Chapter 314: Chapter 273: The Shipwreck Graveyard, Blue Dragon King
Due to overwhelming exhaustion, Violet was unable to resist her sleepiness and uncontrollably fell into a deep slumber, suddenly feeling a chill wash over her.
From an unknown source, a damp, cold wind carrying the briny smell of the sea blew in gusts, gradually stealing her body heat and dispelling the lingering drowsiness.
Hmm, didn’t Byron cover me with a blanket? He’s a bit too careless for a girl, isn’t he?
By the time she could no longer bear the cold and reopened her eyes, she unexpectedly discovered she was no longer in the captain’s quarters of the Golden Deer but was instead inside a colossal, indescribable building.
Her sleepiness vanished, and she became instantly alert. She sprang up immediately, cautiously scanning her surroundings.
This place is... a Temple?
The entire structure was built from some kind of wet, slippery green stone, so vast and wide it could accommodate hundreds of giants for a gathering. The building’s floor was inclined; half of it was submerged in water, while the other half rose above the surface. In the center stood an indescribable octopus-like Divine Statue.
Under a dim, somber yellow light that seemed to cast a pall over everything, the Divine Statue featured a giant human skull for a head. Numerous tentacles covered in suckers protruded from the skull’s openings.
It looked strangely familiar, yet Violet couldn’t recall where she had seen it before. And though it was clearly a stone carving, the lifelike, slimy tentacles seemed to writhe, constantly emerging from the large skull and attempting to follow her gaze into her mind.
"The Luanyan Epoch arrives, all beings shall perish. In the eternal mansion of the Deep Sea, the Slumbering God, who dreams in death, awaits... Enter the dream, enter the dream..."
Whispers and murmurs rose from every corner of the Temple. Hallucinations appeared before her eyes, as if the empty Temple had suddenly been completely filled by some vast, intangible entity.
Violet was horrified. She dared not look any longer and immediately forced her gaze away. Yet, an unstoppable nausea overwhelmed her. Something slimy seemed to wriggle in the crevices of her brain, as if her emotions and memories were being drawn out through every opening in her skull. The murmuring began to echo within her cranium, growing ever clearer.
This is bad! That Divine Statue belongs to some entity beyond comprehension! But how could the contamination affect me so quickly? I’m a Third Order Grand Artificer; my Anchoring is sufficiently stable. Back when the World Rift appeared, even seeing the true form of Greedy Worm Mamon submerged in the Sea of Origin Matter from afar didn’t cause such severe contamination. Something is wrong with my state... this isn’t the real world. It’s a Dream Realm where all information manifests physically, and all Truth becomes absurdity!
The instant Violet saw through the illusion of this world, a sound like a bursting bubble echoed. Spiritual Radiance surged from deep within her heart, forming an invisible barrier around her body. The contamination from that incomprehensible entity immediately diminished by ninety percent, like a receding tide.
Violet let out a long sigh of relief. She was immensely glad she had mastered "Flow State," which greatly enhanced her self-control. Otherwise, she would have been contaminated before she could distinguish reality from the Dream Realm.
She also confirmed one thing. I have indeed entered a Dream Realm, and it’s not my own. It’s a public Dream Realm, contaminated by an entity beyond comprehension.
As this thought crossed her mind, the two Curse Seals she had just etched onto the back of her left hand and the instep of her right foot began to glow, instantly enveloping her body. When the light dissipated, Violet’s legs had vanished, replaced by an amorphous mass of blue light.
Looking down, she realized she was still wearing only the silk nightgown she had on before bed; she had no other equipment. The abilities of a Third Order Grand Artificer were mostly nullified. The only things she could bring into the Dream Realm were her Spirituality and the two newly engraved Curse Seals: [Profane] and [Abyss].
The changes to her body resulted from the two Curse Seals manifesting in the Dream Realm, allowing her to experience Shapeshifting in advance, before the ritual was complete. With a mental command, she tried to change the shape of the light. However, she found she could only follow the path of the [Witch of Calamity], transforming into various aquatic Demon Monsters.
A fish tail, a serpent tail, a jellyfish form, a crab form... After shifting through several shapes, she found that an octopus-like lower body, similar to that of an octopus warship, felt the most comfortable. Moreover, this form offered the strongest resistance to the murmuring in her ears; she was almost unaffected. It felt as if she had been accepted, becoming one of their own in this Temple.
Violet touched her new tentacles.
Tentacles it is, then. Anyway, no one else is around to see. The crucial question now is how to get out of here. According to the supernatural knowledge I possess, if this were my own Dream Realm, I could wake up simply by achieving lucidity. But entering someone else’s Dream Realm, or a collective one, is drastically more dangerous. Unless I can find a well-hidden exit myself, or someone uses Anchoring to wake me from the real world, I could easily fall from the shallow layer to the deep layer, and then into the lost layer. At that point, I might never return. My first option is to search for an exit. The other is to wait for Byron to notice something is wrong and find a way to pull me out.
Violet decided to attempt both approaches.