Chapter 536

Chapter 536: .

“Nameless One’s Dream?”

When they heard the unfamiliar term the captain suddenly tossed out, Agatha and Goathead looked at each other in surprise.

“Where did you hear that term?” After thinking for a moment, Agatha asked, “Is it part of the ‘intel’ you just got?”

“The Annihilators used it to refer to the ‘dream’ Heidi and Lucretia were trapped in before,” Duncan nodded slowly. “The first source of the intel was probably the Enders. After that, the Annihilators and the Sun Church cultists answered some kind of ‘call’ from those Preachers.

“If the intel is correct, this so?called ‘Nameless One’s Dream’ is something like a Vision. It spreads on a huge scale over many different dreams. And elves… under certain conditions, they seem to become a ‘passage’ into the Nameless One’s Dream.”

He paused for a moment, then went on: “Those cultists all seemed to have their own goals in the depths of the Nameless One’s Dream. The purpose of the Sun Church is still unclear, but the target of the Cult of Annihilation seems to be a so?called ‘original blueprint’.”

Agatha’s expression grew visibly more serious. “I truly have never heard of anything like this ‘Nameless One’s Dream’. But in theory, a Vision on that scale… shouldn’t have stayed unknown for so many years. You just said elves would become a ‘passage’ under certain conditions?”

Duncan nodded slightly. “According to those Annihilators, elves have some kind of ‘defect at the blueprint stage’. Because of this, their minds form a link with the Nameless One’s Dream. It should tie back again to that whole creation theory of the Abyssal Lord, but we don’t have enough intel.”

“…I’m sorry, Captain. It seems we can’t give you any useful answers,” Agatha thought seriously for a while, then finally shook her head with a hint of apology. “But since this points straight at the race of ‘elves’, we can at least start investigating here in Lightwind Harbor. This is a city?state of the elves—and an elf here just recently fell into that dream.”

Duncan gave a soft grunt of agreement. He shifted his posture, leaned back in his chair, and tapped lightly on the armrest with his fingers. His gaze fell on the enchanted sea chart, where the fog was slowly clearing. “It is necessary to have a good talk with Master Taran Ael… Let’s go see the Radiant Star. And I should pay Lucretia a visit too.”

…

Outside Lightwind Harbor, in a stretch of open sea near the glowing fallen relic, the Radiant Star was slowly circling. sunlight spread over the surface of the water, making the ship look as if it were gliding over broken gold sand.

A gentle sea breeze blew against them. It carried the southern seas’ unique warmth—yet Master Taran Ael kept feeling a bit cold as he stood on the deck. He pulled his coat tighter against the wind, turned to look at the “sea witch” standing on a mast behind him, and shouted: “Are we just going to wait here?”

Lucretia lowered her head and glanced at the Grand Scholar on the deck. Her voice was not loud, but it carried clearly and directly into Taran Ael’s ears: “We are going to wait here.”

“Can I go back?” Taran Ael shouted again. “For the touching reunion of father and daughter, it feels a bit wrong to have an outsider standing around!”

Lucretia’s expression stayed blank. “Father said he wants to talk to you.”

Taran Ael raised both hands with a troubled face. “Then could you come down and stay with me? I… I’m a little nervous!”

Lucretia looked down at him from on high and gave him a quick once?over. “You are an adult, and a Grand Scholar with great prestige. You should learn to handle your own stress.”

“…Lady Lucretia, don’t tell me you’re nervous too?!”

“Why would I be nervous over something like this? That’s my…”

The voice from the mast suddenly stopped. Taran Ael froze for a second. He was about to ask what happened when a strong sense of dread struck him and cut off his words.

It was a warning from his Spiritual Insight, a sudden jolt of intuition. It was the instinctive tension of a “scholar” who had spent years dealing with dangerous items and hidden knowledge, the reaction he had when Truth drew near. In that instant, a layer of cold sweat broke out on Taran Ael’s skin. Right after that, he heard a low, deep sound, like the breathing of a giant beast, rumbling in his ears.

In the next second, thick fog and terrible light filled his vision.

Right beside the Radiant Star, at arm’s length, fog rose on the sea, appearing in an instant like a towering wall. The twisted light and shadow caused by the Spirit Realm flipping into place seemed about to pour out of that fog. Huge shadows rose up from the Spirit Realm and descended from the fog—

Just as in many dreadful legends of the sea, it came wrapped in darkness and chaos, burning with flames like Doomsday. It was as if a nightmare had suddenly grown a body in the Mortal Realm, like an unavoidable fate crashing straight down on them. Within just a few breaths, the towering bow of the Vanished crashed into the Mortal Realm.

Taran Ael stood frozen on the deck like a carved statue. He heard a “thump” from somewhere nearby, but he didn’t even have the courage to turn his head and look. Several more seconds passed before he finally remembered to breathe again, and he became aware of his heart pounding in his chest. The potion Lady Lucretia had forced him to drink earlier was still working, protecting his weak organs and letting them survive the shock.

Only then did the Grand Scholar slowly come back to himself. He got his voice back, and he quickly turned to look at where the “witch” had been standing before. “Lady Lucretia! Your father…”

There was no trace of the witch on the mast.

Taran Ael blinked, then instinctively looked around and shouted loudly: “Lady Lucretia! Lu—”

“Stop shouting. I’m right here.”

A cold voice with a hint of warning came from very close by, cutting off the scholar’s yelling. Taran Ael turned his head at once and saw Lucretia already standing on the deck. No one knew when she had come down. She stood beside him with a calm face, one hand raised in an elegant gesture to her forehead as her divine gaze rested on the bow of the Vanished.

“Ah, where did you go just now? I turned around and you…”

“Be quiet,” Lucretia snapped, her attitude unfriendly as she cut off the Grand Scholar. “Father doesn’t like people yelling during a meeting.”

Taran Ael shut his mouth at once. His whole body went tense as he stared at the huge ship burning with ghostly flames. Almost at the same time, he saw a flame appear out of thin air on the deck of the Radiant Star.

The flame rose quickly, swirling upward into a spinning doorway. In the next moment, a tall figure stepped out from within it.

Considering that this was his first visit to the Radiant Star, and in order to avoid unnecessary confusion on deck, Duncan had chosen to come alone.

Now, he finally set foot on this ship—one of the last two surviving escorts of the lost Hometown Fleet, the Radiant Star.

He also finally met Lucretia in the Mortal Realm—the “daughter” of Duncan Abnomar.

The “sea witch” wore a black dress with an adventurer’s style. She hesitated and walked a few steps toward him, but stopped again a few meters away. She kept her eyes on him, but her expression was complicated and stiff. She did her best to hide it, yet her nervousness and uncertainty could not be hidden at all.

Duncan could not help but recall what Tyrian had told him before they left Frostholm:

“Lucy gives outsiders the impression of being cold, withdrawn, and moody. But deep down, that’s because she’s bad at socializing and doesn’t know how to express her feelings…

“She slips up when she’s nervous, so she always avoids letting herself get into nervous situations. That’s why the ‘sea witch’ always comes and goes quickly and looks so carefree…

“When she gets too flustered, she has no idea how to start a conversation. It makes her seem rude, arrogant, and strange. But if someone is willing to speak up first and break the silence at that time, she’ll be very happy…”

Back in Frostholm, Duncan had always kept up his image in front of Tyrian as someone “who lost his memories because of Subspace”. Thanks to that, he could openly ask a lot of things about Lucretia. Now, that intel was finally paying off.

“Long time no see,” after giving himself a few moments to adjust, Duncan showed a faint smile and walked toward the “sea witch”. “Lucy, I’m back.”

He followed his rehearsed lines and his own understanding as he tried to play the role of “Duncan Abnomar”.

Yet even as he greeted her, a faint emotion rose quietly from deep in his heart. In that soft, blurry feeling, he once again sensed that trace of distant longing and… regret.

He was no stranger to this feeling anymore. Every body he took over would react in a similar way when it met someone or something that had mattered greatly “in life”.

This time, Duncan did not try to control or ignore the feeling. He let it flow slowly through his heart, and let it fade just as slowly.

Lucretia’s expression changed several times. No one knew what this “witch” thought about in those few short seconds. She stared at him in a daze for a moment. In the end, all her memories and all the intense emotions she had once felt settled into a single, very soft sentence:

“Dad… you were gone far too long this time…”

Duncan was quiet for a moment, then reached into his coat. “I brought you a gift.”

“Gift?” Lucretia raised her head with a slightly confused look.

Duncan stretched out his hand and slowly opened his palm.

A small silver?white hair clip with a design of waves and feathers lay quietly in the center of his hand.

Lucretia stared, stunned. She looked blankly at the little hair clip. After a while, she blinked, as if suddenly waking up, then reached out her hand with a bit of hesitation.

The hair clip was real. It felt hard to the touch and carried a faint warmth—the warmth of a living person.

The “witch” held the gift. After a very long time, she seemed to show the tiniest hint of a smile and said in a very soft voice: “You delivered this so late. It’s out of fashion now. It went out of fashion a whole century ago…”

She stood there for a moment more, then seemed to take a tiny breath.

“Thank you.”