Mystery: Survival from the Secret Doll

Chapter 269 268 Dream Divination
Tang thought for a moment and said, "There are indeed some things in the notes written by that crazy cult member that look quite uncomfortable, but after reading the notes and looking at those strange paintings, I didn't feel anything. I didn't have any nightmares or symptoms of auditory or visual hallucinations."

No problems occurred?

Is this because Tang is already a Sequence 7 magician, or is it due to his own special characteristics?

Special characteristics...

When this was mentioned, Klein's first thought was of the gray fog, which was very likely the culprit that caused him to cross over—the mysterious space above the gray fog.

Was it because of that that I had a corresponding stress response after seeing those things?

As Klein's thoughts raced, Don shook the file folder in his hand again.

“I have something to do… Oh, by the way, Klein, after you’re discharged from the hospital, would you like to take a physical training course at the University of Tingen?”

As if remembering something, he asked again.

"Physical training?"

"It's not open to ordinary people; it's for extraordinary individuals."

Tang explained, "Hoy University also has this course, it's considered one of the basic courses at Miskatonic University. It's designed for extraordinary individuals who aren't very good at close combat, to improve their chances of survival in combat, and to fight against cultists... emmm, a kind of combat training?"

"Okay, if I have time later."

Klein smiled and nodded.

Tang said no more, waved his hand, and entered the psychiatric ward of St. Peter's Hospital, without looking at Patient Number Three who was staring at them from the lawn in front of the ward.

Klein collected his thoughts, his gaze sweeping over the third patient who had been staring at them intently for some time, before leaving the psychiatric ward and heading back to his own room.

Sitting on the lawn, holding a strange doll with five heads, Patient Number Three remained quiet. His golden eyes, innocent like a child's, shifted from Tang, who had entered the ward, to Klein, who had already gone far away.

After a long while, he slowly spoke:
"I'd like some vodka tonight..."

"No, patient number three, patients cannot drink alcohol."

The nurse nearby had keen hearing, and she refused quite decisively.

Patient Number Three's innocent, childlike eyes filled with tears when he heard the nurse's unwavering refusal.

He was like a child who couldn't get candy; he instantly transformed from a calm and reserved adult into a crying and screaming child.

"But I just want to drink it..."

"I want to drink! I want to drink! I want to drink!"

Klein, who was not far away, heard faint crying behind him. He turned around and saw the bearded man who had been calm just moments before rolling around on the lawn, wailing and pounding the ground with a five-headed doll in his hand.

Before long, one of the doll's heads was torn off the body and rolled far away.

That grotesque, somewhat terrifying head happened to land not far from Klein.

The nurse quickly ran over to pick up the head that had been torn off by the force.

"Mr. Moretti, I hope I didn't scare you?"

“No.” Klein smiled, but silently thought to himself, “A mental patient…”

Living in this world is probably quite difficult.

However, in theory, mental illnesses that do not involve supernatural factors should be the type that psychologists can easily cure. Why do the resident patients here, whose conditions are quite ordinary, choose to stay here?
It was a bit strange, but Klein shook his head; it probably had nothing to do with him.

Before pitying others, pity yourself first. If he still has those kinds of dreams at night, then he really needs to consider transferring to another hospital.

-

That evening, after treatment by psychologist Dr. Admitor, Klein clearly felt that his mental state had stabilized considerably.

As the red moon descended once more, Klein turned off the lights and prepared to sleep. He looked at the observation window by the door, remained silent for a moment, then opened the ward door and discussed with the nurse on duty outside about adding a small curtain to the observation window.

In this way, those inside the ward cannot see what's happening outside, and those outside the ward cannot see what's happening inside.

Although this would most likely only serve as a form of emotional comfort, Klein decided to follow his heart.

"I hope I won't have any nightmares tonight."

Klein took a deep breath before going to sleep, turned down the brightness of his mineral lamp, and then fell into a deep sleep.

-

midnight.

The sound of heavy objects being dragged could be heard again from outside the door.

Klein frowned, and slowly, very slowly, opened his eyes.

The room was pitch black. Perhaps because the sunwell ore inside the mineral lamp had burned out, the light from the lamp, which should have emitted a faint glow, was now extinguished. Only the crimson moon outside the window shone through the curtains into the ward, bringing a barely perceptible glimmer of light.

Klein shifted his body, but made no sound.

His eyes shifted slightly, looking towards the direction of the ward door.

The curtains that Klein had asked the nurse to draw on the observation window were now covered with the shadows of many slowly moving bodies, cast by the light from the mine lamps in the corridor.

"It's that dream again..."

Klein frowned, trying to ignore the situation, but he suddenly woke up as if an alarm clock had suddenly rung in his head, and his drowsiness vanished in an instant.

"Sometimes, dreams are also a kind of projection of reality. You may encounter many things in reality that you have not yet realized, but your spirituality and your subconscious remember them."

“These subtle details that you may not have noticed can sometimes be influenced by your subconscious and appear before you in the form of dreams…”

"Stimulated by the notes of the secret society members, your subconscious mind discovered a problem, and as a result, you began having strange nightmares... Of course, this is just one guess; there are many possibilities for the occurrence of dreams, and I cannot guarantee whether this guess is the truth..."

During the day, Dr. Admisor had analyzed Klein's dreaming behavior.

Klein recalled the same words that Dr. Admisor had said.

"Is this some kind of manifestation of my subconscious? Does it mean that things I wasn't aware of before, are connected through the notes of the eccentric members of the Secret Order, and these are the details?"

Klein rolled over and sat up, his voice very soft and quiet.

Klein remembered his dream from last night. In the dream, the monster outside the door entered the room because it sensed his gaze. In other words, those monsters were very sensitive to being stared at, and he couldn't be sure if they were equally sensitive to sound.

Klein was as cautious as a cat on tiptoe. He didn't wear slippers and sat barefoot behind the ward door. He also didn't draw back the curtains to look at the corridor through the observation window.

"As a diviner, the most important thing before doing anything should be to consult the oracle first."

But without any suitable tools, Klein was afraid that the sound of the coin being flicked would alert the monster outside the door. Looking through the curtains at the shadows outside the door, he saw that they were still moving methodically and without any movement towards the end of the corridor. So he bent down and pressed his ear to the door, preparing to listen to the situation outside first.

It seems they haven't found him.

With his ear pressed against the ward door, Klein heard some rustling in the corridor, but it wasn't very clear; it was a muffled sound with a layer of obscurity.

"What are you going to do today...?"

"A brain transplant. My brain is too slow; I need a new, functional one. What about you...?"

"Your fingers aren't very dexterous, let's switch hands..."

"Are there enough materials...?"

"That should be enough... Recently, there were many, but they all turned into..."

"underground……"

"Oh no, I'm going into labor. I wonder what this baby will look like..."

"The child from last time... are you... alright...?"

"A brain transplant, replacing an arm for inflexible fingers? Childbirth?"

Klein's lips twitched, and he felt that familiar chill creeping up his tailbone.

"If this is a dream, then what do the things these monsters are saying mean?"

"And underground, the underground of St. Peter's Hospital? Or does it have some other symbolic meaning? Symbolizing something dark, dirty, something that can't see the light?"

As a diviner, Klein had also studied dream interpretation methods, but these were rather abstract. Klein had never seen dream images and symbols with concrete physical forms, and as a diviner, he could not extract more useful information.

"Tell me, how much longer do we have..."

"It should be soon..."

Soon? What's soon?
Klein was very careful and didn't make a sound, but behind him, from the position of the hospital bed in the room, something seemed to have made an inadvertent noise.

Klein turned his head sharply and saw two withered, thin arms crawling with insects reaching out from under his bed. Something was pawing at the edge of the bed, seemingly trying to pull him out from under it.

"oops……"

"I've been discovered..."

Klein's pupils dilated suddenly, and with the help of the abundant crimson moonlight that had appeared out of nowhere, he saw the monster he had seen yesterday, a monster with a deformed, rotting, pus-filled face covered with transparent worms crawling in and out!

This thing was under my bed the whole time?
"You're awake..."

The monster gave Klein a sinister smile, and then, like a nimble, four-legged spider, it crawled out from under the bed and pounced in his direction!
The monsters outside the door seemed to have sensed something was wrong. With a bang, the glass of the observation window shattered. Outside the door, a corpse with a broken neck, a monster with twisted arms, and a male figure with a large belly were all crowded on the observation window, sticking their heads in and showing Klein the same eerie, almost identical smile.

"You're awake..."

With a buzzing sound, the ringing in his ears and the feeling of nausea made him gasp for breath. Klein woke up again with a start. He didn't even wipe the sweat from his forehead, but quickly rolled out of bed and looked under his bed.

There was nothing under the bed...

The mineral lamps in the room still emitted a faint light, and there were no dismembered corpses hanging in the corridor, no monsters with twisted arms, and no pregnant men.

"Indeed... phew... it was a dream..."

But now Klein really couldn't sleep.

With the light of his mineral lamp turned up, Klein, aided by ritual magic, quickly sketched the faces of several people from his dream onto a piece of paper.

He looked at the several unrecognizable faces, resisted the urge to throw them away, and let his intuition take over. But he only vaguely felt that he had seen these faces somewhere before.

These pictures show the monster's face...

He remained silent for a moment, carefully crafting the divination phrases, preparing to perform a dream divination.

The presence of symbols necessarily indicates that these people have some connection to reality; perhaps Klein has met these people before!

"In the dream, the identities of these people..."

"In the dream, the identities of these people..."

After repeating this seven times, Klein fell backward and entered the dream.

But the dream was empty; there was nothing there.

"I haven't seen these people before?"

Klein frowned when he woke up, but then something suddenly occurred to him.

"No, it's also possible that the result of the divination was influenced by the power of a higher level, which is a very common possibility for a failed divination."

After all, he was just a Sequence 9 fortune teller.

"Since the real world doesn't work, perhaps we can try a different environment—a higher, more mysterious one—to increase the success rate of divination and eliminate interference..."

Other diviners may not be able to do it, but Klein truly has such a mysterious, high-ranking place!
Klein stood up, entered the washroom, locked the door, and then took four steps backward, entering the gray fog.

I don't know if it will work, but I'll give it a try anyway.

Klein conjured up paper and pen, wrote down the same divination statement, and entered the dream in the same way as dream divination.

And this time, he saw it.

Several images flashed by rapidly, with four images appearing in total.

Klein saw fellow patients brushing past him in the St. Peter's Hospital cafeteria, saw passersby on the carriage heading to 32 Red Rose Street, saw a tenant at 47 Golden Rose Street heading to work, and saw the thief who had once stolen the wallet of his original friend, Don Eggers, outside the University of Tingen...

The faces of these people in the dream suddenly twisted, forming one vortex after another.

They all turned their heads 180 degrees out of their dreams, seemingly watching Klein Moretti from afar as he spied on them through dream divination!
(End of this chapter)