Chapter 167 – The Captain Wants You to Dream
Chapter 167 – The Captain Wants You to Dream
The information known during this period of time was written on paper by Duncan, one by one, and connected to each other in accordance with the degree of relevance of the lines, and these clues are interspersed with Nina and Shirley’s memories of the fire, as well as their respective obviously alienated “dream state”.
After listing all the clues, Duncan created a new line at the end of the chart, frowning in deep thought, and writing down a few sentences in the midst of his ponderings-
First, in this world, everything can be “contaminated” except subspace.
Secondly, the reality of this world is built on unstable foundations, space is unstable, time is unstable, and even reality is not always as unshakeable as one perceives it to be.
Third, the forces of subspace have invaded Prenland! The vision in the chapel in the sixth neighborhood is evidence of this – the sun fragment from eleven years ago is likely not even the most critical piece of the whole event, and it is the subspace from the bit …… that is more likely to have contributed to the anomalies in Prand today!
Duncan put down the pen in his hand and looked at the three items he had written down – these three items were not clues, but “premises” and “conclusions” that had a great deal to do with the current situation of Prand.
His eyes fell on the first one, the shortest one, which was the basis of everything, and the “inspiration” for this one came from a sentence he heard inadvertently when he went to the City Bank to open an account.
Thinking about it, he picked up the pen next to him and drew a line through it, connecting it to one of the clues above – the church in the sixth block, which was in temporal and spatial isolation.
The contamination begins at the church, which appears to be a temporal and spatial dislocation and an iteration of different “world lines”, and its level of contamination is so high that even the Storm Goddess’s monitoring of reality has been affected……. So how is this contamination actually realized? Is it really just the church itself that is contaminated ……?
He remembered what he had said when he said goodbye to Shirley – it was something that should have gotten a little bigger, but ordinary citizens reporting it wasn’t quite enough.
As he thought about it, a small smile appeared on Duncan’s face, then he turned his head to the pigeons that were pacing around on the windowsill.
The pigeon stopped pacing at once and stared straight at Duncan, “There’s a murderous aura!”
Duncan pressed it and directly snapped his fingers.
A cluster of ghostly green flames gushed out from the compass on Ai’s chest, the compass opened, the pointer rotated, the boundary between reality and illusion instantly became blurred, Duncan’s eyes shifted before his eyes, then he had already entered the state of walking in the spirit world, and the familiar dark and chaotic space as well as the billions of stars that filled the space then appeared in his eyes.
He stood still in the depths of the darkness, gently inhaled to calm himself, and then followed a ray of subtle perception, leaning towards a bit of starlight not far away.
He came next to the starlight, and without actually touching it, he could already clearly sense the young Inquisitor’s mind – across from this cluster of starlight was Vanna’s mind.
Compared to the first time he’d found this bit of starlight, Duncan could clearly feel that his connection with Vanna had grown much stronger – her last visit to the antique store with Heidi had strengthened their bond, and those strengthened bonds could now come in handy.
Duncan turned his head and looked into the darkness beside him. Aye, in her spirit form, was circling in mid-air, bored, and when she noticed her master’s gaze, the bird immediately leaned in, “Who’s calling the fleet?”
“Remember how we connected to Sherry’s mind last time?”
Aey thought for a moment and cocked his head, “For extra money!”
“It will indeed be a bit more difficult this time, the other party is a devout saint after all, her mind should be firmer than Shirley’s, and there is still the possibility of attracting the attention of the Storm Goddesses,” Duncan nodded softly, but slowly extended his fingers a little bit closer to the cluster of starlight, “but now that the connection has been strengthened, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem if it’s only a shallow communication without any disruption.
“After all, this is just a complaint from a zealous Captain Justice.”
In the next second, his fingertips touched the starlight.
The sound of cascading, illusory waves seemed to come from an infinitely distant place, but it was so fleeting that Duncan didn’t even have time to notice the sound of the waves before he felt himself establishing contact with a mind.
……
Vanna rubbed her eyes and lowered her head to see that she was holding a thick file in her hands, and she raised her head again to see that she was sitting in her room with her dresser in front of her, and in the mirror of the dresser was a reflection of her slightly tired face.
A momentary trance floated up from her mind, but soon she shook her head and recalled what she was doing.
She was continuing to investigate information on heretical worship in the city-state of Prand prior to 1889 – after leaving the archive, she had borrowed a portion of the documents she hadn’t had time to scrutinize from the old priest who was in charge of the caretaker, and had taken them back home with her.
While in the archive, she and the old priest had noticed the anomaly of missing information from 1885, but in the end, they had not been able to find the missing materials, an unusual event that had alerted her, and which, as an Inquisitor specializing in investigating heretical events, would become one of the next focuses of her investigation. Arranging for clerical clerics to access the volumes in the city-state’s several other archives, going to the city hall to extract the security reports for the corresponding years, arranging for Guardian squads to visit and monitor the locations where heretical worship incidents had occurred in those years, conferring with Bishop Valentine to see if she could get further instructions from the Goddess ……
Vanna already had a general follow-up arrangement in mind, and before this series of actions could unfold, she would first have to complete a summary of all heretical worship events between 1886 and 1889.
She glanced at the sky outside and saw the World’s Creation high in the night sky, its pale glow spilling over the city-state.
She lowered her head again and saw that the thick file in her hand was just over halfway through, and perhaps the text on it looked a little blurry from the strain on her eyes from reading for so long.
Wait, that’s not right!
Vanna suddenly reacted, followed by violently closing the file in her hand and turning her head to look out the window.
It was now midnight, the moment when the influence of the World’s Creation was at its strongest – reading books at this time was an extremely dangerous behavior, even specially trained treasurers would avoid reading any text within an hour of midnight, not to mention, what she was putting in front of her eyes now was also a highly dangerous history borrowed from the archive! document on loan from the archives!
A professional cleric wouldn’t make that mistake …… This wasn’t reality, it was her own dream, one that was being influenced!
Vanna’s eyes snapped up, and the moment she realized that her dream was being invaded she began to look for the intruder from her surroundings, and the next second she saw the intruder’s presence – the
Right in front of her, on the dresser, in the oval dresser mirror surrounded by floral patterns, a man with a somber and majestic look was standing silently in the darkness, illusory green flames burning silently around the edge of the mirror.
The figure gazed calmly at Vanna through the mirror, only to break into a faint smile when it saw Vanna look up, a low voice coming from the mirror, “Good night, Vanna, first time I’ve met you – but I’ve been watching you for a long time, and you can call me… …”
“Captain Duncan!” Before the words fell from the mirror, Vanna had already reacted violently, and right after that the well-trained Inquisitor had already jumped two meters out with a leap back, while kicking away the round stool that was in her way, and right after that, as soon as she landed on the ground, she forced her mind to concentrate again, and then she drew out of thin air her gigantic sword, which was never far away from her on weekdays, and whirled it up directly into a jumping slash!
Duncan: “……?!”
With a loud bang, the entire dresser shattered with a loud bang, the mirror was directly smashed into pieces all over the sky by the huge force, and Duncan’s phantom image turned into scattered and flying light in front of Vanna’s eyes.
Fine shards of glass fell to the ground in a sparse manner, Vanna gripped the huge sword in her hand tightly and looked around the room as if she were a lioness who had already entered a fighting state in an overbearing manner, at the same time, she had already begun to whisper a prayer of benediction and began to try to utilize the mind self-control techniques that she had trained in her weekdays in order to break free from this already tainted dream and force herself to awaken.
Just as she felt herself on the verge of touching the real world, however, the low, authoritative voice actually sounded once more – heavy in her ears:
“Your reaction surprises me somewhat.”
Vanna’s eyes snapped open as she looked in the direction the voice had come from, and all she saw were the shards of the vanity mirrors that were sprinkled throughout the room.
On the surface of each shard, illusory flames began to rise silently, and inside each one, a Captain Duncan stood silently in the darkness.
This great terror of legend, the mobile scourge of the infinite sea, was gazing with some helplessness at Vanna, who was on full alert.
“Relax, child, I just want to talk to you about something,” came the voice of a thousand Captain Duncan’s, vibrating against Vanna’s will, “It concerns Prand ……”
“Is it the Mirror ……,” the young Inquisitor suddenly whispered to himself.
Duncan: “Huh?”
Instead of answering, Vanna suddenly dangled the tip of her giant sword diagonally across the ground, then slammed her fist down on it!
A loud bang exploded, the powerful impact transformed into controlled sound waves that reverberated wildly in the room, and in the next second, all the smooth mirrors in the room were reduced to crumbs, with not a single piece of mirror left behind!
The room quieted down, Vanna gently exhaled, slowly stood up straight.
She saw Captain Duncan standing silently in front of her.
No matter how much she blinked or moved her eyes, Captain Duncan stood silently in the center of her field of vision, gazing into her eyes.
“You guessed incorrectly, not mirrors, but everything smooth as a mirror,” the brooding, majestic voice of the spectral captain came directly into her mind, “Right now, I’m in your lens.”
(End of chapter)