The Bizarre Detective Agency

Chapter 917: Entering the Dream

Prusius's pain gradually subsided as they moved further away from the ruined Lennon Archipelago.

As night fell, a gloomy, anomalous fog settled over the sea.

Lu Li and his companions remained in the captain's cabin, while the cultists took refuge in the suites on the upper deck.

Lu Li cleaned and dried Prusius's wound, then wrapped it in a bandage. Once they had left the waters of the Lennon Archipelago, the injuries reverted to ordinary wounds that would heal within a few days.

Lu Li also had a mark on his waist, a thin line that was barely noticeable.

They had only been on the island for a short time, so the force destroying the archipelago hadn't affected them too deeply.

"I'm fine! You can visit my dream tonight, Mister Lu Li!"

To prove he was fine, Prusius scrambled onto a wooden chair and hopped down.

To test Lu Li's Dreamwalker ability, Prusius and Ophelia turned in very early.

Leaving the Merchant to stand watch, Lu Li drifted off to sleep as the ship sailed smoothly through the calm waters.By consciously activating his Dreamwalker ability, Lu Li didn't fall into a deep sleep as usual. Instead, amidst a chaos of strange, indescribable phenomena, he sensed two points of light floating calmly nearby—one faint, the other bright.

Discerning their positions, Lu Li's hazy consciousness drifted toward the faint point of light—the one representing Prusius—passed through a thin, luminous membrane, and entered it.

The chaotic colors of the dreamscape, like a view through a misted window, suddenly cleared. He was in a cavern hall, where a giant frog holding a knife and fork was preparing to devour the meal laid out on a long table.

But what had been the Deep God in reality was now Prusius, lying on the table as the meal.

"Mister Lu Li? Save me! It's come alive again! And it wants to eat me!"

Upon seeing Lu Li, Prusius began to struggle futilely.

The giant frog shot a cold glance at Lu Li.

"I've been waiting for you, Lu Li. Now, let's begin round two."

"Prusius," Lu Li said, ignoring the returned giant frog and addressing the figure on the table. "This is a dream of your own making. It's a projection of your subconscious fears and anxieties, not reality."

"What... it's not real? Then why does it have me?"

"Because it's a dream. The stronger your awareness of yourself is, the weaker it becomes, and vice versa."

"I'm not real? How is that possible!"

The giant frog roared in panic, but its voice sounded more like the doubts from the depths of Prusius's own mind, channeled through the creature.

"'You' don't know what happened in the first layer of the dream," Lu Li replied, addressing not the frog, but Prusius's dream consciousness itself.

As Prusius's self-awareness grew, he transformed from being bound on the table to crouching beside Lu Li.

"It really is a dream!"

At his joyful cry, the giant frog on the table—its own emotions twisting into a panicked shriek like that of the mask—began to scream.

As Prusius prepared to counterattack, Lu Li slipped away from the dream and dissolved into the other, brighter one.

A purple canopy draped over a pink bed in a pink bedroom. In the hazy candlelight, a figure lay on its side on the bed, knees drawn up to its chest.

"Darling, I've waited so long for you."

Ophelia removed the scholarly glasses from the bridge of her nose, revealing a face identical to the woman in the framed photograph.

The next moment, Lu Li was gone from Ophelia's dream.

Shortly after Lu Li awoke, Prusius and Ophelia also stirred. Ophelia remained silent about what transpired in her dream, but Prusius excitedly recounted his own to Lu Li. Unfortunately, he added, his dream had dissolved back into senseless chaos soon after Lu Li's departure.

They had confirmed Lu Li could enter their dreams; now they needed to see if he could pull others into one. If the ability only worked on sleeping targets, its effectiveness would be severely limited—after all, many anomalies don't dream at all.

This attempt took Lu Li a great deal of time. Rather than assuming the Dreamwalker ability had a cooldown, he suspected it was simply more difficult to pull a waking person into a dream, or perhaps that waking so many times in short succession made it harder to fall asleep.

But the result was good news: the silhouette of Prusius materialized in the dream version of the captain's cabin.

"Did I just fall asleep?"

He looked around, puzzled:

"Where is Miss Ophelia?"

"We're in a dream right now," Lu Li said.

"A dream... You did it, Mister Lu Li!"

Prusius wagged his tail.

"Only halfway."

Next, they had to see if he could pull Ophelia into the dream while she was awake.

The results showed that the "Dreamwalker" Cursed Title, granted by the Deep God, was more potent than expected—perhaps it had grown stronger after absorbing some of the god's power. Even Ophelia was unable to resist the summons into the dream.

It took an extraordinarily long time, however. It was nearly dawn before Ophelia finally succumbed, and only because she didn't actively resist the encroaching drowsiness.

In the middle of a fight, with an alert enemy, the ability would be useless.

"Use medicine... to assist," Ophelia suggested.

The alchemical ingredients found in Midnight and its sewers were sure to include something that could induce drowsiness in anomalies, creating an opening to use the Dreamwalker ability.

A misty dawn broke outside the captain's cabin. Contacting Midnight was now on the agenda, but first, Lu Li needed to recover his strength after the sleepless night.

"By the way, what was Miss Ophelia's dream about?"

Prusius remembered something and asked with great curiosity.

No one answered him.

A long time would pass, and Prusius would never find out what Lu Li had experienced during that brief visit to Ophelia's dream.

The voyage from the Lennon Archipelago back to the coast of the Fallow Lands took three days.

When the barren, dark coastline appeared on the horizon, Ophelia’s anxiety about the deep sea finally began to fade. It was a stark contrast to their journey out, when they had been accompanied by an ancient god.

They sailed along the coast and made a brief stop in Locou. There, Lu Li entrusted the local cult—who were no longer as wary of him—with a task: to send a letter containing a dozen eyeballs and instructions for their use to the University of Claire. This was intended to establish a connection between the Trader and Midnight.

Once they accepted the task, Lu Li picked up a newspaper. Though published in Midnight two weeks prior, it was considered "breaking news" here. He returned to the Andrea, and they set sail once more.

"Everyone in Midnight is praising Mister Lu Li... And some of the citizens want to put their faith in you!"

Prusius exclaimed, staring at the back page of the newspaper and drawing Ophelia's attention.

"Midnight... is friendly... and safe. Why... are we... not going there?"

"The Allen Peninsula is friendlier and safer," Lu Li replied.

The Allen Peninsula's Shadow Swamps belonged to the Mother of the Swamp. Belfast had the Church of Distortion and the Church of the Vine, and the Everlasting Dreamer who seemed to know everything. Plus, the fugitive cult's ocean liner was nearly complete.

Midnight, on the other hand, was rife with political intrigue and people who wanted to use him.

Only when the old system was completely shattered would people finally abandon their pathetic political squabbles.

While Lu Li and his companions made their way toward the Allen Peninsula, the knight Vino, having finally returned, set foot in the port of Vinnelag.