You Know About This?

In the end, under Ophelia’s persistent "if you don’t let me in, I’ll die at your doorstep" routine, Elias helplessly compromised.

Faced with a woman in a thin bathrobe on a thunderous night, clinging to the doorframe like a stray cat, even Elias—a lighthouse keeper determined to be a ruthless capitalist—couldn't find it in himself to slam the door in her face.

“Enter,” he said, spitting out the word coldly as he stepped aside.

As she passed him, Ophelia hunched her shoulders like a frightened quail, not forgetting to whisper a soft “Thank you.”

Her voice was as faint as a mosquito’s buzz, but it carried the distinct relief of a survivor.

Once inside the luxurious penthouse suite, Ophelia’s professional reporter instincts kicked in immediately, even through her fear of the storm.

Her large, beautiful eyes quickly scanned the spacious room, and she instantly noticed the first glaring inconsistency.

Where was the luggage?

This man didn't have a single piece of luggage!

Throughout their journey and the time they had spent together, she had naturally assumed that a big shot like “Bruce,” who was wealthy enough to stay in a luxury suite, would have arranged for a station porter to deliver his large trunks and clothes to the hotel ahead of time.

This kind of concierge service was incredibly common among the wealthy in Velen.

However, in this empty, opulent suite, she still couldn't find any sign of a suitcase belonging to Elias. He didn't even have a briefcase.

And most absurdly, why was this man still wearing that black derby hat so firmly on his head even though he was inside his own expensive private room?!

It defied all common sense!

“You...” Ophelia gripped the collar of her bathrobe tightly, looking at him with a strange expression. “Aren't you hot, wearing a hat inside the room?”

She ultimately couldn't help but voice the question burning in her mind.

“I like it.”

“...”

That one sentence instantly killed the conversation.

Elias watched Ophelia, who stood in the middle of the living room like a wooden post, looking somewhat lost. He had no intention of playing the gracious host; he didn't even offer her a glass of water.

He walked over to the wide sofa and sat down with a commanding air, closing his eyes to continue his conversation with the old man in his head.

“That damn curse is being surprisingly quiet today,” Elias mused internally, his tense nerves relaxing slightly.

The closer he got to Moon Bay, the more the dream demon’s curse seemed to settle down.

Thinking back to yesterday, having two high-intensity hallucinations in a single day had been nearly more than he could handle.

But now that he was back in Hastings Port, smelling the familiar salty tang of the sea breeze, the curse had yet to stir. Even the needle-like spiritual stabs of pain in his soul had lessened considerably.

“It’s just the calm before the storm,” Elias knew all too well. He couldn't rule out the possibility that the thing would suddenly trigger during tonight’s thunderstorm and give him a nasty surprise.

But before that... He opened one eye and glanced at Ophelia, who was still standing there. He wanted to get rid of this troublesome woman first.

If necessary, Elias was already subtly mobilizing his spirituality. He decided that if she started being noisy, he would simply hit her with a 【Sleep Spell】 and carry her back to her room like a sack of grain.

“I’ll say,” Old Ed remarked in his mind, his voice carrying the peculiar leisure of the elderly. “Look at her, this girl is quite something.”

The old man smacked his lips in the sea of consciousness, his commentary growing lively. “She’s got the figure, she’s got the guts, and she’s easy on the eyes. You really won't consider it, kid?”

Elias, sitting on the sofa, gave Ophelia another cold glance out of the corner of his eye.

“Not a chance,” he rejected without hesitation in his mind.

“Old man, please face reality. I am a transcendent,” Elias ranted internally. “What is my life? It’s sewer ugly mermaids, mountains of flesh in convents, and the indescribable monsters of Moon Bay! Why are you always trying to set me up with a girl? Are you sick? Why ruin an ordinary person’s life? Dragging a normal girl into a world where she could lose her head at any moment—do you think she hasn't lived long enough?”

“Well, it’s not...” Old Ed seemed to be silenced by Elias’s machine-gun-like interrogation of his soul. “It’s for your own good!”

The old man stammered for a while without being able to explain himself, eventually falling back on the universal catch-all phrase of elders.

In reality, however, Ophelia had keenly caught the look Elias had just shot her. She thought he was annoyed by her standing there, being an eyesore.

So, the fugitive Landon Post reporter promptly shrank down. She pulled her knees to her chest and crouched pitifully on the carpet beside Elias’s sofa.

“...” Elias’s brow furrowed into a knot again.

“You came over just to crouch on the carpet?” he couldn't help but ask, his tone filled with disbelief.

There were plenty of expensive armchairs and high-backed chairs in the room, yet she insisted on crouching by his feet like a mushroom.

“Um...” Ophelia buried her face in her knees, listening to the occasional roll of muffled thunder outside as she tried to organize her thoughts. Then, she looked up.

“Do you know the legends of the ghost ships in Moon Bay?”

“...”

Elias ranted frantically in his mind. No, seriously? That’s how you start a conversation? Who enters a man’s private room in the middle of the night wearing a bathrobe, refuses to sit in a perfectly good chair, shrinks onto the carpet, and then suddenly starts talking about ghost ships like some mystical charlatan telling ghost stories?!

And most fatally! Did this woman really have no concept of her own figure? Or was she doing this on purpose to tempt him?!

As Ophelia spoke, the pressure of her crouching position made her completely oblivious to the fact that her bathrobe was slipping. The fair, deep curve of her cleavage was currently blooming without reservation between the loose lapels of her robe.

The visual impact was starting to make Elias’s blood pressure spike.

Swoosh!

Extremely annoyed, Elias grabbed a wool blanket from the back of the sofa and tossed it over her, precisely covering Ophelia’s head.

“I don't know,” Elias said coldly, forcing his gaze away. His tone was even icier than the storm outside.

Ophelia scrambled to pull the blanket off her head and wrapped herself tightly in it.

The legend of the so-called “ghost ships” she mentioned wasn't actually in the original Elias’s memories. While the original body’s owner had heard plenty of stories used by the older generation to scare children into sleeping—things like man-eating monsters in the sewers or headless men knocking at midnight—they didn't include this particular maritime tale.

Just then, a deafening crack of thunder roared outside.

The ghastly white light of the lightning momentarily illuminated the entire suite. Ophelia shivered uncontrollably and shrank further into the blanket.

“You actually don't know?” Ophelia looked at Elias with surprise, her gaze as if she were looking at an alien. “Aren't you a local of Moon Bay?”

“I never said I was a local,” Elias said with a blank expression, spreading his hands and keeping his cover perfectly intact.

Ophelia was momentarily speechless, but her reporter’s persistence quickly pushed her to continue.

“Anyway, when I was little, I came here on vacation with my family,” Ophelia’s voice sounded somewhat ethereal in the thunderous night. “There’s a legend that’s always circulated among the local fishermen. If you encounter a rare thunderstorm at sea, there’s a chance you’ll see those ghost ships.”

Elias listened, mentally scoffing. Wasn't this just like every other maritime legend in the world? The Flying Dutchman?

Elias felt the premise was quite cliché. But... wait.

White ghost ships?

Elias keenly sensed something was off. According to standard horror tropes, these macabre things should be glowing with eerie green ghost fire or surrounded by black mist. White?

That didn't sound like a vague legend. It sounded like a high-density spiritual manifestation!

“I always thought they were just fake stories to trick children,” Ophelia said, unaware of the change in Elias’s expression, continuing to immerse herself in her memories. “Until one time, I was on a boat with my parents passing through the outer waters of Moon Bay.”

Ophelia’s eyes became somewhat glazed, as if she were seeing that terrifying scene again. “That night, it was just like tonight, filled with thunder and lightning. I was woken up by the thunder and snuck out onto the deck. I saw an incredibly thick fog rising from the sea in the distance. Deep within that fog...”

She swallowed hard, her voice trembling slightly. “There were several ships glowing with a ghastly white light, following our boat from a distance. They made no sound, left no wake, just floating there on the sea in dead silence. Except...”

Ophelia looked up at Elias. “It seemed like I was the only person on the entire ship who could see them. Everyone else was asleep at the time.”

After hearing this textbook horror movie opening, Elias leaned back on the sofa and shattered her fantasy on the spot. “You were dreaming.”

No sooner had Elias spoken than he heard a very clear, sharp intake of breath in his mind before Ophelia could even argue.

“Hiss—”

It was Old Ed’s voice.

Elias’s movements stiffened abruptly, and a crack finally appeared in his poker face.

“What is it, old man?” he asked immediately in his mind, his tone turning serious. “You know about this?”