Chapter 118 Dream Boundary

Duncan looked at the nervous Agou, a smile on his face as gentle as he could manage—he felt there might be some misunderstanding between them, and it was best to clear it up as soon as possible.

But just as he was about to speak, he suddenly saw the blood-red light in Agou's eye sockets flicker—though it was impossible to discern any emotional change from a skull, he seemed to sense the abyssal hound's momentarily intense agitation.

The next second, he heard Agou's stuttering voice, "You... you're the 'Mr. Duncan' we've been dealing with these past two days?"

Duncan paused, then glanced at Shirley beside him.

He hadn't seen any interaction between Agou and Shirley, but it was clear that these two individuals connected by a chain had convenient means of sharing information.

"That's me," Duncan said with a smile, his tone gentle. "Is there anything you need me to explain? Or is there anything you want to know?"

"No!" Agou nearly shrieked, recoiling. "We don't need to know any 'knowledge' or 'truth'! We have no intention of prying into your mysteries!"

"...I still feel like there's some misunderstanding between us, but it seems harder and harder to explain," Duncan sighed, shaking his head helplessly. "Forget it, let time slowly help us build mutual trust. As for now, there are some things I want to understand."

Agou drooped his head. "Y-yes, please ask."

Duncan frowned. He was actually very curious as to why his ghost ship captain, notorious in the real world, had such a great impact among the abyssal demons. In his mind, the Abyssal Depths were especially close to the subspace.

"Place," the demons entrenched in the Abyssal Depths should be closer to those "lower shadows" than the mortals of the real world, correspondingly, they shouldn't be so afraid and resistant to the Homecoming from the subspace.

But now it seemed that the demons, who were already "dangerous existences" to humans, were as afraid of the Homecoming as humans were, which puzzled him. But before figuring out this problem, he first focused on the scene before him—

A "nightmare"—this nightmare from Shirley's deepest memories, which most likely reenacted the truth of eleven years ago.

"I want to know the details of this dream," he said, his gaze falling on Shirley. "I know this is a painful memory for you, and you can refuse if you don't want to talk about it."

"...There's nothing I don't want to say," Shirley simply shook her head. "I should be thanking you. You interrupted this nightmare, so I can suffer a little less... As you saw, that's what I experienced back then."

"The fire..." Duncan nodded gently, then looked at Agou again. "What I saw, was that the process of you and Shirley first 'met'?"

Agou turned his face away. "I was just an abyssal demon back then."

"Then how did you suddenly gain a 'heart'?" Duncan asked curiously. "From what I just saw, you almost killed Shirley back then."

"...I don't know," Agou said after a few seconds of silence, shaking his ugly head slightly. "When I first gained self-awareness, I saw Shirley lying on the ground, dying."

Duncan gave the abyssal hound a deep look, then followed the chain around its neck, seeing Shirley's dark, twisted body, half of which was fused and symbiotic with the chain.

"After that, you...merged together?"

"Sort of," Shirley said softly, her head lowered, hiding her eyes and expression in the shadow of her hair. "Actually, I don't remember very clearly either. After all, I was only six years old back then, and I lived in a daze for a long time afterwards... If you're really curious about how I slowly developed this relationship with an abyssal demon who almost killed me, you can grab a psychiatrist to hypnotize me and see, maybe..."

"No need." Shirley's words were suddenly interrupted, and then she felt a large hand press down on the top of her head in surprise.

The hand was actually warm.

"Sorry, I'm not trying to open your scars, I just want to know the details of eleven years ago," Duncan gently pressed the girl's hair. He knew that his question was not very pleasant for Shirley, who had just escaped from the nightmare. "You should know that in the incident eleven years ago, not only did the sun fragment appear, but countless cultists were also active, and the abyssal hound...in theory, should be a summon of the Annihilation Cult."

Shirley raised her head a little blankly, hearing Duncan continue, "A demon-like creature from the Abyssal Depths suddenly gaining humanity is itself a kind of 'mutation'. Have you ever wondered if this mutation might also be affected by some kind of trigger that year?"

Shirley blinked, saying a little sluggishly, "The sun fragment?"

"I'm not sure... No one knows what the sun fragment really looks like, or what kind of power it has. It's just that in the doctrines promoted by the Sun Cultists, the 'True Sun God' simply doesn't have the power to 'bestow humanity' or anything similar," Duncan shook his head. "So what caused Agou to develop humanity may be something other than the sun fragment."

"You mean, what appeared in the Principality of Pland eleven years ago might not have been just the sun fragment?!" Shirley finally came to her senses, her eyes widening suddenly.

"Just a little suspicion," Duncan patted Shirley's shoulder gently, then withdrew his hand. "Because I've always felt that there's a big discrepancy in this matter: the sun fragment is a 'sacred object' pointing to the Sun Cultists. According to those cultists, its power is actually very simple, and in terms of mystics, it's only related to the 'True Sun God'. However, in the chaos eleven years ago, the cultists who were arrested according to the officially disclosed documents included not only the Annihilation Cultists but also the Doomsayers, guys who had nothing to do with the 'True Sun God'... What were they doing getting involved?"

"Of course, it can also be explained that the power of the sun fragment was so great that even those who didn't believe in the Sun God were affected, causing them to go crazy on the same day. But this doesn't explain why such a strange 'phenomenon' as Agou appeared—a demon with madness attributes suddenly gained sanity during the incident. How did that happen?"

"Even extending outwards, there are many suspicious places, including but not limited to the veil shrouded outside the 'fire', the memories remaining in your and Nina's minds, the strange phenomena in the Sixth Block... We have always attributed all these oddities to the sun fragment, but now that I think about it carefully, is this really all the power of the 'Sun Domain'? Then the so-called True Sun God is just too omnipotent."

Duncan voiced his doubts, some of which had actually arisen before today, but after seeing Agou's mutation eleven years ago, he became more convinced of the suspicion in his heart.

The fire eleven years ago may have really been caused by the sun fragment, but there must have been something else at play in the whole incident!

Shirley was still a little dazed. She wasn't very good at thinking about these complicated things. While in a daze, she heard Agou's voice ringing urgently in her mind, "Shirley, are you okay? Did he release a curse when he touched your head just now? Are you still conscious? You..."

"I'm fine," Shirley replied in her mind with a bit of a wry smile. "Agou, you're too nervous."

"Nonsense, how can I not be nervous! You directly contacted a source of contamination that's enough to drive ordinary people crazy in an instant!" Agou's voice was panicked.

"Then how do you feel?" Shirley thought for a moment, touching the top of her head uncertainly. In her memory, the last time someone stroked her hair like this, comforting her softly like a child, was many, many years ago.

"...Warm." She murmured softly in a trance.

Agou was immediately shocked. "Shirley, is there really something wrong with your brain?"

"...Just shut up!"

Duncan didn't know what Agou and Shirley had communicated in this short moment. He just looked thoughtfully at the window, which was filled with dim red light, and suddenly asked, "What's outside?"

Shirley was stunned. "Huh?"

Duncan raised his hand, pointing to the window. "Outside the room, what's there?"

"I...don't know," Shirley blinked, suddenly realizing that in this nightmare that kept haunting her, there seemed to be an option that should never have existed. "I've never considered this question. Every time I dream, I'm trapped in this room..."

"But now you've broken free," Duncan walked to the door of the cabin, turning his head and saying softly, the words like a lure in the darkness, throwing an unprecedented choice in front of Shirley and Agou. "Want to try it, in a sober state... to see what the edge of your dream looks like?"