Chapter 655

Chapter 655: Invasion

The Mistress was coming, on this cold afternoon.

The soft rustle of the pencil sweeping over the paper filled the room. Lines of different depth and shade stretched and linked across the sheet as if they had a life of their own, slowly forming an image. Richard threw himself completely into this “welcome”, and a feeling of peace and expectation slowly filled his every thought.

Without him noticing, the cold faded away. The strange emptiness that had kept appearing in him lately also vanished. A smile appeared on his face, and there was only one thought left in his mind, only one image—she was about to arrive.

That beautiful lady, that Mistress he had never met. He admired her and joyfully looked forward to her visit… Would the Mistress like this place? Would she like how he had arranged everything? Would she smile and reward her little doll’s loyalty?

Rustle, rustle… The pencil moved lightly over the white paper. The Mistress’s gentle gaze came from the page, smiling as she looked at him.

A rush of excitement rose in him, but Richard’s hands were steadier than ever, and faster than ever. He did not even remember when he had gained such high skill in drawing, able to sketch these beautiful lines so quickly. In the end, he even picked up another pencil in his left hand. Both hands moved so fast that they seemed to leave faint afterimages…

But then footsteps suddenly came from the corridor. Thump, thump, thump, thump. They were as fast as a heartbeat and brought an annoying disturbance.

“They are coming for you, my lovely little doll…”

The light voice in his mind blew past like the wind, with a faint hiss hidden inside it.

That annoying, familiar cold feeling returned. Richard felt a wave of irritation rise in his heart. Someone was coming to bother him, to disrupt the moment when he and the Mistress would meet. They were almost at the door—but he had not finished drawing yet.

He sped up again. His hands danced over the paper, but the annoying footsteps arrived even sooner than he had thought.

The footsteps stopped at the door. Almost without a pause, someone knocked.

The pounding on the door felt as if it was hitting his heart. The sound echoed through the small room. At first it was still gentle, but in the blink of an eye it turned urgent.

“Richard, are you in there?” a voice came from outside the door. It sounded tense and awkwardly “polite”. “The Saint has called a meeting. Everyone is to go to the assembly hall.”

[Do not go. It is a trap.]

A warning rang in Richard’s mind at once. He could no longer tell if it was Rabby’s voice or just his own thoughts. He naturally ignored the voice at the door and kept pouring all of himself into the drawing in front of him.

The silence in the room led to even more frantic knocking. Bang, bang, bang—the sounds came quickly from the door. The person in the corridor slapped the door with force and raised his voice: “Richard, we know you are in there. This meeting is very important. You are not still lazing in bed, are you?”

[Just a little more, just a little more.]

Richard frowned hard. His arms shook as if in a spasm. The Mistress seemed to wink at him. In the black-and-white drawing, those eyes were already as lively as a real creature’s.

But it was still not enough. He still had a few of the most important strokes left…

The knocking suddenly stopped. After a short pause came a heavy crash.

“Bang—crash!”

The flimsy wooden door was thrown open with force. Richard’s movements froze for just a moment—and in that brief instant, someone had already rushed into the room. A huge Abyssal Hound leaped from midair and slammed him to the floor.

[Did the last stroke fall in the right place?]

Richard struggled hard, trying to lift his head for a look, but the strength of the Abyssal Hound kept him from moving at all. He pushed against the floor with all his might, but only hoarse, strange grunts and growls came from his throat, and his head filled with furious anger—

He hated Abyssal Hounds. He hated these rough, violent monsters.

Someone grabbed his arm from the side and quickly tied it with rope. Then another person stuffed something into his mouth to keep him from using the power of spells. The people who had rushed into the room dragged Richard up from the floor, snatched his pencils away, and roughly pulled him toward the door.

The moment he left the room, Richard gave up resisting. His thoughts seemed to break off. His head felt stuffed with cotton. Like a walking corpse, he let several “comrades” hold him up by the arms and walked silently down the corridor.

“Wait,” one of the Annihilators holding Richard’s arm suddenly stopped. He looked up at another cultist walking beside them: “What was he doing when we rushed into the room just now?”

“It looked like he was drawing,” the other Annihilator said with a frown as he tried to remember. “There was a big sheet of paper spread on the bed, but I did not see what he was drawing.”

“…Something feels wrong. I will go back and take a look.”

The Annihilator who had spoken first said this quickly, then turned and ran back to the room they had just left. He stepped over the broken door and hurried to Richard’s bed, looking at the big sheet of paper spread over the board.

It was only a blank sheet of paper.

The Annihilator frowned. For some reason, he felt a touch of unease. Driven by that uneasy feeling, he lifted his head and quickly scanned the room—but found nothing.

The cultist let out a vague grunt in his throat. Out of caution, he bent down, picked up the blank sheet, rolled it up, and tucked it under his arm as he went back into the corridor.

“It is just a blank sheet,” he said to the others waiting in the corridor. “Let us go.”

A blank sheet.

Richard, whose shoulders were held down and whose movements were controlled by his “comrades”, raised his head a little slowly. With a confused look in his eyes, he glanced at the blank roll of paper that the somewhat familiar man across from him was showing. After staring at it in a daze for a while, a slight smile finally appeared on his face.

However, no one noticed his smile.

The messy footsteps faded away down the corridor.

More footsteps soon sounded in other parts of the ship.

The Annihilators who had received the Saint’s orders were already moving. These priests were now walking through long, dim corridors with freshly prepared lists in their hands. They hurriedly knocked on door after door and took every “comrade” who had once entered the Nameless One’s dream out of their rooms.

A tense mood began to spread through the whole ship. Some people sensed that something was off. Some noticed that the ship had stopped moving at some point. Those who had not been taken away secretly gathered in their rooms, nervously talking and guessing about what had happened. Those who had been taken were already arriving at the assembly hall one after another.

The Saint on the high platform in the center of the hall fell into a short daze. Long hours spent peeking at fate had left his mind tired. He suddenly felt a little nostalgic for the past, for the time when he still had a human body. That shell had been filthy and weak, but at least then he could lie comfortably on a bed, and his head had not been filled all the time with hidden whispers and chaotic screams…

He sank into this trance as his memories slowly wove themselves into a hazy veil. In the depths of that veil, it seemed as if an eternal peace was beckoning to him.

That “peace” was a tall shadow burning with ghostly green flame.

The Saint woke with a start from this warning born of fate. Every nerve and vessel twitched and sent a burning pain through him.

“Saint,” a voice came from beside him. An upper priest was reporting: “Everyone you asked for has been brought here.”

The Saint raised his eyestalks. His gaze swept over the cultists gathered in the hall, some fearful, some confused.

Shadows so thick they could not be parted shrouded the entire hall.

The haze of fate blocked all his sight.

“Intruders have boarded the ship!”

…

Only after everyone had left did a faint, almost unnoticeable airflow suddenly stir in Richard’s room—and then a figure abruptly appeared beside the bed.

It was as if a “picture” that had been lying flat on some surface suddenly “flipped” and “stood up”. Lucretia’s figure rose out of the air.

She had been standing in front of that Annihilator the whole time, at the closest point less than half a meter away—she had just been turned sideways.

A picture had no thickness. Eyes in three-dimensional space could not see an “image” that lay parallel to their line of sight.

Lucretia let out a soft breath and looked at her own hands. Then she casually picked up the pencil that had been tossed aside and drew a few lines on her palm.

Then she waved her hand, and her “thin” figure changed from a flat image with no thickness into a normal, solid body.

She turned her head and glanced at the empty floor: “Rabby, I know you are in the room.”

Almost as soon as she finished speaking, a sharp voice like that of a little girl suddenly rang out in the room: “Ah, ah, ah! The Mistress is here! Rabby is coming out right away!”

With that high, childish voice, countless white bits of fluff suddenly appeared in every corner of the room!

From the shadows in the corners, the gaps in the furniture, the holes in the ceiling, the cracks in the floor—in every place where “fibers” could hide—countless tufts of cotton rushed out. It was as if the room itself was wildly pushing out foreign matter. In the blink of an eye, the cotton filled Lucretia’s view, then quickly gathered in the center of the room and slowly turned into a rabbit-shaped form made entirely of cotton balls, with no “skin” on the outside.

Next, the rabbit-shaped cotton mass started to “turn inside out”. Colorful cloth pieces crawled out from its belly and wrapped around it in an instant, turning it into a large, creepy-looking stuffed rabbit doll.

The scary doll swayed in place twice, then leaped at Lucretia in high spirits: “Rabby is here, Rabby is here! Welcome, welcome, a warm—”

“Be quiet,” Lucretia said coldly, catching the rabbit in midair with one hand. “Stay silent.”