On the shore within the dream, just as Elliot's last word fell, the rusted door of the lighthouse swung open on its own.
The hinges made no sound.
There was no light inside the doorway.
Only a massive web of pale threads reached out from the darkness, stretching across the damp reef to wrap directly around the one hundred and thirty-six projections of the deceased on the Moon-Returning Boat.
The figures that had been crowding the deck and the gunwale froze simultaneously.
In the next instant, they were dragged forward by the threads, sliding across the wood.
Some still held the posture of serving soup; some cradled a wooden toy boat in their arms; others silently sang songs from the memories of the living across the black surface of the sea.
Yet, regardless of who they had been in life, none of them resisted now.
The one hundred and thirty-six black-silver memory connections tightened in response.
With every inch they were dragged, a small fragment of the scenes within the threads dimmed.
These did not belong to the dream shadows themselves, but were the last remaining memories of the living back in the Third Relief Shelter.
The door was pulling them out, piece by piece.
Theolan's hands suddenly sank. The spiritual threads wrapped around his fingers cut into his skin, and the beads of blood that welled up were instantly dyed gray by the shared dream.
“We can't let them enter that door!”
An urgent tone finally broke into his usually flat voice.
“Once these memories are completely severed from the living, the people in the Third Relief Shelter will never get them back!”
Ahead of them, near the lighthouse, Elliot had already placed a hand back on the Dream Helm.
The translucent 【Moonlight Barrier】 expanded flush against his body, shielding both him and the Dream Helm inside.
“Just a little longer,” the old man said. His face looked pale under the moonlight, but his gaze remained fixed on the projections of the deceased.
“Once they enter the lighthouse, they can truly stay.”
Elias raised his elemental revolver. The muzzle tracked Elliot's forehead twice before he was forced to lower it.
He couldn't shoot.
These dream shadows were not living people, but they carried the very pieces the living were most reluctant to lose.
No matter who the bullet hit, the ultimate victims would be the people in the shelter who hadn't dared to sleep for two days.
It was bad enough having his hands tied.
Now, this rat was actively hiding behind a shield of one hundred and thirty-six ancestral tablets.
“Mr. Constantine!”
Theolan was pinned to the spot by all the connections, his shoulders already starting to tremble.
“I can't let go!”
“I can see that.” Elias stared at the dream shadows rapidly approaching the bow and suddenly let out a cold laugh.
“Keep holding on.”
Before his voice even faded, he swept The Roaring Cane outward.
The Rational Circuit instantly engaged.
A massive wave of 【Moonfire】 spread across the deck, though it did not actually burn into the dream shadows.
The pale flames seeped into the gaps between the figures, forcing them to crowd closer together for a brief moment.
The black-silver threads gleamed blindingly under the firelight, refracting back and forth among the hundred-plus translucent bodies.
In an instant, all Theolan could see was a blur of shifting white light and intersecting shadows of threads.
“What are you doing?”
“Don't look.”
“I can't see anything right now anyway.”
“Perfect.”
After Elias replied, his spirituality enveloped his entire body.
【Moonlight Veil】.
His outline rapidly dissolved into the chaotic moonlight around him, and his footsteps were swallowed by the lingering hum of the Return Bell.
It was better not to let an active member of the Ascetic Society see too clearly what he was about to do next.
After all, if Theolan witnessed an outsider treating the defense spell they took such pride in like a mere curtain, explaining it later would probably be more of a headache than the actual fight.
Elliot immediately raised his other hand.
The Moonlight Barrier slowly rotated flush against his body, keeping itself firmly between the blurry distortion and the Dream Helm.
His eyes gleamed with a silver light as his 【Moon Vision】 swept across the deck, inch by inch.
Elias's figure had not vanished completely.
In Elliot's vision, there was still a faint, almost illusory spiritual trace slowly moving around the outer edge of the barrier.
Elliot did not dare to lower any of his defenses.
This was no ordinary invisibility.
If he let his guard down for even a second, the other man could shoot from an angle the barrier did not cover.
He continued to channel his spirituality into the barrier, his eyes locked onto the blurry trace.
But right at that moment, a gentle breeze blew past the Moonlight Barrier right in front of him.
Elliot froze for a split second.
The barrier did not vibrate, nor did his spirituality detect any attack.
It felt as though someone had simply walked right through it.
Long ago, Elias had used his own shoulders to prove a certain fact to another ascetic.
The 【Moonlight Barrier】 was excellent at blocking arrows, bullets, and incoming spells.
But it was terrible at stopping a living person like him.
In the next instant, the veil parted.
Elias stood directly in front of Elliot, less than half a step away.
“Impossible!”
Elliot recoiled, his hands instinctively tightening on the Dream Helm.
“How did you pass through it?”
“None of your business.”
Elias stomped his foot down.
Crack!
The wax seal marking used for the 【Displacement Passage】 next to the Dream Helm shattered on the spot.
Elliot tried to raise his hand, but The Roaring Cane slammed down horizontally across his wrist, pinning his arm firmly against the helm.
The cold muzzle of the gun was immediately pressed against his chin.
The owl's eyes on the handle glowed with distinct lusters.
In the cylinder, the grayish-white bullet that had just absorbed the judgment of death rotated right before Elliot's eyes.
“Now, take your hands off the helm,” Elias said.
Elliot's Adam's apple bobbed.
He looked down at the crushed sealing wax, then at the gun inches from his face, and finally, slowly let go of the wheel.
Deprived of control, the Dream Helm slipped, and the hull let out a dull grinding noise.
The pale threads dragging the figures toward the lighthouse did not vanish, but their movement slowed down significantly.
“Where is Robert?” Elias did not give him a moment to catch his breath.
“The... lower deck.”
“Don't play tricks.”
Elias turned his head slightly, looking back at Theolan, whose vision was still mostly obscured by the Moonfire and the memory connections.
“I've found him. What's next?”
Theolan's gaze shifted from the intact Moonlight Barrier to Elias. His lips parted, but he forced himself to swallow his questions.
“We must wake Robert up.”
Theolan's voice echoed directly in Elias's mind. It was the 【Mental Channel】.
“He is the living anchor of this ship. The Dream Helm only responds to his will.
“Only if he personally wills it to turn back will the Moon-Returning Boat leave this place.
“Only then can I send these memories back.”
“What if we force him?”
“It won't work.”
Theolan tightened the threads around his fingers, hauling back two dream shadows that were about to slip away.
“You cannot deceive intent in a dream.”
“Sounds like a very polite system of consent,” Elias remarked, though his muzzle did not budge an inch from Elliot.
“But I have one more question.”
Elliot looked up at him.
“Don't think I don't know,” Elias gestured with his chin toward the lighthouse on the shore.
The darkness behind the door was slowly rising and falling, as if something were breathing through an invisible membrane.
“Once the Dream-Summoning Circuit is fully activated, the dream demons behind the spirit world rift will be unleashed.
“And we're not talking about just one or two.
“How do you plan to handle that?”
Elliot fell silent for a few breaths. The trace of panic forced out of him by the gun muzzle gradually receded.
“Dream demons are very useful,” he said.
“These dream shadows lack the dead's own memories, so they can only repeat the actions and words remembered by the living.
“They cannot think, nor can they truly answer questions.
“But dream demons can read cognition and weave dreams.
“As long as we let them inhabit these dream shadows, they can fill in the blanks.
“When that happens, they will be able to converse, think, and go on living.”
The spiritual threads in Theolan's hands trembled violently.
“Are you insane?
“You want to let dream demons parasitize the projections of the dead?”
“It is not parasitism,” Elliot's voice grew stubborn again, “merely borrowing their ability to shape dreams.”
“Is there a difference?”
Elias stared at him, any trace of sympathy he had felt for the man's loss of his wife and daughter completely evaporating.
“You're going to invite a pack of starving dream demons into your kitchen and trust them to guard your food?”
“No,” Theolan interrupted from a distance, his face turning even paler than before.
“The problem isn't just with these dream shadows.”
He looked toward the darkness behind the lighthouse door.
“Anchoring so many dream demons to a single physical point will create a massive collective resonance.
“Elliot, have you considered the reaction of the Dream Demon King?”
Dream Demon King?
Elias's mind briefly conjured up an image of some generic demon king.
Then, he realized the true trouble behind those words.
Dream demons had a ruler.
The curse mark behind Elias's ear seemed to tingle with a sudden chill.
A single dream demon had crawled into his memories and plagued him to the point where he could barely distinguish reality from illusion.
If a whole swarm of them was backed by a ruler, then this was far more serious than simply unleashing a few spirit world pests.
It meant these creatures were not just independent, low-grade pests that blindly pounced on any living soul they encountered.
They formed packs, and perhaps even possessed a kind of order that Elias did not yet understand.
Elliot merely shrugged.
“Does the Dream Demon King even care how many dream demons die?”
His gaze drifted back to Elias's face, as if he had finally caught onto a question more worthy of investigation.
“Now it's my turn to ask.
“How exactly did you just—”
“Shut up.”
Elias yanked a cloth sash from Elliot's robe, balled it up, and stuffed it straight into his mouth.
“You think you're interrogating me now?”
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