Chapter 131

Chapter 131: Breaking Free of the Dream

Duncan looked at the jumpy Dog and put on the gentlest smile he could manage. He felt there was probably some misunderstanding between them, and it would be best to clear it up sooner rather than later.

But just as he was about to speak, he suddenly saw the bloody light in Dog’s eye sockets flicker. Even though you could not read expressions on a skull, he could still somehow feel the Abyssal Hound’s emotions surge violently for a moment.

The next second, he heard Dog’s stammering voice. “Y-you’re the ‘Mr. Duncan’ we’ve been dealing with these past two days?”

Duncan paused, then glanced at Shirley beside him.

He did not see any obvious exchange between Dog and Shirley, but it was clear that the two beings linked by the chain had a very convenient way to share information.

“That’s me,” Duncan said with a small smile and a gentle tone. “Do I still need to explain anything? Or is there something you want to know?”

“Nothing!” Dog almost shrieked, backing away with its whole body. “We don’t need to know any ‘knowledge’ or ‘Truth’. We have absolutely no desire to pry into your mysteries!”

“…I keep feeling there’s some misunderstanding between us, but somehow the more I try to explain, the less sense it will make,” Duncan sighed and shook his head helplessly. “Forget it. Let time slowly help us build some trust. For now, there are a few things I want to know.”

Dog drooped its skull. “P-please, go ahead.”

Duncan frowned slightly. He was actually quite curious why he, a ghost captain with a fearsome name in the Mortal Realm, had such a huge impact among Abyssal demons as well. In his impression, the Deep Sea of the Abyssal Deep was a “place” especially close to Subspace. The demons that lurked in the deeper layers of the Abyssal Deep should be closer to those “bottom?layer Shadows” than mortals in the Mortal Realm were. In theory, they should not be so fearful and resistant toward the Vanished that returned from Subspace.

Yet now it seemed that those demons, who were already “dangerous beings” from a human point of view, were just as afraid of the Vanished as humans were. That puzzled him a lot.

But before he could get to the bottom of that, his attention went back to the nightmare right in front of him. It came from the depths of Shirley’s memory and very likely replayed the truth from eleven years ago.

“I want to know more about this dream,” he said, turning his gaze to Shirley. “I know it is a very painful memory for you. If you don’t want to talk about it, you can refuse.”

“…There’s nothing I don’t want to say,” Shirley only shook her head lightly. “I should be thanking you. You broke the nightmare and spared me some suffering… What you saw is just what I went through back then.”

“A great fire…” Duncan nodded slightly, then looked toward Dog. “What I saw was how you and Shirley first ‘met’, wasn’t it?”

Dog turned its skull aside. “At the time I was just a Abyssal demon.”

“Then how did you suddenly gain a ‘heart’?” Duncan asked curiously. “From what I just saw, you had almost killed Shirley back then.”

“…I don’t know,” Dog said after a few seconds of silence. Its ugly skull swayed a little. “When I first became self?aware, what I saw was already Shirley lying on the ground, barely breathing.”

Duncan gave the Abyssal Hound a long look. His gaze then followed the chain at its neck and came to Shirley’s body, half of which was black and twisted, fused with the chain in a symbiotic pact.

“And after that, you two… merged together?”

“More or less,” Shirley said in a low voice. She hung her head so that her eyes and expression were hidden in the Shadows of her hair. “Honestly, I don’t remember it that well. I was only six then, and for a long time after that I lived in a daze… If you really want to know how I slowly went from being almost killed by a Abyssal demon to having this kind of relationship with it, you can grab a psychiatrist and have them hypnotize me. Maybe then…”

“No need.”

Shirley’s words were suddenly cut off. Right after that, she felt a large hand press down on the top of her head, to her surprise.

The hand was actually warm.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to tear open your wounds. I only want to know the details from eleven years ago,” Duncan said softly as he pressed down on the girl’s hair. He knew his questions were not pleasant for Shirley, who had just escaped a nightmare. “You should know that, in the incident eleven years ago, it wasn’t only the shard of the Sun that appeared. Countless cultists were moving in the shadows as well. And a Abyssal Hound… in theory, it should have been a summoned creature of the Cult of Annihilation.”

Shirley raised her head slightly, still a bit blank. She heard Duncan continue: “A demon?type creature from the Deep Sea of the Abyssal Deep suddenly gaining humanity is, in itself, a kind of ‘mutation’. Have you ever thought that this mutation might also have been triggered by something during that incident?”

Shirley blinked and said a bit slowly, “The shard of the Sun?”

“I’m not sure… No one knows what form the shard of the Sun really takes, or what power it truly has. But in the doctrine spread by the Suntists, the ‘true Sun god’ doesn’t have any divine authority like ‘granting humanity’ or anything similar,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “So whatever gave Dog humanity might be something other than the shard of the Sun… something else that was there.”

“You mean, what appeared in the city?state of Pland eleven years ago might not have been only the shard of the Sun?!” Shirley finally caught up. Her eyes flew wide open.

“It’s only a suspicion,” Duncan said. He patted Shirley’s shoulder lightly and then drew back his hand. “I’ve always felt there is something very off about the whole matter. The shard of the Sun is a ‘sacred relic’ that points to the cult of the Sun. According to those cultists, its power is actually quite simple and, in occult studies, only tied to the ‘true Sun god’. Yet in that chaos eleven years ago, even in the files the authorities made public, the cultists they caught already included Annihilators and Enders—people who had nothing to do with the ‘true Sun god’ at all… What were they doing mixed into it?

“Of course, you could explain it by saying that the shard of the Sun was so powerful that even people who did not believe in the Sun god were affected, so they all went mad on the same day. But that still can’t explain something as strange as Dog… ‘appearing’—a demon whose very nature is madness suddenly gaining sanity in the middle of the incident. How does that make sense?

“And if you push it further, there are many other suspicious points, including but not limited to the Veil that covered the ‘fire’, the fragments of memory left in your mind and in Nina’s, and the strange phenomena in the Sixth District… We have always lumped all of those oddities together and blamed them on the shard of the Sun. But now that I think about it carefully, are all of them really within ‘the Sun’s domain’ of power? If so, this so?called true Sun god would be a little too omnipotent.”

Duncan spoke the doubts in his heart. Some of them had already arisen long before today. It was only after seeing Dog’s mutation from eleven years ago that he became even more certain of his suspicion.

The great fire eleven years ago might indeed have been caused by the shard of the Sun. But in that whole incident, there had absolutely been something else at work as well!

Shirley was still a bit dazed. She was not good at thinking about things this complicated. While she stared blankly, she heard Dog’s voice ring urgently in her mind. “Shirley, are you okay? When he touched your head just now, was he releasing the curse? Are you still clear?headed? Are you…”

“I’m fine,” Shirley replied in her mind, half amused and half helpless. “Dog, you’re way too nervous.”

“Of course I’m nervous! How could I not be? You just made direct contact with a source of corruption strong enough to drive an ordinary person insane on the spot!” Dog sounded as panicked as could be. “So what do you feel?”

Shirley thought for a moment and uncertainly touched the top of her head.

In her memory, the last time someone had stroked her hair like that and gently comforted her as if she were a small child had been many, many years ago.

“…Warm.”

She spoke in a soft, dazed voice.

Dog was startled at once. “Shirley, has your brain really gone wrong?”

“…Shut up!”

Duncan, however, had no idea what Dog and Shirley had just exchanged in that brief instant. He only stared thoughtfully at the window, where dim red light still spread, and suddenly asked, “What’s outside?”

Shirley was stunned. “Huh?”

Duncan lifted a hand and pointed at the window. “Outside this room. What is there?”

“I… don’t know,” Shirley said, blinking. She suddenly realized that, in this nightmare that had haunted her again and again, something impossible had appeared. “I’ve never thought about that. Every time I dream, I’m trapped in this room…”

“But you’ve broken free now,” Duncan said. He walked to the door of the small room and turned back, speaking softly. His words were like a lure in the dark, throwing an entirely new choice in front of Shirley and Dog. “Do you want to try, while you’re awake… to go see what the edge of your dream looks like?”