Chapter 551

Chapter 551: Twin Realms

(The whole world seemed to be covered by a thick Veil, and its own senses felt as if they had been shattered and rebuilt a thousand times by an invisible force. The mind could not understand those wild, chaotic signals. The buzzing noise and dim, terrifying lights seemed to carve themselves straight into its nerves, stirring its awareness and stabbing at its thoughts.

It tried to take a step forward. It tried to tell what was around it. It tried to remember itself. It tried to understand its situation now.

Countless hazy shapes crowded around it. Those things had shifting outlines. Hollow spaces with strange, dreamy colors floated on their upright shells. Weird currents flowed in those hollows, making nameless howls and hissing sounds that filled everything with fear.

Then, a warm light appeared in its sense of the world. Following that warmth, the being that had woken from darkness and forgotten itself began to walk forward, slowly….)

Nina suddenly put down the cheap trinket she had been picking up and frowned in confusion. She turned and glanced behind her.

Shirley noticed at once and turned too, puzzled: “Huh? Nina, what is wrong?”

“I do not know…” Nina still looked confused. She frowned and swept her gaze over the crowd behind them. “I suddenly felt something move back there, like someone was staring at us. But it feels like… just a mistake?”

“It is probably your imagination…” Shirley also frowned a little after hearing Nina’s words and looked around the market without thinking. “There are people everywhere here. Maybe someone just happened to look this way?”

Even as she spoke, she carefully checked with Dog in her mind.

“Nothing there,” Dog’s reply sounded quickly in her head. “Just a lot of people.”

“Dog says there is nothing,” Shirley said quietly to Nina. “Its senses will not be wrong.”

Nina blinked, glanced back again, then shook her head: “…I guess it was just my imagination.”

The market was crowded. The stream of people made this originally wide place feel a bit cramped. She saw not only locals all around, but also many tourists in foreign clothes wandering through the stalls. Shouts from the vendors rose and fell in the crowd. It sounded noisy, yet full of life.

In a place with so many people, feeling one or two stray gazes on you was not strange at all.

“Young ladies, are you still buying anything?”

The stall owner’s voice came from across the table, breaking Nina’s train of thought.

“Oh, sorry,” Nina said at once. She gave the owner an apologetic smile, then held up the hair clip and brooch she had just picked out. “These two. Please wrap them up for me. What about you, Shirley? Did you find anything you like?”

“I did not find anything,” Shirley said, shaking her head. “I will look at the next stall.”

The stall owner packed the items, Nina paid, and the two girls went on wandering through the busy market. It was still a long time until sunset. The Sun still hung high above the city-state. They still had plenty of time to play.

(What was skin? What were eyes? What were eardrums? How did it walk? How had it come here?

Starting from the most basic questions, it became confused about everything.

Something annoying kept disturbing its thoughts and memories. It brought it more pain and confusion.

It tried to lift its head and searched for the source of that annoying interference. The thing was hanging high above—a giant… noise.

It felt puzzled, because in its weak and blurry memory, “noise” was supposed to be something invisible. But it felt that what it saw up there really was noise.

A mass of twisted, tangled ripples pulsed and writhed endlessly above. The ripples covered the whole chaotic sky, stirring the dim, drifting lights there. They blended with the countless howls and hisses rising from the ground, making one sick, making one afraid.

It forced itself to take another step, moving in the sea of noise. It carefully avoided those shapeless forms with dreamy hollows on their bodies, the ones that kept hissing and whispering. It moved forward slowly, and kept moving….)

Nina stopped again. This time, she stood in the middle of the road, staring wide-eyed at an empty patch of ground.

In her eyes, a faint golden glimmer quietly rose and floated.

Shirley stopped with her at once and frowned at the empty place too. After several seconds, she finally spoke in a hesitant voice: “I think I felt it too. It was like something was watching us, and it even followed us here…”

“Did Dog feel it?” Nina asked in a low voice, her nerves tensing without her noticing.

“Dog still says it did not feel anything,” Shirley replied in a whisper as she watched the area around them. “But it says that having the same ‘illusion’ several times is worrying by itself. Maybe something that should not be in the Mortal Realm is affecting us…”

Nina nodded lightly and checked the market with the corner of her eye.

Among the people coming and going, she could see the Church Guardians standing by the street.

The “Knowledge Guards” of the Truth Institute were watching over this crowded place. They wore institute-style robes and carried large-caliber revolvers at their waists. Their sharp but calm gazes watched for every small movement in the streets and on the square. The eyes blessed by the God of Wisdom Rahm could sense evil that invaded the Mortal Realm at the first moment.

Yet these Knowledge Guards looked relaxed. They seemed to have noticed nothing wrong in the market.

“That feeling is gone… The Guardians do not seem to notice anything either, but I do not think I was imagining it,” Nina muttered quietly to Shirley.

Shirley answered in the same low voice: “So what do you want to do?”

“…Maybe we should tell those Guardians by the road?” Nina thought for a moment and then said: “Uncle said that if we meet dangerous things like heretic cultists, we should report to the Guardians right away.”

Shirley froze for a second when she heard that. As a violent, rude, uneducated bad child, she really did not have much room in her head for the words “report to the authorities,” and she had not thought in that direction at all.

But when she remembered how Captain Duncan had done “righteous reporting” several times before, a strange feeling rose in her heart again—

As a rough, violent troublemaker, was she really the one whose moral sense was too low, so that her way of thinking did not match this whole family of Eldritch Gods?

After a brief sense of mismatch, she could not help but shake her head: “How would we report it? Are we supposed to go over and say we just keep feeling like someone is following us? The Guardians will think we are just making trouble…”

(It forced itself to think and walked unsteadily forward. It remembered a dark red color, like a thick pile of blood. That dark red glow had floated in the sky in its memory. It had chased it without rest, and chased its… companions.

Companions? What were companions?

New memories suddenly appeared in the depths of its mind. It felt confused, and then finally remembered more.

Ah, it did have companions. It had set out with its companions on a long journey. But what were they going to do?

It seemed… they were going to save the world.

They followed the Prophet’s guidance and headed toward the place where the red light fell, to look for a way to save the world. Many of them had set out together, but the hunter brother and sister fell first. Then that gloomy, quiet mage. After that, several knights….)

Nina still decided they should report to the Guardians first.

Even if it would be hard to explain why they were reporting, professional work should be left to professional people. And just like Uncle Duncan had said—if your attitude was honest, no one would blame you if the report led to nothing. If it worked, you might even earn a reward.

She pulled the unwilling Shirley with her and walked toward the Guardians by the side of the street.

(It stopped trying to think. It moved forward on instinct.

The thick “curtains” of the world drew in around it, as if they were trying to block its path. The buzzing noise gathered in tighter rings. Those strange forms that hissed and whispered paced around with shapeless malice on them, giving off a fear that could not be put into words.

But it only walked faster, moving closer to that light. It was like…

It was leaping toward the only thing in its memory that still felt even a little familiar, the only thing it could still somewhat understand.)

Nina reached the roadside.

A Knowledge Guard in institute robes turned his head, curious about the two girls who looked like they were still in middle school and had suddenly walked up to him.

“Young misses, do you need any help?” the Guardian asked. He smiled and spoke gently.

“We think something is wrong…” Nina began, telling the Guardian the line she had been working out in her head all the way over. “Just now…”

(In that instant, all the Veils and mists became invisible borders. The “real touch” of pushing through the border was the first sharp pain felt by the lost and forgotten one in this New World. It leaped forward.)

A scream suddenly rang out from behind them, echoing through the whole market.