Chapter 525: The Real Invaders
Chapter 525 – The Real Intruder
Heidi had a bewildered look on her face, followed by a look of horror.
Because she knew who the father of this “Witch of the Sea” was – and the joke wasn’t funny!
“I’m a devotee of Rahm, the God of Wisdom, ma’am,” she spoke hurriedly, as if afraid that if she spoke too late she would deepen the misunderstanding and actually establish some kind of hidden connection with the dreaded Subspace Shadow, “I’m just an ordinary psychiatrist, you must be mistaken! ”
Lucrecia, however, only frowned slightly, her gaze calmly falling on the chest of this “spiritualist”, that plain-looking amethyst pendant was still faintly emitting a familiar aura – other things she might have recognized wrongly, but the father’s Scent ……
She even felt that her father’s eyes were gazing at her through the pendant.
“This pendant of yours, where did it come from?” Lucrecia asked suddenly.
“This …… was a gift from my father, he bought it from an antique store,” Heidi hurriedly explained, for a moment but didn’t think much of it, “It’s not a special item, except that it happens to have a little bit of spiritual sheltering effect ……”
“An antique store?” Lucrecia was a bit puzzled, “And your father is ……”
“Oh, this girl is Maurice Underwood’s daughter,” that’s when Taran Elle, who hadn’t been saying much from the side, finally spoke up, sensing that the atmosphere was a bit off, “Relax, Ms. Lucrecia, this young lady is indeed a psychiatrist, and she’s helping me to get out of here. ”
Lucrecia, however, was momentarily stunned after hearing Talan-El’s words, and immediately afterward, she looked at Heidi with a subtle expression on her face, “Maurice Underwood?”
“Yes …… yes,” Heidi nodded her head, “that was my father’s name ……”
Lucrecia’s face was expressionless, but her mind recalled the last time she had met the new crew of the Lost Country through the crystal ball, and recalled the respected scholar who was now her father’s “intellectual advisor”.
What a small world.
The coldness in the bottom of her eyes melted away, and sincerity returned to her smiling expression, and her gaze toward Heidi softened: “Hello, Ms. Heidi.”
“You …… Hello,” Heidi was confused, always felt that just a moment’s time her life seemed to have experienced several ups and downs, but she didn’t know what was happening, and could only nervously respond to the “witch” greeting in front of her, “Heidi! She could only respond nervously to the “witch” in front of her, “Do you …… know my father? And you also know Master Taran El?”
“This world is smaller than you think,” Lucrecia, however, did not answer the other party positively, but only casually made a perfunctory sentence before looking at the opposite side of the elf scholars, “From the self-perception, how long do you think you’ve been trapped in this dream world?”
“Not sure, my time perception is faulty right now, maybe a few days? Or maybe longer.”
Lucrecia frowned, “Judging by the amount of cognitive offset, it’s getting a bit dangerous …… I’m guessing you’ve already tried various methods of awakening on your own, including the falling method?”
Taran-El spread his hands, “Yeah, just the ‘sudden death method’ hasn’t worked yet.”
“If the regular subliminal awakening method doesn’t work, then neither does anything else, this isn’t a normal dream – nor is it an alien curse or psychic attack,” Lucrecia waved her hand, “I’ve been in the real world to check on your condition and have set up a site in the lab to control mental contamination, which would rule out these scenarios …… Ms. Heidi, can you tell us about the information you have so far?”
Heidi froze for a moment when she heard this, and only reacted with hindsight after two seconds, quickly telling the “witch” in front of her everything she knew, even starting from her acceptance of the invitation to the city hall in Prand – not daring to leave out a single detail.
Lucrecia patiently listened to the other party’s large string of information, and her expression changed several times.
“From a dreamland far away from Prand, into the dream of Taran-El …… The distance between these two city-states is not simple, and that dreamland entrance has now disappeared ……” This “witch” face was grave, slowly said, “It seems that if the guidance is not good, even you, the spiritual healer, will be trapped in this place.”
“So do you two experts have a conclusion now?” As the only “patient” at the scene, Taran Ayer appeared to be quite calm, and at this time, he only asked with some curiosity, “What exactly is going on in this dream?”
“…… Before making a conclusion, I need to confirm one thing first,” Lucrecia did not answer directly, but asked with a serious face, “How did you fall into a deep sleep? I found the draft you left behind on the tower, when you seemed to be planning to send it to the academy through the ‘Swift Piece’, did you encounter an attack on the tower? Or did you ‘see’ something while observing the sun?”
Taran-El fell into a reminiscence.
After a long time, he spoke with less certainty: “I was not attacked …… I only remember that I was seeing many vague shadows and lines within the sun through the equipment on the tower, and tried to record them all, but those things were too confusing and blurry to see clearly no matter what , so I could only make a rough drawing, and then ……”
His words suddenly became unusually hesitant, and a strong sense of confusion and bewilderment surfaced in his eyes, as if the more he recalled what he had seen at the moment he fell into a deep sleep, the less he was able to confirm his memories.
Finally, Taran Ayer stopped, no longer able to recall what he experienced in the last second before he fell asleep, he slowly raised his head with confusion, his eyes swept over Heidi and Lucrecia in front of him, and then immediately looked around, looking at this lush, incredibly dense forest.
He just gradually stood still, finally ceasing to make any movement or sound, even his breathing as well as the subtle movement of his eyeballs were completely still, and the breeze blowing through the forest was no longer able to move his hair or the corners of his coat.
Taran Ayer became a “sculpture” frozen in a dream world. Along with his stagnation, everything in the dream world finally began to change, a strange and low rumbling echoed throughout the world, as if the infinite huge things are slowly collapsing, the sky-high trees gradually lost their colors, and began to disintegrate downward from the crown, and the luxuriant plants on the ground gradually weathered and dissipated, turning into flying smoke.
Heidi looked at all of this in shock, and then turned her head violently to look at Lucrecia: “This is a layer of ‘curtain’? Not a real dream world?!”
“It seems you learned well in school, Miss Heidi,” Lucrecia raised her eyebrows, “That’s right, just as I suspected, this isn’t a layer of real dreams, but just a protective ‘curtain’ woven on top of the dreams ‘, and what we’re seeing isn’t Taran-El either, but merely a temporary mental entity he’s created for his own protection, so there’s no way we could wake him up from here anyway – the real dreamscape is hidden much deeper.”
“Why is that?” Heidi was amazed, “I …… have never seen such a real protective curtain that hides the lower dreamscape so tightly ……”
“I’ve never seen it either, and Taran-El isn’t an expert in the mental realm, and while he’s had some targeted training, it’s theoretically impossible for him to weave such a perfect ‘protection,'” Lucrecia shook her head, “But one thing is certain, the weaver of this ‘curtain’ is trying to hide the deeper layers of the dream realm …… If this is really Taran El’s doing, then he must have sensed a great danger after entering the dream ……”
She stopped abruptly.
Because the “collapse” of the forest gradually stopped.
Not only stopped, after a few seconds, the whole process of the forest’s collapse even began to reverse – those giant trees in the sky are reorganized, the dissipated colors also quickly returned to the ground, originally looked to be about to break the “curtain” actually began to regenerate at an alarming speed!
“The curtain is regenerating!” Heidi exclaimed.
Lucrecia, on the other hand, looked at Taran-El’s mental entity at the first moment after being surprised – the latter was still standing still like a statue, with no sign of being reactivated at all.
The protective curtain of the dream had regenerated, but the “weaver” of the curtain was not Talan-El – it was another force protecting the deeper truth of the dream!
The moment she realized this, Lucrecia suddenly realized two things:
First, in addition to the “elf girl” mentioned by Heidi and Master Taran El, there was at least a third “dreamer” in this dream world, and this dreamer was the real controller of the “fake dream world”. This dreamer is the real controller of this “fake dream world”.
Secondly, the intruder is still in the neighborhood, and the source of contamination is here!
The protective “curtain” of the dream realm reorganizes itself spontaneously.
It was because it sensed a great danger that it suddenly reversed itself when it had already begun to dissipate – and judging from the size of the entire forest and the movement it made during its reorganization, the source of this danger was definitely far beyond imagination.
Whether it was the Annihilationists that Heidi had expelled earlier, or the intruders that Taran-El had already resolved, neither of them was the real cause of the closure of this dreamland!
At the same time Lucrecia reacted, Heidi also realized the reason for the curtain’s regeneration with a jolt, “There’s East XZ in this dream realm, and the intruders are still there!”
“Pay attention to the anomalies around us!”
Lucrecia immediately warned, and immediately began to quickly search for anything suspicious in her sight, sensing the scent flowing in the air, trying to find out where the “source of contamination” that the curtain was trying so hard to resist was hiding.
The air, the scent of flowers, the sound of the wind blowing through the forest, the sound of water flowing in the distance, the sunlight pouring through the canopy of the trees ……
Everything is so real, everything is so natural, everything looks no different.
Which, in the end, is abnormal in this dream world?
Wait …… sunshine?
Lucrecia’s mind snapped.
This forest had countless huge trees, countless luxuriant canopies, and the purpose of these canopies was to block out the sunlight.
But even with so many tree canopies blocking the sunlight, the “sunlight” was still pouring over the entire forest, making every inch of this place extraordinarily bright.
“Sunlight is an intruder!”
She reacted instantly and warned Heidi, who subconsciously raised her head and looked through the gaps between the tree canopies into the dreamy sky.
Between the layers of tree canopies, large and small gaps had appeared at some point, and between the gaps were the sky and the sunlight, and the sun that shone in the dreamland.
Huge, dark, twisted tentacles coiled and intertwined, tangled into balls, interspersed with countless pairs of huge, pale eyes, like ghastly monstrosities floating in the sky, perched above the forest.
Bright sunlight covered the surface of this monstrous thing like a light-cast shell, transparently, silently illuminating the entire dreamscape.
(End of chapter)