Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 623 - Chapter 623 Chapter 622 Howling Shadows

Chapter 623: Chapter 622 Howling Shadows Chapter 623: Chapter 622 Howling Shadows In the area covered by ashes and black dregs, which was the remnant of the World Tree, Morris, Nina, and Taran El and their company had successfully found several Knowledge Guardians who had awakened from the illusion.

Just as Morris had predicted, these Knowledge Guardians, equivalent to those “entering the Dream for the first time,” had been scattered to random locations within the ruins of Silantis. Fortunately, most of them had not dispersed too far, and Nina’s launching of the Fireball into the sky was so conspicuous that these scattered Guardians converged to investigate the situation, which quickly brought them all together.

Except for the last person.

“We still haven’t found any trace of Sir Ted Riel,” a Knowledge Guardian dressed in a short robe, holding a scroll and a revolver, returned to the temporary resting spot and said to Taran El and Morris, who were waiting there, “There’s no sign of the agreed signal, and there’s no response to the call of Spiritual Energy.”

“Could it be that he hasn’t ‘awakened’ yet?” Taran El subconsciously furrowed his brows, “That doesn’t make sense… The dose he was given was quite substantial; even for a Truth Confidant, it should have worked smoothly…”

Nina glanced at the Knowledge Guardian, who appeared somewhat anxious, and then at the pondering Taran El. She hesitated but couldn’t help but speak up, “Could it be that the dose was too large…?”

Taran El was momentarily startled and then, realizing what he had said, began to wave his hand dismissively, “Impossible, impossible. I am a meticulous scholar; how could I make such a mistake with the dosage? And Sir Ted Riel is an expert in pharmacology; he is certain of his intake of potions…” His voice trailed off, and he added uncertainly, “Probably.”

Nina & Morris: “…?”

“Exactly how much of the Blood Raven potion did you prepare for Ted Riel?” Morris couldn’t help but ask.

Taran El thought for a moment and then gestured with his hand, “About as high as a bottle…”

Morris was dumbfounded: “…You had him down a bottle of potion the size of a beer bottle?! Normal people use a dropper for that stuff!”

“Please, he is a Truth Confidant,” Taran El spread his hands, “Making him experience a mental dissociation level of ‘feigned death’ is extremely difficult; a dose that would be lethal to a normal person ten times over would at best quench his thirst. What else could I do? Sir Ted Riel even specially purified the potion because he couldn’t stomach that much in its original form…”

Listening in stunned silence, Morris muttered with a strange expression only after a long pause, “I remember back when I was at school, the Truth Confidant wasn’t so exaggerated…”

“Graduating class stress,” Taran El waved his hand, “It started with drowning sorrows in alcohol, then nerve toxins. Now, I don’t even want to know what he puts in his water cup after his classes… Regardless, the ‘dose’ of Blood Raven potion definitely isn’t the issue.”

“Perhaps Sir Ted Riel is trapped deeper within the Dreamscape, a place even a call of Spiritual Energy can’t reach,” a nearby Knowledge Guardian, seeing the conversation veering off topic, seized an opportunity to speak up, “This place feels very unsettling. Just now, when we were searching the nearby ruins in groups, we noticed that beyond a certain distance, we’d experience mental disorientation, blank minds, or even short-term memory loss. The sense of Spiritual Energy between us became intermittent…”

“It is indeed so,” another Knowledge Guardian immediately nodded, “Serena even said there were a few seconds when she completely forgot who she was, forgot everything about the real world, and felt like she was born here, wanting to stay here forever…”

Nina looked at the two Knowledge Guardians who had spoken and thought for a moment before saying, “Are you sure it’s not because the dose was too large?”

“The dosage I gave was absolutely correct!” Before the other guardians could speak, Taran El couldn’t restrain himself, “Miss, please trust the quality assured with a first-class Pharmacist’s license–besides, I’m the inventor of the ‘instant death method’; no one knows it better than I do…”

“With such an ‘instant death method’ to your name, the Academy of Truth should revoke your Pharmacist license,” Morris couldn’t help but mutter, but after a serious consideration, he shook his head, “It’s unlikely related to side effects of the potion. The situation the two Knowledge Guardians mentioned seems more like ‘The Dream of the Nameless’ itself is having an effect on them.”

Nina blinked, “But we’ve been moving around in here for so long without feeling like that…”

Morris pondered for a moment and then looked up at the grand ruins of the treetop canopy in the distance, as well as the phantoms wandering lost among the debris, “Perhaps… because we are ultimately not Elves.”

Nina instantly understood her teacher’s meaning; Taran El and the surrounding Elven guardians also showed thoughtful expressions.

After a brief silence, Taran El slowly got up and approached a nearby boulder, looking into the distance with a complex expression.

The sprawling blackened remains stretched up and down in his field of vision–the majestic treetop had collapsed and fallen, turning into mountains and valleys on the ground, ash covering the land, withered branches intertwining amidst the ashes.

As if a massive city had fallen from the sky to the earth, walls and structures crumbling apart, desolate memories still haunted the land after its destruction, melding with the wind and the dust.

Taran El tried his utmost to imagine what this place once looked like.

There was once a forest here, a lush forest under the shade of the World Tree, where the valleys and hills thrived with life, where the massive roots of the great trees undulated over the earth and crystal-clear streams flowed through the valleys, home to numerous creatures–birds, beasts, Elves.

It was a time he had never seen, lived by “ancestors” from another era.

The lushness and vitality of that age far surpassed the imagination of today’s people, but even more unimaginable than that vitality were the order and peace.

It was said that distant Prand and Frost had welcomed this peace–but Captain Duncan said that even the current “peace” of Prand and Frost was nothing compared to the world before the Great Annihilation.

Taran El found that his imagination hit a wall.

He found that no matter how he tried to imagine, his mind could not conjure up a vivid picture–cold words from books he had once read seeped into his memory, and the images he sketched in his mind were only superficial impressions. He had barely learned from Dreamscape what a “forest” truly looked like, but he couldn’t picture how birds and beasts lived in that boundless green sea, nor how Elves could coexist with such a “forest”…

People said that the Elves had left the most complete legacy in their ancient texts and stories passed down verbally; if one day archaeologists truly managed to reconstruct the world before the Great Annihilation, that picture would undoubtedly be buried in the libraries of Light Breeze Harbor and Moco.

But now Taran El realized–that picture was no longer there.

On a day long, long ago, when the sea swallowed the world, it had disappeared with the withering of Silantis.

But… what exactly destroyed Silantis? What caused the Great Annihilation?

Suddenly, a scorching wind blew in from nowhere, carrying with it a disturbing, piercing noise–not the intermittent, disordered breeze in the ruins, but a more intense one, as if filled with panic and destruction, capable of directly sweeping away one’s sanity.

Taran El abruptly woke from his deep thoughts.

The fierce howling wind nearly swept him off the ground; he struggled to steady himself, yet found that darkness and chaos had already enveloped his surroundings. It was as if all the sky light of the world had been drawn in an instant, turning the towering tree ruins into undulating shadows, with tremendous smoke rising from above them, as if the World Tree had ignited once more. And the other guardians of knowledge that had gathered at this spot, including Morris and Nina, had all vanished from his sight.

The wild wind began to howl; dark dust swirled over the burning World Tree. Taran El fell clumsily off a boulder, tumbling several times before coming to a stop against a giant “branch”–a spine-like, slightly curved massive limb. He hit its base, then instinctively looked up at the sky.

The sky was “collapsing.”

Amidst the chaos, Taran El saw an unimaginable scene.

A faint red glow penetrated the clouds; the dim sky was collapsing downwards as if being pressed by something. The clouds twisted, and even the light within the cloud layer was bending, as if a massive, terrifying entity was gradually pressing down, almost flattening the entire world. The immense terror this scene brought literally took his breath away, freezing his thoughts, and it was in this suffocation and fear that he saw a white glimmer.

Dots of white light diffused from the burning ruins of Silantis, gradually gathering in the air into streams of light. The glimmers flowed among the giant branches and scorched earth, and as if sensing something, they gradually converged in front of Taran El.

Taran El’s eyes widened as he felt a warm force within the stream of light, but for some reason, a tremendous panic and unease surged through his heart–he stared at the light until it gathered into an indistinct sphere of light in front of him.

The sphere had no solid form but seemed to possess Spiritual Intelligence; it slowly revolved around Taran El, as if curiously observing something.

Then, it suddenly stopped.

Taran El heard a sharp wailing sound–as if it wanted to drill directly into his brain, boring a hole into it.

The sound was high-pitched, filled with immense fright and a crazed kind of annoyance.

“This is wrong! You are not Elves!”