even a moment.
Even the one that came closest to Hope was too far away for him to make out its appearance.
Hope guessed that they were hostile, but this flock seemed to be just passing by.
They sang, "Tata tata tata tata." One particularly nasty bird even left behind a dropping, which fell into the storage room. They paid no attention to Hope, an "unripe soul" that wasn't yet fit to eat, and quickly flew away.
As the Night Hawks left, Hope's dizziness gradually eased, and the black figure grew blurrier, paler, and more translucent. The illusion caused by the Night Hawks' cries was about to disappear.
Hope was now more than three meters from the table, and the figure was floating right beside it.
Hope had already confirmed that the figure was an illusion only he could see and couldn't affect reality in any way. He had no reason to be wary of it, so he quietly waited for it to fade on its own.
But the figure moved. For the first time since it appeared, it did anything at all: it reached out toward the table beside it. Its blurred hand was almost impossible to make out, let alone its fingers.
It grabbed the Steel Pen.
Its grip was clumsy, like a child's, but it really did pick up the pen.
Sensing that something was wrong, Hope hurriedly turned his head, trying to change the shadow's position. The shadow did move quickly with his gaze, but it didn't let go of the pen. The pen moved with it.
Hope bit his fingernail... Could the shadow be real, not an illusion?
Hope knew there was a button on the right shoulder of his shirt. It had become loose and was about to fall off.
He pinched the button and tugged hard. It came off with little effort. He flicked his hand, sending it toward the shadow.
There was no sound of it striking anything solid. The button passed right through the shadow's body, flew out through the roof, and fell toward the ground.
So it was still an illusion?
As the button flew through the roof, Hope lowered his head, forcing the shadow to overlap with the floor. Just like with the table, the floor didn't stop the shadow.
But the floor did stop the Steel Pen. The pen, made of steel, couldn't pass through the concrete. When the shadow reached the underside of the floor, it was forced to part with the pen, no matter how tightly it held on.
Whatever the shadow had wanted to do with the pen, it couldn't do it now.
Hope walked a few steps forward with his head lowered and picked up the pen, putting even more distance between the shadow and the pen.
The Night Hawks' cries had faded into the distance. The shadow was so faint it was almost invisible. It would disappear completely in five seconds at most.
But the shadow suddenly made a motion as if it were "opening its mouth." Its blurred form had no such organ, so the edge of its face split open into a crack, which opened and closed.
Strange sounds came from the crack, awkward and bizarre. Hope felt as if he had heard them somewhere before...
Wilbur. His "incantations" sounded just as inhuman.
The shadow was using an incantation!
In an instant, every sound around him became muffled and indistinct, except for the shadow's chanting.
Hope suddenly realized the shadow was no longer in his field of vision. The moment the incantation began, it had stopped being fixed in one corner of his sight.
Right before his eyes, a small area on the silver Steel Pen suddenly lit up. Strange symbols rose within it, moving with an odd rhythm that seemed to respond to the shadow's voice.
There was something wrong with this Steel Pen!
Hope flung it away as if it were red-hot. Before he could see it hit the ground, he had already closed his eyes.
With the Night Hawks no longer interfering, Uncertainty transported him beside the grandfather clock in less than half a second.
He briefly opened his eyes. The shadow hadn't followed him. In the brief pause between escapes, he saw that the grandfather clock seemed to have stopped working; its second hand wasn't moving at all.
...Was that the effect of the incantation? Hope didn't take a closer look. He immediately closed his eyes again, this time focusing on his room.
Uncertainty met no resistance. After releasing the incantation, the shadow had done nothing else, and Hope couldn't hear its chanting from here. He even suspected it had disappeared.
All sounds faded away, and the blurry wooden ceiling came back into view. Hope made it safely back to his room.
He lay on the bed, still shaken. After waiting a few seconds and checking his body, he finally confirmed that the shadow's incantation hadn't caused him any obvious harm.
He pulled the Iron Chain out from under the bed and locked it around his wrist again.
He calmed himself down.
I ran off without even figuring out what that incantation did... No, I couldn't wait until I understood what was happening before I acted. A wise man didn't stand beneath a collapsing wall. If I waited too long and couldn't escape in time, I'd have no one to blame but myself.
At least for the rest of tonight, I shouldn't go back to Old Williams House.
There was definitely something wrong with that Steel Pen. The shadow might have changed only after touching it...
Damn! What had Robert said at the time...?
"This is Old Whateley's Steel Pen. Pretty, isn't it? He just gave it to me."
Was this the sort of power an experienced old cultist had? Even a pen he gave away on a whim was that strange.
Hope steadied himself, knowing he should get some sleep. This wasn't a university dorm. If he slept until lunchtime, someone might get suspicious... He didn't need to worry about Lavinia, of course, but he still had to watch out for Wilbur.
Agility: 1.31, Constitution: 1.55, Vision: 0.67, Mana: 0.01, 0, 16
Uncertainty: 1
Source-ification: 0.3
Curse of Darkness: 1
The Curse of Darkness was still there, which meant Hope still hadn't escaped the shadow. He just couldn't see it anymore.
But...
Had his mana... increased?
Before you continue