Haunted Inn

Because Iver doesn't have Wind Attribute Mana, Liz can't elementalize with Iver.

Even with just a simple near-ground flight, they quickly found the direction of Alder Town.

After all, when they first arrived at Eagle Cape Village, the two griffin aunties had already led them through Alder Town. If this place didn't look so unlike Eagle Cape Village, they might have landed here.

After seeing Alder Town, Sherlock on the griffin instinctively looked back.

But he discovered that Eagle Cape Village hadn't disappeared after he left. A perfectly round village lay neatly at the bottom of the valley. From this angle, you could even see that the village's edge was a perfectly round circle.

He immediately patted Iver on the back and shared the situation with him.

Iver glanced back, then seemed to be deep in thought.

"I see..."

Once you've been to Eagle Cape Village, will you no longer be fooled by the barrier?

Or are there other conditions... like being remembered by the people here, or having slept here? In that case, Daya... that is, the Phantom Demon Egg of the Dream Demon, may have also been to Eagle Cape Village.

Is she still at that hotel?

I suppose they're no longer around.

Dream Demon is also a proper Greater Phantom Demon, and usually lives in the Dream Realm.

Without a contract with Demon Scholar, Greater Demon cannot remain in the Present World for long. Unless the Demon Scholar summons her again, she should remain in the dreamlike realm of the Path of Beauty year-round.

... Then the Earthbound Spirit here must be quite lonely.

She probably thought the Dream Demon, being just as adept at manipulating illusions and dreams as she was, would stay and keep her company. But she didn't expect the other woman to be a working older sister who only came over for a brief moment before going back to work...

With a cry from the griffin, it began to slowly descend.

"It seems that the disordered timeline was not attached to us; our sense of time returned to normal immediately after leaving Eagle Cape Village."

Iver first looked up at the sun in the sky, moved by the moment when it no longer suddenly jumped.

He then looked down and saw the road sign ahead.

It was a crooked, old metal sign.

It stands at the crossroads, directly facing the direction of Alder Town.

On the left, a red arrow reads the warning, "Danger! Proceed with caution! Violators will be sentenced to death." On the right, a black arrow reads, "To Bagpipe Town," and above that, another black arrow reads, "To Alder Town."

It was now tilted forty-five degrees to the left, as if blown by the wind. It was covered with grime formed from damp soil, as well as a large number of dried, scattered mud stains.

It was clear that few people came here. On the somewhat damp road, apart from the footprints left by Liz when she landed, there were no other footprints or tire tracks.

Sherlock suddenly frowned, looked around, and fell into thought.

He suddenly jumped off the griffin, ran behind the road sign, and glanced at it. Then he came back and patted Iver on the arm.

"Iver, clean up this sign," Sherlock said.

"Uh-huh."

Iver's lips curled up slightly, and without even asking "why," he simply waved his hand and released a flame butterfly carrying the Purification Fire.

It slowly flew to the road sign and then exploded into a ball of flame.

In the flames, the road sign was not burned, but underwent a strange change—the words on it suddenly changed to a different font.

The upward arrow has turned downward, and the text on both sides has been reversed. The danger arrow pointing to the left has turned to the right.

"Just as I thought," Sherlock chuckled. "I had a feeling that the sign was either upside down, blown upside down by a storm, or some kind of illusion had flipped it over."

"In Avalon, if a three-way street sign faces a one-way street, it will point down, not up. It will only point up when the sign is facing away from the street—just like how up at a crossroads means going forward."

"This shows that the Earthbound Spirit are not as weak as we thought."

Iver said softly, "Even from this distance... she's already able to create illusions that affect very far places."

"Alice... is that so?"

Sherlock murmured.

Previously, Iver had recounted his experiences and encounters during the Promotion Ritual, which of course included the poor girl named Alice who was buried in the foundation. She was the Earthbound Spirit of the Haunted Inn, and the source of the series of calamities that led to the arrival of the Dream Demon egg Daya.

Generally, Earthbound Spirit create illusions or dreams to kill passersby and absorb their souls to strengthen themselves.

But if the Earthbound Spirit are much stronger than they were sixty years ago...

That might mean she has already eaten many people.

"... It might be a fierce battle."

Little Sherlock warned seriously, "She is no longer the innocent girl who had just become Earthbound Spirit sixty years ago."

"Not necessarily."

Iver shook his head. "I tend to favor another possibility..."

"What?" Sherlock asked, puzzled.

"No, we'll talk about it later."

Iver did not answer.

Because it's just a conjecture, there's no evidence. To say it now would seem presumptuous.

And as they rode the griffins again, they flew in the right direction.

The sky soon darkened.

It was like a videotape being sped up—perhaps because the griffins they were riding were going so fast that the clouds in the sky were growing and piling up at a speed that was almost visible to the naked eye.

They had only just begun to see the hotel in the distance when the sky, which had previously been overcast, became completely covered with dark clouds.

A flash of lightning streaked across the sky.

A chilling wind howled past, accompanied by rolling thunder.

Then, without any warning, the torrential rain began to fall! "—Again?"

Sherlock frowned. "It's still an illusion, isn't it?"

"I can't dispel this."

Iver chuckled lightly, simply shielding his eyes with his hand as he gazed at the rapidly approaching inn, seemingly unconcerned.

By the time they reached the inn, Sherlock's newsboy jacket was completely soaked.

He had a sour face and a furrowed brow. He looked as if he was contemplating how much compensation to demand.

But the hotel didn't seem to be much of an illusion.

Its sign was roughly removed, leaving only white glue residue. The building itself was visibly old, with a layer of white dust, like a computer fan that hadn't been cleaned for over a year, thickly accumulated in the cracks of the building.

Is anyone home?

Iver dismounted from the griffin and, shouting, pushed open the inn door.

As a result, the hotel lobby, which looked so dilapidated it resembled something from the last century, was completely empty.

In the dimly lit hotel, there was only a young receptionist.

He looked very thin. Dressed in inappropriately thin clothes, he dozed off on the table with his hands folded over like a student.

However, with Iver's divine vision as Third Level priest, he could easily see that the outline of the front desk was semi-transparent.

Iver smiled slightly and walked confidently to the front desk.

"Hey, long time no see, buddy."

He greeted us with a smile.