"Mm."
Iris rubbed her eyes and slowly stretched.
When she realized she had somehow ended up leaning against Linton, she guiltily glanced at the necromancer, then touched his clothes. Only when she found them dry did she let out a sigh of relief.
After looking around, Iris saw that the pure white book before the statue still glowed. The blue-robed priest had already left. She was the only sleeper to awaken early, while everyone else remained in all manner of sleeping poses.
Some had smiling eyes, some wore smiles at the corners of their lips, as though they were all having beautiful dreams that could never happen in reality.
—Linton alone was the exception.
The face hidden beneath his hood was tightly furrowed, pale as if he had witnessed something terrible.
Iris was worried, yet she did not dare wake him rashly. She could only carefully poke his face with a fingertip, trying to rouse him in the safest way possible.
Yet just as her fingertip was about to touch Linton, she caught sight of the necromancer's deep eyes. They were open, and her reflection lay within them.
Iris blinked. "Does this guy not even close his eyes when he sleeps? Is it because he lacks a sense of security, or..."
"...Is there a possibility that I'm actually awake?"
"Huh?"
"Well... I saw some dust fall onto your face."
The girl jerked her hand back as though shocked and turned her head away, awkwardly calling out to herself. But Linton had not looked at her at all. Instead, he raised his eyes toward the front.
The instant his gaze fell there, the mysterious light suddenly shattered. Every abnormality in the church immediately returned to normal, and everyone woke in alarm as though startled from a nightmare.
"What happened? Where's my money? Where did all those gold coins filling my room go?"
"Where's my wife?"
"My Evil King's Demon Eye!!"
"..."
Iris edged closer to Linton, her lovely brows knitting slightly.
Even though she had never participated in such a ritual, she could tell that something was wrong.
"Didn't you say they would forget what happened in their dreams? Why does it feel like they all remember? Or... do they simply not think they've returned to reality?"
"What about you? Were you affected?" Rather than answering immediately, Linton turned to look at her. "Do you still remember what you dreamed about?"
"Me? I don't remem—"
Iris had just been about to say that the dream had not affected her at all, but in the next instant, countless fragmented images were forcefully crammed into her mind.
"Ugh."
The doll girl clutched her head. She barely managed to keep her thoughts from being shattered by the sudden flood of information, but when she saw one fragment that was clearer than the others, her expression immediately turned cold.
"When did you meet Vera?"
"Vera?" Linton asked blankly. "Who's that?"
"She's..."
Iris flushed red, yet she had no idea how to describe it to Linton, who genuinely seemed to know nothing. In the end, she could only mutter, "Nothing."
But seeing her expression, Linton guessed, "Was it something you saw in your dream?"
"Yes!" Iris shifted farther away from him, her tone extremely stiff.
"Tell me, you said before that if someone still remembered scenes from their dream after waking up, they would reappear in reality. Is that guaranteed to happen?"
"If this had happened before the current situation, I would have given you an affirmative answer, because it is a documented fact without a single exception." Linton looked calmly at the worshippers whose minds had collapsed, as though they had fallen into madness. "But now, things may have changed."
"It had better be." Iris chose to believe the necromancer and temporarily breathed a sigh of relief inwardly.
Then she worriedly asked Linton, "Aren't we standing out a little too much by being this normal among them?"
Fortunately, her fears did not become reality.
The blue-robed priest emerged from the darkness again at some unknown point.
"Silence!"
His voice rose and fell in a strange cadence, like some mysterious magic.
The moment his words fell, color returned to everyone's faces, though their gazes were all somewhat blank.
"The service is over. Please return home."
The blue-robed priest spoke again, but his tone had clearly returned to normal this time.
"Praise the True Lord!"
The worshippers pressed their hands together and offered praise. They seemed not to notice the abnormality that had just occurred, and slowly left the church.
Linton and Iris also seized the chance to lower their heads and make themselves less conspicuous as they slipped out with the crowd.
But because of the enormous disparity in strength, even Linton, with an Intelligence of 21, failed to notice that the blue-robed caster's gaze had been wandering between him and Iris all along.
After everyone had left the church, the blue-robed caster took out a piece of parchment and a quill, then began to write.
"Iris Lizer?" After a moment of thought, he erased the name he had already written and replaced it with another.
"Linton Crewechill."
Radiance flickered, and the parchment instantly burned to ashes. Yet it did not vanish; instead, it conveyed its message to someone a thousand miles away.
After doing this, he did not leave. He merely closed his eyes and waited for a reply.
His wait did not last long. About half an hour later, the parchment returned before him.
The message it carried was exceedingly simple.
"Keep under close watch."
Billt Marvin pressed his hands together and bowed slightly, then his figure was swallowed by the surging darkness behind him.
A thousand miles away, in a room somewhere in Falasong.
Under the dim yellow light, the shadow cast by the person in the chair stretched immensely long. The light was so blurred that it could not even clearly outline every line in the book held in his hands.
But he did not care. He continued carefully flipping through the thick book, as though searching for some extremely important information.
In fact, if an outsider saw what this book recorded, they would surely be stunned.
It recorded the lives of many people in exhaustive detail, even clearly noting what color trousers they had worn on a certain day of a certain month in a certain year.
If one had doubts about someone's actions, one only needed to consult this book to find the answer.
Yet even so, it could not ease the deep frown of the person in the chair.
That shadow flipped through the book, studying every word concerning the necromancer named "Linton Crewechill." But when he turned another page in an attempt to uncover more secret information, he found an entire blank page.
He stared in astonishment at this sight, which should not have existed. When he tried to turn back, the words he had just read had been erased by some invisible hand, as though they had never existed.
"Interesting."
Casually tossing the Book of True Names aside, the shadow stretched and repeatedly rolled the necromancer's name around in his mouth.
"Linton Crewechill."
Before you continue