Chapter 524

Chapter 524: The Real Intruders

Heidi first looked blank, then her face twisted in horror.

She knew who this “Sea Witch’s Father” was. That kind of chilling joke was not funny at all.

“I am a believer of the God of Wisdom Rahm, my lady,” she said in a rush, as if afraid that if she spoke a second later, the misunderstanding would deepen and she would really form some secret link with that terrifying shadow in the subspace. “I’m just an ordinary psychiatrist. You must be mistaken!”

Lucretia only frowned a little. Her calm gaze fell on the “psychiatrist’s” chest. The plain-looking purple crystal pendant there still gave off a faint, familiar aura. She might mistake other things, but Father’s aura…

Lucretia even felt that Father’s gaze was quietly resting on her through that pendant.

“This pendant of yours, where did it come from?” Lucretia suddenly asked.

“This… it was a gift from my father. He bought it from an antique shop,” Heidi explained at once, without thinking too much. “It’s nothing special, it just happens to give a bit of protection in the mental field…”

“Antique shop?” Lucretia sounded a little puzzled. “And your father is…”

“Oh, this young lady is the daughter of Morris Underwood,” said Taran Ael at last. He had been quiet at the side the whole time, but now he felt that the mood was going in a strange direction. “Relax, Lady Lucretia. This miss really is a psychiatrist. She’s helping me get out of here.”

Lucretia froze for a second when she heard Taran Ael’s words. Then she turned to Heidi, and a strange look appeared on her face: “Morris Underwood?”

“Y-yes.” Heidi nodded. “That’s my father’s name…”

Lucretia kept her face still, but in her mind she recalled the scene from last time, when she met the new crew members of the Vanished through the scrying crystal. She remembered that respected grand scholar—her father’s current “knowledge adviser.”

The world was really small.

The coldness in her eyes faded. Her smile became sincere again, and her gaze on Heidi grew gentle: “Hello, Miss Heidi.”

“Hello…” Heidi was completely lost. In just a short moment, she felt as if her life had gone through several sharp ups and downs, yet she had no idea what was happening. She could only answer the “witch” in front of her with nervous politeness: “You… know my father? And you know Master Taran Ael too?”

“This world is smaller than you think.” Lucretia did not answer her directly. She just brushed it off, then turned to the elven scholar opposite her. “From your own sense of time, how long do you think you’ve been trapped in this dream?”

“I’m not sure. My sense of time is off now. It might be a few days… or longer.”

Lucretia frowned: “From the amount of cognitive shift, it’s already a bit dangerous… I’m guessing you already tried all sorts of waking methods yourself, including the falling method?”

Taran Ael spread his hands: “Yeah. The only thing I haven’t tried yet is the ‘sudden-death method’.”

“If the usual subconscious awakening methods don’t work, then nothing else will help. This is not a normal dream, and it’s not an external curse or a mental attack either,” Lucretia said, waving her hand. “I already checked your condition in the Mortal Realm and set up a field in the lab to control mental corruption. We can rule those out… Miss Heidi, can you tell me the information you have so far?”

Heidi blinked for a second. Two seconds later she finally reacted, and quickly told the “witch” in front of her everything she knew. She even started from the moment she accepted City Hall’s invitation in Pland, not daring to leave out a single detail.

Lucretia listened patiently to this long chain of information, her expression changing several times.

“From a dream far away in Pland, you entered Taran Ael’s dream… The distance between those two city-states is not small, and now that dream’s entrance has disappeared…” The “witch” grew solemn as she spoke slowly. “It seems that if the mental guidance isn’t smooth, even you, a psychiatrist, will end up trapped here.”

“So do you two experts have a conclusion now?” As the only “patient” present, Taran Ael was quite calm. He only sounded a bit curious. “What is this dream, really?”

“Before I draw a conclusion, I have to confirm one thing,” Lucretia said instead, her face serious. “How did you fall asleep? I found the draft you left in the tower. You seemed to be about to send it to the Academy by ‘express dispatch’. Were you attacked in the tower, or did you ‘see’ something while observing the Sun?”

Taran Ael fell into his memories.

After a long time, he spoke again, not very sure: “I wasn’t attacked… I only remember that I saw many vague shadows and lines inside the Sun, through the instruments on the tower. I wanted to record them all, but they were too messy and blurry. No matter what I did, I couldn’t see them clearly, so I could only sketch a rough outline, and then…”

His voice suddenly grew strangely hesitant. Confusion and doubt filled his eyes. The more he tried to recall what he had seen in that last moment before he fell asleep, the less sure he became of his own memory.

At last, Taran Ael stopped. He could no longer remember what happened in the final second before he blacked out. With a lost look, he slowly raised his head. His gaze passed over Heidi and Lucretia in front of him, then turned to the surroundings, to the lush and impossibly dense forest around them.

He gradually fell still. He stopped making any movement or sound at all. Even his breathing and the tiny motions of his eyes came to a complete halt. The wind that blew through the woods could no longer move his hair or the edges of his robes.

Taran Ael became a “statue” frozen in the dream.

As he fell still, the whole dream finally began to change. A strange, low rumbling spread through this world, echoing as if some vast, endless thing was slowly collapsing. The towering trees began to lose their color and break apart from the crowns downward. The lush plants all across the ground slowly weathered and crumbled, turning into drifting smoke.

Heidi stared in shock at all this, then suddenly turned to Lucretia: “This is a layer of ‘Veil’? Not the real dream?!”

“It seems you learned well at school, Miss Heidi,” Lucretia said, lifting an eyebrow. “Yes, just as I guessed. This is not a true layer of dream, but a protective Veil woven over the dream. What we see is not really Taran Ael, but a mental construct he made for himself as a shield. No matter what we do, we can’t wake him up from here—the real dream is hidden deeper down.”

“Why would it be like this?” Heidi was stunned. “I… I’ve never seen such a real protective Veil. It covers the lower dream so completely…”

“I haven’t seen anything like it either. And Taran Ael is not an expert in the mental field. He has had some special training, but in theory he shouldn’t be able to weave such a perfect ‘defense’,” Lucretia said, shaking her head. “But one thing is sure: whoever wove this Veil is trying to hide what’s in the deep layers of the dream… If Taran Ael really did this, then he must have sensed great danger after Dreamwalking…”

She suddenly stopped.

Because the “collapse” of the forest was slowing down.

It did not only stop. After a few seconds, the entire collapse began to reverse. The towering trees started to rebuild themselves one after another. Color came flooding back into the ground. The Veil that had seemed on the verge of breaking apart now started to regenerate at an amazing speed.

“The Veil is regenerating!” Heidi cried out.

Lucretia, shocked as well, at once looked toward Taran Ael’s mental construct. He still stood there like a statue, showing no sign of “reactivating.”

The protective Veil over this dream had regenerated, but its “weaver” was not Taran Ael. Some other power was protecting the truth in the deep layers of this dream.

The moment Lucretia realized this, two facts hit her.

First, besides the “elven maiden” Heidi had mentioned and Master Taran Ael, there was at least a third Dreamer in this dream. That Dreamer was the true controller of this “disguised dream” layer.

Second, the intruders were still nearby. The source of the corruption was right here.

The dream’s protective Veil had rebuilt itself on its own. It had sensed a great danger. That was why, even after it had already begun to fade, it suddenly reversed. From the size of this whole forest and the scale of its rebuilding, the source of that danger was far beyond what they had imagined.

Neither the Annihilator that Heidi had driven out before, nor the intruders that Taran Ael had already dealt with, were the real cause of this dream being sealed.

As Lucretia grasped this, Heidi also suddenly understood why the Veil had regenerated: “Something is hiding in this dream. The intruders are still here!”

“Look for anything strange around us!”

Lucretia called out at once, then quickly searched everything in her sight, feeling the currents in the air. She wanted to find where the “source of corruption” was hiding—the thing that this Veil was trying so hard to block out.

The air, the fragrance of flowers, the rustling of wind through the forest, the distant sound of running water, and the sunlight pouring through the canopy…

Everything felt so real. Everything felt so natural. Everything seemed perfectly normal.

Which thing, exactly, was wrong in this dream?

Wait… the sunlight?!

Lucretia’s heart jolted hard.

This forest had countless towering trees, countless thick crowns. The purpose of those crowns was to block the sunlight.

But even with so many layers of leaves, the “sunlight” still filled the whole forest. Every corner was bright.

“The sunlight is the intruder!”

She realized it at once and shouted a warning to Heidi. Heidi reflexively raised her head and, through the gaps in the canopy, looked up at the sky of this dream.

Between the overlapping crowns, many large and small openings had appeared at some point. Between those gaps lay the sky, the sunlight, and the Sun that shone on this dream.

Huge, dark, twisted tentacles coiled and wrapped together into a ball. Between them were countless enormous, pale eyes. The mass hung in the sky like some horrible freak, floating over the forest.

Bright sunlight formed a shell of living light, clear as glass, wrapped tightly around that twisted thing. From within that shell, it calmly shone on the entire dream.