“I really do need to sober up.”
Elias shook his head vigorously.
He tried to shake out the messy hallucinations cluttering his mind.
However, it didn't seem to have much effect.
The “Jiang Huan” dressed in modern casual wear still stood before his eyes.
He felt that if he didn't lift the curse soon, he really would go mad.
Just like the original owner of this body.
Now he truly understood how the dream demon curse could drive a person to insanity.
“Old man.”
Elias took a deep breath.
“Since that's the case, I won't hold your lecturing me against you.”
He made a generous compromise in his mind.
He treated it as giving his “ally” a way out of an awkward situation.
“Hmm??”
Deep in his mind, Old Ed's voice suddenly spiked.
This nasal sound carried a sense of pure simple-mindedness and sheer confusion.
“How did you know I was lecturing you just now?”
The old man's tone sounded like he had seen a ghost.
It even carried a trace of panic from being caught red-handed.
“Ah?”
Now it was Elias's turn to be completely bewildered.
He stood frozen in place.
He blinked, the expression under his mask stiffening.
“Wait...”
Elias asked back haltingly in his mind.
“Was that really you talking just now?!”
Could that righteous moral judgment really have come from this craven old thing?
Had the old rogue changed his nature?
“I was just muttering for a little bit...”
Old Ed's voice grew smaller and smaller.
His confidence was severely lacking.
“Who knew you'd actually hear it...”
The old man grumbled, seemingly searching for an excuse for his slip of the tongue.
In fact.
From Old Ed's actual perspective, the situation was like this:
He had simply watched as Elias's eyes went blank the moment he stepped out of the cemetery.
His gaze was as hollow as a puppet whose soul had been drained.
He hadn't said a word, just mechanically walking outward.
Along the way, there were various branches, puddles, and discarded obstacles.
The kid had dodged them quite well.
His movements were practically silky smooth.
It was just a pity that at such a young age, he had gone deaf.
It was exactly the same symptom caused by the dreamlily powder back in Hastings Port.
He had directly cut off the reception of external audio.
Old Edmond had shouted at the top of his lungs in his mind for a long time.
He found that he couldn't get a reaction out of Elias at all.
The boy was completely immersed in his own world.
So.
The old man simply gave up on the wake-up treatment.
Based on the principle of not wasting breath, he began to ramble to him unilaterally.
Things like:
“See, you just wouldn't listen to me.”
“Looking at you now, the dream demon is playing with you again, isn't it?”
The old man's tone carried a hint of smugness, as if saying, 'I told you so.'
“You should have given yourself a harsh shock earlier.”
“Use those resonance stacks to stimulate your nerves. Then you wouldn't have these blackouts, would you?”
Old Ed offered his unsolicited advice.
Then, he glanced back at the soaring aura of death behind them.
He patted his ethereal chest.
“Well, at least you only had a relapse after the fight was over.”
“If you had this kind of fit while surrounded by cultists...”
Old Ed sighed, his tone full of the relief of a survivor.
“Brother, you would have basically been laying me to rest right then and there.”
Finally, the old man didn't forget to display his biting sense of humor.
“After all, this place is a graveyard.”
“We'd even save on funeral expenses and the cost of a hearse...”
That was the entirety of what Old Ed had actually said.
It was all complaints and grumbling.
There was no righteous indignation.
There was no talk of a Firebearer's responsibility and duty.
Just then.
Following Old Ed's confession.
Elias's actual memories of what happened just now flooded back into his mind.
The old man's noisy, biting, and incessant muttering.
In an instant.
It all rushed into his head exactly as it had happened.
Great.
The corners of Elias's mouth twitched violently.
After all that.
The two of them had been talking past each other the entire time.
One was talking about apples while the other was talking about oranges.
They weren't even on the same channel!
To have a cross-wavelength conversation reach this level was quite a spectacle even in the supernatural world.
“Forget it!”
Elias simply waved it off in his mind.
He had no time to dwell on these issues.
He raised his hand.
He pointed at the modern phantom “Jiang Huan” still standing in the mud ahead.
He asked directly in his mind:
“Can you see him?”
He had to confirm whether the self before him was a product of the curse.
“What?”
Old Ed fell silent.
It took a good while before the old man answered hesitantly.
“See who?”
His tone was completely bewildered.
“Never mind.”
Elias lowered his hand.
He had his answer.
“The curse's effects probably haven't fully worn off yet.”
He patted his head hard.
He tried to slap away the last remaining trace of madness.
Immediately.
He turned around.
He faced the convent cemetery shrouded in the aura of death once more.
He lifted his leg and strode back toward the direction he had come from.
After taking two steps.
He didn't forget to look back at the phantom of his past self, “Jiang Huan”.
The other party even raised a hand.
As if saying goodbye.
“What are you doing?”
This sudden move of heading back completely stunned Old Ed in his mind.
“Aren't we running?”
The old man grew frantic.
They had finally escaped that shambles with great difficulty; why was he going back to die now?!
“A knight's revenge need not be immediate!”
Old Ed even pulled out an ancient Velen proverb.
He tried to stop his partner who had suddenly gone mad.
“Can you even beat that thing?”
“I think you should prepare more...”
Listening to the old man's bottomless nagging and attempts to talk him out of it.
Elias was now completely certain.
The “Old Ed” who had just been full of responsibility and righteously lecturing him.
Was entirely a delusion fabricated by his own brain within the curse's hallucination.
And this one.
This old man full of nonsense.
Was the real old partner he knew.
Although the old rogue talked a lot and had a big mouth.
When nothing was wrong, he never stood on the moral high ground to lecture people blindly.
He preferred giving pragmatic advice.
He liked to undermine and bicker with him.
As for that righteous voice in the hallucination.
Elias walked back into the cold wind, silently reflecting in his heart.
Perhaps.
That was his own inner voice.
It was the nature he could never completely erase.
Earlier, when those Seventh Agency investigators were covered in blood.
Yet they resolutely refused to retreat, choosing to stay and fight to the death so he could leave first.
He had indeed felt shaken.
That spirit of defying death was like a needle, piercing through his layer of “self-preservation” camouflage.
It was just that.
Elias had always prided himself on not being that noble.
He only wanted to live a stable life in this shitty steam world.
Find a chance to break the curse and stay far away from this mess.
But thinking carefully.
Stop and ask your own conscience.
Does all of this really have nothing to do with me?
It was he who swung the shovel to dig up that grave.
It was he who personally took that damn pendulum out of John's belly.
And it was he who personally pulled the trigger to transcend John with radiance bullets.
In reality.
From the moment he was muddled into this by Old Crowley and John.
He was no longer innocent.
Just as he had answered Ms. Cecil before.
No transcendent is innocent.
He was one of them.
Just as the fabricated “Old Ed” in his hallucination had said.
If he were to just turn tail and leave now.
The investigators who stayed behind would surely die a miserable death on the spot.
And after the investigators died?
This mountain of flesh that looked like a pile of feces.
Would surely follow the spiritual traces he left behind and hunt him down.
He couldn't help but recall some unpleasant memories.
That's right.
The sewer ugly mermaid that had summoned the Lord of Mists.
That feeling of despair from being locked onto by a high-dimensional power with nowhere to run.
He didn't want to experience it a second time.
However.
The fellow before him, stitched together from countless severed limbs.
The physical destruction and aura of death pollution it could cause.
Would likely be far more terrifying than that ugly merman.
It would turn the West District of Hope County into a complete dead zone.
The civilians.
Charlotte.
And Arthur.
They would all be swept into this disaster.
He couldn't retreat.
Besides.
Elias's footsteps suddenly slowed.
A flash of inspiration struck his mind.
He suddenly remembered a vital thing.
A tactical detail he had forgotten in a corner.
He... seemed to have a chance to take down this giant pile of moving filth.
“Old man.”
Elias stopped before a broken tombstone.
“I suddenly remembered.”
“Finn's living corpse... didn't it walk into the depths of the cemetery?”
“Didn't it embrace the power of the pendulum?”
He looked down.
His gaze fell upon The Roaring Cane in his hand.
He looked at the energy accumulated through continuous strikes and resonance bursts during the successive battles in the passage and the cemetery.
At the head of the cane.
The crystals representing the resonance charge.
Were glowing with a full six segments.
“Hmm?”
In his mind, the old man heard this out-of-the-blue question.
He was stunned for a moment.
Then, he too realized something.
“It seems...”
Old Ed's voice became strange.
Carrying a trace of shock from a sharp intake of breath.
“You even stuffed something into him earlier, didn't you?”
“Exactly.”
Elias gripped the cane glowing with six crystals.
That counted as a primer he had buried in advance.
“Let's go. Let's deliver to our old friend before us...”
He stepped forward again, entering the battlefield shrouded in the aura of death.
“...a gift of joy from the inside out.”
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