Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 569 - Chapter 569 Chapter 568 Large-Scale Foreign Terrain

Chapter 569: Chapter 568: Large-Scale Foreign Terrain? Chapter 569: Chapter 568: Large-Scale Foreign Terrain? The living room on the first floor was completely silent, as quiet as the entire street outside. Everything still maintained the appearance of nightfall, while the wooden puppets and iron servants, driven by springs and Magical Mechanism, stood silently in their places–it seemed that until just the second before the “anomaly” occurred, they were still executing their cleaning commands according to their programmed settings.

With Alice nervously clinging onto his clothes, Duncan walked down the stairs, his eyes sweeping across the gloomy and silent living room. The sound of their footsteps echoed in this deadly silence, adding to the eerie setting.

While holding tightly to the captain’s clothes, Alice glanced sideways–a maid-shaped puppet was standing nearby, one hand supporting the stair railing. The puppet seemed to have been wiping the handrail just a moment ago. “She” maintained a slightly forward-leaning upper body posture with a bucket at her feet. However, like the other servants, “she” had come to a halt, and the characteristic ticking and gear friction sounds no longer emanated from within her.

Alice always felt that the puppet would suddenly turn its eyes toward her, just like in many horror stories–this thought terrified her tremendously.

“It’s so scary…” she muttered behind the captain, “Puppets are everywhere… It wasn’t so bad during the day, but now that they’ve suddenly stopped, it’s really scary… but it feels even scarier if they were to suddenly start moving…”

Duncan silently turned back, giving the naive puppet a peculiar look.

However, Alice didn’t notice… nor did she think she had said anything amiss.

Duncan shook his head and refocused on the “marks” he had left on Maurice, Fenna, and others.

These marks were still twinkling in his perception, but their state was extremely bizarre–at times, he could sense that these marks were right in this house or even right beside him. But in the next second, the marks would suddenly appear at a great distance, as if they had moved to the other end of the City-State, as though… they were teleporting without any pattern.

This was the first time Duncan had encountered such a situation.

He tried to call out to these distant marks directly in the mental world to establish contact with Nina and the others, but due to being unable to precisely determine the position and state of the marks, his calls were unsuccessful or only received a faint and meaningless “response” in some moments–this was also an unprecedented situation.

However, the good news was that he seemed to have gradually grasped the pattern of these eerie marks’ states. Even if he couldn’t pinpoint their locations, after adjusting for a while, he should still be able to establish accurate contact with them. On the other hand, as long as those marks remained, it meant that the individuals carrying them were not in mortal danger and there was no need to worry too much.

As Duncan continued perceiving and becoming familiar with the distant marks, he slowly walked forward. However, just then, a slight cracking sound abruptly rang out in the living room, interrupting his and Alice’s actions.

Duncan quickly turned around, looking in the direction of the sound.

The maid puppet by the stair railing had slowly started to move in the dark, turning its head stiffly like a long-rusted machine. Its lifeless eyes slowly searched for something across the living room.

Alice was almost scared out of her wits: “Wow! It really started moving!”

Duncan could no longer hold back: “Why would you, a living puppet, be afraid of this?”

Alice paused, finally catching on: “Ah… right?”

Ignoring the embarrassing naive one, Duncan refocused on the now stiffly moving maid puppet–he seemed extraordinarily calm as he sensed a sudden, familiar presence from the puppet.

“Lucy, is that you?” he ventured to ask.

“Ah, so you are nearby…” The puppet finally focused its sight accurately on Duncan. “She” moved her jaw awkwardly, producing a somewhat strained and altered voice, “But I still can’t see you, the quality of this temporary ‘medium’ is just too poor. I really shouldn’t have skimped on the domestic puppets. Long story short, how are things on your side? I sensed your calls a few times just now, but I always failed to respond in time before they were cut off…”

“Everything is fine here, the house is empty, and you all are gone,” Duncan promptly replied and quickly described the current situation on the street. “…That’s what’s happening. In short, from my perspective, it seems like there’s a problem on your end, while Alice and I remain unaffected.”

“It appears so,” after a few seconds delay, the voice of Lucy again came from the mouth of the maid puppet, “The problem is likely with us, you are still in the real world, just witnessing the anomalies appearing in the real world, while we… seem to have been swept into the ‘interior’ of this anomaly.”

“Are others with you?” Duncan immediately asked.

“No, only I am here–it looks like we have been scattered to different places.”

“What’s around you?” Duncan inquired again.

“Surrounding? Trees.

The forest was enveloped in dusky twilight, an eerie and mildly oppressive chaos seemed to wrap the entire world. The sunlight filtering through the layers of tree crowns also appeared dim and lethargic, incapable of dispelling the gloominess among the dense trees.

Occasionally, the sounds of animals or snapping branches could be heard in the distance; although nothing else out of the ordinary, Lucresia felt as if she could smell an inexplicable… tension in the air from this forest.

It felt as if something was about to happen here.

One hand tightly gripped a short magic wand resembling a “conductor’s baton”, while she maintained a connection with a puppet she had crafted herself, using it to communicate information about the area with her distant father, “…There’s a pervasive sense of tension in the forest, it’s suffocating, even carrying an intangible fear… Yes, it’s emotion, as a witch, I can sense this ’emotion’ spread in the air… This place looks very much like Taran El’s Dreamscape, but there are no Scions of the Sun invading the sky, and there seems to be something else deep in the forest…I’m walking towards it.

“The scenery of the block? I can’t see it… My vision is only trees, although the jungle limits visibility, I am sure that this forest spans way beyond just a block or two… The expanse of this ‘foreign realm’ is vast, what you see ‘on the other side’ must be just a small part that has leaked into the real world.”

Lucresia suddenly stopped, listening intently to the words coming from afar, and nodded gently after a moment, “Yes, I also suspect this is still that ‘Dreamscape’, called ‘The Dream of the Nameless’ by the obliteration heretics, but the situation is different this time… Last time we entered The Dream of the Nameless via Taran El as a stepping stone, and that’s what you heard from those heretics, to enter this dreamscape one must use an elf’s mind as a bridge, but this is all happening so suddenly and weirdly…”

She paused, raising her magic wand to gently tap a vine in front of her, which instantly came to life, wriggling and growing forward to form a bridge-like structure across the deep gorge ahead.

Lucresia walked along this vine bridge, continuing, “… I have not yet found that ‘bridge,’ not found out who the ‘dreamer’ is, but according to the laws of dreamscape, I should be near the ‘dreamer’ by now.”

Suddenly, she stopped.

Rustling footsteps appeared nearby–the sound was abrupt, as if a second ago there was no one and the next, a figure seemed to emerge out of thin air, stepping on dry twigs and leaves approaching her.

Lucresia instantly became focused, casting several protective spells on herself before turning, her hand gripping the magic wand while she looked in the direction of the sound.

However, what appeared before her was neither an invading heretic from the dreamscape nor a naturally distortion of the dreamscape itself.

A strange elf woman stood under the nearby tree shade, looking back at her with surprise and caution.

Lucresia’s first thought was that she might be the ‘dreamer’ who acts as “the bridge” within this dreamscape; however, the unfamiliar elf brought a sense of dissonance–she was dressed in lightweight armor that bore styles from neither any City-State nor any era recognizable, her light golden hair interwoven with faintly glowing blue odd “threads”, and she held a peculiar weapon that seemed a combination of a spear and a battle-axe. Such an outfit… Lucresia had never seen in Light Breeze Harbor, nor anywhere else in the world.

While Lucresia was still taken aback, the strange elf woman with the peculiar long-handled weapon already spoke with a serious and alert tone,

“Didn’t you receive the evacuation order? Why are you still staying outside the Wall of Silence?”

Lucresia slightly narrowed her eyes.

The situation… seemed to become subtler.

…

Under the intersecting glow of the “sunlight” between buildings and the cold brilliance of the Creation of the World, in the unique eerie night of Light Breeze Harbor, Duncan and Alice were swiftly moving through the streets.

Alice was still holding a puppet head whose mouth kept moving.

Lucresia’s voice came from the mouth of that puppet head, reporting the latest developments from “over there”–

“I’m currently moving along with this suddenly appeared strange elf, she seems completely unaware that I am not of her kind, and very easily lowered her guard… We are heading towards a place called ‘the Wall of Silence’…”

This scene was as bizarre as it could get: a living puppet running in the night, carrying another puppet’s head in her arms, and that head continuously talking, its voice hoarse and distorted due to the material–just this sight alone, anyone with a sane mind would probably lose sanity upon a glance.

However, Alice showed no abnormalities.

She was running after Duncan, even looking somewhat pleased.

Probably got used to carrying a head… whether her own or someone else’s.

(Today there are three updates!!!)