Chapter 575

Chapter 575: Each Different

Duncan and Alice hurried back at top speed to the Witch manor at 99 Crown Street.

Along the way, what they saw were city streets that had fully returned to their everyday look. The blocks that had once been completely covered by “forest”, the nearby lanes once overrun by spreading vines, and the buildings that had fallen silent and empty in the forest’s Shadows had all regained their old, lively face in the early morning light.

There were more and more people on the streets. The first bus of the morning had already driven down the avenue. At the intersection, a Knowledge Guard was handing over the shift to a city Constable. The strange state that had filled the whole district a few hours ago… now felt like a grand illusion that only Duncan and the others had noticed.

When Duncan and Alice returned, everyone was already waiting in the living room. Lucretia was the first to come up. She walked quickly to Duncan and asked: “Are you all right?”

Duncan waved his hand as he headed into the living room and said quickly: “What I went through was different from you. We need to put all the information together now.”

Alice followed him in. As she passed Lucretia, she casually handed over the puppet head she had been carrying the whole way: “Here, this. I didn’t break it!”

Lucretia took the puppet head with a slightly odd look on her face. She glanced at the maid puppet leaning in standby against the stair rail not far away, then raised a hand to call over an iron footman. She passed the puppet head to it and said: “Put this in the workshop first. I’ll deal with it later.”

Soon, everyone gathered together. Duncan sat on the sofa in the middle of the living room and let his gaze sweep over each familiar face.

Even though he had known earlier that everyone was safe, he still could not help letting out a silent sigh of relief now that he saw them all back in the Mortal Realm.

“Let’s start with what we know so far.” After a brief silence, Duncan was the first to speak. “First, we can now say that the large-scale Visions in the city last night were very similar to the dream Taran Ael fell into before. The details were different, and there were many new changes, but they should all come from the influence of the so-called ‘dream of the Nameless One’. That ‘dream’ is growing, and now it seems to be in a runaway state and spreading toward the Mortal Realm.”

He paused for a moment and glanced at Alice beside him, then went on: “Second, after the anomaly began, all of us had different experiences. Alice and I stayed in the Mortal Realm. We saw streets warped and twisted by the power spilling out of the dream. I even made contact with a large entity that had ‘crawled out’ of the dream. You were dragged into the ‘other side’ of the dream. In that time, all contact was cut off, and only Lucretia kept a weak link with the Mortal Realm through the puppet servant she had made.”

“Let’s start with Lucretia, then. Each of you go over what you went through on the ‘inside’ of the dream.”

Duncan’s gaze fell on the Sea Witch. She nodded at once and shifted her sitting position a little: “Then I’ll start with mine. The place where I began my Dreamwalking was an uninhabited zone in the forest. There, I met an elven woman who called herself ‘Celine’…”

Nina, sitting to the side, let out a soft cry as soon as she heard this: “Huh? You met a person? Was she the Dreamer?”

Then she realized she had interrupted. She stuck out her tongue in embarrassment and said: “Sorry, I couldn’t help it… go on, I won’t cut in again.”

Lucretia did not mind. She only nodded to Nina and kept talking: “From what I could tell, the elven woman who called herself ‘Celine’ was not the Dreamer, but a… ‘resident’ of that huge dream. I know that sounds strange…

“She talked about a place called the ‘Wall of Silence’. It seemed to be a defensive line. She called herself a ranger, and she mentioned a retreat order. She told me that everyone had already pulled back inside the Wall of Silence. Until the dream ended, I was traveling with that elf, heading toward the place she called the ‘Wall of Silence’, but we never reached it…”

Lucretia described her experience in the dreamscape in as much detail as she could. Except for Duncan, who already knew some of it, everyone else listened with serious and amazed looks—because Lucretia was the only one among them who had met a “native resident” of the dream world.

No one had expected that there would be homegrown mind-born beings like “Celine” inside the “dream of the Nameless One”!

And if what the elf named “Celine” said was true, then beyond the depths of that forest, behind the defensive line called the “Wall of Silence”, there were even more mind-born beings living inside the “dream of the Nameless One”?!

When Lucretia finished, the living room fell quiet for a moment. Then Morris spoke up: “Nina and I were together.”

Duncan was a little surprised: “The two of you were together?”

“Yes. It looks like there is some randomness to how we fell into the dreamscape. Not everyone was separated,” Morris said with a nod. “We also landed in a kind of ‘no man’s land’. All we could see around us was endless, nameless vegetation. At one point, Nina flew up to look into the distance. We found that there were some dark areas in the forest that looked like they were under corruption…

“And from our tests, whenever Nina released her power, the whole dreamscape would have a very strong ‘reaction’…”

Morris laid out their time in the “dream of the Nameless One” in a clear order. This was information Duncan had not had before. He frowned slightly and listened carefully to every detail the old Mr. described, especially how the “dream of the Nameless One” reacted violently whenever Nina used the power of the original Sun.

It sounded… like a strong rejection.

That made Duncan think back to his own experience in that dark, fog-filled space. According to that “suspicious Goathead”, the space had pushed him away because Atlantis was afraid. Then what about the rejection Nina had felt?

Could it be that Nina’s “sunlight” also made the dream of the Nameless One feel threatened?

Lost in thought, Duncan raised his head, and his gaze fell on Shirley.

“I met a cultist. An Annihilator,” Shirley said at once. She looked very pleased with herself, with a hint of pride in her voice. “I dug a lot of information out of that guy! And I beat him up in the end and had Dog leave a mark on him… Oh, and I ran into the whole forest suddenly going weird. It almost scared me to death. I think that was the ‘corruption zone’ Lucretia mentioned? The ‘corruption area’ that Old Gentleman and Nina saw—was that my side?”

Duncan’s eyes widened a little.

Everyone’s experience in the dream of the Nameless One had been different, but Shirley’s side sounded especially explosive.

His expression grew serious at once. He leaned forward without thinking and stared into Shirley’s eyes: “Slow down. Don’t jump all over the place—what exactly happened?”

“Okay, okay, let me sort it out first…” Seeing how serious the captain looked, Shirley straightened up at once and started digging through her memories. But even after she tried her best to put her words in order, she still scratched her cheek and said: “Um… Dog, you explain it. I’m afraid I’ll mess it up.”

In the next second, every gaze in the room turned to Dog.

Dog shook his head and let out a helpless sigh. Under Duncan’s gaze, he began: “We first ran into a rapid decay of the forest—which, based on the information we got later, should have been the ‘corruption’ phenomenon…”

Dog calmly laid out what he and Shirley had gone through in that forest. He described the way the forest had suddenly started to rot and twist, then the cultist they had met afterward, and the many bits of information Shirley had coaxed out of that cultist.

Duncan’s thoughts spread out as Dog spoke, matching each new piece of detail with the clues he already had and linking them together.

The corruption phenomenon. The defensive line called the “Wall of Silence”. The elf named Celine. The Annihilator. And… the sudden end of that uncanny dream.

“It seems… the corruption that elf named ‘Celine’ talked about was the same horrible phenomenon Shirley and Dog ran into,” Lucretia said thoughtfully. “The forest twisting into unnamable shapes, the ground turning corrosive and alive, everything becoming hostile… and those Annihilators seem to know even more.”

“It’s a pity that cultist still got away in the end,” Morris said, frowning. He shook his head. “If he is hiding in some other city in the Mortal Realm now, finding him again will not be easy.”

“More important is how those cultists are getting in and out of the dream of the Nameless One in the first place,” Vanna, who had been silent until now, suddenly said, breaking the quiet. “They seem to have some special method that lets them enter and leave that ‘dream’ under control, and even carry out organized operations inside it. That ‘method’ is key.”

Duncan nodded slowly at that. Then his gaze moved to Vanna.

“What did you see ‘over there’? Were you in the forest too?” he asked, curious.

Vanna looked around at the others. After a brief pause to think, she said: “That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about. What I went through was nothing like yours. Very, very different. When I hear you describe that forest, I feel really confused, because… I was in a desert.”

The living room fell silent at once.

Everyone stared at one another.

After several seconds, Duncan finally spoke in disbelief: “You were in a desert?! You didn’t see a forest at all?”

“Yes. No forest. Only sand, a few sparse, withered plants, and huge rocks,” Vanna said with a firm nod. “I climbed to the highest rocky hill and looked into the distance. There was no forest anywhere in sight.”