Chapter 54: Interpretation

Lu Mi rolled backward a distance before rising again.

That sudden, abruptly cut-off scream eased his mind considerably.

Still, he did not let his guard down; he slung his rifle over his back, gripped his axe tightly, and cautiously approached the completely collapsed house.

Dust hung thick in the air above the piled bricks and timber, lingering for a long time.

Standing outside, Lu Mi could not see the monster’s body at all—proof it was fully buried. Under these conditions, his sense of smell was severely dulled; he even raised a hand to cover his nose, shielding it from the dust.

Facing this situation, Lu Mi stepped back seven or eight paces, maintaining a safe distance from the target, and waited patiently for the dust to settle.

While waiting, he constantly scanned his surroundings, alert for any sudden faint footprints or rapidly approaching scents.

Finally, the air regained its “freshness,” and his vision was no longer obstructed.

Lu Mi approached the building again, following the lingering scent of blood, and found the monster buried beneath layer upon layer of heavy stones.

Since he wasn’t in a hurry, he relied on his “Hunter” talent to remove the stones in a specific order, avoiding any secondary collapse.

At the same time, he remained ever vigilant, fearing the monster might still be alive and waiting for an opportunity to ambush him.

Another heavy stone was pulled away, and Lu Mi saw the monster’s head and neck transformed into a swirling “mouth.”

It lay on its back, crushed into a pulp of blood and flesh, its chest pressed flat against its spine; its tooth-filled “mouth” was pinned to the ground by a sharp, broken stub of stone column, and several of its dark, membrane-covered tentacles had been severed.

Had its features not been so distinct, Lu Mi might not have recognized this semi-solid, highly viscous mass of meat as his target.

This was better than he’d expected!

After preliminarily confirming the monster was dead, Lu Mi turned his gaze to its chest and found the three black marks still clearly visible.

How strange… even in the world of mysticism, this shouldn’t be common, right? Lu Mi, though thoroughly drilled by his sister, still lacked too much knowledge—he could only make rough judgments by instinct.

He had originally planned to use his pocket knife to peel off the patches of skin bearing the black marks, but the trap had worked too well—the entire chest’s skin was utterly shredded and crushed into the flesh, impossible to peel away.

After a few seconds of thought, he tore a small piece from the inner linen shirt he wore and laid it flat before him, using it as paper.

Then he cut another strip of cloth, wrapped it around his index finger, and dipped it into the monster’s blood—whether this fully isolated potential contamination or toxicity, he didn’t much care; if anything went wrong, he could simply exit the dream, since injuries carried into reality were minimal—he’d fully recover within a few hours or half a day.

Using the monster’s blood as ink, Lu Mi traced the three black marks.

As he drew, he suddenly felt dizzy, with a dull throbbing pain forming at his temples.

Based on Aurora’s teachings and his own bodily awareness, Lu Mi concluded his spiritual energy was nearly depleted, and he identified the cause:

“Just tracing these three marks has almost drained my spiritual energy?”

He was astonished by the strange black marks and shocked by how low the "Hunter's" spiritual ceiling was—barely stronger than that of an ordinary talented person.

After resting for a while, Lu Mi resumed tracing; it took him three intermittent attempts before he finished, his head throbbing with each effort.

In this state, he could not explore further; he gathered up the cloth, picked up his axe, and headed back toward home on the other side of the wasteland.

As he stepped out of the ruins and relaxed slightly, he suddenly felt his “Hunter” potion had digested further.

“Looks like that was a successful hunt…” Lu Mi muttered.

His half-formed, unorganized reflections surfaced in his mind:

“Calmness is vital… when suddenly encountering prey with no time to prepare, calmness is even more vital.”

“Always observe your surroundings and think about how to use them.”

As his thoughts shifted, Lu Mi returned home, climbed to the second floor, and entered his bedroom.

He forced himself to memorize the marks for a while before collapsing onto the bed, falling into a deep sleep.

…………

The next morning, when Lu Mi awoke, both his temples still throbbed slightly—a minor sign of excessive spiritual depletion in the dream ruins.

He shook his head, left his room, and went to the bathroom to wash up.

When he came downstairs, he found his sister had already prepared breakfast: toast with jam, sliced sausage, and rich coffee.

“So early?” Lu Mi blurted out in surprise.

His sister rarely woke up this early.

Aurora replied irritably:

“You’ve realized you’re trapped in a time loop, and everyone around you is stranger and more terrifying than the last—how can you sleep well? I certainly can’t.”

“I can’t help it,” Lu Mi comforted her. “At least you can truly sleep—I’m busy even in my dreams.”

“True,” Aurora said, sipping her coffee with half a packet of sugar.

Once her brother sat down and ate most of his toast and sausage, she asked:

“What did you find in the dream ruins this time?”

Lu Mi recounted the entire encounter with the monster in full detail, then added:

“Aurora, uh, sister, can you help me figure out what these three black marks mean? The parish priest at the end of Lent had something similar—only more of them.”

Aurora nodded lightly and pulled out a fountain pen and notepad from a hidden pocket in her cream-colored corseted dress.

Lu Mi quickly sketched the black marks, reproducing them imperfectly.

Soon, as he handed the notepad to his sister, he explained:

“I only memorized them a few times—some parts I’m unsure about, but these parts here, here, and here are definitely correct.”

Merely reproducing these partial marks had drained more of his spiritual energy.

Aurora placed the notepad on the dining table, stared at it intently for a while, then said:

“These aren’t any script I recognize, and the symbols are more twisted than those commonly found in mysticism.”

Just as Lu Mi felt a flicker of disappointment, Aurora added:

“From the way these mystical glyphs and symbolic signs affect their surroundings and manipulate natural forces, I suspect these are external manifestations of a special contract.”

As she spoke, she tapped the notepad with her index finger.

“Contract?” Lu Mi asked.

Aurora nodded:

“Judging from your fight with the monster, each black mark likely represents a unique contract.

“This contract probably grants it a supernatural ability from some spirit-world being, extradimensional entity, or alien lifeform—so the mark on its left chest glowed to enable invisibility, the one below its neck emitted sounds that provoked irritation, hatred, and madness, and the one on its right chest showed no effect—I suspect it relates to the ‘mouth,’ tentacles, or digestion.”

“That explains it…” Lu Mi suddenly understood certain details from the battle.

He smiled then:

“So the parish priest made over a dozen contracts with different beings?”

“What’s that called? Everyone can be his father!”

“Weird phrasing,” Aurora muttered. “Now it seems the parish priest you fought at the end of Lent didn’t even show a tenth of his power—he likely used only one of his contracted abilities, yet his body and mind inexplicably lost control, leaving him helpless before you.”

Lu Mi, who hadn’t understood during the previous and earlier loops, now clearly felt how lucky he’d been.

Eagerly, he asked:

“Can I trace the contract on the monster and establish contact with the corresponding being?”

He was deeply envious of the “invisibility” ability.

“A contract is a contract, a ritual is a ritual—do you know how to perform a ritual?” Aurora doused his enthusiasm. “Even if you mastered the ritual, do you know what price such a contract demands? The parish priest probably achieved this through the favor of some hidden entity…”

Here, Aurora paused for a second, murmuring to herself:

“Why does the monster in your dream ruins also have these black marks… did it also receive that entity’s favor?”

As she spoke, Aurora’s gaze shifted to Lu Mi’s left chest:

“Could it be connected to the black thorn symbol that locks your heart?”

“The parish priest had one too… perhaps the dream ruins were created by the hidden entity represented by the thorn symbol, and the key to breaking the loop might lie there—or perhaps, under certain conditions, reality and the dream ruins must synchronize in some action to resolve the problem…”

“Possible,” Lu Mi thought. This explained why the monster had black marks, and why the mysterious woman had sent him to explore the dream ruins and uncover its secrets.

He sighed:

“Aurora, uh, sister, your imagination is truly far richer than mine.”

“That’s the discipline of a writer,” Aurora smiled.

After breakfast, she had Lu Mi join her in the study to teach him Hermes script.

They didn’t stop until late afternoon, taking only casual snacks in between.

“Alright, you can go out now and meet Pierre Beri for a drink,” Aurora said, judging the time appropriate enough to avoid suspicion.

Lu Mi grunted in agreement, then added with concern:

“You be careful.”

His sister was about to risk contact with the three sheep to gather intelligence.

…………

Inside the dilapidated two-story house where the shepherd Pierre Beri lived.

Lu Mi glanced around and asked the old woman before him:

“Where’s Pierre?”

The old woman was Pierre Beri’s mother, Ma Erdi; though only in her early fifties, years of labor had left her deeply wrinkled, her skin spotted, her black hair streaked with white—she looked no younger than Naloka.

“He went to church,” Ma Erdi replied.

Again to church? Lu Mi’s heart jolted.

(End of chapter)