Chapter 126: Mental Transformation

“So you had two dreams last night?” William one hand on the helm, his gaze partly fixed on the murky river surface, mostly wandering over the hills along the banks, always keeping the vessel centered in the channel.

Since returning to the boat and escaping that distrust of the ground beneath his feet, his mental state had improved with the journey’s length—though it might have been better still if not for that person’s repeated nighttime jolts.

The river surface was calm, requiring little effort to steer frequently, so the captain could spare a few words in conversation with his companion.

“If waking up in a dream counts as waking up, then yes, two.” No one had ever established a standard definition; Kraft didn’t know whether to distinguish them by continuity or content, so he could only describe them vaguely: “Two nested, linked dreams.”

“Dreams within dreams aren’t uncommon.”

“But the content was unusual, so I want to know if you’ve dreamed of those things recently.” Following the principle of parallel comparison, a control sample was needed to expose what was different; after experiencing all this, who could guarantee no psychological damage had taken root?

To ensure comparable conditions, the only two people here who had shared deep experiences were Kup and William.

The former indeed slept poorly, but most of it stemmed from his first time killing. This retainer had performed excellently in training, swinging his weapon correctly, delivering each blow at the right speed to every enemy without harming himself.

Once freed from the tension of battle, the numbness born of intense emotion receded faster than the half-life of a short-acting drug.

By the next morning, when he clearly saw the results of his actions, the exhilaration from his first successful retainer mission vanished completely, replaced by confusion and fear—how fragile a human life could be.

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In the dead, he saw himself. If life could drain so swiftly from those wounds—human or otherwise—then when the same fate came for him, it would not spare him a single second.

Content related to violence and death troubled Kup for a long time. He had sought guidance from Kraft, but Kraft had no direct experience with “why humans inflict such terrible violence on their own kind, or how they achieve self-reconciliation.”

Indirect experience from elders suggested few veterans he knew had similar issues, and even those who did quickly moved past them. Looking back now, it was likely survivorship bias.

Thus, images of shattered bones, collapsed chests, and uncontained blood frequently haunted his dreams; the retainer had to endure this trial on his own and truly earn his “certificate of qualification.”

Kraft also confirmed that Kup’s condition was entirely different from his own, so he went up on deck to find William, who seemed afflicted with “land fear.”

Clearly, the latter did not wish to discuss anything related to hills or caves, especially anything tied to the deep. He turned his head, brushed his increasingly dry beard, and coughed twice—perhaps acknowledging he’d heard.

Then silence fell. The two stood in the river valley’s stinking wind, watching sailors adjust the main sail. To the rhythmic, familiar northern ship chant, the yardarm was slowly raised into position, ensuring the vessel wouldn’t be blown toward either bank.

This was, of course, William’s demand. Even though occasional patches of yellow-green vegetation on the low hills along the shore indicated they had nearly reached the southern hills’ edge, whenever he paid attention, the ever-present black hollows still appeared sporadically across the hillsides, each one proclaiming the presence of that terrible thing—some of the larger ones still clearly visible across the wide river.

He imagined them in distant ages, dominating the land as whales dominated the sea, frequently surging upward, hurling waves of stone and rain of rock. The scarred southern hills were witnesses to that terrifying era.

A distance of merely dozens of meters from shore offered him no safety when he saw those openings; he had to watch them vanish entirely from view, swallowed by the river’s next bend.

Perhaps only when he reached familiar oceans, with not a scrap of land in sight, could he truly feel at ease.

Fortunately, that goal was not far off. Once they reached the confluence with the Tem River, the estuary lay ahead, followed by the sea voyage back to Weijie Harbor.

“In two more days, we’ll enter the Tem River and say goodbye to these things forever.” William turned his head back; his gaze always seemed alert, never pausing for a moment, “Can’t you let me have a few peaceful days?”

His tone carried a bitter resentment, like a ghost who hadn’t slept in days. It was easy to understand: if someone had occupied his private space for days, constantly making noise at night, swinging swords at the air, and recounting terrifying, reality-based dreams that left him mentally exhausted, he wouldn’t be calm either—even if that person had just pulled him out of hell.

William’s beard had transformed from oily, high-quality fur to a wild tangle of southern hill grass—half due to the deep, one-tenth from the foul air, the rest entirely Kraft’s doing.

“I’m just asking a simple question—I promise I won’t describe those things to you again, okay?” Kraft raised both hands to show he was harmless, abandoning any recounting of his experiences in Wenden Harbor’s deep, lest he further destabilize William’s fragile mental state and worsen his hair quality.

After two separate encounters, observing others’ reactions, Kraft had unexpectedly realized he might be slightly different.

Take William and Kup as examples: the immense shock had altered their worldviews to some degree. The writhing things of the deep had shattered the Church’s lifelong influence on Kup, changing his outlook on life. William’s transformation was even more pronounced—he had completely reversed his perception of water and land.

Kraft, however, displayed a strange stability. He didn’t know whether to describe it that way, but even ignoring everything else, the near-death experience alone should have been devastating; combining new senses, dimensional shifts, and conflicting normal perceptions, it wouldn’t be surprising if he developed some functional impairment, let alone full-blown psychosis.

In fact, before this, he had never experienced anything abnormal that affected his daily life. So after days of tormenting nightmares, while reflecting on his mental state, he also began considering other possibilities.

“Alright, alright.”

It seemed William couldn’t shake Kraft off today without answering. Reluctantly, he recalled his recent sleep patterns. Honestly, the part closest to a nightmare was Kraft’s own description—there was a kind of magic in it, the words overflowing with an atmosphere beyond language, pouring those irrational deep experiences directly into the mind.

The speaker himself hadn’t noticed, but the listener, overwhelmed with the visceral sensation of reliving it, tossed and turned, unable to sleep, finally collapsing into slumber from sheer physical exhaustion—and slept deeply, too drained even to dream.

“No, I have none of those symptoms. Next time, I hope you’ll tell me something pleasant—like how we can turn this secret into a pile of actual gold coins.” Only the original purpose of this journey—the Vestermin coins—could soothe his soul. And Kraft? He’d better vanish from the deck soon.