Chapter 102: Wandering (Seeking monthly votes)

Tick, tick, tick, the sound of the wall clock's second hand jumping was clearly audible in the dark room.

Not knowing how much time had passed, Lu Mi finally seemed to have broken free from a nightmare.

He hurriedly propped up his body, grabbed Aurora by both shoulders, and shook her forcefully:

"Wake up! Wake up!"

He lowered his voice, not daring to let the three official investigators on night watch hear.

Aurora's eyes were tightly shut, her mouth slightly open. No matter how Lu Mi shook her, there was no reaction, like a living dead person who had lost her soul.

Lu Mi's shaking movements became slower and slower, finally stopping.

He looked at Aurora in her "sleeping state" and remained motionless for a long time.

He didn't understand why this was happening, didn't know when the problem had originated, and felt as terrified and lost as he had on the night he saw his grandfather die.

After that day, he began to wander.

Lu Mi's hands gripped tighter and tighter, and his body trembled slightly.

Suddenly, he turned his body and looked toward the window.

That transparent, blurry "lizard" had returned to the room.

Lu Mi stepped off the bed, reached out his right hand directly, and grabbed the monster creature, which had been somewhat stunned to see him awake.

The next second, he stuffed the "lizard" into his own mouth, his expression twisted as he growled lowly:

"Don't you like crawling into other people's mouths?"

"Come on! I'll give you this chance!"

He stuffed the "lizard" in while biting down frantically, his eyes blood-red.

The "lizard" seemed frightened and didn't put up any resistance.

Just then, a voice came from behind Lu Mi:

"What are you doing?"

It was Aurora's voice.

Lu Mi froze, slowly turned his body, and looked toward the bed.

Aurora didn't know when she had woken up; she sat up with her blonde hair draped over her shoulders, her light blue eyes filled with confusion and bewilderment.

Lu Mi subconsciously lowered his head and found that the "lizard" he had grabbed was long gone.

For a moment, he didn't know if what he had seen and what had happened just now was a nightmare or reality.

"What's wrong with you?" Aurora frowned.

Lu Mi forced a smile:

"You had a nightmare just now and kicked me off the bed."

"Is that so?" Aurora scrutinized her brother suspiciously, feeling as if he were playing a prank.

She recalled for a moment and said:

"I did have a nightmare. I dreamed that I was grabbed by a huge monster and stuffed into its mouth. I was so scared that I struggled desperately and finally managed to wake up."

As Lu Mi listened, his body began to turn cold, as if he had been submerged in an alpine ice lake that hadn't completely melted.

"Maybe, probably, I really did kick you..." Aurora felt a bit embarrassed.

Lu Mi closed his eyes and revealed a smile:

"Just kidding. I woke up because of something else."

He then lowered his voice and said:

"That mysterious lady appeared in the dream ruins, helped me separate the 'Provoker' Beyonder characteristic, and gave me the correct potion formula."

"So, you were so happy you woke up and wanted to ask if I had the corresponding auxiliary materials?" Aurora suddenly realized.

Lu Mi said with a face full of smiles:

"That's right."

"Hmm, do you have dew made from honeysuckle, grapevine powder, and water fern powder?"

He smiled much more naturally than before, but there seemed to be some ripples flashing in his eyes.

Aurora thought for a moment and said:

"I have both grapevine and water fern; one is a ritual material, the other is a spell medium."

"Honeysuckle, we've always had it at home. I use it to soak in water to drink. Didn't you know?"

As she spoke, she rummaged through the hidden pocket of her house dress.

"That's honeysuckle?" Lu Mi watched his busy sister and said deliberately with a smile, "Why didn't you ask me if this time it was free help?"

Aurora took out a short piece of grapevine and said with a smile:

"Grind it into powder yourself!"

She didn't seem to have heard Lu Mi's question just now.

"Okay." Lu Mi also pretended he hadn't asked.

He then said to his sister:

"The 'Provoker' potion also needs distilled wine. I'm going to the cellar to get some now, striving to advance to Sequence 8 tonight."

"Making dew with honeysuckle takes some time," Aurora said with a slight frown. "However, the requirements for auxiliary materials for low-sequence potions aren't that strict. You can use a whole honeysuckle flower instead, as long as the Beyonder characteristic can finally dissolve, you can consume it."

She then looked at the open bedroom door and asked in a low voice:

"You're going to get distilled wine in the middle of the night. Aren't you afraid Ryan and the others will be suspicious?"

Seeing his sister's reaction, Lu Mi managed to keep his smile from becoming stiff:

"As a regular at the old tavern, waking up in the middle of the night and suddenly wanting to drink some wine is a very normal thing."

"Although alcohol has many, many disadvantages, at least it can let my mind get some relaxation."

He meant to use "the Lenten festival celebration is over, the mental pressure is too great, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep, and need strong alcohol to relax" as an excuse.

"Okay." Aurora indicated there was no problem.

Lu Mi turned and walked toward the door, the smile on his face gradually disappearing.

His hands were tightly clenched from beginning to end.

After stepping out of the door and arriving in the corridor, Lu Mi saw Ryan, wearing a brown tweed jacket and light yellow trousers, standing diagonally opposite, with Lyra and Valentine located at the two ends of the corridor respectively.

"Not sleeping anymore?" Ryan, holding a kerosene lamp, looked at Lu Mi.

Lu Mi smiled:

"Going to the cellar to get a bottle of strong liquor. How about it, do you want a sip too, to relax?"

"I don't need it." Ryan nodded. "You haven't experienced similar things, your mind is tense, and the pressure is great; it's foreseeable. Alcohol can indeed play a certain role."

As he spoke, he carried the kerosene lamp with its swaying, dim yellow light toward the stairs:

"I'll go down with you. You can't act alone at a time like this."

"Okay." Lu Mi didn't object.

As the two entered the stairs, Lyra took the initiative to move closer to Aurora's bedroom to stand guard at the door.

One step, two steps... Lu Mi and Ryan descended in silence to the dark first floor.

As the dim yellow light illuminated half the stove, Ryan asked as if casually:

"Something seemed to happen in the room just now? There was some movement."

Lu Mi opened his mouth and said very difficultly:

"Aurora, Aurora had a problem..."

His purpose in suggesting going to the cellar to get wine wasn't originally for advancing tonight—there was also a cellar with distilled wine in that two-story building in the dream ruins; he mainly wanted to avoid Aurora to communicate with Ryan and the others about what had just happened.

But when the words reached his lips, he almost couldn't say them, feeling that those few words were even more choking than the strongest liquor.

Ryan's expression immediately became serious:

"What's wrong?"

Lu Mi breathed several times before saying:

"Aurora, like the assistant priest, had that kind of suspected little elf 'lizard' crawl out of her mouth."

Saying this sentence completely, he felt as if all his strength had been drained.

After seven or eight seconds, he recounted the whole thing, only describing waking up as waking from sleep and happening to see it.

Ryan listened quietly the whole time without urging him. After he finished speaking, he said in a gentle tone:

"You handled it very well. Now, you can't let her know herself that she has appeared abnormal. I'm worried that would make the situation worse."

"You continue to pretend that nothing happened. When dawn comes, I will use the excuse that 'Cordu Village has been contaminated, and we need to do a purification once a day to prevent being affected' to let Valentine try to see if he can drive out that 'lizard'."

"Okay." Lu Mi answered with no strength.

He felt that the "lizard" had already merged deeply with his sister's soul and wasn't so easy to drive out or purify.

Ryan looked at him and patted his shoulder lightly:

"I can understand your feelings. If it were my relative who appeared with a similar abnormality, I wouldn't be able to stay calm either."

"But you must remember, impatience won't solve any problems."

"I know Valentine's purification likely won't have an effect, but we have to try to determine if it's impossible. Hmm, that kind of abnormality is highly likely linked to the cycle of Cordu Village. As long as we can finally break the cycle, your sister should be able to recover directly."

That's right... This is also equivalent to a kind of contamination. As long as I can recover all the contamination when the cycle is broken, Aurora will definitely be fine... Lu Mi's eyes gradually brightened, and he regained his motivation.

Ryan was quite satisfied with his reaction and said gently:

"I need to remind you that in the next few days, you need to adapt to your sister's changes."

"She will likely become like the assistant priest, gradually only having instincts, following memories and the most intense emotions to make different behaviors, while having no reaction to anything else."

Lu Mi was silent for a long while and said:

"I will adapt..."

His voice became lower and lower until it disappeared.

After getting the distilled wine from the cellar, the two returned to the second floor, as if nothing had happened.

Entering the bedroom, Lu Mi revealed a smile again.

He shook the bottle in his hand at Aurora and whispered:

"Success."

Aurora returned the smile and pointed to the desk:

"The honeysuckle, grapevine, and water fern are all there."

Lu Mi nodded and placed the wine bottle in his hand on the desk as well.

Then, he lay back on the bed, closing his eyes with the excuse of "falling asleep as soon as possible to advance in the dream."

He couldn't fall asleep no matter what.

He couldn't figure out when his sister had been contaminated and when that "lizard" had entered her body. During this time, the two of them were clearly together every second. Even when Aurora went to the washroom, Lyra accompanied her, and vice versa. How could a problem have occurred?

If it was while sleeping, why didn't I have a problem? Lu Mi tried his best to recall, hoping to find the source, which would help solve the abnormality.

Suddenly, he remembered something.

In the second-to-last cycle, assistant priest Guillaume Bénet said, "Does the Church want to kill all the adults here and harvest a ruin?" and said that even if Aurora really wanted to deal with them, he had other ways.

And at that time, he was still an ordinary person.

Lu Mi had originally thought his reliance was the shepherd Pierre Berry, but combined with the current situation, he had a guess, a crazy guess:

Perhaps from the very beginning, most of the people in the village had been parasitized by that strange, "lizard"-like creature, including Aurora!

As time drew closer to the twelfth night, the corresponding abnormalities would become more and more obvious, and some people would show signs of being wrong earlier.

The reason he himself was spared was because he had that blue-black symbol on him.

Thinking of the latter half of the second-to-last cycle, where Aurora presented a state of only talking and not doing in the handling of many things, Lu Mi felt his guess might be correct.

He couldn't help but bite his teeth tightly.

At this time, Ryan was patrolling back and forth in the corridor with a kerosene lamp.

On the wall to his side, his shadow suddenly elongated.

Almost at the same time, the silver bells on Lyra's veil and boots made a sound.

She felt her shoulders become exceptionally cold.

ps: Seeking monthly votes~

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 103 =====