Sword of Dawnbreaker - Chapter 180

Chapter 180: The Power of Eternal Sleepers

A torrential downpour, lightning flashed and thunder roared. The cold winds from the northern frigid zone carried equally freezing rainwater to splash on the spire of the castle. On this day, the Kant territory’s most respected, oldest people coincidentally had the same dream. They dreamed that time seemed to rewind back to 30 years ago, back to that similarly stormy night —— their young, strong, impartial, and benevolent feudal lord was driving a carriage, rushing back to town. And not too far ahead was the Kant castle’s tall and stately outer walls and towers. Everything was cloaked in the night and fog stirred up by the rain. The carriage raced down the endless road, like a dream that one couldn’t wake up from.

Gawain was walking down the deep and long underground corridor. This corridor led to the north tower of the castle. The soldiers who originally should have been guarding this section of the corridor were collapsed and piled up against each other at their posts. They were breathing, but their consciousness had been stripped through a dream realm that was difficult to awaken from. At the same time, this dream realm had also broken away from the fetters of illusion. It extended its feelers into the real world, leaving behind its distorted projection in the real world formed by matter.

Moss crawled all over the mottled stone walls, yet the moss continuously peeled off, revealing the decayed, deformed walls beneath it. The logic of space and time inside the corridor seemed to lose its regularity in this moment: the scenes of the dream realm and the scenes of the real world took turns to switch places. And those magic crystal lamps mounted on the walls also followed by flickering, making the ancient oil paintings between the lamps gloomy and strange by their illumination.

Boom!

A loud rumble of thunder cut across the horizon. The completely sealed off underground corridor that initially had a thick and heavy ceiling was lit up by the lightning to be bright as day. Huge cracks appeared on the pitch-black ceiling, and in between those cracked stone pieces, the dark sky could be seen. Violent rain poured from the sky.

Gawain lifted his head and looked out. Through the ceiling of the corridor, he could vaguely see the entire upper section of the north tower fragmentarily floating in the sky. Those crumbled huge stones and roof were suspended in the rainy night like they had no weight, ceaselessly spinning with the shrieking wind. As they collided with one another, bits of broken bricks and rocks scattered down.

He ignored all of this, directly striding down the long corridor flooded with wind and rain. The rainwater that alternated between dream and reality drizzled on him, now soaking him to the skin, yet vanishing next. ——Each time he observed, the outcome presented was different.

The heavy oak door finally appeared before his eyes, exactly like what he had seen previously in the dream realm. Gawain stretched out his hand, but before his fingers touched the door, a segment of shadow beside the door suddenly stirred. Amber’s figure then condensed into form. “Eh! Gawain, you’re here!”

Gawain looked at Amber. “Have you found the lantern?”

“I only made it here. I could already sense very obvious fluctuations of magical power here, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t open this door!” Amber’s voice sounded especially disheartened. Clearly, she had been full of confidence earlier, but failing to open an antique wooden door as an excellent rogue had severely hurt her confidence.

“Can’t open the door?” Gawain frowned. He turned back to glance at the direction he’d come from and realized that the strange corridor had now resumed its stability once more. The wrecked walls and roof were sealed up again; there was no longer wildly blowing wind and rain or mottled moss or collapsed brick pieces. The big oak door at the end of the corridor appeared to be sturdy and intact. Though worn down, it was tightly sealed.

Gawain looked towards Amber. “Did you see the rain in the corridor when you were here?”

The half-elf wore a complete look of bewilderment. “Rain? How could it possibly rain in the corridor?”

“Seems like you’re still in the dream realm.” Gawain was clear in his mind. “The door in the dream realm is sealed. It’s impossible to open it regardless of what you do.”

As he explained, he looked towards the oak door. Then he closed his eyes, recalling the knowledge and powers held in the fragments of the Eternal Sleepers heretic’s consciousness. “Only when you push open this door in the real world would you see this castle’s true appearance.”

He reopened his eyes. In the corridor, freezing wind and rain rolled in with a howl; a series of cracks spread over the dark stone ceiling; moss coated all the walls and that oak door took on an aged, mottled, and worn-down look.

With a light push, the door opened.

Amber’s eyes widened the instant the oak door was pushed open; she was finally seeing the same things Gawain was seeing in his vision.

Miss Half-Elf cried out, “How… How did this place become so run down all of a sudden?!”

Gawain shook his head. “Because this place hasn’t been repaired for an entire thirty years.”

Then he walked in front, walking into this place that sustained the entire illusion with Amber.

The cellar space behind the oak door was very perfectly preserved. The high tower structures above blocked the torrential rain that was pouring from the sky. The surrounding noise died out all at once; the entire world seemed to quieten down.

In the hazy dim space, the lantern’s glow suddenly lit up. The warmth radiance dispelled the darkness. Within range of the illumination, a female figure wearing a white long dress appeared.

And behind her was the stone coffin that Gawain had seen previously in the dream realm, and many stone pillars like those in the dream realm held up the entire cellar. Countless shimmering runes sparkled on every stone pillar.

“Madam Lilith Kant.” Gawain looked at the other person silently. “It’s time to wake up from your dream.”

“Duke, you shouldn’t have come to this place.” Lilith’s eyes were filled with sadness. “If only you’d taken it as if nothing had happened.

Gawain shook his head lightly. “But it has already happened. You wallowing in this dream realm is merely an act of deceiving yourself and others —— what the Eternal Sleepers gave you was far from the best medicine. You ought to know that very well. They were merely using your hands to draw power. What they gave you was just an illusion.”

“But I am willing to believe it. That makes it real!” Lilith Kant suddenly became agitated. “I was already about to succeed. I’d already succeeded! So long as you people don’t come, so long as I continuously hypnotize myself, I would… I would…”

Gawain loudly interrupted this woman who’d fallen into insanity 30 years ago, “You will never succeed because the dream powers that the Eternal Sleepers gave you has an innate defect —— the dream creator would forever be sober! This is an innate defect that even the Eternal Sleepers themselves could not resolve!”

Lilith Kant’s expression stiffened instantly. “Why… would you know?”

“Because I devoured an Eternal Sleeper and received his knowledge and memories.”

Lilith Kant’s form uncontrollably swayed. “So… that’s how you became aware of the truth here?”

“No.” Gawain shook his head. “Although I’d obtained that Eternal Sleeper’s knowledge and memories, I was indeed fooled by this ‘actual dream realm’ when I first came here. —— Unfortunately, you left behind too many loopholes that I was then able to realize the truth bit by bit.

“Victor Kant’s study has many old books. Even the newest book had been collected thirty years ago.

“About the incident thirty years ago, the people in the territory and the castle all had fuzzy memories, and about the ‘Viscountess’, these two groups of people had entirely different notions.

“Viscount Kant appears to be the person in charge of the whole castle, but when it involves your matters, he would show evident slowness and bewilderment. This was because you worried that he would realize he was only living in a dream and set up a tight lock of thoughts on him.

“But these still aren’t the biggest loopholes. Instead, it was that lantern in your hand —— perhaps there is no longer anyone in this world who knows its history, but I recognize it. That lantern was something I gifted to a friend seven hundred years ago, and its function is to allow ‘the person who weaves dreams’ to sustain themselves and to seek the path in a steerable dream realm. In other words, the one with the lantern in hand is the person who is truly controlling the dream realm!”

Amber, who stood confusedly by the side for a long time, finally figured out the whole thing. Her mouth instantly agape as she lifted a hand to point at Lilith Kant who was at a distance. “So… so thirty years ago…”

“Yes, the Viscount Kant and Young Master Belm from thirty years ago have actually died. They died instantly when the carriage plunged into the mountain creek, and the Viscountess, who the world believed had gone mad and consumed poison on the fourth day, was the one who survived. This dream realm wasn’t what Viscount Kant had created in order to bring back his love. Just the contrary, it was the Viscountess who accepted the powers of the Eternal Sleepers and remolded her husband in this dream realm —— she even allowed her own husband to be the feudal lord for an entire thirty years in this dream castle, governing the territory for thirty years!”

“He ruled the territory very well! He managed the castle very well! Even if this is a dream realm, why can’t this dream last!” Lilith Kant’s voice suddenly became sharp, hatred and insanity swiftly spread over her beautiful face, and that lantern that radiated a gentle glow was abruptly shrouded in a layer of faint purple light that reminded one of starlight. ——The powers provided by the Eternal Sleepers allowed this woman to maintain thirty years of never dying youth, but it had finally come to the time for the sorcery to demand its price. A second earlier, it had still been her controlling the lantern, and a second later, she had become the servant of this lantern. “Why did you come to destroy all this! Why must you awaken the sleeping people! If you hadn’t come… if you hadn’t come… everything would’ve been wonderful forever!!”

A huge and distorted black shadow took form behind the Viscountess; spots of multi-colored starlight shimmered in it. It suddenly manifested a sharp claw from the illusion, thrusting towards Gawain’s chest with a whistle, and the voice that came from the shadows overlapped with Lilith Kant’s and sounded, “What good would destroying all this do you?!”

With the rise of Gawain’s hand, the Sword of Pioneers was in the way of the murky sharp claw. “You used tens of thousands of lives to sustain all this, and it will soon threaten every person on this entire land, so destroying it is the greatest ‘good’ for me!”

At the same time, in a heap of ruin behind the castle’s main structure, Sir Philip’s longsword was lifted up high and then swung down with force.

The castle was making frightening sounds behind him: a low rumble continuously sounded from the direction of the north tower. Although the main body of the castle was still firm, the whole north tower was gradually falling apart in the night sky, disintegrating into fragments, dispersing and floating under the dark night. And there were large brick pieces repeatedly breaking off from the roof and vanishing in the wild storm.

However, Sir Philip didn’t pay the slightest attention to the changes behind him; he was faithfully carrying out Gawain’s order. After finding the focal point of that sinful aura using his evil-detection ability, he began digging into this heap of collapsed ruin. ——The formidable power of the Knight occupation allowed him to easily blow off these decayed ruins of the stable and stone flooring. Finally, a concealed entrance appeared before him.