Chapter 626

Chapter 626: Call

To be fair, Vanna had to admit that Morris, the old gentleman, was right.

Fire, Holy Oil, and incense were the three key elements of a sacred ritual. In special situations, you could improvise, but replacing all of them with whatever you could find in a kitchen was still a bit hard to justify.

But she still decided to try.

After all, first, she had already tried it more than once back when she was on the Vanished. Second, she really could not find any better materials in this witch’s mansion.

“I really shouldn’t have expected a witch’s home to have anything like Holy Oil,” Vanna sighed and said to Morris helplessly. “I’ve been careless about my everyday preparations.”

Morris muttered under his breath: “I keep feeling that ever since you managed to hold a ritual on the ship with cheap materials, you stopped thinking about preparing proper ritual materials at all…”

Vanna shrugged and pointed toward the window: “Then maybe you could find a way to buy some from the street?”

Morris lifted his head and glanced at the street outside, where tree shadows swayed. Thinking about how chaotic Lightwind Harbor was right now, he decided it was better not to answer.

Shirley, who had rushed over to watch the show, was holding Dog and staring at Vanna’s work with interest. She suddenly said: “Why not add some ginger and garlic too?”

Vanna froze, confused: “Why?”

Shirley said: “When your ritual is over, we can ask Lunie to stir-fry two dishes with it—I’m hungry.”

“…Don’t make fun of it so casually!” Vanna finally felt her expression slipping. She glared at Shirley, trying hard to look stern and serious. “This is a solemn ritual. I’m only improvising because of the situation…”

Shirley fell silent, just pulled Dog and quietly edged closer to the door.

Vanna stared, baffled: “…Why are you backing so far away?”

“I don’t really understand you clerics and all this flashy stuff,” Shirley waved a hand. “But my gut says I’d better stand farther away. When the lightning strikes you later, I don’t want your blood splashing on me.”

Vanna: “…”

The Inquisitor tried hard to calm herself and decided to ignore the figures watching at the door. She took a slow breath and focused on the ritual to build a psychic channel.

The flames rose, and the fat began to boil.

No matter what, fire was still fire. At any time, the lighting of a flame stood for the first step of a civilization. It was a sign, a sign mortals showed to the deities, and it had only one meaning—“I am here.”

Long ago, ever since she had just graduated and left the seminary, Vanna had always thought this way—the form of the fire did not matter. The act of lighting it was the meaning.

As one of the most outstanding clerics of the younger generation in the Deep Sea Church, this had been the only thought Vanna had, in all those years, that could be called “not quite in line with doctrine”—and even that was only true for those past years.

Now she had far too many thoughts and actions that strayed from doctrine.

The soft sound of waves echoed in the ears of this Inquisitor who was growing more and more “rebellious.”

She sensed a gaze. A gentle divine gaze fell on her and then turned away. The “channel” opened before her eyes, and from the far end of that channel came the voice of Bishop Valentine.

“Vanna?” The old bishop sounded a bit surprised. “I did not expect to suddenly hear your call… Wait, what is that smell?”

“That is not important, Archbishop.” Vanna steadied herself and spoke in a serious tone. “I have to tell you something, and you must not panic…”

“What is it?”

“The captain will come to the Great Storm Cathedral to see you soon. He wants the construction records of the Vanished—all of them.”

…

Duncan frowned slightly as he stood in the ward with Heidi, looking at the young elf lying on the hospital bed.

“This patient was only admitted this morning. There are dozens more like him now—several elf communities have already started to panic, because no one knows if the next to collapse or vanish will be themselves,” Heidi said softly. “The incident has already reached supernatural corruption level. The cathedral has sent Guardian units to take over those communities, but aside from constantly sending elves with strange symptoms here, they have no good way to deal with it.”

Duncan nodded with a grave expression, then stepped forward and bent down to study the condition of the young elf on the bed.

The elf’s whole body had a hazy, unreal look, like a phantom that could fade away at any moment, barely clinging to a humanoid outline on the bed.

This clearly went beyond the earlier cases of Sleep Sickness and was no longer a “symptom” that normal medicine could handle.

“He is disappearing, leaving our Mortal Realm dimension in a way that is hard to understand. This is no longer something a psychiatrist can handle. I used some methods from the supernatural field, but I can only barely keep their minds on this side and slow the process of ‘disappearance,’” Heidi said from behind Duncan. “On one patient whose symptoms were lighter, I tried Thought Reading, but I found that their thoughts were being slowly drawn away by something… much larger. It is like a vortex dragging these elves out of the Mortal Realm, from mind to body.”

Duncan listened to her description with a deep frown. After a long moment, he spoke as if to himself: “Atlantis is taking them away.”

Heidi was stunned: “Atlantis?”

“That is the ‘vortex’ you sensed. I suggest you stop trying things in that direction,” Duncan said, face very serious. “Because it is very likely that this vortex will treat you as an elf too.”

Heidi’s face changed at once.

Duncan, meanwhile, shifted part of his attention to watch what was happening far away—

The Vanished was already drawing close to the sea near Lightwind Harbor and was preparing to surface from the Spirit Realm.

Vanna had just sent word. She had successfully contacted the Great Storm Cathedral in Pland. Bishop Valentine would prepare everything as quickly as possible and wait for the “captain” to visit.

Inside Lightwind Harbor, things were still in chaos. The thick forest was like a boundless green hell to the residents of the city-state. Even the well-trained Guard Corps and the Guardian troops could hardly deal with something so far beyond imagination—Lucretia was already moving through the city-state, trying to give as much help as she could.

And in the distant northern city-state of Frostholm, Sleep Sickness was spreading just like it was here in Pland.

It was easy to imagine that the spread of Sleep Sickness was not limited to Pland and Frostholm. As the situation in Lightwind Harbor grew worse, it was likely that elves all over the world were facing the same terrible crisis—Atlantis was devouring them.

But why was it like this? Why had the World Tree, rooted in the very memory of the elves as a race, suddenly undergone such an extreme change?

Just then, a faint sound from the bed suddenly broke Duncan’s thoughts.

The elf lying on the bed, who had been in a deep sleep and was slowly turning transparent, suddenly moved. His body twitched slightly, and a low, muffled groan came from his throat.

He seemed as if he were about to wake up.

Heidi noticed at once. She rushed to the bed, as if wanting to check whether this elf was really regaining consciousness. But at that moment, the same thing suddenly happened on the other beds in the ward.

The elves in deep sleep began to twitch one after another, the same muffled groans rising from their throats!

The eerie scene made Heidi’s scalp prickle. She straightened up sharply and looked toward Duncan on instinct. At that very moment, all the muffled groans in the elves’ throats stopped at the same time.

The next second, the sleeping elves opened their mouths at once, as if a single mind had finally linked to all these bodies in the Mortal Realm at the same time. They spoke in clear voices—

“I am Ted Riel. I am now in the deepest part of the Nameless One’s dream.

“I am sending this message to the Mortal Realm through every path I can find. Whoever hears it, please spread it to as many people as possible—

“Atlantis has gone mad.

“She is trying to devour all elves and use that to enter the Mortal Realm and take root and grow again.

“She is not our protector. What she protects is not us.

“We are fighting against Atlantis’s main consciousness and trying our best to slow her spread toward the Mortal Realm—but we are losing.

“We need help. Do everything possible to keep the elves in the Mortal Realm from being devoured by Atlantis, to stop them from vanishing or dying in their sleep. This can slow Atlantis’s awakening. I repeat, we need help…”

The voices in the ward cut off at once.

All the elven patients sank back into “sleep,” as if what had just happened were only an illusion—Ted Riel’s link to the Mortal Realm had been cut off.

“Ted Riel…” Heidi stared for a few seconds before she reacted. “The Truth Keeper from Lightwind Harbor?!”

Panic and horror appeared in her eyes. The short few seconds just now had made her realize how terrible and serious the situation was.

She looked at Duncan, wanting to seek help from this “captain.”

Duncan’s brow knit tight. The sudden change of events and the message from Ted Riel were beyond what he had expected, but after a brief, fast chain of thoughts, he vaguely caught some lines of direction from those words.

“Looks like I have to go,” he turned his head and said to Miss Psychiatrist, his face serious. “Someone has to solve this from the root.”

Heidi spoke without thinking: “Then what about things here…”

“Keep doing what you are doing. Slow down how fast these elves are being ‘devoured,’” Duncan said quickly. “Hold their spirits in the Mortal Realm for as long as you can—leave the rest to us.”