Chapter 570 – Another Place in the Forest
Chapter 570 – Another Place in the Forest
In the forest shrouded by the light of the dusk sky, Lucrecia followed the elf woman with the strange long-handled weapon as she trekked deeper and deeper into the dense forest.
The other party was walking very fast, even in the rough and bumpy forest with vines and no path at all, her footsteps seemed to be running on a flat and wide avenue – this kind of extreme adaptability to the forest and her special footwork even reminded one of the “classical skills” mentioned in some old elven legends. This kind of extreme adaptation to the forest and special footwork even reminds us of the “classical skills” mentioned in some old legends of the elves, in which the elves used to live in the vast country covered with “forests”, and they could move through the forests like a light wind, unlike the modern elves, who have long forgotten the many skills of harmonizing with nature in the city-states filled with high-rise buildings.
Lucrecia, of course, could not keep up with such footsteps – she knew that without trying.
The sorceress had always refused to go outdoors, and even when she had to go out she used various spells to hurry, so she had decisively turned on her Phantom Wind after the first time she had been shaken off by the elven woman, transforming herself into fluttering pieces of paper through the forest every now and then so as to keep up with the other woman’s pace – not with her father here, anyway.
The only thing she was worried about was how the strange elf who appeared in this “dream world” would react after seeing this scene, but it turned out that the other party didn’t react at all when they saw these strange spells of theirs, just like in the beginning, the elf didn’t realize that the “uninvited guest” in front of her was a human, but instead, she realized that the “uninvited guest” was a human. The elf didn’t realize that the “uninvited guest” in front of him was a human, but rather invited himself to the place called “Wall of Silence” as if he were one of his own kind.
Seeing this situation, Lucrecia had some vague guesses in her heart, so she intentionally did something more obvious and more contrary to verify her own guesses – she simply stopped from time to time, and used her spells to create some relatively large movements, such as suddenly summoning huge vines, or creating some explosions in the air.
The elf still didn’t show anything out of the ordinary – at best, she stopped when Lucrecia deliberately delayed and waited patiently for the other to follow.
Lucrecia stopped her “testing” for the moment, and began to follow the other side without worry, while controlling the distant “puppet medium” in her mind and describing her side of the story to Duncan:
“After my test, this elf is indeed not the ‘dreamer’ of this dream, she should be the ‘product’ of the dream, or a component… …Her cognitive and behavioral patterns have obvious limitations …… It looks like a layer of ‘normalization filters’, where the abnormal manifestations of outsiders are ‘normalized’ in her eyes ‘, and this normalization may be to maintain the stability of the dream.
“I didn’t conduct a more intense ‘test’, and I don’t know what the upper limit of this ‘normalization’ is, but theoretically if my behavior is too out of the ordinary, it might cause this ‘elf ”s cognitive reset, which could also lead to a more intense ‘rejection’ from the dream world …… Right now I need to keep investigating, I can’t take that risk ……
“Ah, you have entered the neighborhood where the ‘mutation’ occurred? Great, then hopefully you can find the ‘dreamer’ from the real world side, if you lock down the source of the dream you should be able to directly intervene here as usual ……”
“By the way, what’s your name?”
A voice suddenly came from the front, interrupting the communication between Lucrecia’s mind and the far side of the room, and the sorceress lady immediately stopped and looked up to the front.
The elf girl with a long-handled axe in her hand and marvelous blue threads woven between her blonde hair was turning her head and looking curiously this way.
“You may call me Lucrecia,” Lucrecia confessed, “Why did you suddenly remember to ask my name?”
“One more person who knows their name is one more person who may remember them,” the elf not far away said earnestly, “My name is Shireen, and you need to remember it.”
Lucrecia noticed the worry and nervousness in the other’s eyes.
More than once along the way, she had detected this sense of apprehension in the strange elf – and the tension had permeated the entire forest, as if it were the “undertone” of the dream itself.
After a moment’s hesitation, Lucrecia asked, “What happened?”
The elf named Shireen opened her mouth, but nothing came out, as if she didn’t know where to start, or as if she felt that certain things shouldn’t be disclosed to the “commoners”, so in the end, she just gently shook her head: “Don’t worry, Silentis will protect us, and everything will be fine! …… Hurry up and go, outside the wall of silence is no longer safe, erosion may appear in the area outside the wall at any time, meet a forest ranger like me is your luck.”
Erosion – Lucrecia immediately noticed this particular word, and then silently memorized it in her mind, before once again following Shireen’s wind-like footsteps as she trekked deeper into the seemingly never-ending dense forest.
……
“Dog, did you hear any movement?”
In the lush and endless dark dense forest, Shirley suddenly frowned, and then she bent down to hide behind a bush while vigilantly observing the surrounding movements, and at the same time cautiously asked Dog, who was hiding in the shadows.
Gou’s voice came directly into her mind, “The wind, the trees, the unknown bird calls, all superficially normal sounds – but the atmosphere is weird, and it’s been getting weirder and weirder since just now, I don’t know how to describe it, it’s as if… . the environment itself is shifting, the trees around it are no longer trees, but something that is gradually taking on a malevolent appearance ……”
Shirley instantly rose a layer of goosebumps, the bottom of her eyes with nervousness, looked around the circle of those unknown sky-high giant trees around, one side of the arm has gradually transformed towards the characteristics of the profound demon: “Dog you’re talking about this is a little bit scary ah, here fucking can be everywhere trees …… ” “You told me to say it, I’m telling you what I ‘feel’,” Dog responded sullenly, “I urge you to take it seriously, the Profound Hound’s perceptions have always been sharp- -This forest, it’s getting progressively worse.”
“Any fool fucking knows something’s not right here ……”
Sherry grunted, cautiously leaving the bush she had just been hiding in – not sure what was changing here, but her instincts told her that it was best not to stay in one place for long.
There was vegetation everywhere as far as the eye could see, and the lush, eerie jungle was a scene she couldn’t even imagine as a girl born and raised in the cramped, crowded slums; she’d only heard of such a place a short while ago from conversations with the captain and others, but hadn’t realized that she’d been taken here as well, just by taking a quick nap– If she was right, this should be the “Dream of the Nameless” that both the captain and Lucrecia had mentioned.
Feeling the eerie atmosphere around her, Shirley’s face suddenly appeared a little regretful expression: “Shouldn’t I have dozed off while doing my homework ……?”
“I don’t think the fact that you’re entering this bizarre ‘otherworldly realm’ has anything to do with whether or not you napped while doing your homework,” Dog’s silhouette gradually emerged from the shadows and coalesced into shape amidst the fluttering smoke, it chanted as it followed Sherry’s side to keep a watchful eye on the surroundings. “But that’s true in and of itself – you’re not supposed to nap while you’re doing your homework.”
“Mostly because I get headaches when I do math,” Sherry muttered, as if trying to talk about something everyday to distract herself from the tension brought on by the eerie atmosphere of the place, “And I know quite a few of the basic words, so why do I need to learn to do math… …”
Dog listened silently from the sidelines, he seemed to be trying to keep quiet, but after a few seconds of silence he chimed in as usual, “Still need to learn some math, even if it’s just for myself ……”
Shirley pursed her lips and couldn’t help but mutter, “Why do you want me to learn all this stuff so badly, Dog …… It feels like you’re more motivated than even the Captain ……”
Dog didn’t open his mouth for a while, and after a while, just when Shirley was on the verge of forgetting about the topic, it suddenly popped up with, “Remember the seventy-two pesos?”
Shirley froze for a moment, and only after a few moments did she open her eyes slightly wide, as if she had finally remembered something from that faded childhood memory.
A slightly complicated expression surfaced on her face, and she whispered in an embarrassed voice, “You …… still remember, it was so early ……”
“I’ll always remember that a murderous bastard, with a few haphazardly scribbled pieces of paper, was able to cheat away from a child the payment for several days of working through chimneys in a factory-if I knew how to read at the time, you wouldn’t have had to starve for those few days, and if you knew how to read at the time, you wouldn’t have had to go drilling into those dark and dangerous chimneys-it would have been better than that to be an apprentice copying figures in the pump-room.”
Shirley said nothing.
It was some time before she spoke in a whisper, “But now you can read, and you can do more than read, you can learn at the same pace as Nina ……”
“What if I can’t stay with you all the time?” Dog mumbled and spoke.
Shirley was stunned for a moment, seemingly at a loss for words, then subconsciously spoke again, “Then Captain ……”
“The Captain won’t necessarily protect you forever – he’s nice, he’s taking care of you now, but subspace is ultimately unfathomable,” Dog shook his head, “Sherry, be on your own.”
Shirley lowered her head, and after a few seconds, she gently shook the chain attached to her arm, “Dog, what did you mean when you said you couldn’t always be there for me?”
“…… Don’t think about it so much, I was just making an analogy,” Dog let out a sigh in his throat, “I’m not thinking of leaving you behind, it’s just that I’m not sure about the future, after all . …I have a ‘heart’, and there hasn’t been a Spectral Demon with a heart in this world yet, and no one knows what else will happen to me, maybe ‘humanity’ will give me a lifespan limit like you humans, maybe my sanity will gradually diminish as the years go by, and maybe one day my ‘heart’ will just disappear again ……”
“Dog,” Sherry interrupted suddenly, glaring at the other woman and tugging hard on the chain in her hand, “You …… don’t say a word.”
“All right, I won’t say it.”
(End of chapter)