Chapter 618

Chapter 618: Rabby and Little Doll

Several figures in dark coats or hooded robes were moving through the depths of the dense forest.

A faint black dust hung around them. Black symbiotic pact chains stretched out from their bodies. Savage Abyssal demons walked at their sides. Richard and his “brethren” had already been acting in this dream for some time, and according to what the Death-Omen Bird sensed, they were now very close to the “Wall of Silence”.

But the group suddenly stopped.

The mood in the forest had changed in a subtle way. At some point, a thin mist had begun to rise from nowhere, curling through the clearings between the trees. As the mist appeared, the whole forest became even more… “silent” than before.

Dumont frowned. He remembered that when they had first entered the dream of the Nameless One, this forest had still been full of sounds. Unknown birds beat their wings and took off. Unknown beasts roared in the distance. They had never been able to see those birds or beasts, but all those sounds of life had always been there.

Now those sounds had vanished. Only the occasional wind and the faint rustle of swaying leaves remained, making the silence feel even deeper.

Any change in the Nameless One’s dream had to be treated with great care.

“These mists feel a bit wrong,” another Annihilator said softly. A jellyfish like drifting smoke floated in the air beside him. The tentacles that hung beneath it twitched in small, uneasy movements. “My demon senses fear and tension… It is the emotion this ‘forest’ itself is releasing.”

“The Nameless One’s dream does have emotional shifts. It is itself a vast mind,” Dumont said in a low voice. “If its mood suddenly changed, it may mean someone reached the core of that mind… Could someone have found the ‘Wall of Silence’?”

“Would it be our people?” the Annihilator who had a symbiotic pact with the Smokewisp Jellyfish asked.

“We are not sure yet. We cannot reach the other brethren the chapter sent into this place,” Dumont said. Then he frowned and looked toward a figure at the back of the group. That person had been scratching at himself the whole time. “Richard, what are you doing?”

Richard started as if waking from a dream. He realized he had been scratching the skin around his neck and his waist. Puzzled, he raised his hand and saw many tiny white fibers caught under his nails. They looked like…

“Cotton,” he whispered.

“Cotton? What cotton?” Dumont frowned. “You do not seem quite right.”

“No, I am fine,” Richard said at once. He lifted his head and patted down his clothes, which he had mussed up by scratching. “I just feel a little itchy. This mist makes me uncomfortable.”

Dumont nodded and did not press the matter. Instead, he turned his gaze to the others: “We should already be within the influence of the Wall of Silence. According to those so?called ‘Preachers’, this is the ‘gaze’ zone of Atlantis’s mind. If you see or hear anything that was not present in the forest before, you must tell the others at once.”

Listening to his voice, Richard felt a dull irritation in his chest.

Dumont had already started to lead the team with the air of a leader. That arrogant, self?important attitude had always been unpleasant… The group did need someone to give orders, but that role should have been his.

“It really makes one angry…” A light little voice spoke in Richard’s mind. “Rabby thinks this is very unfair. Rabby feels sorry for you…”

“It really is unfair,” Richard muttered under his breath, moving his lips so that only he could hear. “But this is the Saint’s arrangement… and Dumont is indeed capable…”

“Is the most important reason not that all these troublesome people are watching you?” the voice in his head whispered, in a tone of tender concern and easy trust. “If no one were watching, then none of this would be troublesome at all…”

Richard frowned and slowly shook his head, sensing on instinct that something was not quite right. He still hesitated: “But… what should I do…?”

“Be patient. Be a little patient, my lovely Little Doll. Rabby is only telling you about some possibilities. It is not the time yet… The chance will come, when someone is left alone…”

Richard covered his forehead, torn with doubt: “But I cannot… they are all my brethren…”

“Yes, they are all your brethren, my lovely Little Doll. You must not hurt them. Rabby does not wish to see you harm one another—so you have to help them instead.”

“Help them? How do I help them?”

“Have you not noticed? Your brethren… their bellies are empty. They do not even have cotton inside them. How pitiful. No cotton, no warmth. No cotton, no soul. No cotton, nothing at all… You already have cotton, my lovely Little Doll. Give them some cotton too. Rabby can lend you cotton, as long as you… remember to give it back…”

The small, sweet voice in his mind slowly faded away.

Richard blinked and suddenly felt confused. He thought he had just heard someone speaking to him, and even remembered holding a conversation. But with a single moment of distraction, the voice was gone, as if… it had all been an illusion.

He lifted his head and looked at Dumont ahead of him and at the other brethren around him.

How pitiful they were.

“…We will set mark points here,” Dumont said, apparently not noticing Richard’s gaze. He had already begun to assign the next steps according to the plan. “From here, we can already affect the lower layers of Atlantis’s mind. It is a suitable area for deployment.”

The cultists around them all nodded. Then each of them took out the tool used for the ritual—a strange little knife, black as pitch, with a curved blade.

Richard paused for a moment, then reached into his coat as well and felt his own bone shard knife.

It was a small carving knife, only the size of his palm, made from some blackened bone. Strange, intricate patterns covered its surface, and it gave off an ominous air.

Richard remembered that the raw material for this knife came from the bones left behind by Abyssal demons whose summoning rituals had failed. Not every summoning and symbiotic pact ritual succeeded. The failures became nourishment on the altar. Those Annihilators who lacked talent washed the altar with their blood, and the demons that died in a ritual runaway state left behind bone shards that could be used to make tools.

This ought to have been basic common sense for every Annihilator who had advanced to the priest rank. Yet for some reason, when Richard recalled this knowledge now, he felt a strange… sense of novelty.

He shook his head and pushed that odd feeling aside, then looked toward Dumont: “We have to set as many Marks as possible before this dream ends. If we split up, it might be more efficient.”

“…Splitting up means danger,” Dumont said after thinking over the suggestion. He shook his head. “Do not forget your previous failure—brethren who acted alone had almost no power to fight back when they faced His followers.”

Dumont really seemed to be giving a serious warning, with no mockery in his words. Yet Richard felt he saw a hint of scorn in the other man’s eyes, and anger flared up inside him like poison fire.

He felt he had been deeply humiliated.

Yet the next second, that rage like poison fire suddenly went out and was replaced by an icy calm. Richard was surprised at how cool?headed he could be.

He looked at Dumont with an unusually sincere, steady expression, and his words carried a quiet power of persuasion: “Of course we cannot move alone. I mean groups of two or three. That way we can watch each other and still finish the task quickly. And to be honest, even if we do meet those followers and fall into a disadvantage, we can still withdraw from this dream at once. From what I observed last time, those followers do not seem able to come and go in the dream as freely as we do…”

The earnest look on Richard’s face and the calm steadiness in his tone had their effect.

Dumont began to think it over again.

Here was a fellow believer with much Dreamwalking experience. Though his condition had not been very good since the last exploration, his proposal now was clearly well considered and trustworthy, and every reason he gave was sound.

If he kept ignoring or rejecting this advice, it would make him look as if he were deliberately targeting someone experienced. Coming across as petty and narrow?minded would do nothing to help him lead the team.

Dumont felt he ought to accept the suggestion. As a new, half?unspoken leader, accepting advice was also part of building his authority.

Besides, if anything truly went wrong later, the responsibility would be Richard’s.

“Very well. Then we will go in pairs and set mark points along the edge of the mist,” Dumont said with a nod, quickly giving orders. Then he looked at Richard. “Richard, you are with me.”

“Of course,” Richard said with a smile, as if he were very pleased with this arrangement.

Dumont was pleased as well.

“Then let us move out.”

The Annihilators moved at once.

They split into pairs, each carrying the ritual dagger used to leave Marks. The pairs headed off in different directions along the forest paths where the thin mist flowed, and soon vanished into the depths of the woods.

Richard took his own ritual dagger and walked toward Dumont. But he was careful. He knew he still had to wait. He had to wait until the other pairs were far enough away, and until Dumont’s attention was fixed on the “work” of setting a mark.

Then he could “help” Dumont.

“Let us begin, my lovely Little Doll,” the voice in his mind said.

“Let us begin, Dumont,” Richard said.