The living room on the first floor was silent, as quiet as the entire street outside. Everything remained the same as it was at night, and the puppets and tin servants driven by clockwork and magic mechanisms stood quietly everywhere - it seemed that until the last second before the "abnormality" occurred, they were still executing the cleaning orders according to the program settings.
Duncan walked down the stairs with the nervous Alice, his eyes sweeping across the dim and silent living room. The sound of their footsteps echoed in the dead silence, making everything seem even more weird.
While Alice carefully grasped the captain's clothes, she turned her head to look at the side - a puppet made in the shape of a maid was standing not far away, holding the stair railing with one hand. The puppet seemed to be wiping the handrail a moment ago. "She" kept her upper body slightly leaning forward, with a bucket at her feet. However, like other servants, "she" had stopped moving, and the iconic ticking sound and gear friction sound were no longer heard from her body.
Alice always felt that the puppet would suddenly turn its eyes towards her, just as described in many horror stories - this association frightened her to the core.
“How scary…” She muttered behind the captain, “There are dolls everywhere… It wasn’t a big deal during the day, but now that they’re all suddenly motionless it’s really scary… But it’s even scarier when they suddenly move…”
Duncan turned around silently and looked at the silly doll with an extremely strange expression.
However, Alice didn't notice it at all... nor did she feel that she had said anything wrong.
Duncan shook his head and refocused his attention on the "mark" he left on Morris, Vanna and others.
Those marks were still shining in his perception, but in an extremely strange state - sometimes he would feel that those marks were clearly in this house, or even next to him, but the next second those marks would suddenly appear very far away, or even seem to be at the other end of the city-state, as if... they were being teleported in an irregular manner.
This was the first time Duncan had encountered such a situation.
He also tried to call out to those distant marks directly in the spiritual world in order to establish contact with Nina and the others, but because he could not accurately determine the location and status of the marks, his calls were unsuccessful several times, or he only received a weak and meaningless "response" at a certain moment - this was also an unprecedented situation.
However, the good news is that he seems to have gradually mastered the patterns of the strange states of those marks. Even if he cannot accurately locate their positions, he should be able to accurately establish connections with them after a period of adaptation. On the other hand, as long as those marks are still there, it can be determined that the people carrying the marks are at least not in danger of their lives, so there is no need to worry too much.
Duncan walked slowly forward while sensing and familiarizing himself with the state of the mark in the distance. However, at this moment, a slight clicking sound suddenly rang out in the living room, instantly interrupting the actions of him and Alice.
Duncan turned around suddenly and looked in the direction where the sound came from.
The puppet maid who had been standing next to the stair railing began to move a little bit in the darkness. She turned her head stiffly like a rusted machine, and her lifeless eyes slowly searched for something in the living room.
Alice's head almost dropped out of her head for a moment: "Wow! It really moves!
Duncan finally couldn't help it: "Why are you, a living puppet, afraid of this?"
Alice was stunned for a moment, and finally reacted: "Ah...right?"
Duncan ignored the embarrassing fool and turned his gaze to the puppet maid who was moving stiffly. He seemed particularly calm because he had sensed a sudden and familiar breath from the puppet.
"Lucy? Is that you?" he asked tentatively.
"Ah, you are around here..." The puppet finally focused its sight on Duncan. "She" moved her jaw and spoke in a somewhat stiff and out-of-tune voice, "But I still can't see you. The quality of this temporary "medium" is really terrible. I really shouldn't have saved money on the housework puppet. To make a long story short, how are you doing? I sensed your call a few times just now.
, but it’s always interrupted instantly before I can respond...」
"Everything is fine here, but there's no one in the house and you're all gone," Duncan said immediately, and briefly described the current situation on the street, "... That's it. In short, from my point of view, there should be a problem with you, and Alice and I are not affected."
"It seems like this," Lucrecia's voice came out of the puppet maid's mouth again after a delay of several seconds, "We are the ones who have the problem. You are still in the real world, but you have seen the abnormal phenomena in the real world. We
···.··It seems that I have been sucked into this abnormal phenomenon. "
"Are the others with you?" Duncan asked immediately.
"No, I'm the only one here - it looks like we've been scattered all over the place."
"What's around you?" Duncan asked again.
"Surrounding? Trees, vines, endless green - it's a forest," Lucrecia replied, "very similar to the forest we saw in Master Taran El's dream before, but the atmosphere seems... different."
The forest was shrouded in dusk-like light. A strange and slightly gloomy sense of chaos seemed to envelop the entire world. The sunlight that sprinkled through the gaps between the layers of treetops also seemed dim, unable to dispel the eerie feeling among the lush trees.
Occasionally, the sounds of birds and animals, or branches breaking could be heard in the distance. Although there was nothing unusual beyond that, Lucrecia felt as if she could smell an inexplicable sense of tension in the air of this forest.
It's like something is about to happen here.
In one hand, she tightly grasped the short magic wand that was like a "baton", while maintaining contact with a "puppet" she made by herself, and used it to communicate information here with her father far away: "······There is a sense of tension in the forest, very depressing, and even with an invisible fear·····Yes, it is emotion. As a witch, I can sense this "emotion" in the air·······This place looks very similar to the dream of Taran El, but there are no invading descendants of the sun in the sky, and there seems to be something else deep in the forest······I'm heading that way.
"The scene of the city block? I can't see it from here... Everywhere I can see is full of trees. Although the field of vision is limited in the dense forest, I am sure that the scope of this forest is definitely more than one or two city blocks... This 'alien land' is extremely vast. What you see 'over there' is probably only a small part of it that has leaked into the real world."
Lucrecia suddenly stopped. She listened carefully to the words coming from afar. After a moment, she nodded slightly and said, "Yes, I also suspect that this is still that dream, the one called 'Dream of the Nameless' by the Annihilation Cult, but the situation is different from last time... Last time we entered the Dream of the Nameless through Taran El as a springboard, and the information you got from the cultists also said that to enter this dream, you must use the mind of an elf as a bridge, but this time it happened suddenly and strangely..."
She paused, raised the wand in her hand and gently tapped a vine in front of her. The vine instantly moved, wriggling and growing forward, forming a structure like a bridge, covering the deep ditch in front.
Lucrecia walked forward along the vine bridge and continued, "... I haven't found the 'bridge' yet, nor have I found out who the 'dreamer' is. But according to the laws of dreams, I should be near the 'dreamer' now."
She stopped suddenly.
There were rustling sounds of footsteps nearby. The sounds appeared abruptly, as if there was no one there the previous second, and then a person appeared out of nowhere and walked towards this side, stepping on dead branches and leaves.
Lucrecia focused instantly and cast many protective spells on herself before turning around. Then she held the wand tightly in one hand and looked in the direction where the sound came from.
However, what appeared before her was not
The cultists that invade dreams are not twisted creatures that naturally grow in dreams.
A strange elf woman was standing in the shade of a tree not far away, looking at this side with surprise and vigilance.
The first thing Lucrecia thought of was the dreamer who acted as a "bridge" in this dream. However, she soon realized the sense of incongruity brought to her by the strange elf not far away—the other party was wearing a light armor that could not be identified from which city-state or era. Strange "silk threads" with faint blue light were woven between his long light golden hair, and in his hand he was holding a strange weapon that looked like a combination of a spear and a long-handled axe. This outfit... she had never seen it in Breeze Harbor, nor anywhere else in the world.
While Lucrecia was in a daze, the elf woman holding the strange long-handled weapon spoke with a serious and vigilant look on her face:
"Didn't you receive the order to evacuate? Why are you still staying outside the Wall of Silence?"
Lucrecia narrowed her eyes slightly. The situation... seemed to be getting more subtle.
Under the interlaced reflections of the "sunlight" between the buildings and the cool light of the Creation of the World, in this strange night unique to Breeze Harbor, the figures of Duncan and Alice were quickly crossing the street.
Alice was holding a puppet head in her arms, its mouth opening and closing constantly.
Lucrecia's voice came from the puppet's head, reporting the latest progress "over there".
“I’m following this strange elf that suddenly appeared. She doesn’t seem to realize that I’m not of the same species as her, and she easily lets down her guard... We are heading to a place called the ‘Wall of Silence’...”
This scene is as weird as it can be: a living puppet is running in the night, holding the head of another puppet in its arms. The head is still talking, and the voice is hoarse and distorted due to the limitations of the material. Just looking at this scene, any sane person would probably be shocked.
But Alice was no different.
She trotted along behind Duncan, and even looked a little amused.
Maybe I'm used to holding a head in my arms...I'm used to holding my own head, and the same goes for holding other people's heads.