Chapter 44: Eternal Dream

Chapter 44: Eternal Dream

The Rorsted Archipelago was the Kingdom of Loen’s governing foothold in the Central Sonia Sea, and likewise a key diocese of the Church of Storms. A high-ranking deacon qualified to participate in the Cardinals’ Council had long been stationed there.

Of course, not every pirate at the admiral level could alarm such a great figure, let alone so-called second mates and boatswains. Deacon Cordova Royer accepted the mission happily, led two teams of Mandated Punishers, and activated Sealed Artifacts 2-37 and 2-166, lying in ambush some distance from Number 15 Fragrant Tree Avenue in order to ensure absolute success.

In Cordova Royer’s view, one Mandated Punisher team paired with two Sealed Artifacts was already enough to handle Steel’s group and Blazing Danitz. Yet the latter’s behavior of watching for pursuers in return made him somewhat worried. By intuition, he believed that some problem was hidden there, and so he called in another Mandated Punisher team.

In truth, 2-37 alone should be enough… Cordova Royer suddenly sighed while waiting.

In his view, this Sealed Artifact would become the nightmare of Steel, Blazing, and the others.

He closed his eyes briefly, and the corresponding information naturally surfaced in his mind:

“Number: 37.

“Name: Eternal Dream.

“Danger Level: 2. Dangerous. Use cautiously and with restraint. Only operations involving three or more people, or deacons and diocesan bishops, may apply for its use.

“Confidentiality Level: Bishop, team captain, and above.

“Sealing Method: Place in boiling water.

“Description: It resembles a heart. Its color is deep black, its touch cold, and it is riddled with holes. It often produces sounds similar to a bagpipe.

“This item originates from a primitive tribe in West Balam of the Southern Continent. They were led by spirit shamans and lived by resting during the day and moving at night.

“A Loenese army conquered this tribe and obtained this item, which had been worshiped upon an altar. Over the following week, soldiers gradually showed signs of disorder, madness, suicide, and other abnormalities.

“Research indicates that anyone who has come into contact with this item will enter a long dream. If not awakened by someone else, they will remain in that illusory world forever. Externally, they display agitation, fear, confusion, and similar emotions. Their psychological and physiological states gradually change.

“Researchers who were awakened still remained unable to distinguish reality from dreams for an extended period, leading to a series of tragic incidents, including but not limited to: confessing love to a superior, kissing a venomous snake on the mouth, suffering depression, stripping naked and sprinting in public, and attempting to bathe in boiling water. If they were not transferred to another city, their only endings were madness or suicide.

“This item can be used to make living creatures within a target range enter the same dream… The user may, within certain limits, choose targets and exclude companions… The maximum range is a radius of fifty meters. Exceeding this will place an enormous burden on the user and leave severe mental trauma… After use, the user will enter a state where they cannot distinguish reality from dream, and must leave the city where 2-37 is located to have any hope of recovery.

“Multiple cases, see appendix, indicate that even without contact, this item broadly affects the surrounding population unless placed in boiling water…”

“Appendix: 1. Similar to the Nightmare effect of the Evernight pathway, but more prominent and uncontrollable.

“2. Example 1: A guard forgot to add charcoal, causing the flame to go out and the boiling water’s temperature to drop. He quickly displayed abnormal behavior. Suspected of dreaming of the girl he loved, he made an impassioned confession to his own boxing glove and attempted to engage in relations beyond friendship with it. Example 2…”

As his thoughts turned, Cordova Royer suddenly saw Blazing Danitz. The fourth boatswain of the Golden Dream had indeed come to this contact point, intending to collect information.

He made a gesture, signaling the Mandated Punisher beside him to open the golden square box engraved with numerous symbolic marks and magical labels, and remove the Sealed Artifact 2-37 from the boiling water in which it was soaked.

That box, seemingly cast from gold, was another Sealed Artifact: 2-166.

It could maintain the original temperature of items inside it and, to a certain extent, alter the weather, producing a rain of Sun holy water.

Of course, it had major negative effects. Otherwise, the Mandated Punishers would have used it long ago to seal 2-37 instead of only temporarily exploiting its convenience. Among those effects, the most intolerable was that any item touching it for long enough would gain living characteristics and devoutly believe in the Eternal Blazing Sun. Among the Mandated Punishers, there had once appeared a table that sang praise of the Eternal Blazing Sun every day, and a candle that wanted, every second, to ignite itself and purify everything.

The irritable Mandated Punishers turned that table into a pile of firewood. The one that lit it was precisely the candle afterward.

Seeing figure after figure appear and rush into Number 15 Fragrant Tree Avenue, Cordova Royer pressed down his right hand without hesitation, ordering the team member beside him to activate Sealed Artifact 2-37.

Illusory fish scales immediately surfaced on the team member’s palm as he directly reached into the boiling water and seized the pitch-black heart-like Sealed Artifact.

A melodious bagpipe sound followed. Misty night enveloped the house at Number 15 Fragrant Tree Avenue.

The adventurer John Smith and the others found the scene before them unchanged: still the empty sitting room without furniture, still Blazing Danitz wearing a black cloak. They had no sense of entering a dream at all.

They worked hard to rush over, worked hard to fire their guns, worked hard to use their own abilities. They successfully heavily injured Blazing and seized this famous pirate with a bounty of 3,000 pounds, who was also tied to Death’s Key.

In the real world, however, they remained in place, lifting their knees high, or stretching their arms as though swimming, or using their fingers as guns while making bang, bang, bang noises with their mouths.

“Move!” Cordova Royer left his hiding place first, charging toward the house at Number 15 Fragrant Tree Avenue. The Mandated Punisher team members in the other locations split into two groups and completed the encirclement from different positions.

Before Cordova arrived, the sitting room had already filled with brilliant light, as though a sun were slowly rising there. Sacred, pure water droplets scattered downward like rain. This was Sealed Artifact 2-166 taking effect.

At a relatively distant location, the flying carpet hovered quietly, concealed by darkness. Steel Maviti and the others understood the moment they saw the Mandated Punishers appear that this had indeed been Blazing Danitz’s trap.

“That son of a bitch actually threw himself in with the Church of Storms!” Maviti growled, madness in his eyes.

Bloodthorn Huntley glanced at Calm Scour and praised him sincerely.

“Fortunately, we were not careless.”

“In truth, even I did not expect that idiot donkey Blazing Danitz to cooperate with the Church of Storms,” Scour said calmly. “Perhaps the injured him was captured long ago by the Mandated Punishers and had no choice but to cooperate.”

They were just about to leave when they suddenly saw something protrude from the shadows outside the house at Number 15 Fragrant Tree Avenue, clinging to the ground and swimming swiftly into the distance.

“Blazing!” Steel Maviti remembered the failed ambush from before.

“Danitz!” Huntley also recognized who this fellow trying to escape with a strange ability was.

Scour froze at first, then immediately understood.

“Either Blazing Danitz is trying to seize this opportunity to escape the Mandated Punishers’ control, or he had another trap prepared for us, only for the Mandated Punishers to appear for unknown reasons, forcing him to decisively abandon it and flee in a panic.”

“No matter what, this is an opportunity!” Bloodthorn Huntley glanced at the Mandated Punishers who had just rushed into the house. “As long as we seize the brief window of a few dozen seconds, we can kill or capture Blazing right under the Mandated Punishers’ eyes!”

Steel Maviti immediately grew excited, his eyes turning abnormally frenzied.

After Scour nodded, he said to the other two Beyonders, “Take my living corpses and marionettes and guard this position. Once the Mandated Punishers chase us, have them create chaos while you take the chance to break away!”

“Yes, boss.” The two Beyonder pirates, along with the living corpses and marionettes, jumped down from the flying carpet at the same time.

The peacock-blue carpet turned and gave chase ahead of Blazing Danitz.

“You assist us, mainly by guarding the surroundings. I am worried Danitz has other helpers,” Scour said quickly to Bloodthorn Huntley.

A smile appeared on Huntley’s slightly pale face.

“Fine!”

Scour said no more and nodded to Steel Maviti.

Relying on the advantage of looking down from above, Maviti identified the nearly imperceptible extra shadow and judged the direction in which the target was moving.

He suddenly leaped from the flying carpet, falling to the ground like an enormous boulder. White frost condensed beneath his feet, and a cold, transparent layer of ice rapidly spread toward the side.

The black shadow was immediately frozen at the corner of a wall!

With a crack, Blazing Danitz struggled free and “grew” out from the shadow.

From the flying carpet above, Huntley cooperated flawlessly, dropping objects he had already gripped in his palm: green leaves, flowers, and thorny vines.

Leaves, petals, and thorns either expanded madly or connected together, sticking to Blazing Danitz and wrapping around him, leaving him unable to move an inch.

Scour seized the chance to leap from the flying carpet. Borrowing the force of his fall, he drove the sharp scalpel in his right palm into Danitz’s neck.

Pfft!

His right hand dragged the handle. With a twist and a turn, he arrived behind the target.

Danitz’s head fell off at once, and his body swiftly flattened, transforming into a thin, tattered paper figurine.

At the same time, Steel Maviti felt an indescribably intense hunger. It was as though a terrifying monster hidden in the darkness was quietly watching him.

No, that is not Blazing! The thought had only just flashed through his mind when an extremely compressed blazing-white fireball flew over from a certain rooftop and smashed toward his body.

Steel Maviti made only one movement in response: he lifted his arm and blocked in front of himself.

Boom!

The flames exploded. The shockwave blasted outward, obstructing Scour and Huntley’s sight. Yet neither of them panicked in the slightest, possessing powerful confidence in Steel.

As expected, Maviti’s clothes were merely torn, and his skin held only faint white marks. He had not suffered any real harm.

But at that moment, he suddenly saw a figure filled with madness walk out from within the rolling flames in midair. Although the figure wore Blazing Danitz’s black cloak, he had neatly combed black hair, deep-brown eyes without the slightest emotional fluctuation, and a thin, cold face.

The Danitz from earlier had always been Klein, the Faceless. It had always been Gehrman Sparrow preparing for the hunt!