Chapter 525

Chapter 525: Attack Under the sunlight

That deformed, terrifying freak hung high over the forest, sprawling across the sky. Countless coiled and knotted tentacles held up its glowing “shell.” The “sunlight” that pierced the entire forest came from this nightmare-like intruder.

How long had it been hanging above this dream? Had it been there from the very start? Why had no one noticed how wrong the sunlight was? With what dreadful purpose was it watching this forest, patched together from several different layers of dream?

Heidi tilted her head back, as if drawn by some great force. She could not stop herself from gazing at the small “Sun” held up by those horrible limbs.

She stared at the pale giant eyes, surrounded and guarded by the tentacles.

In that instant, she felt her mind link to some vast and distant existence. Through those pale, sky-gazing eyes, something pushed straight into her thoughts. She heard a thunderous roar deep in her spirit and sensed an ancient will looking down at this dream through that blazing Sun in the sky—and at the uninvited guests inside it.

Hundreds and thousands of voices whispered or screamed in her head. Among them, she heard one voice clearly. It slipped into her awareness like a murmur from a dream:

“…hidden in the deepest part of their memories… before our sunlight goes out…”

Under that whisper boring into her mind, Heidi felt a sudden urge to submit and worship.

But in the very next second, a burning heat suddenly rose from her chest. In that heat, Heidi snapped awake. It was as if ten thousand claps of thunder exploded in her ears. She felt the link between her and those voices tear apart in an instant.

Her heart pounded like a drum. Sharp ringing filled her ears like noise. Her mind heaved wildly, and the feeling of having just escaped disaster only rose from the bottom of her heart after a few long seconds. As soon as she woke, she forced herself to tear her gaze away from the sky. At the same time, she grabbed the purple crystal pendant at her chest by reflex.

The pendant was still giving off burning heat, but it did not hurt her. Shaken, Heidi turned her head and looked at the “witch miss” standing beside her.

Lucretia was reaching her hand toward Heidi with a blank face. At Lucretia’s fingertips, three colored gems floated in the air, slowly spinning. Light leapt between the gems and her fingers, weaving a beautiful, deadly glow.

Heidi felt a jolt of fear in her heart.

“I’m awake! I’m awake!” she shouted at once, afraid that this witch really was about to act. “I’m not corrupted—”

Lucretia nodded and glanced at the crystal pendant on Heidi’s chest. The three colored gems flew back up and returned to the little ornament in her hair.

Then Lucretia paused, as if she felt she owed an explanation: “I wasn’t planning to kill you.”

“Uh…” Heidi had not expected her to say that. Her expression twitched. “I just thought you were about to do something to me.”

“It would only be a violent shock. If you had only suffered shallow mental corruption, the shock would bring up your subconscious fear of death and force the uncorrupted part of your mind to leave this dream. Afterwards, you’d at most lose some recent memories,” Lucretia explained. “That was a Dream Exit Technique Master Taran Ael invented—the ‘sudden-death method’.”

Heidi stared wide-eyed: “Didn’t you say that ‘sudden-death method’ was unreliable?!”

“It’s unreliable when used on Taran Ael himself,” Lucretia said, glancing at the grand scholar, who still stood in place like a mental statue. “He might drop dead even without nightmares.”

“Then what about me…”

“You’re sturdier.”

Heidi was speechless for a moment. She stayed awkwardly quiet for several seconds, then finally pointed up at the sky with lingering fear. During all this, she did not dare look directly at that strange, horrifying thing again. “Lady Lucretia, that thing…”

“So that’s the real intruder,” Lucretia said lightly. She swept her hand across the air in front of her. A round, illusory mirror, ringed with elegant patterns in a courtly style, appeared out of thin air before her. Using the reflection in this magic mirror, she carefully observed the scene in the sky. “The Veil in this dream exists to block that thing’s ‘gaze’.”

She paused, a thoughtful look on her face.

“It looks like the work of those cultists who worship the Black Sun. The thing in the sky looks exactly like the ‘Sunspawn’ they follow…”

“Sunspawn…” Heidi’s heart skipped. As someone from Pland and a survivor of the Black Sun incident back then, she knew better than anyone how terrible that name was. But right after that shock came a deeper confusion. “But the ‘intruder’ I first saw in the dream was clearly an Annihilator…”

“Annihilator?” Lucretia frowned. “Then… this is even worse.”

Heidi opened her mouth, about to ask what the “Sea Witch” meant. But before she could speak, a faint rustling sound suddenly came from nearby, making her fall silent at once.

“Did you hear something?” Heidi asked quickly, tense.

“Looks like the ‘protector’ of that freak in the sky has arrived,” Lucretia said calmly. “We discovered ‘it’, so ‘it’ feels fear and will try every way to wipe out any thinking beings who have seen ‘it’. The spawn of the Black Sun always behave like this—”

The rustling sound cut off.

But in the instant it vanished, a huge wave of alarm and danger surged in like a tide.

The next second, Heidi caught a flicker of shadow at the edge of her vision. Under the nearby bushes, in a spot that had seemed completely normal a heartbeat ago, a shapeless darkness began to writhe and swell. It split out cruel limbs like spearheads and blades, and lunged at her and Lucretia.

Heidi did not have time to think. Her body dropped hard to the side. At the same time, she swept the golden awl in her hand through the air in front of her. A faint afterimage stayed where she had just been. A second later, the attacker pierced that afterimage without mercy.

The dark mass snapped back, while the “figure” it had stabbed still stood where it was. The figure swayed twice. Its blurred outline quickly sharpened and turned into another “Heidi.”

At the same time, a sharp cracking blast came from Lucretia’s direction.

A shadow slithered along the ground like a vicious snake, creeping to the Sea Witch’s feet. It suddenly burst into countless thorns, spikes, blades, and tentacles. These twitching horrors surged at Lucretia from all sides, swallowing her figure in an instant.

But as those shadows crossed and tangled, Lucretia’s body suddenly transformed. She flattened into a paper-thin “image.” Her body spun once in the air and “floated” out from between those deadly attacks. Then her figure rebuilt itself on the open ground nearby. At some point, a short baton had appeared in her hand, like the baton a conductor would use when leading an orchestra on stage.

She raised the little baton and gently tapped it against a black tentacle that had formed in midair, giving a calm command:

“Minor key.”

The tentacle gave a small crack. Then more cracks followed, stringing together like notes in a song. In that stream of explosions, the tentacle broke apart into countless unreal, multicolored notes that fluttered away and vanished in the air.

All the shadows linked to that black tentacle broke into constant bursts as well. Under that terrible curse, they became a cloud of shining notes, drifting and scattering in a storm of color.

It was beautiful like a dream, and so eerie it made one’s heart race.

Lucretia flicked the conductor’s baton with grace, then turned to look at Heidi, who had already split off a third personality. There was a hint of surprise in Lucretia’s eyes.

“Your self-defense skills are pretty good. From the way you move, you’ve trained in the Mortal Realm too?”

“I have to know how to protect myself. In our line of work, we deal not only with mental patients, but also with their mental illness,” Heidi said, panting a little, with a touch of pride. “Father always told me that a girl must learn how to protect herself.” Then the look she gave Lucretia held even more awe and respect. “Your power… really is as strong as the rumors say.”

“My father taught me something similar,” Lucretia said with a small smile. She then turned away and calmly watched the figures that were now appearing in the air one after another.

The loss of a few tentacles and shadows did not mean things were over. For the followers of the Black Sun, their vile limbs could always stand more damage.

The true attackers finally showed themselves.

Several tall figures appeared. They wore long black coats of some unknown material, like heavy trench coats. Under the coats, something like twisted, deformed flesh kept writhing and heaving, making wet, disgusting sounds. Their faces were hidden in the shadows cast by their wide-brimmed hats. No real features could be seen, only endless emptiness and a cold hatred toward all living things.

“…Lesser spawn of the Sunspawn,” Heidi said at once, recognizing what these not-quite-human beings were. She and her personality splits all shifted into guarded stances, though she could not keep from frowning. “…But I never heard that these things could invade dreams…”

Lucretia noticed something else.

“They’re not carrying umbrellas,” the Sea Witch said with a slight frown.

As an explorer who ran the border regions all year round and often dealt with all kinds of strange and dangerous powers, she was very familiar with the followers of the Black Sun and had crossed paths with them several times.

These scraps of Sunspawn that had appeared in the dream were not holding those strange, iconic black umbrellas.

They all stood openly in the light, calmly bathing in the “sunlight” that pierced the forest.

As if… exiles had returned to their home.