At last, the puppet Luny also accepted the Fla Mark bestowed by the captain, led by Alice.
By that point, apart from the more "crude", mindless tin n and wooden puppets, everyone in the "Witch’s Mansion" had received the brand of the fire of the Spiritual Body before entering the Dreamscape.
Dinner ti arrived, the bright electric lights and the wall-mounted gas lamps together illuminated the spacious dining room, where the mbers of the Exiled Fleet gathered by the long dining table, sharing fish, bread, and wine, preparing to face the impending, even more unfathomable nightfall.
Faint green flas flickered deep within their eyes, making their gazes seems to focus on both the real and the illusionary dinsions simultaneously. Their conversations intermittently mixed with a bit of the captain’s power, causing a dull buzzing vibration in the air, while green flas tinged the gas lamps on the walls, making all the flas shimr with a hint of green ghostly light, lending an eerie quality to the entire dining room’s walls and floor akin to that of a Spiritual Body.
If an unsuspecting ordinary person happened to wander into the dining room at this ti, they would likely instantly be overwheld by the strange atmosphere and power abounding here—maintaining their sanity and self would be a very difficult feat.
The clockwork puppet Luny lit the decorative candelabra, and the candlelight flickered on the table, casting a srizing warm glow on the silver and ceramic tableware.
Morris and Lucrezia were quietly discussing ancient legends related to the Elves’ society, interspersing their talk with many technical terms, making it difficult for the average person to understand; Sherry was gobbling up her food, she was always the first to fill her stomach at the table; Fenna was saying a prayer before the al, still the most devout one, ticulously completing the sacred rituals to the goddess at all tis; Nina, after taking a few bites, surreptitiously lifted her head, eyes glancing towards the wine placed not far in front of her.
"I want so fernted grape juice..." The fragnt of the Ancient Sun made a request to the Usurping Fla.
Duncan glanced at the girl and raised an eyebrow, "Why not say you want so barley fruit juice?"
Nina’s eyes imdiately lit up, raising her hand towards the beer on the other side, "Really?"
Duncan looked at her expressionlessly, "What do you think?"
"Oh..." Nina murred, honestly picking up the lemonade that was placed on the other side, looking quite disappointed.
In the distance, the chanical clock ticked away, its hands slowly moving forward.
As dinner neared its end, Duncan suddenly broke the silence, "I’ve been thinking about a question."
"What are you pondering?" Fenna across the dining table put down her cutlery and asked curiously.
"How exactly does The Saint of the Mysterious Deep Sea view His believers?" Duncan said very seriously, "He suggested that I capture so followers of the obliviate to establish a connection with the Mysterious Deep Sea, which doesn’t sound at all sentintal—but at the sa ti, He remains rational and seems very concerned about this world; don’t you find that odd?"
"I find it quite reasonable," Morris wiped the corner of his mouth, speaking leisurely, "Especially given the premise that The Saint of the Mysterious Deep Sea is rational, the suggestion He made to you is even more logical."
Duncan raised an eyebrow at that, "Oh?"
"Before you succeeded in establishing a connection with that ancient deity, there had never been any communication between The Saint of the Mysterious Deep Sea and the real world. In other words, those so-called followers of the obliviate were actually just blindly worshiping their ’Lord,’ and through this one-sided belief, they drew power, constantly summoning demons from the Mysterious Deep Sea for their own use," Morris shrugged, "Think about it from another perspective, if you were The Saint of the Mysterious Deep Sea, and suddenly a bunch of noisy mortals appeared out of nowhere, claiming to be your descendants, then they run into your yard, steal your fruits, dig up your fruit trees, even try to deceive your servants, and in the end, they want to pry open your door and move into your room..."
Duncan pondered this, feeling his blood pressure rising.
"Alright, I think I understand..." he sighed, "It’s reasonable."
The chanical clock in the corner of the dining room suddenly struck the hour, its loud chis interrupting the conversations by the table, hollowly echoing throughout the vast mansion.
Duncan listened to the bell chis, silently counting each strike, and quietly said, "It’s nine o’clock."
No one responded to him.
Only a few empty chairs remained on both sides of the dining table, as if from the beginning, there had not been a single person there.
Duncan slowly frowned, looking at the suddenly empty dining room. Even though the anomaly had occurred right under his nose, he still could not determine the specific "process" of it all.
Everything happened suddenly, as if the entire world completed a "switch" in an extrely brief mont, like a deck of cards flipped in an instant, with numbers turning into the patterns on the back—Nina, Morris, and the others had entered another dinsion with the flipped cards, while Duncan remained by the table.
Also remaining "by the table" with Duncan was Alice.
The doll Miss suddenly widened her eyes, appearing quite startled, "Wow!"
"The influence of The Dream of the Naless appeared again..." Duncan slowly stood up from the chair, "Even the rabbit puppet has disappeared."
As he finished speaking, a sowhat nervous voice ca from the side, "Old master, I... I’m still here."
Duncan and Alice turned their heads simultaneously, looking in the direction of the voice.
The automaton Luny was standing not far behind them—at dinner ti, she had stood there.
Now, this automaton had been left on "this side" of the real world.
Alice looked at her in surprise, "Luny! Why were you also left on this side?!"
"I don’t know," the automaton spread her hands and shook her head, then looked towards the empty opposite side of the dinner table, her tone laced with concern, "Is the mistress... alright?"
"They have already reached the other side of the Dreamscape," Duncan said, while he couldn’t help but scrutinize Luny up and down, a slight frown forming.
Luny had been left "on this side"... Why was that?
When The Dream of the Naless occurred, both he and Alice would be left on the side of the real world, and now Luny had been left on this side as well, moreover, while she was awake... What chanism was at work behind this?
Could it be because of... "automatons"?
"Luny, do you dream?" Duncan suddenly asked while pondering.
"I... don’t know," Luny paused, then honestly replied, "Occasionally, when the mistress is maintaining my body, I beco dazed and recall so past events, but the mistress says that’s not dreaming, just mories spilling out of the soul container... I probably don’t dream? I don’t know what human dreaming is like."
"What about Rabi? Does that rabbit nad Rabi truly dream?" Duncan asked again.
"Rabi does dream, and in fact, it’s quite powerful in the Dreamscape—many years ago, the mistress often suffered from nightmares, which even disrupted her research work. So the mistress made preparations and deliberately plunged herself into the Dreamscape to confront those shadows that invaded her spirit world—she won, and from the deepest part of her nightmares, she captured a shadow that ca from the Spirit Realm, the mistress said it was the creation of fear, then she beat up the shadow over and over again, finally sewing it inside a cloth doll, which is Rabi..."
Duncan listened as the automaton in front of him recounted these past events with an indifferent face, and after a mont, the corners of his mouth twitched: "It seems that Lucresia has also experienced quite a few extraordinary things over the years... Alright, I think I understand what’s going on now."
Alice scratched her head, "Huh?"
"The Dream of the Naless seems to only affect creatures that can enter dreams," Duncan looked at the two automatons in front of him, "As automatons, you actually don’t dream—or to put it another way, even if you ’dream’, your dreamscape is not ’compatible’ with that of ordinary humans."
Duncan made so careful clarifications as he spoke the last part, because he suddenly rembered that Alice had once described to him her experiences during sleep that seed like "dreamscapes," so in a way, Alice also dreams—but like Luny, her dreamscape was different from that of ordinary people, to say the least... it seed more like "automaton stupor."
This kind of "stupor" obviously did not et the "criteria" for entering The Dream of the Naless.
Alice listened sowhat comprehending, then suddenly, her dim-witted brain sparked with an epiphany, and she looked at Duncan with widened eyes: "Then Captain, why are you also left ’on this side’ with us? Don’t you dream either?"
"I, of course..." Duncan instinctively began, but then he hesitated, his expression turning sowhat peculiar.
Had he... truly had any dreams after coming to this world?
Normal dreams that belong to mortals, weaving between reality and mory... dreams.
It was as if a long-neglected switch was suddenly flipped, a chaotic corner of his subconsciousness that he had not noticed revealed itself, and for the first ti, Duncan beca aware of this issue. Rapidly recalling, he went back through every ti he had slept in this world since passing through that door, and... "dreams."
He rembered. He had dreamt—He had entered the Subspace in dreams, foreseen impending disasters, seen the sun extinguished, a dying void suspended in the sky, bizarre luminescent bodies falling from the heavens...
And beyond that, he couldn’t rember any other types of dreams, because his current body hardly needed sleep, maintaining the habit of lying in bed every day, oftentis just a ans to preserve his "humanity"...
Yes, he dread, albeit seldom, although...
Duncan suddenly raised his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose firmly.
No, dreams shouldn’t be just like that, not just like this—what about those ordinary dreams? The day’s experiences reflected in dreams after falling asleep? Those blissful dreams, those mundane dreams, those interesting dreams, those dreams filled with mories, those... ordinary people’s dreams?
Duncan strained to recall, but then he realized. All his dreams, if not pointing to the Subspace, pointed to so sort of ti-transcending, prophetic "hallucination," and apart from that, each of his sleep experiences... was nothingness.
Even more so, not just in this world.
He continued to recollect.
Zhou Ming continued to recollect.
He recalled the days before he opened the door to his bachelor apartnt, the days before he was trapped in the fog, the long, long ti ago—so distant it almost felt like another lifeti—when everything was still normal, when the whole world had not yet fallen into fog.
Zhou Ming puzzledly raised his head.
Had he... truly, like an ordinary person, ever dreamt?
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