Chapter 1 Inception

In the forest shrouded in the twilight glow, Lucrezia followed the elven woman with the strange, long-handled weapon, constantly trekking deeper into the dense woods.

The other party moved quickly, her footsteps seemingly gliding on a flat, wide road even in the rugged, uneven forest overgrown with vines where there was no road at all – this extreme adaptability to the forest and the special gait even made one involuntarily recall the "classical techniques" mentioned in some ancient elven legends. In those descriptions, the elves once lived in vast lands covered in "forests." They could leap and travel through the woods like a gentle breeze, instead of forgetting many of the skills of harmonizing with nature in the high-rise city-states like modern elves.

Lucrezia, of course, couldn't keep up with such a pace – she knew it without even trying.

The witch had always refused outdoor activities. Even when she had to go out, she would use various spells to travel, so after being left behind by the elven woman for the first time, she decisively activated the Phantom Wind, occasionally transforming herself into scattered pieces of paper to pass through the woods, so she could keep up with the other party’s speed – anyway, her father wasn't here.

Her only concern was what reaction the strange elf who appeared in this "dream" would have after seeing this scene, but as it turned out, the other party didn't react at all when she saw these strange spells of hers, just like at the beginning, this elf didn't realize that the "uninvited guest" in front of her was a human, and instead wanted to take her to a place called the "Silent Wall" like inviting a member of her own race.

Seeing this situation, Lucrezia had some vague guesses in her heart, so she deliberately did some more obvious and discordant things to verify her conjecture – she simply stopped from time to time and used spells to create some bigger movements, such as suddenly summoning huge flower vines, or creating some explosions in the air.

The elf still didn't show any abnormal behavior – at most, she would stop and patiently wait for the other party to catch up when Lucrezia deliberately delayed.

Lucrezia temporarily stopped her "tests" and began to follow the other party in peace, while controlling the "puppet medium" in the distance in her mind, describing her situation to Duncan:

"After my tests, this elf is indeed not the 'dreamer' of this dream. She should be a 'product' of the dream, or a component... Her cognition and behavior patterns have obvious limitations... It looks like a layer of 'normalization filter'. The abnormal behavior of outsiders is 'normalized' in her eyes. This normalization may be to maintain the stability of the dream.

"I haven't conducted higher-intensity 'tests', and I don't know what the upper limit of this 'normalization' is, but in theory, if my behavior is too out of line, it may lead to the cognitive reset of this 'elf', or it may lead to a more intense 'rejection' of the dream world... Now I need to continue the investigation, and I can't take this risk...

"Ah, you have already entered the 'mutated' block? That's great. Then I hope you can find the 'dreamer' from the real world side. If you lock down the source of the dream, you should be able to directly intervene here as usual..."

"By the way, what's your name?"

A voice suddenly came from the front, interrupting Lucrezia's communication with the distance in her mind. The witch immediately stopped and looked up ahead.

The elven girl with the long-handled axe and wonderful blue threads woven into her blonde hair was turning her head, looking curiously at this side.

"You can call me Lucrezia," Lucrezia said frankly. "Why did you suddenly think of asking my name?"

"The more people who know their name, the more people who may remember them," the elf not far away said seriously. "My name is Shirin, you must remember it."

Lucrezia noticed the worry and tension in the other's eyes.

Along the way, she had noticed this sense of worry emanating from this strange elf more than once – and the tense atmosphere always permeated the entire forest, as if it were the "background color" of this dream itself.

After hesitating slightly, Lucrezia asked, "What happened?"

The elf named Shirin opened her mouth, but couldn't say anything. It seemed like she didn't know where to start, or maybe she felt that some things shouldn't be revealed to "ordinary people" casually, so in the end she just shook her head gently: "Don't worry, Silantis will protect us, everything will be fine... Let's go quickly, it is no longer safe outside the Silent Wall. The corrosion may appear in the area outside the wall at any time. You are lucky to meet a ranger like me."

Corrosion – Lucrezia immediately noticed this special word, then silently remembered it in her heart, and then followed Shirin's wind-like pace again, trekking towards the depths of this seemingly endless dense forest.

……

"Agou, did you hear anything?"

In the lush and endless dark dense forest, Shirley suddenly frowned. Then she bent down to hide behind a bush while vigilantly observing the movements around her, and carefully asked Agou, who was hiding in the shadows.

Agou's voice was directly transmitted into her mind: "Wind, the sound of trees, the calls of unknown birds, all normal sounds on the surface – but the atmosphere is very strange, and it has become more and more strange since just now. I don't know how to describe it, it's like... the environment itself is changing, and the surrounding trees are no longer trees, but something that is gradually showing malice..."

Shirley suddenly got goosebumps. Her eyes were nervous as she looked around at the unknown towering trees. One of her arms had gradually transformed towards the characteristics of a Deep Sea Fiend: "Agou, what you're saying is a little scary. There are tmd trees everywhere here..."

"You asked me to say it. I'm telling you my 'feelings' truthfully," Agou responded in a muffled voice. "I advise you to take it seriously. The perception of Deep Sea Hounds has always been keen – this forest is gradually becoming wrong."

"Even a fool tm knows that something is wrong here..."

Shirley muttered, cautiously leaving the bushes where she had just been hiding – although she didn't know what was happening here, her intuition told her that it was best not to stay in one place for a long time.

Everywhere she looked, there were plants. The lush and gloomy jungle was a scene that she, a girl who was born and raised in the narrow and crowded slums, couldn't even imagine. She had only recently heard about such a place from the captain and other people's conversations, but she didn't expect that she would be brought here after just taking a nap – if she guessed correctly, this should be the "Dream of the Nameless" that the captain and Lucrezia had both mentioned.

Feeling the gloomy and terrifying atmosphere around her, a hint of regret suddenly appeared on Shirley's face: "Should I not have taken a nap while doing my homework..."

"I don't think your entering this weird 'otherworld' has anything to do with whether you took a nap while doing your homework," Agou's figure gradually emerged from the shadows, condensing into shape in the floating dust. It walked beside Shirley, guarding the surroundings while muttering, "But the sentence itself is correct – you shouldn't have taken a nap while doing your homework."

"It's mainly because I get a headache as soon as I do math," Shirley mumbled, seemingly wanting to say some everyday topics to divert the tension brought by the gloomy atmosphere here. "And I know a lot of basic words too, so why do I still have to learn math..."

Agou listened silently on the side. It seemed to want to keep quiet, but after a few seconds of silence, it still muttered as usual: "You still have to learn some math, even for yourself..."

Shirley pursed her lips and couldn't help but mutter, "Agou, why do you want me to learn these things so much... I feel like you're more motivated than the captain..."

Agou didn't speak for a while. After a long time, just when Shirley was about to forget about this topic, it suddenly blurted out: "Do you still remember those seventy-two pesos?"

Shirley was stunned for a moment. After a while, her eyes widened slightly, as if she had finally remembered something from the faded childhood memories.

A slightly complicated expression appeared on her face. She said embarrassedly in a low voice, "You... still remember, it was so long ago..."

"I will always remember, a bastard who deserves to be killed, was able to trick a child out of several days' worth of wages from sweeping chimneys in the factory with a few randomly scribbled pieces of paper – if I had been literate at the time, you wouldn't have had to go hungry for those few days, if you had been literate at the time, you wouldn't have had to crawl into those dark and dangerous chimneys at all – being an apprentice copying numbers in the pump room would be better than that."

Shirley didn't say anything.

After a long time, she whispered, "But now you're literate, you're not just literate, you can even keep up with Nina's learning progress..."

"What if I can't be with you forever?" Agou grumbled.

Shirley was stunned for a moment, seemingly not knowing what to say for a while, and then subconsciously said, "Then the captain..."

"The captain won't necessarily protect you forever – he's good, he takes good care of you now, but the sub-space is ultimately unpredictable," Agou shook his head. "Shirley, you have to rely on yourself."

Shirley lowered her head. After a few seconds, she gently shook the chain connected to her arm: "Agou, what did you mean when you said you can't always be with me?"

"...Don't think so much, I'm just making an analogy," Agou sighed in his throat. "I'm not thinking about abandoning you, it's just that I'm not sure about the future, after all... I have a 'heart', and there has never been a Deep Sea Fiend with a heart in this world. No one knows what changes will happen to me. Perhaps 'humanity' will give me a lifespan limit like you humans, perhaps my sanity will gradually decrease with the passage of time, perhaps one day, my 'heart' will disappear again..."

"Agou," Shirley suddenly interrupted the other party. She glared and tugged hard on the chain in her hand. "You... stop talking."

"Okay, I won't say it."

(End of chapter)