The living room on the first floor was silent, as quiet as the entire street outside, everything was still as it had been at night, and the puppets and tin men servants powered by clockwork and magic traps stood silently everywhere - as if they were still carrying out the sweeping orders according to the program until a second before the "anomaly" arrived.

Duncan led a nervous Alice down the stairs, his gaze sweeping over the dimly lit silent living room, where the sound of their footsteps echoed in the dead silence, making everything seem even more eerie.

Alice carefully grasped the captain's clothes as she turned her head to look to the side - a puppet in the shape of a maid was standing not far away with one hand holding on to the railing of the staircase, the puppet seemed to be wiping the handrail a moment ago, "she" maintained a slight forward posture with her upper body leaning forward, with a bucket at her feet, but like the other servants, "she" was still, and the trademark ticking and gear grinding sounds were no longer heard in her body.

Alice always felt that the puppet would suddenly turn its eyes to her, as in many horror stories—the association scared her out of the cracks.

"It's scary······ She muttered behind the captain, "There are dolls everywhere······ It looks like nothing during the day, and now it's really scary to suddenly stop moving······ But it's even more scary for them to move suddenly·····."

Duncan silently turned his head and glanced at the silly puppet with a strange expression.

However, Alice didn't notice it at all······ I didn't feel like I was saying anything wrong.

Duncan shook his head, refocusing on the "mark" he had left on Morris, Vanna, and the others.

The marks still shone in his senses, but in an extremely strange state—sometimes he felt that they were clearly in this house, or even beside him, but the next second they would suddenly appear in the far distance, even as if they were on the other side of the city-state, as if they were ····· It teleports in an irregular instant.

This was the first time Duncan had encountered such a situation.

He also tried to call those distant imprints directly in the spirit world to establish contact with Nina and the others, but because he was never able to accurately determine the location and status of the imprints, several calls were unsuccessful, or he only received a faint and meaningless "response" at a moment, which was also unprecedented.

But the good news is that he seems to have gradually grasped the laws of the strange state of those marks, and even if he can't pinpoint their location, he should be able to accurately establish a connection with them after a period of adaptation, and on the other hand, as long as those marks are still there, he can be sure that the person carrying the mark is at least not in danger of life, and he doesn't have to worry too much.

Duncan slowly walked forward while perceiving and familiarizing himself with the state of the distant mark, but at this moment, a slight clicking sound suddenly sounded in the living room, instantly interrupting his and Alice's movements.

Duncan jerked his head back and looked in the direction the voice was coming from.

The puppet maid who had been standing next to the handrail of the staircase moved little by little in the darkness, turning her head stiffly like a long-rusted machine, her lifeless eyes slowly searching for something in the living room.

Alice's head almost fell out in a moment: "Wow! It's really moving!

Duncan finally couldn't help it: "Why should you be afraid of this, a living doll?"

Alice was stunned, but finally reacted: "Ah······ Right?"

Duncan ignored the humiliating fool and turned his gaze to the puppeteer, who was stiffly moving—for he seemed extraordinarily calm, for he had sensed a sudden, familiar aura from the puppet.

"Lucy? It's you, right?" He asked tentatively. Look at the book

"Ah, you're around here······ The puppet finally focused its gaze on Duncan, and she moved her chin and let out a somewhat stiff and translucent voice, "But I still can't see you, the quality of this temporary 'medium' is so bad that I shouldn't have saved money on housekeeping dolls in the first place." Long story short, what's going on on your end? I've sensed your call a few times just now

, but it is always interrupted before it has time to respond······

"I'm all right here, but the house is empty, you're all gone," Duncan said at once, briefly describing the current situation on the street, "······ That's it. In short, it seems to me that something is wrong with you, and Alice and I are not affected."

"It seems so," after a few seconds of delay, Lucrecia's voice came from the puppet maid's mouth again, "It should be us who is the problem, you are still stuck in the real world, but you have seen the anomalies that appear in the real world, and we

···.·· It seems to have been caught up in this anomaly."

"Is anyone else with you?" Duncan immediately asked.

"No, I'm the only one here—it looks like we're scattered."

"What's around you?" Duncan asked again.

"Around? Trees, vines, green beyond the horizon—it's a forest," Lucrecia replied, "It's like the forest we saw in Master Taran-El's dreams before, but the atmosphere seems to be ······ It's not the same."

The forest was shrouded in twilight skylight, and a strange and slightly gloomy sense of chaos seemed to envelop the whole world, and the sunlight that poured through the cracks in the cascading canopies seemed drowsy, unable to dispel the gloomy feeling among the lush trees.

Occasionally, there was the sound of birds and beasts, or the breaking of branches in the distance, and although there was nothing more out of the ordinary, Lucrecia felt as if she could smell an inexplicable ······ in the forest air Tension.

It's as if something is about to happen here.

She clutched the short wand that looked like a "baton" in one hand, and at the same time maintained a connection with a "puppet" she had made herself, so as to exchange information with her father in the distance: "······ There is a sense of tension in the forest, very oppressive, even with an invisible fear······ Yes, it's emotions, and as a witch, I can feel this "emotion" that fills the air······· It looked very similar to Taran El's dream, but there were no invading children of the sun in the sky, and there seemed to be something else deep in the forest······ I'm heading that way.

"The scene of the neighborhood? You can't see ······ here All I could see were trees, and although I had limited vision in the forest, I was sure that the forest was more than a block or two······ The scope of this 'alien land' is so vast that what you see 'over there' should only be a small part of it leaking into the real world."

Lucrecia stopped suddenly, she listened carefully to the words coming from afar, and nodded lightly after a moment, "Yes, I also suspect that this is still the dream', the dream that the Annihilation Cultists call the 'Dream of the Nameless', but the situation is different from the last time······ The last time we entered the Nameless Dream was through Taran El as a springboard, and the information you got from the Cultists said that to enter this dream you had to use the mind of an elf as a bridge, but this time it happened suddenly and strangely..."

She paused, raised her wand and tapped lightly at a vine in front of her, and the vine moved instantly, squirming and growing forward, forming a bridge-like structure that lay out on the deep ditch ahead.

Lucrecia walked along the bridge of vines as she continued, "······ I haven't found the bridge yet, I haven't found out who the dreamer is, but according to the laws of dreams, I should be in the vicinity of the dreamer right now."

She stopped suddenly.

There were squirming footsteps nearby, and the sound appeared very abruptly, as if there was no one there one one second, and the next second, a person appeared out of thin air, stepping on dead branches and fallen leaves, and walked this way.

Lucrecia froze for a moment, casting a protective spell on herself before turning back, and then grasped her wand in one hand while looking in the direction from which the voice came.

But it wasn't what appeared before her eyes

The cultists who invade dreams are not distortions that naturally breed in dreams.

A strange elven woman stood in the shade of a tree not far away, looking at this side in surprise and wariness.

Lucrecia's first thought was of the dreamer who acted as a "bridge" in this dream, but she soon realized the sense of disobedience brought to her by the strange elf not far away—the other party was dressed in light armor that was completely unrecognizable to which city-state or era, with long pale blonde hair woven with strange "silk threads" that traveled faint blue light, and in her hand she held a strange blade that looked like a combination of a spear and a long-handled axe······ She'd never seen her in Breezehaven, and she hadn't seen it anywhere else in the world.

And at the moment when Lucrecia was stunned, the elven woman with a strange long-handled weapon had already spoken with a serious and vigilant face:

"Didn't you receive an order to evacuate? Why are you still outside the walls of silence?"

Lucrecia's eyes narrowed slightly. Situation ······ It seems to be getting subtle.

Under the "sunlight" between the buildings and the cold light of the creation of the world, in the strange night unique to Breeze, the figures of Duncan and Alice are speeding through the streets.

Alice was still holding a puppet's head with its mouth opening and closing.

Lucrecia's voice came from the puppet's head, reporting the finest progress "over there".

"I'm following this strange elf who suddenly appeared, and she doesn't seem to realize that I'm not of the same race as her, and she's easily let her guard off······ We're heading to a place called the 'Wall of Silence'······

This scene is really weird and weird: a living puppet is running in the night, holding the head of another puppet in his arms, the head is still talking, and the voice is hoarse and distorted due to the limitation of the material.

Alice, however, was no different.

She trotted all the way behind Duncan, and her expression even looked a little pleasant.

Probably used to holding a head in your arms······ Hold your own habits, and hug other people's too.