Dizziness.
Extreme dizziness.
It felt like he had downed three bottles of cheap rum in one go.
Elias walked along the same woodland path he had taken during his last Audience.
This time, the sensory experience was completely different.
He didn't experience the blurred vision that Old Ed had described as being caused by a low Scale.
Instead, it was a hazy sensation, as if he were drunk.
Everything he saw had a double image.
Even the speed of the wind in the air seemed to have slowed down.
The cicadas chirping around him and the nightingales calling in the air felt as if they were covered by a thick layer of plastic wrap; the sounds were muffled and utterly surreal.
“Phew...”
Elias staggered forward two steps.
He sniffed hard.
The rich fragrance of moist earth, mixed with the scent of lush herbaceous plants, rushed into his nostrils.
The only thing that remained the same as last time were the fireflies guiding the way.
They gathered in swarms to form a river of faint green light, flying slowly ahead of him to show him the path.
As Elias walked, he looked up.
The night sky was like ink that wouldn't dissolve.
The three massive, pale moons radiating a cold aura still hung high in the sky.
However, perhaps because he was a bit dazed, he couldn't tell which moon was brighter this time.
He squinted for a long time, but the light of the three moons blurred into a single white halo in his eyes.
Following the guidance of the fireflies, the tall trees around him slowly parted to either side like the Red Sea before Moses.
His vision suddenly cleared.
Once again, Elias arrived at the lakeshore where his previous Audience had taken place.
However, he froze.
The lakeshore was empty.
The mysterious little girl who had spoken to him was nowhere to be found.
Deep in the woods, which were completely obscured by darkness, only a few owls stood on high branches.
Their two glowing eyes watched him coldly from a distance.
Soon, Elias’s attention was forcibly diverted.
The owls weren't the most conspicuous thing there!
The biggest change in this area was the three doors standing quietly in the center of the shallow lake.
Three white doors standing on the surface of the water without any support!
The visual impact was bizarre to the extreme.
Absurd. Eerie. Yet they possessed a lethal attraction.
Elias swallowed hard.
He could bet on the intelligence of the great detective Brian Fisher!
Faced with three doors appearing out of thin air like this, absolutely no one would be able to resist wondering what was hidden behind them.
Moreover, this was his Audience; he had no reason to fear three inanimate objects.
He set off, stepping onto the muddy lakeshore and attempting to move toward the center of the lake.
Splash.
The icy lake water instantly rose above his ankles, gradually soaking his hosiery.
In Elias’s dazed state, the piercing cold seemed to be weakened by some kind of power.
He waded through the water, drawing closer and closer.
As the ripples spread, he finally saw the details on the three white doors.
Each door was carved with a distinct yet subtly connected mark.
Elias squinted and leaned toward the first door.
In the very center of the door panel, a simple pattern of a girl was sketched with lines.
Above the girl’s head, a waxing gibbous moon was carved.
He turned his head to look at the second door in the middle.
It depicted a voluptuous matron.
Above the matron’s head was a perfectly flawless full moon!
Finally, there was the third door on the right.
Carved on the door panel was a maiden with a graceful figure.
Above her head hung a waning moon.
The girl of the waxing gibbous moon.
The matron of the full moon.
The maiden of the waning moon.
Elias’s brow furrowed deeply.
Just then, a faint night breeze blew across the lake.
As he stood before the last two doors, Elias suddenly caught a peculiar scent!
The fragrance burrowed into his nostrils in an instant.
Without warning, two specific terms struck his dazed mind like an electric current.
Laurel. Absinthe.
The clean, sacred, woody scent of laurel mixed with the extremely bitter, lethally hallucinogenic herbal scent of absinthe.
For some reason, this smell felt incredibly familiar to him.
So familiar that his heart skipped a beat uncontrollably.
But he simply couldn't remember where he had smelled this eerie scent before.
Was it in his previous life, near some residential area filled with greenery? Or had his original body smelled it somewhere?
His hazy senses, suppressed by both the potion and the rules of the spirit world, were currently incapable of deep thought.
His brain felt like mush.
However, as a modern youth who had read countless web novels, he still possessed basic judgment.
What was certain was that the patterns carved on these three doors were definitely the three lunar phase avatars of the Moon Lord!
Elias shuddered.
The layer of haze over his brain wasn't enough to turn him into a complete, brainless idiot.
It certainly wasn't enough to make him stupid enough to actively court death by pushing open one of the doors to see what was inside.
The first rule of horror movies: if you see any door, box, or basement of unknown origin in a creepy place, never let your curiosity get the better of you!
Opening it means certain death! They’ll be scattering your ashes!
“Time to go...” Elias warned himself frantically.
He turned around decisively and began to head back to the lakeshore with heavy steps.
He still couldn't interpret the true meaning of this godforsaken dream.
Everything seemed meaningless, like a fragmented performance without logic.
However, just as he had turned and taken two steps, the water moved.
Splash.
He felt the lake surface, which had been as still as dead water, come alive!
These weren't ripples caused by his own wading.
Instead, intense waves were washing over his calves in layers from behind him!
A chill shot straight to his head!
This sudden change caused Elias’s adrenaline to surge instantly!
He abruptly quickened his pace toward the shore, splashing water everywhere.
At the same time, he couldn't help but instinctively turn his head to look back.
What he saw nearly made his heart stop!
In the middle of the lake, the center door of the three was vibrating violently with an eerie frequency!
Thump! Thump! Thump!
With every vibration, waves surged through the lake water below.
It felt as if something terrifying behind that seemingly thin white door was trying to break through.
Shit!
Elias had seen plenty of horror movies!
He thought of a certain foreigner hacking through a door and the desperate scream of a woman in a denim jacket!
This was not a scene worth reenacting.
For the remaining distance through the water, he completely abandoned his dignity as a bipedal human.
He practically scrambled onto the shore on all fours.
Having just climbed onto the muddy grass, he turned back, panting heavily.
In his line of sight, the pure white wooden door in the middle was undergoing an astonishing physical deformation!
The door panel, which should have been hard, was now like a piece of kneaded modeling clay—or rather, like a highly elastic rubber membrane!
A slender hand was pressing firmly against the door from the other side!
It was stretching the entire door outward, deforming it severely!
It was like someone inside a tent reaching out, trying to grab something outside through the thin fabric!
Even though Elias’s brain was still in a daze, his limbs were weak with fear as he prepared to continue fleeing deep into the woods.
But the wind direction suddenly changed.
On the far right, the third door, carved with the waning moon and the maiden, suddenly erupted with pale moonlight.
The light instantly pierced through the mist on the lake.
Immediately after, an obscure yet familiar sentence echoed in Elias’s ears:
“Don't forget me.”
The voice struck his soul, mingled with the scent of laurel and absinthe.
Even though Elias had long forgotten the exact pronunciation of that strange language from his last Audience, he recognized it the moment he heard it!
The pronunciation! The tone!
It was identical to the words spoken to him by that mysterious little girl last time!
Not only that, but this ethereal female voice also carried a distant echo.
Elias’s brain fell into a brief state of paralysis.
All his attention was completely captivated by that hand and the sentence in his ear.
So much so that he didn't notice a transparent circle silently expanding beneath the muddy grass where he stood!
In the next second, Elias felt the ground vanish beneath his feet.
He fell downward, completely out of control!
“Oh, holy crap!”
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