“Also, once you're back in Hastings Port, make sure you find a camera and take a photo of the projection stone's content while it's playing.”
Elias's voice was very low.
Ophelia looked lost.
To an ordinary person, a projection stone was nothing short of a miracle. She had absolutely no idea how to operate it.
“Take this.”
Elias reached out and placed a small vial of glow-amber powder into her palm.
“When the time comes, you can place this beneath the stone.”
He pointed at the projection stone.
“Find something to light it with, and the images stored inside will be projected.”
The faint spirituality released when the glow-amber powder burned would peel away and magnify the illusion solidified within the projection stone.
At that point, taking a quick snap with a standard flash camera toward the empty air would perfectly capture and freeze the image.
Ophelia nodded blankly.
She sniffled and carefully tucked the glow-amber powder into the deepest corner of her bag.
Elias looked down, flipping through Ryan's log in his hand once more.
Then, with an impassive face, he handed the log back to Ophelia.
“Can we leave now?”
Old Crowley stood by the door, waiting somewhat impatiently.
The embers in the old captain's pipe flickered, and his triangular eyes were filled with impatience.
“Of course.”
Elias looked at Old Crowley.
“And what about our agreement?”
He asked, his words carrying a deeper meaning.
He was referring to the dream demon curse and the curse-removal method the other man had promised.
He had no desire to spend his entire life as an earthbound spirit.
“Wait until I come find you.”
Crowley exhaled a thick cloud of smoke and let out a cold snort.
The old man pulled down the brim of his hat, hiding the fleeting look of gravity in his eyes.
“Don't worry, this matter is far more important than lifting your damn curse.”
The “matter” the old captain referred to was obviously reinforcing the seal.
“Let's go, Malcolm.”
Crowley waved his hand and strode out the door.
The towering sailor, Malcolm, escorted Ophelia close behind.
The night was heavy.
The group walked all the way to the pier.
The faint light of a kerosene lamp flickered in the sea breeze.
The skiff's ropes were untied, and it headed toward the Nightgull anchored in the distance.
As he watched the Nightgull slowly depart, Elias felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him.
Too much had happened today.
“I'm going to the top of the tower to check the alchemy buoys.”
Jack, standing nearby, suddenly spoke up.
Evidently, the shriveled corpse in the cellar had given the young man quite a shock as well.
He needed to find some real work to distract himself.
Jack said, then headed up to the tower alone.
Elias returned to the cottage alone, sinking into the armchair in front of the fireplace.
The firewood in the fireplace crackled and popped.
The firelight cast his shadow onto the wall, stretching and shrinking it.
Elias sat in silence in the armchair before the fireplace, his mind flooded with a thousand thoughts.
Without the talkative Old Ed...
...the silence in his mind felt a little unfamiliar.
Having grown accustomed to someone bickering with him in his head, the sudden quietness actually made him feel a bit restless.
This was the first time since his arrival that he was completely alone to sort through his tangled thoughts.
First was Old Ed.
This old ghost, who claimed to have died here fifty years ago...
...had lied to him in a sense.
And he had lied thoroughly.
Even the shriveled corpse that served as his “spawn point” was a fake.
But it wasn't intentional.
Elias closed his eyes, his fingers lightly tapping the armrest of the sofa.
This didn't make logical sense.
Because lying always had a purpose.
Whether it was for money, life, or attempting possession, there had to be a clear motive.
Yet from beginning to end, the old man had never shown any definite goal.
Over the past two months, aside from teaching him supernatural knowledge and bickering with him, the old man had even proactively warned him of danger and helped him strategize on multiple occasions.
If his goal was to harm Elias, there was no need to put so much effort into being a mentor for beginners.
Surely he wasn't doing it just for a laugh?
What would he gain?
Was it because of his good looks, or because he was a sweet talker?
Remembering Old Ed's jumbled memory...
...and based on his final words, there was a high probability that his memories weren't under his own control at all.
That was the truly chilling part.
For a spiritual body, what it remembered and what it ought to remember—the underlying logic behind it all had broken down.
He believed himself to be Edmond, he remembered details from fifty years ago, and he even remembered Olivia's name.
But these memories were like data that had been arbitrarily tampered with.
There was at least something pulling the strings behind it.
Either some kind of rule, or some kind of entity.
And the old man's Scale rank in life was, in all likelihood, higher than Scale Two.
Elias opened his eyes, staring at the dancing flames.
He recalled the woman he had met at the Resurrection Society, one of the pinnacle figures walking the material world—Ms. Stoneheart.
This was also why Ms. Stoneheart had warned him the very first time they met.
A Scale Seven expert, a figure at the pinnacle of current humanity.
She had seen right through his bracelet and claimed to be a colleague of the old man.
If Old Ed were truly just a minor Scale Two, how could he possibly be colleagues with a Scale Seven Saint?
He couldn't have been weak.
And his jumbled memories only proved this.
Perhaps within the old man's spirituality, the chronological order of his memories was completely scrambled.
Fragments of his past, present, and future had been mashed into a chaotic blur.
That was why he had mistaken Ryan for himself.
Then there was Ryan.
The young man who had come to the lighthouse three years ago and ultimately ended up as a shriveled corpse in the cellar.
How had he managed to survive here for so long?
According to the log, carapace husks came ashore, dream demons loomed, and there was that choir of sirens in the sea who sang at the drop of a hat.
An ordinary person, without any supernatural protection, would have survived a week at most.
In all probability, he had also received Old Ed's help.
This also explained why the bracelet had been on Ryan's wrist when Elias found his body.
Ryan had been the old ghost's first pupil.
Or rather, his first student.
The information obtained from 【Interpretive Insight】 earlier also confirmed this.
In the moving images Elias had witnessed...
...Ryan's life was filled with an eerie sense of déjà vu.
In those scenes, the young man had behaved exactly like him at the beginning, talking to thin air.
But what about the way he died?
Elias stared blankly at the crackling fire, lost in thought.
Edmond had originally claimed he died from being drained by a dream demon, which was why he became a shriveled corpse.
This had practically become an imprint stamped into the old ghost's memory.
Yet Ryan's condition perfectly matched that description.
His skin had keratinized, taking on the texture of a dehydrated mummy.
It seemed it could only have been the work of a dream demon.
Otherwise, a normal human body wouldn't have turned into a shriveled corpse and been preserved in a cellar.
In a damp and rainy environment like Moon Bay, a normal corpse would have quickly rotted, crawled with carrion crabs, and eventually turned into a pile of bones.
Only extraction on a supernatural level could turn a body into such a peculiar, dried specimen.
Was it because the old man and Ryan shared the same cause of death, resulting in this memory confusion?
Or had Old Ed adopted Ryan's experiences as his own memories?
Had the old ghost absorbed Ryan's despair before death and forcibly written that experience into his own “persona”?
There was no way to verify this anymore.
And the dead tell no tales.
Elias sighed and pulled out the Scale One spirit vision potion recipe he had unearthed in the cellar earlier from his Gluttonous Stomach.
Once again, he cast 【Interpretive Insight】.
Threads of spirituality pierced deep into the fibers of the paper.
This time, he heard a voice in the residual spirituality.
It was Ryan's voice.
“This recipe is missing an ingredient called 'Resurrectionist Soul'?”
“I can't use it?”
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