Elias actively channeled his spirituality into the gun.
The owl's eyes on the handle lit up simultaneously, and a powerful suction pulled from the muzzle toward the crescent wax seal on the deck.
The black flesh inside the gun woke up in response, contracting gently against the metal structure as if trying to identify whether this offering delivered to its mouth was edible.
Elias's right hand suddenly grew heavy as he gripped the gun.
The judgment of death recorded in the sealing wax was peeled away bit by bit. The spiritual imprint copied from him was torn into grayish-white threads, flowing backward along the barrel and into the cylinder.
The crescent moon beneath his feet, which had been on the verge of completion, quickly dimmed.
The third toll of the bell had yet to sound.
Click.
The empty cylinder rotated half a slot on its own.
A grayish-white bullet slowly took shape inside it.
The casing's surface bore no elemental patterns, only a black-and-silver crescent wax seal that fully closed as the last wisp of the curse was sucked inside.
The weightlessness that had gripped the depths of his spiritual body vanished.
Elias flexed his previously numb fingers, his sense of touch fully restored.
He looked down.
The black-silver sealing wax on the deck had completely lost its color, turning into a puddle of lifeless gray wax that cracked into several pieces as the hull rocked.
Not far away, the one hundred and thirty-six black-silver threads remained taut and steady.
The projections of the deceased did not dissipate, nor did they become fragmented.
“What about the memory connections?” Elias asked.
Theolan did not answer immediately.
He closed his eyes, using the crescent holy emblem to verify each connection one by one.
A moment later, he opened his eyes. For once, a look of clear astonishment appeared on his usually expressionless face.
“They are all intact.”
“It only absorbed the curse.”
“The memories carried by the sealing wax haven't been touched at all.”
Theolan stared at the elemental revolver as if seeing a gun for the very first time.
Elias rotated the grayish-white bullet away from the firing chamber, in a rather good mood.
The elemental revolver would only absorb the part belonging to the curse.
This made his future work much simpler.
This old partner of his looked a bit sinister, but it was surprisingly picky about its food.
Unfortunately, his joy lasted less than two breaths.
Black-silver sealing wax seeped out from the gaps in the deck once more.
There was even more this time.
They spread rapidly along the wood grain, bypassing the lifeless gray wax and closing in on Elias's shadow once again.
“Again?” Theolan immediately warned him. “Don't let it complete a second recording!”
Elias, however, did not fire right away.
As long as the caster behind this was still active, absorbing one copy meant they could just supply another.
No matter how much the elemental revolver could eat, there was no sense in standing by a leaking pipe just to keep catching the water.
He took half a step back, letting the 【Moonfire】 temporarily block the sealing wax, and then surged his spirituality toward his eyes.
【Moon Vision】 activated.
The projections of the deceased, the dark tide, the Return Bell, and the holy emblem in Theolan's hand all dragged overlapping spiritual trails.
The entire ship seemed to have been thrown into a tangled ball of yarn, filled with the memories of the dead, the dreams of the living, and the residual echoes of the reversed ritual.
Trying to find the source of a specific power within this was no different from trying to pick out a single specific noodle from a pot of pasta.
Elias did not look at the brightest spot.
He fixed his gaze on the new sealing wax beneath his feet.
The spirituality on the surface of the sealing wax seemed scattered, but with each surge, it would contract briefly in the same direction.
Once.
Twice.
Elias followed that faint backflow with his eyes, eventually looking toward an inconspicuous gap in the deck planks next to the cabin entrance.
The spirituality was coming from the lower deck.
It wasn't the old man's projection, nor was it the Return Bell.
Someone had been hiding beneath the deck all along, manipulating the sealing wax.
“Got you.” Elias spun the cylinder with his thumb, rotating a thunderclap bullet to the firing position, and pulled the trigger at the gap.
Boom!
Resonance energy slammed into the deck.
The trapdoor, which had originally blended in with the wood grain, was blown open on the spot, sending wooden splinters and black-silver sealing wax flying upward.
At the same time, a layer of cold moonlight lit up beneath the trapdoor.
The hastily erected 【Moonlight Barrier】 collided head-on with the thunderclap bullet. The barrier buckled inward, and the explosive shockwave spread outward along the deck planks.
The entire deck shook violently.
Elias took two steps back, shielding Theolan from the flying wood splinters.
The black-silver threads in Theolan's hands vibrated simultaneously, but fortunately, not a single one snapped.
“There really is someone?!”
A muffled cough came from beneath the trapdoor.
After a while, a man in his sixties stepped out, climbing up the broken wooden ladder.
His hair was already gray, his left sleeve was torn open by the resonance energy, and several scorched wounds lined his arm.
The man wore a black-silver relief deacon's robe.
Though the garment was old, the crescent pattern on the chest and the spiritual stitching were both genuine.
A name badge hung on his left breast.
Elliot Marsh.
When Theolan clearly saw the name, his expression finally changed.
“Father Marsh?!”
“The last Dream Mourner of the 【Quiet Tide】.”
“The archives record that you left the Ascetic Society thirty-seven years ago.”
Elliot glanced at him and did not deny it.
He stepped onto the deck and slowly raised his hands.
However, his gaze bypassed Elias's muzzle and fell upon the one hundred and thirty-six projections of the deceased near the gunwale.
“Where is Robert?” Elias asked.
Elliot did not answer.
“I didn't hurt them,” his voice was hoarse, but his tone was calm. “I just wanted to spare them from having to die a second time.”
“Whether dead people die a second time, I don't know,” Elias said, looking at the faces stitched together from memories. “But if you keep draining them, those one hundred and thirty-six living people out there won't even recognize themselves soon.”
“These aren't the deceased either.” Theolan tightened the black-silver threads in his hands. “They are merely dream shadows shaped by the memories of the bereaved.”
“They can only repeat what the living remember.”
The calmness on Elliot's face finally cracked.
“The night the sea beasts came ashore, my wife and daughter died too.”
As the last word left his mouth, his raised right hand trembled slightly.
He quickly clenched his fingers again, turning his gaze toward the unlit lighthouse deep within the shared dream.
“It was the 【Dream Helm】 that found it.”
“Inside that lighthouse is a 【Dream-Summoning Circuit】 that is still running.”
Hearing that name, Elias's hand gripping the gun suddenly tightened.
The night of the sea-folk invasion, Malcolm had specifically warned him.
Once someone used a dispel delusion spell at the top of the tower, that circuit would expose the caster's spirituality, forcibly opening a spirit world rift and drawing in hordes of dream demons.
That thing was not some safe warehouse for preserving memories at all.
It was a door specifically designed to let the spirit world demolition crew into reality.
“As long as the Moon-Returning Boat docks, I can use the spirit world rift opened by the Dream-Summoning Circuit to anchor these memories in the same dream,” Elliot continued.
“They will no longer need to rely on a living person to remember them. And the living will be able to see them again in their dreams. One hundred and thirty-six people is just the first batch.”
The coldness in Elias's eyes grew even deeper.
Elliot, however, acted as if he hadn't noticed.
He gazed at the extinguished lighthouse in the distance, his voice gradually growing intense.
“I am going to rebuild a Hastings Port there.”
“A Hastings Port where no one will ever be lost again.”
“You plan to use the memories of the living to build an empty city filled with imposters?” Anger finally surfaced in Theolan's voice.
“At least they will still be here!”
Elliot suddenly brought his hands together.
Elias's pupils contracted.
That wasn't a surrender.
From the moment Elliot raised his hands, his ten fingers had been slowly adjusting their positions.
Bringing his hands together now perfectly formed the complete ritual gesture for the Dream Helm.
The Return Bell suddenly rang.
Dong—
The one hundred and thirty-six projections of the deceased raised their heads simultaneously.
The dark tide outside the ship also surged onto the deck along with the tolling, pressing down heavily against the ring of fire.
The pale 【Moonfire】 was compressed into a thin layer by the dark tide. The projections of the deceased stepped over the flickering flames, lunging toward Elias and Theolan from all directions.
Theolan's arms snapped inward, weaving the black-silver threads into a dense net in front of them, forcefully blocking the foremost dream shadows.
“Dammit!”
“His active credentials were revoked thirty-seven years ago.”
“That's why he needed my holy emblem to set sail on the Moon-Returning Boat!”
“The next time you lay someone off, remember to revoke all their other credentials too!”
Elias held The Roaring Cane horizontally, and the 【Moonlight Barrier】 expanded to meet the sweeping tide of the dream.
Dozens of palms slammed against the barrier simultaneously.
The cold moonlight trembled violently, and Elias was pushed backward.
He couldn't kill the dream shadows directly, and the sealing wax was continuing to climb along the deck. For a moment, he couldn't free up a hand to aim at Elliot.
Elliot seized this brief window.
His figure was suddenly enveloped in black-silver spirituality.
At the same time, a piece of sealing wax next to the 【Dream Helm】 lit up with the same glow.
【Displacement Passage】.
The two swapped places in an instant.
By the time Elias turned his gun muzzle back around against the dream tide, Elliot was already standing before the Dream Helm.
He grabbed the helm with both hands.
The surrounding pitch-black sea parted to both sides.
The lighthouse in the shared dream approached rapidly.
The rusted door, the cracked stone walls, and the extinguished lantern room at the top of the tower were now so clear they felt within arm's reach.
A dull grinding sound echoed from beneath the hull.
While the sound of waves in reality still echoed from beneath the shared dream, the dream hull covering the ferry had already crashed into the black shore that shouldn't have existed.
The bow lifted slightly before slamming back down heavily.
All the projections of the deceased on the deck turned around at the same time, facing the rusted door like a crowd of passengers who had finally reached their destination.
Elliot looked back at the two of them.
“It is too late.”
“We have already docked.”
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