Chapter 94

Chapter 94: Nina’s Strange Dream

Outside, the sky over the street was slowly growing dark.

After seeing Morris off and tidying up the first-floor shop, Duncan finally had time to bring up what Nina’s teacher had said during the home visit.

After all, that had actually been the main reason Mr. Morris had come by today—though the two of them had ended up drifting off topic as they talked.

At the dining table on the second floor, Duncan was spreading butter on a slice of bread as he asked with concern: “Have you not been sleeping well lately? Or are you feeling unwell? I heard from your teacher that this has been going on for several days.”

Nina looked a little nervous. She had more or less guessed that her teacher would mention these things during the visit, but until very recently, she had never imagined that her uncle Duncan would really start paying attention to how she was doing at school.

A strange feeling spread through her heart. It had been a long time since anyone cared about her like this. She felt awkward and uneasy, but also faintly warmed.

“It’s just that I’ve been… really sleepy,” Nina said.

“So it seems what Mr. Morris said was true.” Duncan watched Nina’s face carefully. “Is it something with your health? Or something else? If you have anything on your mind, you can tell me.”

He paused for a moment, then added after thinking it over: “Of course, at your age there are probably things you don’t want to tell an adult like me, and that’s normal. You’re growing up, you have your own personality and your own thoughts, and all of that should be respected.

“But you still need to remember this: when people run into trouble, asking for help is nothing to be ashamed of. If it’s something I can help with, you can just say it. We’ll figure it out together.”

He tried his best to make his words sound steady and kind. That was not easy for him. He had never had a blood relative this age to take care of before. Still, he did have some experience dealing with students, so he simply talked to Nina the way he would talk to a teenager. In his opinion, his attitude was already gentle and reliable enough.

“I… I’m really fine, really!” Nina still was not used to such a kind uncle, but deep down she did not reject it. She waved her hands hard and met Duncan’s gaze. “It’s just that I’ve been feeling really sleepy lately. I keep waking up all of a sudden when I’m asleep, and sometimes I… dream.”

“Dream?” Duncan frowned and suddenly thought of something. “Nightmares? Do you dream about that big fire when you were little?”

Maybe because he had been focused recently on the fragments of the Sun and that eleven-year-old cold case, his thoughts went there at once. But Nina shook her head. “No, it’s not about when I was little.”

“Then what is it?”

“I keep dreaming that… that I’m standing somewhere very, very high. It feels like the tower of a building in the city. The streets below me are all pitch-black. Everywhere is ruins and ash,” Nina said slowly, trying to recall. “The ruins and ash are like a huge scar. It runs from the center of the Lower City all the way to the Crossroad District, and then to the edge of the Upper City, like it’s going to tear the whole city apart.

“I’m trapped in that very high place. I want to leave, but something like an invisible wall stops me…”

Nina thought for a moment, then shook her head lightly. “The dream is always like that. If you say it’s scary… actually, nothing really scary shows up. No danger comes close to me. I just watch the city get crushed by something I can’t see, and it leaves that scar. And I’m stuck there, unable to move. Every time I wake up I feel exhausted, and then I start nodding off in class the next day…”

Duncan listened carefully to the girl’s description, and his frown deepened bit by bit.

What Nina described was definitely not the fire she had gone through in her childhood, nor was it anything in Duncan’s own memories.

It sounded more like a static “display,” showing her some scene from Pland in a time and place neither of them knew.

If this had been Earth, Duncan would only have treated it as a recurring odd dream. But in this strange world filled with Anomalies, he could not help feeling alarmed.

First there was Nina remembering a fire that seemed to exist only in her mind and Duncan’s, and now there were these unending strange dreams that felt almost like a prophetic vision.

“When did these dreams start?” Duncan asked, his expression growing serious.

“About a week or two ago? Maybe earlier… I don’t really remember,” Nina said. She took a sip of vegetable soup, her voice a little muffled. “I didn’t pay much attention at first…”

When Duncan heard that, he almost said, “You should have told someone earlier,” but then he suddenly remembered something. At that time, Nina’s “uncle” had still been a good-for-nothing, drowning himself in cult activities and alcohol.

Back then, she had not had any reliable person she could talk to at all.

He forced the words back down and changed what he was going to say: “Have you consulted any professionals? Like a doctor?”

Nina raised her head. “You mean… a psychiatrist?”

“Yes, a psychiatrist.” Duncan thought for a moment, then nodded at once.

In this world, psychiatrists were an indispensable profession. There were too many things lurking in the veil of night and the Deep Sea, watching the city-states with hungry eyes. The minds of ordinary people were easily affected by those whispers and breaths. Big and small problems would appear—nightmares, auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, Cognitive Shifts, even personality disorders.

These illnesses troubled many, many people, so treatment in this field had developed to an unbelievable level. The most skilled psychiatrists even used supernatural power to straighten out a twisted mind.

Nina’s constant strange dreams should also count as one of the “symptoms” psychiatrists watched for.

“I haven’t,” Nina muttered. “Their fees are really expensive… and I’m just having some weird dreams.”

“But those dreams have already started to affect your life,” Duncan said, his voice very firm. “Dreaming of such strange scenes again and again might be a sign of danger. You should have learned about things like this at school.”

As he spoke, his thoughts were racing. These repeated weird dreams of Nina’s clearly had a problem. No matter what, since he was now living in a world full of strange Anomalies, he had to stay alert whenever elements from the supernatural realm showed up.

But he himself was an outsider when it came to theory. He would have to find some professionals to deal with this.

And it happened that he also wanted a chance to meet some “professionals” from civilized society, and see how they handled incidents that might involve the supernatural.

Nina still seemed hesitant, but in the face of Duncan’s serious expression, she finally surrendered. “Then… then this weekend we can go to the community cathedral first and ask the Deep Sea priest there to give me a calming divine blessing. That doesn’t cost much. If it doesn’t work… then we can find a psychiatrist who specializes in this stuff. Is that okay?”

The cathedral? A priest of the Deep Sea? A priest who served the storm goddess Gamona?

Duncan’s heart stirred. He felt that this was also a good idea—he had been wanting to meet those priests who served deities.

“All right, then it’s settled,” he nodded at once. “You’re going to the City Museum this weekend anyway. When you come back, we’ll stop by the cathedral.”

“Mm!”

After dinner, Nina went back to her room early as usual. Duncan returned to his own room and at once saw AI’s lazy form sprawled across the windowsill.

The pigeon had spent the whole day flying around outside and had come back with nothing to show for it.

Duncan closed the door behind him, then walked over to the window. When the pigeon saw its master, it lazily raised one wing in greeting and grumbled: “Let everything be destroyed already, I’m tired…”

“You really worked hard today.” Just one look at the half-dead bird told Duncan how exhausted it was. He stepped forward and unfastened the “cultist detector” strapped to the pigeon’s back while soothing it: “This job really isn’t easy. They’re all hiding very deep, and the Deep Sea Church has been watching closely lately. They’re bound to be even more careful…”

AI rolled its eyes, shook its wings once, and then lay flat again, not moving at all.

Duncan could not help laughing at that. “Even so, we still have to keep doing this… Of course, having you fly around all day might be a bit too much. I’ll arrange a better balance between work and rest for you.”

He had already decided to treat hunting cultists in the city as a long-term task.

After today’s “big job,” he was no longer under such urgent pressure for money. He did not need to rely on “hunting” to cover household expenses. But making trouble for those cultists was meaningful in itself.

On one hand, he might be able to fish out a big target from among them and use that to get the information he needed. Higher-ranking priests were sure to know more secrets about the Sun, and perhaps more details about the fragments that had appeared eleven years ago. Those were exactly what Duncan cared about most.

On the other hand, there was also that seemingly feral dog-eared supernatural girl active in the city-state. She was also constantly going after the Suntists. She might know certain secrets of the supernatural world.

Duncan wanted to try his luck and see if he could talk to her again about the Abyssal Deep Sea, and the demons of the Abyssal Deep.

After his talk with Morris, he was now intensely curious about that layer of “Starry Sky” hanging above the Abyssal Deep and the Deep Sea.

Noticing the serious look on Duncan’s face and sensing its future of forced overtime, AI let out an extremely human-like sigh.

“Ah…” The bird’s tone was full of sorrow. “A pitiful thick barrier has already come between us…”

“Your vocabulary is pretty impressive,” Duncan said.