Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The second hand of the wall clock echoed through the dark room.
After what felt like an eternity, Lumian finally shook off his nightmare.
He hastily reached over, gripping Aurore's shoulders and shaking her vigorously.
"Wake up! Wake up!"
He stifled his voice, careful not to alert the three official investigators on night duty.
Aurore's eyes remained tightly shut, her mouth slightly agape. No matter how much Lumian shook her, she didn't respond. She appeared like a living corpse, devoid of a soul.
Lumian's shaking gradually slowed, then ceased altogether.
He gazed at the sleeping Aurore, frozen in place for a long while.
He couldn't comprehend what was happening or when the issue had begun. The fear he felt mirrored the night he'd witnessed his grandfather's death.
From that day on, he'd embarked on his nomadic existence.
Lumian's fists clenched tighter, his body quivering slightly.
Abruptly, he spun around to face the window.
The translucent, ghostly "lizard" had returned to the room.
Lumian leaped off the bed, lunging with his right hand to grab the stunned creature as it caught sight of him awakening.
In the next instant, he jammed the "lizard" into his mouth, snarling with a twisted expression, "You like to worm your way into people's mouths, huh? Fine! I'll give you a chance!"
As he crammed the "lizard" into his mouth, he tore at it ferociously, his eyes bloodshot.
The "lizard" appeared too petrified to resist.
Just then, a voice sounded behind Lumian.
"What are you doing?"
It was Aurore's voice.
Lumian froze and slowly turned to look at the bed.
At some point, Aurore had woken up. Her blond hair disheveled, she sat up with her light-blue eyes filled with confusion and bewilderment.
Subconsciously, Lumian glanced down and realized that the "lizard" he had captured had long vanished.
For a moment, he didn't know if what he had just seen was a nightmare or reality.
"What's wrong?" Aurore frowned.
Lumian forced a smile.
"You kicked me off the bed while having a nightmare."
"Is that so?" Aurore eyed her brother suspiciously, feeling like he was playing a prank.
She thought for a moment and said, "I had a nightmare. I dreamt that I was grabbed by a huge monster and stuffed into its mouth. I was so frightened that I struggled with all my might and finally woke up."
As Lumian listened, a chill ran through his body, as if he had been submerged in an icy lake that hadn't completely thawed.
"Maybe, probably, I really kicked you…" Aurore was a little embarrassed.
Lumian closed his eyes and smiled.
"I'm just kidding. I woke up because of something else."
He then lowered his voice and said, "That mysterious lady appeared in the dream ruins and helped me separate the Provoker Beyonder characteristic and gave me the correct potion formula."
"So, you woke up in joy and wanted to ask me if I had the corresponding supplementary ingredients?" Aurore deduced.
Lumian said with a smile, "That's right. By the way, do you have honeysuckle extract, grapevine powder, and fern powder?"
His smile was much more natural than before, but there seemed to be a flickering glint in his eyes.
Aurore mulled it over for a moment before responding, "I have both grapevine and fern. One is a ritual ingredient, and the other is a spell medium.
"Honeysuckle flowers. We always have them at home. Don't you know that I soak them in water for drinking?"
As she spoke, she rummaged through the hidden pocket of her long dress.
"That's honeysuckle?" Lumian looked at his busy sister and deliberately smiled. "Why didn't you ask if I was given free help this time?"
Aurore took out a short grapevine and said with a smile, "You grind it into powder yourself!"
She didn't seem to hear Lumian's question.
"Alright." Lumian pretended not to have asked.
He then said to his sister, "The Provoker potion still requires distilled liquor. I'll head to the cellar to retrieve it and strive to advance to Sequence 8 tonight."
"It will take some time to make extracts from honeysuckle flowers," Aurore said with a frown. "However, the supplementary ingredients for Low-Sequence Beyonders potions aren't that strict. You can use the entire honeysuckle flower as a substitute. You can consume them as long as the Beyonder characteristics can eventually dissolve."
She then looked at the open door and asked in a low voice, "Aren't you afraid that Ryan and the others will be suspicious if you go to get distilled liquor in the middle of the night?"
Seeing his sister's reaction, Lumian forced his smile from being too stiff.
"As a regular at Ol' Tavern, waking up in the middle of the night and suddenly wanting to drink is very normal.
"Although alcohol has many disadvantages, it can at least relax my mind to a certain extent."
What he meant was to use the excuse that the Lent celebration had ended and he was under too much stress. He had trouble sleeping and needed hard liquor to relax.
"Sure." Aurore agreed.
Lumian turned around and walked to the door, the smile on his face gradually disappearing.
He clenched his fists tightly from beginning to end.
After exiting the door and arriving at the corridor, Lumian saw Ryan standing diagonally opposite him in a brown tweed shirt and pale-yellow pants. Leah and Valentine were at opposite ends of the corridor.
"Not sleeping anymore?" Ryan raised the kerosene lamp and looked at Lumian.
Lumian grinned.
"I'm heading to the cellar to get some liquor. How about it? Do you want a sip to relax?"
"I don't need it." Ryan nodded. "You haven't experienced anything like this before. You're tense and under a lot of stress. It's understandable. Alcohol can indeed help."
As he spoke, he walked towards the staircase with the flickering kerosene lamp.
"I'll go with you. You shouldn't move alone at a time like this."
"Alright." Lumian didn't object.
As the two entered the stairs, Leah took the initiative to approach Aurore's bedroom and stand guard at the door.
One step, two steps… Lumian and Ryan descended to the shadowy first floor in silence.
As the faint light cast a glow over half the stove, Ryan asked casually, "Did something happen upstairs? I heard some commotion."
Lumian opened his mouth and said with difficulty, "Aurore, something's wrong with Aurore…"
His intention in suggesting they get alcohol from the cellar wasn't to advance tonight. The two-story building in the dream ruins also had a cellar and the distilled liquor. His main goal was to avoid Aurore and communicate with Ryan and the others about what had just happened.
However, when the words reached his lips, he almost couldn't bring himself to say them. He felt that the unsaid words were even more choking than the strongest liquor.
Ryan's expression turned serious.
"What's the matter?"
Lumian took a few deep breaths before saying, "Aurore, like the deputy padre, had a lizard that looked like a mini-elf coming out of her mouth."
It was as if all his strength had been drained when he said this.
After seven to eight seconds, he recounted the entire incident. Instead of waking up willingly, he explained it as happening to wake up and seeing it.
Ryan listened quietly and didn't rush him. After he finished, he said gently, "You handled it well. We can't let her know that something's amiss. I'm worried that it will worsen the situation.
"Continue pretending that nothing happened. At dawn, I'll use the excuse that Cordu has been corrupted and that we need to undergo a purification every day to prevent ourselves from being affected. I'll get Valentine to try and exorcize the lizard."
"Alright," Lumian replied weakly.
He felt that the "lizard" had already fused deeply with his sister's soul. It wasn't that easy to exorcize and purify.
Ryan glanced at him and patted his shoulder gently.
"I can understand how you feel. If something similar happened to my family, I wouldn't be able to stay calm.
"But you have to remember that impatience can't solve anything.
"I know Valentine's purification might not be effective, but we have to give it a try to confirm that it won't work. Yes, that abnormality is most likely related to Cordu's loop. As long as we can finally break the loop, your sister should be able to recover."
That's right… This is equivalent to corruption. As long as I can remove all the corruption when the loop is lifted, Aurore will definitely be fine… Lumian's eyes gradually lit up as he regained his motivation.
Ryan was rather satisfied with his reaction and said gently, "I need to remind you that you have to adapt to your sister's changes in the next few days. It's very likely that she'll be like the deputy padre, gradually losing herself to instincts. She'll act differently, following her memories and strongest emotions without reacting to anything else."
Lumian fell silent for a moment before saying, "I'll adapt…"
His voice became softer and softer until it trailed off.
After getting the distilled liquor from the cellar, the two of them returned to the second floor as if nothing had happened.
Upon entering the bedroom, Lumian smiled again.
He shook the bottle in his hand at Aurore and whispered, "It worked."
Aurore smiled and pointed at the desk.
"The honeysuckle, grapevine, and fern are all there."
Lumian nodded and placed the bottle on the desk.
Then, he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes under the pretext of trying to fall asleep and advance in his dreams as soon as possible.
He couldn't fall asleep no matter what.
He couldn't figure out when his sister had been corrupted and had the lizard enter her body. During this period, the two of them had been together every second. Even if Aurore went to the washroom, Leah would accompany her, and vice versa. How could there be a problem?
If it happened during our sleeping hours, why didn't anything happen to me? Lumian tried his best to recall, hoping to find the source. It would help resolve the abnormality.
Suddenly, he remembered something.
In the previous, previous cycle, Padre Guillaume Bénet had remarked that the Church didn't want to kill all the adults here and harvest a ruin. He said that he had other means even if Aurore really wanted to deal with them.
At that time, he was still an ordinary person.
Lumian initially believed that he was relying on Shepherd Pierre Berry, but with the current situation, he had a guess—a crazy guess: Perhaps from the beginning, most people in the village had been parasitized by those strange lizard-like creatures, including Aurore!
As the twelfth night approached, the corresponding abnormality would become more and more obvious, and some people would show signs earlier.
The reason why he was spared was because he had the bluish-black symbol on him.
Recalling Aurore's lack of commitment in many matters in the second half of the previous, previous cycle, Lumian felt that his guess might be correct.
He couldn't help but grit his teeth.
At this moment, Ryan was patrolling the corridor with a kerosene lamp.
On the wall beside him, the shadow suddenly lengthened.
Almost at the same time, the small silver bells on Leah's veil and boots rang.
She felt her shoulders turn abnormally cold.
