On the carriage back to the Third Relief Shelter, Elias pulled out his pocket watch again.
The brass cover popped open.
There was only one hour and seventeen minutes left before the 【Moon Gate】 closed.
“That fast?”
He stared at the watch face, almost suspecting that the hands had taken a few extra laps behind his back.
After stopping at several places, it felt as if a chunk of time had been stolen from him along the way.
He couldn't help but marvel at how quickly time passed.
To make matters worse, returning to the Third Relief Shelter wasn't the final stop. After checking these residues, he still had to cross more than half of the West Coast to reach the West Bank Third Supply Depot and crawl back through the bottom of the cargo crate sitting outside the 【Moon Gate】.
Of this hour and seventeen minutes, only half at most could truly be dedicated to the investigation.
If he couldn't make it back to the West Bank warehouse, Jack would have to clutch that box of spirit restoration potions and perform a live demonstration of how one drinks themselves to death on the spot. Or, he could find a boat in Hastings Port and slowly drift back to the lighthouse.
Neither ending was particularly dignified.
“Sir, can we go any faster?” Elias urged the driver in front of him as he snapped his pocket watch shut.
“To be honest with you, sir,” the driver replied, clutching the reins with one hand and pointing ahead with the other, “look at how the road is blocked today. How can I go fast?”
The section of the road sealed by the Alchemy and Craftsmen Association had not yet been opened. Several freight wagons loaded with pipes and sea beast remains were parked across the intersection, and craftsmen in leather aprons were scurrying back and forth with lanterns. The carriage queue had formed a long line; no matter how skilled the driver was, he couldn't make the horses grow wings.
Elias glanced at his watch. “What if I pay extra?”
“Sit tight, sir.” The driver’s response didn't falter for a second.
The tip of the whip cracked sharply in the night air. The old horse in front lunged forward, and the entire carriage lurched backward. Elias’s back slammed into the seat, and for the first time in a long while, he felt the sensation of being pinned to his seat by sheer acceleration.
Good grief. Did this carriage have a sports mode?
The main road ahead was still blocked, but the driver had no intention of forcing his way through. As the carriage reached the intersection, he yanked the reins hard, and the wheels scraped the curb as they veered into a narrow side alley. The carriage tilted, and Elias scrambled to grab the door handle. He was even ready to cast a 【Moonlight Barrier】.
The driver clearly wasn't a first-timer. The two horses charged through the alley mouth, brushing past clotheslines and grazing a pushcart piled with wooden crates. The wheels splashed into puddles, sending muddy water onto the walls, but they never once hit anything. Every time it looked like a collision was imminent, they cleared it by less than half a wheel’s width.
A woman in the alley who was taking in her laundry heard the hoofbeats and pressed herself against the wall with her wooden basin, hurling a string of local curses Elias couldn't understand. The driver didn't even look back; he simply raised his whip and waved it behind him. It was unclear whether he was apologizing or just saying hello.
Elias gripped the door frame tight, watching as the driver navigated through two more small alleys before finally bursting out onto the street behind the relief shelter. As the wheels came to a stop, the carriage swayed twice.
“We’re here, sir.” The driver looked back, his expression as calm as if he had just taken a leisurely stroll.
Elias looked at the relief shelter, then back at him. He was impressed. He had to be. In a city as large as Hastings Port, he had actually run into a Velenese drift king.
He handed over a shilling quite readily. It was for the fare, but also a sign of respect for the man’s driving skills.
When he pushed open the doors of the Third Relief Shelter, the low hum of voices and the heavy scent of medicine rushed out to meet him. None of the one hundred and thirty-six wounded dared to sleep. Some used cold water to stay awake, while others sat by their beds, mechanically rubbing their hands.
Dr. Hall was leaning over to check a patient’s pupils. Hearing the door, she only had time to give Elias a quick glance. Near the door, a wounded man’s head started to droop, and the nurse standing by immediately slapped the bed frame.
“Don't sleep!” The iron frame let out a piercing clang. The man jolted, looking around blankly, and it took him a couple of seconds to hurriedly straighten his posture. As if reminded by the noise, the low conversations throughout the hall picked up again.
Theolan was still sitting at the long table. Several sheets of 【Dream-soothing Paper】 were pressed under his palms, with fine silver threads extending from the paper and disappearing into the various beds. Those threads of light pulsed with the breathing of the wounded, looking as though they might snap taut at any moment.
“Any findings?” Theolan asked, looking up.
“Yes.” Elias walked quickly to the table and took the evidence bag from his trench coat. Inside the bag were two folded pieces of stiff paper. He spread them out individually. “One is from Robert’s final footprint. The other is from the mooring ring on the shore.”
Two small piles of black-silver residue sat on the papers. Under the lamplight, their surfaces shimmered with a fine, cold luster.
Theolan didn't answer immediately. He took a silver probe from his leather kit and first picked at the residue from the footprint. As soon as the tip of the needle touched the black-silver substance, a thin strand of silver light was pulled from the residue. It didn't break right away. It coiled around the tip of the probe, trailing a nearly transparent thread as Theolan lifted his wrist.
Theolan’s habitually expressionless face finally darkened. “【Dream-Mourning Sealing Wax】.”
“Oh?” Elias arched an eyebrow.
Theolan looked at him. “You don't know? As a Moon Lord believer, how could you be entirely ignorant of this?”
“An investigation is an investigation,” Elias said, tapping the table irritably. “Why do you have such a lack of boundaries?”
Theolan was momentarily silenced by the remark. He looked at Elias as if re-evaluating whether his previous question had truly crossed a line. After a few seconds, he gave up the line of questioning and moved the silver probe under the light.
This allowed Elias to breathe a secret sigh of relief. As a Moon Lord believer, his power might be up to par, but his knowledge of church lore was basically a matter of learning as he went. If Theolan really started testing him on old rituals one by one, his cover might not necessarily be blown, but his status as a believer would likely be judged as needing a remedial course.
“In the old-style sea burial rituals of the Ascetic Society, a Dream Mourner would use this kind of sealing wax to coat the mooring ropes.”
“The ropes belonging to the 【Moon-Returning Boat】?”
“Correct,” Theolan said. “It can fix the final dream left by the deceased onto the boat, preventing the dream anchor from disconnecting from the deceased’s belongings when the ritual vessel moves. Just to be clear,” he added, glancing at Elias again, “the ritual sends away the dream left by the deceased, not the soul.”
“Well, then this fellow clearly didn't read the manual,” Elias said, pointing to the sealing wax on the table. “He sent a living person up there.”
Theolan didn't respond to the jab. He took a sheet of 【Dream-soothing Paper】 that Robert had used as a proxy and pressed the silver probe against the name on the paper and the silver thread respectively. The moon patterns on the paper glowed faintly. A moment later, the two fine threads actively coiled around each other.
Theolan’s fingers stilled. “Robert’s spirituality is mixed in here.” He took the other sample of residue and compared it again. The result was the same. “Someone has used the ritual in reverse. Instead of having a dead person’s dream cling to the boat, they’ve fixed Robert as a living dream anchor.”
“Hiss...” Elias felt a phantom ache in his teeth. A living dream anchor. To put it bluntly, wasn't that just turning a perfectly good human into “wetware” and plugging them into the ritual? Mysticism only made it look more dignified.
He looked back at the drawings on the table that depicted the sequence of events approaching the Lightless Lighthouse. The perspective in the dream wasn't fixed. It followed something, approaching the lighthouse along a waterway that didn't exist in reality. And in reality, Robert happened to be picked up by a boat.
“So the thing moving in the dream...” He pointed to one of the images of the sea. “...is also a boat?”
“Highly likely,” Theolan nodded. “The 【Moon-Returning Boat】 originally served as both a material vessel and a dream vessel.”
The answer didn't make things simpler. Instead, it gave that non-existent waterway something that could actually sail through it.
“Who would have a boat like that?” Elias asked.
“Current rituals no longer use the black-silver formula.” Theolan took a pen and paper and wrote down several lines. “But retired Dream Mourners, ritual boats that weren't decommissioned, and private counterfeiters might still have stock. I need to check the old archives, formula batches, and the ritual boat registry.”
“Formulas have batches?”
“The black-silver ratio, the moon phase processing, and the sealing wax holy seals have all changed.” Theolan tapped the two piles of residue with the tip of his pen. “Identifying the batch will narrow down the year of manufacture and the handling diocese. The ritual boat registry can tell us who the boat was ultimately given to, and the records of retired Dream Mourners can confirm who once mastered the full ritual. Cross-referencing these three sets of data should at least eliminate most of the possibilities.”
Elias looked down at the paper. The scope wasn't small, but it was at least much better than “everyone in Hastings Port who can dream.”
“How long will it take?”
“Before moonrise tomorrow night.”
As expected of an ascetic. For the same timeframe, others would say before nightfall, but they insisted on saying before moonrise. It sounded like an extra layer of mystical service fee.
Elias shook off these trivial thoughts and glanced at his watch. The hands were still moving. “Can't you go any faster?”
“The archives are in the cathedral basement,” Theolan said calmly. “The old numbering doesn't match the current directory. Even if I sent someone to fetch them now, they would have to be checked volume by volume before the relevant files could be brought here. They won't walk over on their own.”
“Then put some back into it!”
Theolan blinked. He looked down at the paper, then back up at Elias. “Put some back into it? How does one put their back into checking archives?” He paused, his expression showing a rare hint of hesitation. “Is that supposed to be humor?”
Elias was stunned. “What?”
“Bishop Raymond told me to practice humor,” Theolan explained earnestly. “I thought you were providing a demonstration just now.”
“...” Elias was speechless. It seemed that smiling tiger of a Bishop’s humor project had already started victimizing his subordinates.
“You should damn well practice checking the archives first.”
Rate on N.U.
