"The History Department building... I came here a few years ago for an academic symposium."
Compared to the chaotic and desolate "outside world," everything here was much more stable. Light and shadow no longer floated erratically, pedestrians' faces were no longer blurred, even the slightly intoxicating feeling of sunlight on one's face felt so real...
If not for the prior psychological preparation, she probably wouldn't have known she was actually in a dream.
"This is Mrs. Belinda's dream."
Fran raised her hand, proactively explaining to Sigrid.
"She is a White Cup teaching assistant marked by Luyala. Using her dream as a bridge, we can attempt to infiltrate other White Cup Error-Purgers' dreams."
"You mean..."
Sigrid narrowed her eyes, roughly understanding this doctor's scheme.
"Correct. Mrs. Belinda's dream is not the final stop yet. But before reaching there, we need to do some preparatory work."
Luyala walked toward the white star jasmine covering the courtyard wall, stretched her neck, plucked some flowers and leaves, and began chewing them.
If this were reality, Fran would have stopped her from doing this.
Star jasmine belongs to the oleander family and therefore has slight toxicity. As an ornamental plant, routine touching poses no safety issues, but ingestion could easily upset the stomach, causing vomiting or diarrhea...
But what Luyala was chewing now were not just a few plant flowers and leaves, but the "thoughts" constituting Mrs. Belinda's dream.
After swallowing these flowers and leaves, she pouted her lips, as if brewing something.
Pop.
Soon, a glazed, bubble-like object expanded with her breath, enveloping all of them.
The floating bubble shimmered with dazzling colors, a scene seemingly from a fairy tale.
Haida raised her palm, pressing close to the crystal-clear bubble.
She didn't intend to pop it, just wanted to perceive more carefully the nature of the spirit within.
Gentle, harmonious, seemingly one with the entire dream, yet essentially isolating scrutiny from the outside in.
This was a "one-way mirror" like camouflage.
"You can touch it too, you know? It won't pop."
Seeing Haida's cautious state, Fran pressed her lips together into a light smile, reminding her from the side.
The bubble Luyala blew out seemed thin and fragile, but being a product of intertwined dream and spirit, it wouldn't shatter and dissipate from simple contact.
"Is it camouflage?"
"Correct."
Fran snapped her fingers crisply, neatly responding to Haida's speculation.
Luyala was born from the dream dimension; her foraging and camouflage abilities were innate. Even White Cup researchers, immersed in the realms of dreams and thought for countless years, could hardly match a true mythical creature.
Although Mrs. Belinda was a college teaching assistant, she wasn't a White Cup Error-Purger herself. Therefore, her state in the dream was completely unconscious; even without camouflage, there was no need to worry about being discovered...
Last time Luyala brought Haida to find something to eat, she didn't use any camouflage.
"We just need to wait here a bit. Today's main target will arrive soon."
"...That old man's efficiency is always high."
Fran searched briefly under the dappled sunlight through the forest shade, then found an unoccupied wooden bench and slowly sat down.
She rested her chin on one hand, her pale, nearly gray long eyelashes slightly converging, her gaze carrying a hint of languor. Her demeanor was like an old fisherman who had set up his rod and bait, sitting quietly by a deep pool fishing...
Moments later, they saw the boundary of Mrs. Belinda's dream begin to turn illusory and distorted.
A grey-robed old man wearing a pointed hat manifested his figure.
Though his beard and hair were graying, he was still hale and hearty, his eyes showing no sign of aging at all.
Grantham stroked his briarwood pipe, took a shallow inhale, then exhaled curling smoke.
"Hmm... still runs so fast."
Since discovering an unknown mythical creature might exist in Belinda's dream, he had been extremely attentive.
Coincidentally, Belinda had previously used the spirit-infused potion Construct Dream Slumber, so he incidentally linked his own dream with hers to detect subtle changes.
But that little creature seemed to possess extraordinary perception regarding Grantham's arrival... every time she could vanish without a trace before he entered the dream.
This dream creature's alignment of good and evil couldn't be judged yet, but from the impressions of several chases, at least she didn't possess too strong an aggression or malice.
"What could it be, after all?"
Grantham was momentarily uncertain.
During the closest chase, he saw a fluffy, soft white tail in the ripples of the dream boundary... But based solely on this feature, it was truly difficult to determine the specific species.
She was very alert and timid, wouldn't return for a long time after fleeing...
Seemed tonight was again a fruitless endeavor. Perhaps he should change strategies?
Grantham shook out his pipe, and then somewhat listlessly prepared to leave Belinda's dream.
He didn't realize... the mythical creature he had long pursued was at this moment, beneath a membrane as thin as a cicada's wing, standing quietly behind him.
Sigrid's molten gold eyes widened slightly, feeling somewhat incredulous.
In her understanding, if asked who in Norlington City had the deepest attainment in dreams... that person would undoubtedly be Grantham of the White Cup.
Even Dr. Fran might not surpass him in this aspect.
But that mysterious and solemn old man was now completely oblivious to Luyala right before his eyes. There was only a seemingly easily breakable bubble-like membrane between them, yet it was like an impassable chasm.
Seeing Sigrid's look of surprise mixed with confusion, Fran couldn't help but raise a hand to cover her lips, restraining her laughter.
In fact, upon first meeting Luyala, she had experienced similar astonishment.
This seemingly harmless little deer could directly ignore the barrier between thought and mind, directly pulling one's spirit into a deep dream... This indicated that within a certain range, Luyala's control over dreams was nearly absolute.
And this absolutely could not be achieved by relying on the so-called "talent" of a mythical creature...
This child must still have some special unknown aspects...
Like a cat that had basked enough in the sun, Fran raised both hands to stretch her waist, then stood up from the bench.
"Sigrid, relax. Now we need to follow Grantham into his dream."
"Mr. Grantham's dream..."
Hearing this, Sigrid let out a light sigh, inexplicably feeling somewhat nervous.
As a craftsman hailed as a genius within the Sun-Forgers cult, she also knew many secrets among the cult's higher echelons.
For example, the Sun-Forgers decision-makers mostly referred to the Burial Court's leader as "obsessive" or "Red Wolf Who Killed Its Master." And the White Cup's headmaster was called "lunatic"...
Though it was hard to imagine why they used this term to describe a distinguished, humble, and eloquent elder... it still made her feel somewhat uneasy.
Haida, having had many experiences on joint house calls with Fran, found unexpected situations had become commonplace for this elder sister.
Her gray chestnut eyes were calm and collected, appearing composed and unhurried.
As her mind settled, the group, shrouded in a dazzling bubble, followed Grantham into his dream.
...
In the narrow sense, dreams are illusory flashbacks in the mind during light sleep.
Chaotic, miscellaneous, utterly illogical, any trivial matter from day or night could change their content.
But the dream they stepped into was the "deep consciousness."
It contains primal instincts, thoughts formed later, and memories accumulated over time, therefore its form is more stable.
Precisely because of this, Belinda's dream remained that forest-shaded path bathed in gentle sunlight, undergoing no change. That was her most beloved scene, also what she considered the most relaxing and pleasant time.
But the environment within Grantham's deep consciousness... was far more horrifying.
Vast, gloomy, desolate.
Lofty towers and giant structures crumbled and collapsed, ashes and ruins everywhere in sight.
This was a grand and withered ruin.
Like a corpse long buried in the dust of history, to the extent that even scavenging crows were unwilling to circle and linger.
The night sky was clear, the stars hidden, only a cobalt-blue crescent moon hung alone. If this were a grave, then she was the sole mourner offering a parting kiss.
Grantham had already vanished.
Without deliberate intent, a fully thinking "self" does not manifest concretely in the dream of deep consciousness. Even if an identical form appeared, it would only be an echo of the past.
Simply put, as long as they were not discovered, Grantham would not appear here.
Fran felt somewhat novel as she surveyed this ruin, the excitement in her eyes almost impossible to suppress.
"As expected, infiltrating Grantham's dream through Luyala is feasible. That child's camouflage can even deceive his subconscious."
"But how long it can last remains unknown..."
As she spoke, her gaze fell upon a tilted, collapsed broken giant tower, carefully identifying its specific composition.
"Concrete structure, embedded with steel reinforcement. And inscribed with prayers and ritual arrays to reinforce the building's strength..."
"The Lost Age."
From this, it seemed even if Grantham wasn't a White Cup survivor from ancient times, he had extremely deep origins with the Lost Age.
This to some extent explained why he could briefly suppress and even severely wound the Withered Crown's avatar during the Great Plague, setting the stage for Fran's subsequent theft of its crown.
[Erect the Dream Slumber], [Hyperthymesia], [Mystic Stairway]—each was a first-category ritual containing forbidden divinity. Grantham's ability to integrate three rituals into himself without being torn apart was itself a miracle...
But if he mastered Lost Age mystical knowledge, then that success was probably no accident.
In the arrogant yet meticulous conceptions of the White Cup ancestors, even miracles could be mass-produced!
"The Lost Age?"
Sigrid gently bit her lip, easing her inexplicable tension.
Most White Cup historians believed the Lost Age was an independent epoch, but some occultists thought it was just a fragmented period of hidden history, like the Secrets-Hunter Burial Court's Zoparos.
Though the two sides disagreed on certain aspects, they both acknowledged that the White Cup cult of this era was unprecedentedly powerful, with weapon-forging and secret arts reaching their peak... until they touched upon some kind of taboo, inviting an irreversible demise.
Fran followed Luyala walking among the broken walls and ruins, simultaneously not forgetting to respond to Sigrid.
"Judging by the characteristics of this ruin, it should indeed be from the Lost Age."
"Although Grantham, due to Hyperthymesia, has lost the ability to forget, trying to depict an entire city with just one person's thoughts would still have insufficient detail..."
Just as she was about to say more, the originally clear, cloudless sky began to drizzle.
Fine and misty, falling like silk gauze.
There were no clouds gathering, nor southern winds howling... no warning whatsoever.
"So impatient, won't even let us stay a little longer."
Fran licked her lips, then felt a hint of iron-tinged taste gradually spreading on her tongue.
The taste of blood, thick and vivid.
The curtain of rain poured down, an inverted blood-red triangle faintly appearing. The originally pitter-pattering rain had also, unknown when, turned sticky and crimson.
That was one of the deities who personally ended the Lost Age: the Mother of Mountains and Consumption, the Red Cup. Also the nightmare shadow lingering in the depths of Grantham's consciousness, a terrifying echo from a millennium ago...
---
Blood-colored clouds rolled like raging waves, wrapped in a roaring curtain of rain, surging and churning.
On the layered, overlapping heavens above, among the stars where light had been extinguished, several illusory giant figures distantly manifested. Their auras and spirits intertwined, silently confronting each other, also engaged in an intangible clash.
Heavenly drums throbbed, thunder and white lightning intertwined, nearly violently tearing the night sky.
But even so, it couldn't shake that all-encompassing boundless darkness... Everything was wildly howling, it seemed like just the final lament before the apocalyptic silence.
Rubble, broken pillars, dust everywhere... broken things began to reassemble in the storm.
Giant metal gears shed layers of rust, re-embedding themselves within the collapsed clock tower.
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T/N: Hey readers~! New Translator here! Before I say anything, I'd first like to thank the original author for creating this wonderful story. Without them, I wouldn't have the chance to share this adventure with you. I hope my translation does justice to their work, and that together, we can enjoy this story.
With that said, I'm happy to let you know I'll be uploading daily chapters. And for those who wish to support my work and gain early access, I've set up a Patreon where advanced chapters will be available.
[email protected]/PeakTL