“Someone else went missing?”
Elias recalled the conversation between the night-shift scribe and the female doctor.
Three hundred for the basic investigation.
Another three hundred upon confirming the source of the anomaly.
And the final six hundred to resolve the anomaly and bring back the missing person.
Of the twelve hundred gold crowns, not a single one was easy money.
“One,” the female doctor replied. “The relief shelter's night watchman.”
“During last night's shift change, we found the duty room empty, but the door was open.”
“His boots, coat, and personal belongings were still there.”
“Only footprints stretched from the duty room all the way out of the shelter, ultimately leading to the shore.”
“Then, they vanished.”
The shore?
Elias's brow twitched slightly.
Dreaming.
Leaving the room.
Walking all the way into the sea.
Why did this pattern sound so familiar?
The only difference was that someone had pulled him back in time back then.
This watchman, however, clearly hadn't been so lucky.
“Were there any signs of a struggle on the shore?”
“No.”
“Any other footprints?”
“None either.”
“What about the lock on the duty room door?”
“Undamaged.”
The female doctor paused. “It was as if he woke up on his own, opened the door, and walked straight into the sea.”
Elias glanced at the fragmented nautical chart on the table.
Standing on a pitch-black sea in a dream.
Walking toward the actual ocean in reality.
If these two events were completely unrelated, he would eat his derby hat on the spot.
“Since these supplies came from the Ascetic Society, why not look for them?”
“We did,” the female doctor said, her voice heavy with exhaustion. “They denied ever sending a relief deacon, nor have they donated any 【Dream-soothing Paper】 to us.”
“The clergyman who received us checked their inventory records.”
“The Ascetic Society confirmed they never issued these supplies to the Third Relief Shelter, and the serial numbers aren't on our receiving manifest.”
“They've already sealed the same batch of Dream-soothing Paper to trace the supply chain, but their dream investigators won't arrive until dawn at the earliest.”
“What about the Seventh Agency?”
“We've already reported it.”
“They told us to seal the scene, preserve all physical evidence, and wait for their investigators.”
Elias nodded.
This protocol was standard.
The problem was that the Seventh Agency had just dealt with the sea beast invasion. Right now, all of Hastings Port was flooded with pollution incidents, missing person cases, and supernatural items of unknown origin.
Telling them to “wait for investigators” was basically code for: We got it. Try not to die. We'll get to you when we get to you.
Honestly, to the Seventh Agency, this was probably the smallest of their problems at the moment.
“But the wounded haven't dared to sleep for two days,” the female doctor said, tightening her grip on the records. “Some are using cold water to stay awake, while others jam their fingers into the gaps of their bedframes so the pain will wake them if they drift off.”
“If this drags on, they'll collapse on their own before whatever is in their dreams even gets to them.”
Elias looked up at her.
The dark circles under the female doctor's eyes were nearly as dark as coal soot.
As she spoke, her gaze would occasionally lose focus before she forced herself back to alertness.
“Including you?”
“I can still hold on.”
“Usually, people who say that wake up staring at an unfamiliar ceiling the next time they open their eyes.”
Elias hooked a nearby chair with his foot.
“Sit down, Doctor.”
“If you collapse first, I'll have to carve out a portion of the commission fee just to save you.”
The female doctor opened her mouth, seemingly wanting to insist she was fine.
Elias raised his hand, cutting her off. “No need to prove it. I just spent a soul coin to learn that one shouldn't blindly trust unverified services.”
The female doctor didn't quite grasp the latter half of his sentence.
But she indeed could barely stand.
She grabbed the edge of the desk for support, sat down, and let out a long breath.
“Let me see the paper,” Elias held out his hand.
The female doctor pulled several sealed evidence bags from her leather bag.
Inside each bag was a snow-white piece of paper folded into a triangle.
The so-called 【Dream-soothing Paper】 was a low-tier, single-use ritual consumable crafted by the Ascetic Society.
Elias had recently read about it in 《Identification of Common Spiritual Consumables》, a book Jack had brought back from the underground library.
The user needed to write their name on the paper, fold it into a triangle, and place it under their pillow.
Once they fell asleep, the lunar phase ritual on the paper would use their name as an anchor to enter their shallow dreamscape.
Nightmares caused by fear, trauma, or low-tier spiritual disturbances would be peeled away from the dream and sealed within the paper.
By the next morning, the used 【Dream-soothing Paper】 would turn grayish-black, completely losing its efficacy.
To put it mystically: this was a lunar phase ritual consumable.
To put it bluntly: it was a way to package and discard the garbage in your head while you slept.
Convenient as it sounded, it had many limitations.
It could only handle an individual's shallow dreams.
It couldn't lift real curses.
It didn't dare touch high-tier spiritual pollution.
And it certainly couldn't connect one hundred and thirty-seven people to the exact same dream, letting each of them bring back a piece of a nautical chart.
Elias took the evidence bag and held it up to the gaslight.
The paper was pristine white.
There were no stains on the surface, nor any signs of scorching or moisture along the edges.
Only in the center of the paper could a faint, silver lunar pattern be seen.
“Why is the handwriting for the names on these sheets identical?” Elias asked, flipping through a few sheets with the same handwriting.
“The wounded who could still write did so themselves. The severely injured had the watchman write for them,” the female doctor explained.
“What about the other sheets?”
“They've all been gathered.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“Did they turn black?”
“No,” the female doctor replied. “Every single one is as pristine as when it was first opened.”
The casual look on Elias's face vanished.
A normal piece of 【Dream-soothing Paper】 would inevitably be contaminated by dream residue after peeling away a nightmare.
The darker the color, the more severe the sealed nightmare.
The fact that the paper hadn't turned black meant those nightmares hadn't been sealed at all.
At the very least, it was certain that the nightmares hadn't remained in the paper through the normal mechanism.
Whether they were redirected, overwritten, or used as consumables for some ritual remained to be seen.
Originally, the wounded had repeatedly dreamed of sea beasts.
After using the 【Dream-soothing Paper】, the sea beasts disappeared.
On the surface, it looked like a successful ritual.
In reality, those nightmares hadn't entered the paper.
They weren't eliminated.
Instead, they had been sent somewhere unknown.
Or perhaps, they had been swapped out for something else.
If they were merely redirected, they could still trace the destination.
But if those one hundred and thirty-seven nightmares were merely the price paid for some ritual, then the people in the relief shelter weren't patients—they were sacrifices kept in the dark.
Beside them, the contract master also sensed something was off.
He took the evidence bag, pulled out an inspection stamp bearing the mark of the Ascetic Society, and pressed it against the lunar pattern on the paper through the bag.
A pale silver light spread from beneath the stamp.
A string of silver serial numbers immediately appeared along the edge of the paper.
The contract master compared the serial numbers one by one with the public registry behind the counter.
“The paper is real,” he checked the lunar pattern again. “The holy seal is genuine too. The batch number... is also real.”
The female doctor asked immediately, “But why did they say they never donated them?”
“A genuine registration only proves that this batch of paper was manufactured by the Ascetic Society and was once cataloged as relief supplies,” the contract master said. “It doesn't prove who ultimately delivered it to the relief shelter.”
Elias slid the snow-white paper out of the evidence bag and gave it a gentle wave.
“The Ascetic Society didn't send it.”
“The person who delivered it was an imposter.”
“And the genuine goods didn't function according to their original mechanism.”
The person was fake.
The paperwork was real.
The items were also real.
Yet, the final outcome was entirely wrong.
It was as if someone had used legitimate medicine, a valid prescription, and official hospital stamps to ultimately feed the exact same hallucination to one hundred and thirty-seven patients.
Either the paper had been tampered with, or some power had ridden on the paper's ritual to infiltrate the wounded's dreams.
Whichever it was, it was far more troublesome than a common nightmare.
Elias looked back at the female doctor.
“Doctor.”
“Your twelve hundred is looking more and more like a bargain.”
The female doctor was taken aback. “Is that supposed to be good news?”
“Of course not,” Elias placed the paper back on the table. “My point is, at least you aren't spending your money on a run-of-the-mill nightmare.”
“...”
The female doctor did not feel comforted in the slightest.
“I'll take this commission,” Elias pulled the commission document toward himself, but he didn't sign it immediately. “But I want to add three clauses.”
He held up one finger. “One: If the risk exceeds Scale Two, the reward must be renegotiated.”
A second finger. “Two: If the client conceals vital information leading to mission failure, the remaining reward must still be paid in full.”
A third finger. “Three: Regardless of whether the missing person is dead or alive, as long as they are found and brought back, the rescue portion of the commission is considered complete.”
Once his final words fell, silence lingered around the table for a moment.
The female doctor stared at him.
The scruffy stranger before her had just been haggling with the contract master over a single soul coin.
Yet, when it came to the terms of the mission, he hadn't hesitated for a second.
Risk levels, informational responsibility, rescue boundaries.
Every single clause was targeted precisely at the most common points of dispute.
“Do you take commissions often?”
Elias paused.
Strictly speaking, this was “John Constantine's” first-ever commission.
A brand-new account.
Zero reputation.
No messenger.
Though his enemies might very well be lining up in his future.
This resume was hardly suitable for inspiring confidence in a client.
Elias decided to maintain a bit of professional mystique. After all, between silence and nonsense, he had always been better at the latter.
“What do you think?” Elias countered.
The female doctor observed him intently for a moment.
His reply was confident.
Yet, for some reason, she felt he was dodging the question.
“So, should I feel reassured?” The female doctor pondered for a moment, switching to a different question.
Elias lowered the brim of his hat slightly.
The derby hat cast a shadow over his eyes.
“You can choose to believe me.”
“Or you can go back and wait for the Seventh Agency.”
“But since you're standing here, it means you don't really have a second choice anyway.”
He was speaking the truth.
The one hundred and thirty-six survivors at the relief shelter hadn't dared to sleep for two days.
No one knew if another person would disappear once the third night fell.
The female doctor fell silent for a long time before finally extending her hand.
“I'm Irene Hall.”
Elias looked at her outstretched hand and grasped it.
“Excellent, Doctor Hall.”
“At least now, we've started speaking honestly to each other.”
Irene's hand was cold.
But her grip wasn't as weak as she had appeared earlier.
“I hope we have a pleasant cooperation.”
“But I still have one question.”
Elias picked up the registration form, his eyes lingering on the final page.
There were only one hundred and thirty-six users of the 【Dream-soothing Paper】, yet the dream statistics recorded one hundred and thirty-seven entries.
The last entry belonged to the missing watchman.
“Did the watchman use the 【Dream-soothing Paper】 himself?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say one hundred and thirty-seven people are having the same dream?”
He astutely realized the discrepancy.
“How did you know he dreamed of the lighthouse?”
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