The moment this absurd thought popped into Elias's head, a familiar and distorted sensation wrapped around him without warning.
It was an experience he had relived countless times.
The world began to warp in his perception, the sound of the sea breeze drifting in and out as if through a thick layer of frosted glass.
This was the feeling of the dream demon curse taking effect.
"Damn it, again?"
Elias gripped the edge of the skiff tightly, his knuckles turning white from the strain.
So far, he hadn't discovered any pattern to this wretched dream demon curse.
It didn't require a specific location, nor did it have to be a specific time.
It was as if there were a god hiding behind the scenes, manipulating everything.
Whenever He wanted, whenever He felt bored, He would reach out a finger to scramble Elias's brain, making it impossible to distinguish reality from illusion.
This fear of losing control over one's senses was more exhausting than facing a literal monster.
Furthermore, Elias sometimes felt that these hallucinations were, to some extent, also distorting his perception of time.
Especially on the night he first arrived; he had spent hours in a hallucination, fighting against the air, only to realize after Edmond's reminder that time had already slipped away.
Even now, whenever he recalled it, he still felt a lingering fear.
Another example was a few days ago.
He was interrupted by a hallucination while eating. The piece of salted dried meat in his hand, which was already hard and difficult to swallow, actually began to rot under his gaze, turning into carrion crawling with maggots.
That stench, which hit him like a physical blow to the head, had once made him lose his appetite entirely, nearly finishing him off.
Although it was later proven to be a hallucination and the jerky was still the same jerky—still tough enough to break a tooth—the psychological shadow was enough to make him lose his taste for meat for three days.
However, after this month of torment, Elias had discovered a pattern.
Although these hallucinations were outrageous, most of them were things he or the original owner had seen; they were the reorganization and distortion of memory fragments.
They didn't cause him too much terror anymore, and sometimes they even allowed him to find a trace of eerie familiarity on this lonely island where there was only the sound of waves.
At this point, he pulled back his wandering thoughts and refocused on the scene before him.
Then, Elias froze.
Because the Captain Crowley before him had changed.
He was no longer that old man with a face full of orange-peel wrinkles puffing on a pipe; in his place was a figure that made his soul tremble to its core.
It was his mother.
Oh, of course, to be more precise, it was the mother of the original body's owner.
It wasn't the mother from Jiang Huan's memory who was always nagging him to wear long johns.
If it had been the latter, Elias would have probably broken down instantly and lost control on the spot.
Fortunately, it wasn't.
A middle-aged woman with the same chestnut hair, a haggard face, and looking incredibly thin stood at the bow of the skiff.
She wore an old, faded dress and looked at him with hollow eyes, a stiff and eerie smile hanging on her lips.
Not only that.
Elias's peripheral vision glanced toward the sea surface beside the skiff.
The originally azure seawater had now become muddy and foul, and countless colorful sparklers were emerging from the seabed.
They looked like garden eels.
They swayed in unison with the waves, their tips flickering with a brilliant yet eerie light like fireworks.
Elias suddenly felt a strong sense of déjà vu about this scene.
Perhaps this was purely the image of Elias's mother, who had died of a serious illness in his memory, mixed with his imagination of deep-sea horrors, striking his fragile nerves and resulting in this absurd illusion.
"What is it?"
"Mother" spoke.
The voice was not the gentle female voice of his memory, but that familiar, hoarse, tobacco-scented raspy voice.
This extreme disconnect between sight and sound caused Elias a wave of physiological discomfort.
However, he knew very well that it was that damn white-bearded captain speaking.
"Nothing."
Elias blinked hard, trying to wipe this portrait of a mother’s vigil from his retinas, but he failed.
He could only force himself to face that face and say with feigned calm:
"I just suddenly felt that the sun is a bit piercing today, giving everyone I see a soft-focus filter."
"Didn't you say that as long as I lived, you would answer my questions?"
Elias had not forgotten this promise.
This was an opportunity to ask questions that he had traded his life for.
"That's right."
"Mother" nodded, her movements as stiff as a marionette.
"You can ask. As long as it doesn't involve the company's interests, I can answer."
Captain Crowley (Mother Edition) answered candidly, even pulling out a pipe and taking a puff.
"Very well."
Elias didn't waste words and directly threw out the first question he had been calculating in his mind for a long time.
"Which number is this tower I'm in?"
"I saw the records left by the previous keepers."
"There seems to be more than one lighthouse in the Moon Bay region."
"Tell me, where am I?"
This was a key piece of information.
At least, that was what he thought.
However, Captain Crowley shook his head.
"I said, as long as it doesn't involve the company's interests."
He blew out a smoke ring for emphasis, the smoke swirling around "Mother's" haggard face, looking particularly horrifying.
Elias's heart sank.
It seemed this question indeed involved company interests, perhaps even some deeper transcendent layout.
The more they hid it, the more it proved something was wrong.
That made it all the more necessary to understand.
But since the other party refused to budge, Elias didn't plan to beat a dead horse on this issue.
"Fine."
Elias changed his angle of approach, his gaze becoming sharp.
"Is the mortality rate for the company's lighthouse keepers high?"
This question seemed redundant, since he had almost died eight hundred times himself.
But he wanted to hear the official version.
"High."
Captain Crowley didn't even hesitate, answering directly after a brief thought.
That matter-of-fact manner was as if he were saying, "Do you even need to ask?"
"Doesn't the company just hire guys like you who want money more than their lives?"
"But to tell you the truth, young man."
Crowley grinned, which looked particularly gruesome on that female face.
"In fact, this hiring strategy saves the company a lot of money every year."
He didn't say anything more after that.
Because even without him saying it, Elias could imagine the rest.
This was also a form of extremely dark black humor.
Most of the keepers probably didn't live to spend their wages.
That half-month's salary they received in advance was their blood money.
And the high salary for the remaining half-year or more?
Heh, since the people were dead or missing, that money naturally became the company's 'sunk cost,' and they even saved on the pension.
Originally, he would have been like that too.
Taking the 12 gold crown prepayment and happily coming here to die.
Then becoming a corpse on this island or a pile of fish droppings in the sea.
He had originally wanted to ask, since that was the case, why didn't the company just hire real transcendents?
Even a low Scale transcendent would have a much higher survival rate than an ordinary person, right?
But thinking about it, there was no need to ask.
The answer was obvious—cost-effectiveness.
How expensive were transcendents?
And transcendents weren't easy to fool, and their probability of survival was high.
That meant the company would have to actually pay the full salary.
A surviving transcendent might even discover the company's secrets and blackmail them in return.
How could they compare to ordinary people?
Cheap, easy to trick, quick to die, no strings attached.
Is this how a capitalist calculates?
Elias felt his worldview being refreshed once again.
So, based on this, he could confirm that the words from the ghost John's mouth weren't aimless.
The keepers of the other lighthouses were, in all probability, already dead and cold.
And this also confirmed that he wasn't the only sucker who had been tricked.
Look, there was even one on the shore right now.
Elias looked back at Jack in the distance.
"Then..."
Elias turned his head, staring intently at the "Mother" before him, and asked the question that was most important to him.
"I've been cursed by a dream demon."
"I need a way to break the curse."
"Oh?"
Hearing this question, Captain Crowley raised an eyebrow, seemingly becoming interested.
"How did you know it was a dream demon curse?"
He looked Elias up and down, a flash of surprise in his eyes.
"Ordinary people can't perceive things on this level at all; they would only think they were going crazy."
"Reasonably speaking..."
Elias was just about to make up an excuse to fool him.
Right then, the scene before him suddenly shattered like a broken mirror with a crash.
The eerie sparklers, the muddy seawater, and that face of his mother that made his heart skip a beat all vanished in an instant.
The hallucination receded.
That old face full of wrinkles and a big white beard was presented before Elias again.
The sea breeze became clear once more, and the sunlight no longer had its own filter.
"Whew..."
Elias breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
Fortunately, the hallucination didn't last long this time.
"Forget it!"
Captain Crowley waved his hand, deciding not to dig deeper into those things.
Everyone had secrets, especially those who survived in a hellhole like this.
He couldn't be bothered to care if this kid was crazy or had truly become some big shot.
"Since you can discover the curse, it shows you indeed have some skill."
Crowley tapped his pipe, his tone becoming somewhat playful.
"As for the method to break the curse..."
"I do have a way."
Elias's eyes lit up.
"What way?"
"However..."
Crowley's tone shifted, and that familiar merchant's smile appeared on his face.
"You have to do me a favor."
Elias was stunned, then almost laughed out of anger.
"How is there another one?!"
First it was that old ghost Edmond, who made him deliver a bracelet before he would lead him into transcendence.
Then it was that brat John, who made him look for something before he would give a clue.
Now even an old man who sails a boat wants him to help?
Was he, a greenhorn newcomer, really that much in demand?
"Old man, the company owes me this!"
Elias pointed at the lighthouse behind him and roared.
"I almost died here, and now I'm asking for a way to break a curse, and I still have to help?"
"The company owes you, so go find the company!"
Captain Crowley spread his hands righteously.
"I am me, and the company is the company."
"It's not like I'm the one who owes you!"
Elias opened his mouth, momentarily speechless.
He wanted to argue, he wanted to curse.
But thinking about it carefully...
"You actually have a point, damn it."
Rate on N.U.
