Tick, tick, tick, the sound of the second hand of the wall clock can be clearly heard in the dark room.
After an unknown amount of time, Lumian seemed to have finally escaped from a nightmare.
He hurriedly leaned forward, grabbed Aurore's shoulders, and shook her vigorously:
"Wake up! Wake up!"
He lowered his voice, not daring to let the three official investigators on duty hear him.
Aurore had her eyes tightly closed and her mouth slightly open. No matter how Lumian shook her, she did not respond, like a living dead who had lost her soul.
Lumian's shaking movements became slower and slower, and finally stopped.
He looked at Aurore who was "sleeping soundly" for a long time without moving.
He didn't understand why this happened, nor did he know when the problem started. He was as scared and confused as the night he saw his grandfather die.
After that day, he started wandering.
Lumian's hands clenched tighter and tighter, his body trembling slightly.
Suddenly, he turned around and looked towards the window.
The transparent and blurry "lizard" returned to the room.
Lumian stepped off the bed, stretched out his right hand, and grabbed the monster creature that was stunned because it saw him wake up.
The next second, he stuffed the "lizard" into his mouth and growled with a distorted expression: "Don't you like drilling into other people's mouths? "Come on! I'll give you this chance!" While stuffing the "lizard" into his mouth, he bit it madly, his eyes bloodshot.
The "lizard" seemed to be frightened and did not resist.
Just then, a voice came from behind Lumian: "What are you doing?" It was Auror's voice.
Lumian froze, slowly turned around and looked at the bed. Aurore had woken up at some point, sitting up with her blond hair disheveled, her light blue eyes filled with confusion and bewilderment.
Lumian subconsciously lowered his head and found that the "lizard" he had caught had disappeared.
For a moment, he didn't know whether what he had just seen or happened was a nightmare or a real event.
"What's wrong with you?" Aurore frowned.
Lumian forced a smile, "You just had a nightmare and kicked me off the bed."
"Really?" Aurore looked at her brother suspiciously, feeling like he was playing a prank on her.
She thought about it for a moment and said, "I had a nightmare. I dreamed that I was caught by a giant monster and stuffed into its mouth. I was so scared that I struggled desperately and finally woke up."
As Lumian listened, his body began to feel cold, as if he had been sunk into a mountain icy lake that had not yet fully melted.
"Maybe, probably, I really kicked you..." Aurore felt a little embarrassed.
Lumian closed his eyes and smiled: "Just kidding, I woke up because of something else."
He then lowered his voice and said, "That mysterious lady appeared in the Dream Ruins, helped me separate the Provocateur's extraordinary characteristics, and gave me the correct potion formula."
"So, you woke up happily and wanted to ask me if I had any corresponding auxiliary materials?" Aurore suddenly realized.
His smile was much more natural than before, but there seemed to be a slight gleam in his eyes.
Aurore thought for a moment and said, "I have both the grapevine and the water fern, one for the ritual material and one for the spell medium."
Honeysuckle, I always have it at home, I use it to make tea, don’t you know?”
"good."
Lumian also pretended that he had not asked.
The Provocateur potion still requires distilled liquor. I will go to the cellar to get it now, and try to advance to Sequence 8 tonight."
"It takes some time to make hydrosol from honeysuckle."
Aurore frowned slightly and said, "However, the auxiliary material requirements for low-sequence potions are not so strict. You can use a whole honeysuckle flower instead. As long as the Beyonder properties can be dissolved in the end, you can take it."
She then glanced at the open door and asked in a low voice:
"You went to get distilled liquor in the middle of the night. Aren't you afraid that Ryan and the others would get suspicious?"
Seeing his sister's reaction, Lumian tried hard not to smile stiffly:
As a regular customer of the old tavern, it is normal to wake up in the middle of the night and suddenly want to have a drink.
"Although alcohol has many disadvantages, it can at least help me relax to a certain extent."
What he meant was that he used the excuse that “the Lenten celebrations were over, I was under too much mental pressure, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t sleep, and I needed to relax with some strong liquor.”
"Can."
Aurore said that was no problem.
Lumien turned and walked towards the door, the smile fading from his face. His hands were clenched tightly the entire time.
Walking out of the door and into the corridor, Lumian saw Ryan, wearing a brown tweed jacket and light yellow trousers, standing diagonally opposite him. Leah and Valentine were at the two ends of the corridor respectively.
"Not sleeping anymore?" Ryan, holding a kerosene lamp, looked at Lumian.
Lumian smiled and said, "Let's go to the cellar and get a bottle of strong liquor. How about you take a sip and relax?"
"I don't need it." Ryan nodded. "You have never experienced anything like this. You are nervous and stressed. It is foreseeable. Alcohol can indeed play a certain role."
"I'll go down with you. You can't act alone at a time like this."
"good."
Lumian did not object.
As the two entered the stairs, Leah took the initiative to move closer to Auror's bedroom and stood guard at the door.
One step, two steps... Lumian and Ryan went down to the dark first floor in silence.
As the dim firelight illuminated half of the stove, Ryan asked casually, "Something seemed to have happened in the room just now? There was some movement."
His purpose in proposing to go to the cellar to get wine was not originally for the purpose of advancing to the Dream Ruins tonight. There was also a cellar with distilled liquor in the two-story building. His main purpose was to avoid Auror and discuss with Ryan and others what had just happened.
Ryan's expression suddenly became serious:
"What's wrong?"
Lumian took a few deep breaths before saying, "Aurore and, like the parish priest, a 'lizard' that looked like an elf came out of their mouth."
After saying this sentence completely, he felt as if all the strength in his body had been drained away.
After a pause of seven or eight seconds, he narrated the entire thing, except that he described waking up on his own initiative as waking up from a nap and just happening to see it.
"You handled it very well. Now you can't let her know that something is wrong with her. I'm worried that it will make the situation worse."
You continue to pretend that nothing has happened. When daybreak comes, I will use the excuse that 'Cordu Village has been polluted and we need to purify it once a day to prevent it from being affected' and let Valentine try to see if he can get rid of the 'lizard'."
"good."
Lumian replied with little energy.
He felt that the "lizard" had already merged deeply with his sister's soul, and it was not so easy to expel and purify. Ryan glanced at him and patted his shoulder gently: "I can understand your feelings. If my relatives had similar abnormalities, I would not be able to remain calm.
“But you have to remember that impatience won’t solve anything.
"I know that Valentine's purification may not be effective, but we have to give it a try to make sure. Well, that abnormality is most likely related to the cycle of Cordu Village. As long as we can eventually break the cycle, your sister should be able to recover directly."
Yes... This is also a kind of pollution. As long as I can recycle all the pollution when I unwind the cycle, Aurore will be fine...
Lumian's eyes gradually brightened and he regained his motivation.
"I need to remind you that in the next few days, you have to adapt to your sister's changes."
She will probably become like the curate, reduced to instinct, acting on her memory and her strongest emotions, and not reacting to anything else."
Lumian was silent for a while and then said, "I will adapt..."
After getting the distilled liquor from the cellar, the two returned to the second floor as if nothing had happened.
Entering the bedroom, Lumian smiled again.
Aurore smiled back and pointed to the desk: "The honeysuckle, grapevines, and water ferns are all there."
Lumian nodded and placed the bottle in his hand on the desk.
Then he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, using the excuse of "falling asleep as soon as possible and getting promoted in his dreams."
He couldn't fall asleep.
He couldn't figure out when his sister was contaminated and the "lizard" entered her body. During this time, the two of them were together every minute. Even when Auror went to the bathroom, Leah was with her, and vice versa. How could something go wrong
If it happened while I was sleeping, why didn't I have any problems
Lumian tried his best to recall the source, hoping to find it, which would help solve the anomaly.
Suddenly, he remembered something.
At that time, he was still an ordinary person.
Lumian originally thought that he could rely on the shepherd Pierre Berry, but considering the current situation, he had a guess, a crazy guess:
Perhaps from the very beginning, most people in the village were parasitized by those strange "lizard"-like creatures, including Aurora!
As time gets closer to Twelfth Night, the corresponding abnormalities will become more and more obvious, and some people will show that something is wrong earlier.
The reason why he himself was spared was because he had that blue-black symbol on his body.
He clenched his teeth involuntarily.
At this time, Ryan was patrolling the corridor with a kerosene lamp.
On the wall to his side, the shadow suddenly lengthened.
Almost at the same time, the silver bells on Leah's veil and boots rang, and she felt her shoulders become unusually cold.
PS: Ask for monthly ticket～