Chapter 135

Chapter 135: The End of the Dream

The spirit flame drew back and sank into the chunk of flesh.

The remains corrupted by the fire trembled as they crawled up, then crawled faster and faster, soon vanishing at the far end of the street.

That lump of mindless flesh had set out on the road home. But whether it could really make it back to some “main body”, or would simply burn out halfway and scatter on its own, or be intercepted and purified by something else, even Duncan had no way to know.

All he could do was clear away as many hidden dangers as lay within his reach.

From the moment Shirley started fighting that strange dark figure, he had been quickly analyzing what this “attacker” who appeared in the nightmare might be, and guessing at the pattern of its abilities. After seeing how it reacted to the spirit flame, he became more certain that this sudden attacker was probably only a split-off “pathfinder”.

Once it met the spirit flame, the attacker had no will to fight at all. Its first reaction had been to shatter and try to break out in every direction. That could be read as a panicked attempt to flee. But it could just as easily be read as a “pathfinder” trying to send information away. If this vast dream was truly woven by some hidden hand behind the scenes, then the arrival of an “intruder” like him was important intelligence.

Duncan watched the direction where the fragment had vanished, deep in thought. After it crawled a certain distance, the thing simply disappeared inside a burst of rising smoke and dust. That made him even more sure of his guess:

The sudden attacker knew this dream far better than he and Shirley did. In this place it had easier ways to move and knew some unseen “passages”. That was how the figure with the umbrella had managed to appear nearby without him sensing it at all.

By contrast, he, Shirley, and Dog were first-time “explorers” here. In the dream they were like headless flies, and finding those things that were hiding would not be easy.

But that was all right. The Fire Seed had already been spread, and a faint sense of connection was still flickering at the edge of his perception. Duncan believed that the flame he had sent out would bring something back. As long as that bit of spirit flame continued to spread, a clearer sense would form. Sooner or later, he would find some of those hidden beings in the spreading fire—and then Nina and Shirley would no longer have nightmares.

“Mr. Duncan…” Shirley looked at him, a little frightened by his sudden silence. She hesitated for a long time before finally mustering her courage and asking: “Do you know what that thing just now… was?”

She meant the attacker who had held the black umbrella.

“…Hard to say,” Duncan answered after thinking for a moment and shaking his head. Then he looked around at the burned-out street and added, thoughtful: “But do you remember that figure I mentioned before, the one standing at the edge of the square when we were coming back from the City Museum?”

“The one only you could see?” Shirley remembered at once. “Ah, so the one who attacked us just now was the one you saw…”

“I can’t be sure it’s the same one,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “But it is definitely the same ‘kind’. And I suspect it is related to those cultists who worship the Sun. Both times it showed up in scenes tied to ‘fire’. That is very suspicious.”

“So it’s connected to those cultists…” Shirley blinked, then reacted quickly: “Could it be the ‘Sun Spawn’ they talk about?!”

“Let’s suspect that for now, though we don’t have any real proof,” Duncan said with a quiet sigh. “But more than the attacker’s identity, I’m bothered by why that thing appeared in your dream and Nina’s dream… What link is there between the scene at the City Museum and your dreams?”

As he spoke, he lifted his head and let his gaze sweep over the tall tower.

He still could not see Nina at the top of the tower, but Duncan was almost certain that this was the place Nina had seen in her dream.

“This really is Nina’s dream?” Shirley looked around in wonder, full of disbelief. “How did you know?”

“She told me about this dream,” Duncan said, raising a hand to point at the nearby tower as he spoke. “In the dream, she was standing on top of the tallest distillation tower, looking down at the city-state after the fire. This spot is about two blocks away from the little house in your nightmare. I don’t know why, but your dreams are clearly linked to each other on a deeper level.”

Shirley was amazed and seemed to want to ask more. But all at once Dog beside her seemed to notice something: “Hey, Shirley, look. The umbrella that guy was holding is still here!”

Shirley and Duncan both looked toward where Dog was pointing. Sure enough, a big black umbrella was lying quietly by the side of the street.

Their attention had been on the attacker before. After his main body split apart, the umbrella had fallen by the road, and for a while none of them had noticed it.

Duncan walked over. At last he had a chance to examine the black parasol up close. But when he saw the inside of the canopy, he couldn’t help letting out a small “Huh?”

He had imagined what the umbrella that the attacker had carried in his hand the whole time might be like. It might be an supernatural item etched with runes. Or it might be something that looked plain on the outside but was actually an Anomaly with many hidden traits. In any case, given the attacker’s eerie and terrifying powers and form, the umbrella’s style should have tended toward the sinister.

Yet everything under the canopy was completely different from what he had imagined—

He saw an extremely complex man-made structure. Delicate hexagonal grids were packed densely along the frame, forming something like a kind of… solar panel. In the deep purple gaps between the grids, he saw fine pipes and bundles of wiring. At the center of the umbrella there was a delicate device like some sort of control core that linked the handle to the surrounding grid array. Its precision and complexity far surpassed any steam engine in the city-state of Pland.

Duncan stared at the thing, stunned.

His first reaction was simple: it felt like technology.

This was definitely not an supernatural item. Its style was completely different from that of any “Anomaly”, and it was not a machine built by the city-states of today. This umbrella was a piece of technology, extremely delicate and complex.

It… came from a civilization beyond anything the modern city-states could understand!

“What is this thing?” Shirley asked in shock and confusion as she looked at the inner structure of the umbrella. She could not understand at all what it was and lacked Duncan’s knowledge from another world. To her it just looked a hundred times more complicated than she had imagined, to the point that it made her eyes swim. She reached out without thinking: “It looks kind of like…”

“Don’t touch it!” Dog cut her off at once. “It looks like some kind of Blasphemous Archetype.”

Shirley froze. “Blasphemous Archetype? What’s that supposed to be?”

“A creation from some forbidden history,” Dog said in a low, serious voice. “Something that shouldn’t exist in the Mortal Realm, but has been forced to stay in the Mortal Realm anyway. I don’t really know how to explain it to you… because I don’t know the principles behind it myself. Just remember this: in the long river of this world’s years, some stretches of history have been ‘locked’. The things born in those forbidden histories are Blasphemous Archetypes. In most cases, their very existence is harmful to living beings in the Mortal Realm. If you see one, do not touch it.”

Shirley quickly pulled her hand back, tense. Duncan gave Dog a thoughtful look and asked: “Is that also knowledge that Abyssal demons are born with?”

“More or less,” Dog said, shaking his head. “Not every Abyssal demon knows about these things. I just happened to be born closer to the head of the Abyssal Lord, so I ended up with a bit more knowledge in my skull.”

Duncan only grunted without answering, his eyes still on the strange black umbrella. Just then, as if it had lost some kind of “support”, the umbrella suddenly began to crumble and collapse before his eyes.

The delicate grid structure slowly turned transparent. The frame and wiring faded and turned into pale gray dust that scattered on the wind. The complex device at the core melted and flowed down like heated wax. Before it vanished completely, Duncan caught, out of the corner of his eye, a tiny line of text on one of its parts.

It was neither the common tongue of the city-states today nor any language he knew. Yet the meaning of the words still surfaced in his mind:

“K-22 Spectral Filter Crystal Core.”

A second later, the whole umbrella, including that last part, scattered away on the wind.

Duncan slowly straightened. Just then Shirley, standing beside him, gave a small cry: “Ah! What’s happening to my hand…”

Duncan looked at her arm and saw that not only her arm but her whole body was becoming transparent and blurry.

Shirley turned pale with fright. “Help help help help…”

“Help my ass!” Dog cut her off. “You’re about to wake up! This is the first time you’ve woken up properly from this dream—hurry up and thank Mr. Duncan!”

Only then did Shirley realize what was happening. She quickly looked at Duncan, and saw that his figure was also fading away in the dream.

Duncan smiled and waved to the girl in front of him: “Good night—and good morning. Don’t forget to wake Nina later so she can have breakfast.”