Shut up, brave man! I don't want to atone for my sins to you!

64. Of course it's okay

"If the experience of Mr. Xilin presented to us by the tracing spell is correct, then after his death, his cane sword should have been left at the border between Diesel and Victoria... together with the big box he took away, his body, and the body of the shadow that pretended to be him."

The brave man analyzed in a low voice:

"But in fact, we found nothing near that section of the border."

"Whether it was the cane sword, the box, or the bodies of Mr. Xilin and the shadow... the place was empty and clean, as if nothing had happened."

He looked at the letter that had not yet been put away by the witch.

"Just like this letter, Ivan Thorne, who wrote it, had fallen into madness in the end and was unable to deliver it to us, its successors, but we still received it."

The witch and the priest understood what he wanted to say almost at the same time.

This time it was the pastor who spoke first:

"Crazy John said that he found the cane next to the emperor's throne, and this letter was handed to us by the emperor himself..."

"That is to say..." She concluded, "the emperor is 'helping' us?"

The brave man looked at the priest with some surprise, hesitated, and shook his head:

"That depends on whether Long Jin I has been polluted. If he has not been polluted, then it is only natural that he would choose to help us since he once studied in the White Tower. If he has been polluted and his cognition has been interfered with, then why he would help us like this is something worth pondering..."

Although so far, they have not yet determined what changes will occur to people contaminated by the Slender Man compared to before the contamination.

Perhaps everyone reacts differently after being contaminated.

For example, Mr. Schilling, after being polluted, wanted desperately to leave Diesel and go to the outside world.

And Ivan Thorne, who...

Ciel thought back to the contents of the letter and recalled the two experiments conducted by the investigator.

In the first experiment, Ivan Thorne proved their previous conjecture, that is, "whether all the Diesel people have been contaminated by the Slender Man."

As for how he conducted the experiment, they no longer know.

The second experiment...

If Charles guessed correctly, Ivan Thorne voluntarily chose to be contaminated by the Slender Man.

The human body is always limited, and the "perspective" it can provide is terribly narrow. If one wants to "see" the truth like Mr. Schilling, then one may have to give up one's identity as a human being.

Accept the contamination, become Slender Man, and then you can "see" the truth through Slender Man's perspective.

Mr. Schilling's experience inspired Ivan Thorne.

So, he followed in the footsteps of his predecessors and made a decision.

In the darkness with no way forward, the investigator lit himself up... If there was no torch, then he would become the new sun.

He used his sacrifice to illuminate the way forward for future generations, and he left some particularly important pieces of information to his successors.

dream.

Ivan Thorne mentioned dreams.

On the verge of madness, he temporarily suppressed the contamination from the Slender Man with a willpower that ordinary people could not achieve. He told his successor that after gaining the Slender Man's perspective, he saw -

Dream, he saw something sleeping in the dream, and the pronoun he used was "we".

At that time, he was probably about to be transformed into Slender Man, so can we make this assumption?

The "we" mentioned by Ivan Thorn refers to the Diesel people who were also polluted and transformed into the Slender Ghost. So he is trying to tell the later ones...

He saw the Diesel people who had been contaminated by the Slender Man thirty years ago.

Those Diesel people...are sleeping in their dreams.

But whose dream is so grand that it can accommodate all the sleeping Diesel people?

The answer is in the next line of the letter -

"Wishing machine..." The hero muttered the term, and said to himself in a daze, "...Dreaming?"

He felt incredible.

At least as far as he knew, no limited wishing machine had the so-called "thoughts". The five limited wishing machines currently owned by human countries were absolutely dead objects. They would only diligently fulfill the wishes of every wisher and charge a price.

But he had to admit that he knew very little about those limited wishing machines, and most of his knowledge about them came from those groundless rumors.

But it doesn’t matter, even though he doesn’t understand the limited wishing machine, there are people who do.

Ciel suddenly turned his head, looked at the witch, walked over and leaned on the armrest of the sofa.

"The limited wishing machine in your White Tower... can it dream?" He lowered his head and asked seriously.

The witch was silenced by this ridiculous question.

After a long time, she shook her head and replied:

"I don't know. To be honest, I have never seen the limited wishing machine in our White Tower, and I don't know anything about it. But I think it shouldn't be able to dream. After all, it's just a tool, a dead object..."

At this point Charles interrupted her suddenly:

"But the mistress of the elves can dream."

The witch was stunned and didn't know how to refute for a moment.

Charles continued:

"When I first met the elves' mistress, I had doubts - the mistress's body was made of steel and grass, not flesh and bones, but she had life and soul. She even wanted to protect her children like all mothers in the world..."

"So, what is the boundary between life and death?" Ciel said in a low voice, "Can a dead object like the Limited Wishing Machine really not dream?"

The witch found that she could not give an answer.

Perhaps due to her natural laziness, she has almost never studied these issues specifically since coming to Pangaea.

"Before crossing over, I had to study and work every day. After crossing over, I still have to study and work every day - then wouldn't it be a waste of time for me to cross over?"

She has always thought so.

Therefore, compared to the native Charles, her understanding of the nature of magic and the truth of the world cannot be said to be superior.

After being stumped by Charles' question, she felt ashamed for bringing shame to the time traveler, and she made up her mind to study hard in the future.

If she can’t beat Charles, can she defeat Charles?

Do you understand the value of the innate holy body of questioning?

But no matter how slow she was, she had almost come to her senses by now and figured out why Charles suddenly asked such a strange question.

"Are you thinking about the letter?" she asked. "I remember Evan Thorne mentioning that the wishing machine was dreaming."

"Yeah," Ciel nodded, "He also said that 'we' are all sleeping in the dream of the wishing machine."

At this time, the pastor sitting beside the bed suddenly spoke:

"But when he wrote that letter, Ivan Thorne was almost going crazy. The pollution he had suffered was so serious that even his choice of words and sentences became a problem."

"Besides..." She paused, and then said, "The world in the eyes of the Slender Man may not be the same as the world in the eyes of ordinary people. And Ivan Thorne, who is half Slender Man and the other half still retains human characteristics..."

"I tend to believe that he would not deceive us, but the 'truth' described in every sentence he said might be far from our cognition."

"Because a normal person's perception is not the same as Slender Man's perception."

Charles felt that what the pastor said made sense, so he nodded subconsciously.

He himself has come across real-life examples - for example, in some countries, nodding represents affirmation and agreement; while in other countries, nodding expresses denial and rejection.

Not to mention the cognitive differences between humans and ghosts, there are many unimaginable cognitive differences among humans alone.

So, he paused for a moment, and then continued the pastor's words:

"The message that Ivan Thorn left for us, his successors, is very important. I am willing to believe in this pioneer, but just like..."

At this point his voice got stuck like an old tape recorder, and it continued after a moment:

"Anyway, we can't completely trust the information he left for us. We should selectively screen it..."

The brave man suddenly remembered the last three things that the respectable investigator left for them.

Don't wake up any of Slender Man.

Enter the wishing well and you will see the real Diesel.

as well as……

"The sleepers are awake, and the awake are... mad?"

The previous information was easy to understand, but this sentence was the only thing that Charles couldn't understand at all.

Who is the sleeper? Why is the sleeper awake? And why is the awake one crazy?

If this sentence is describing the entire Diesel, describing the Diesel people who have been polluted by the Slender Ghost...

Then it seems to be right.

Because Ivan Thorn also said that all the Diesel people who were transformed into slender figures were sleeping in the dream of the wishing machine. Correspondingly, in the cognition of these outsiders, the sleeping slender figures were indeed living as normal people.

They did stay "awake".

But what about the second half?

What does "the sane are crazy" mean?

If we talk about sober people, then this word can only refer to outsiders like them who have not yet been polluted.

So, in Ivan Thorne's eyes, all the investigators, including himself, are actually crazy?

Or have they all been contaminated, without realizing it, by Slender Man, just like old Mr. Schilling?

Ciel's brain was working at high speed and he frowned.

But at this moment, he suddenly felt a strange touch on his thigh.

He subconsciously turned his head to look and found that the witch had become so sleepy that she couldn't open her eyes and leaned her little head on him.

The hero's body stiffened, not daring to move for fear of waking the sleeping witch.

The witch woke up by herself, rubbed her eyes, straightened up, yawned, and looked up at the brave man standing next to her with a subtle expression.

"What's wrong?" she asked in confusion.

"..."

The hero was silent for a while, then answered subconsciously:

"It's okay... How about you? If you're tired, why don't you go and rest first?"

The witch waved her hand at him and said:

"Don't worry about me, I...I can't be in trouble, it's just..."

She yawned again, and her voice became softer:

"I just don't know why I've been feeling a little sleepy lately."

-

[To be continued]

65. Please take me with you

After sending the witch back to her room to sleep, the hero was forced to face the priest alone.

To be honest, he felt that facing the priest was even more suffocating than facing the mad mother of the elves in Lentiheim.

The pressure was so great that he was practically sweating profusely.

He didn't want to provoke the pastor, his heart only belonged to Rachel, but the pastor... he always felt that this guy in the pastor's skin would take the initiative to provoke him.

So he felt that the only way now was to ignore the priest's presence, go straight back to the room and sleep, and never forget to lock the door, and at the same time expand the range of the forbidden spell until it could cover the door.

Only in this way could he ensure that he would not be attacked by witches or priests at night.

But just as he was about to implement his plan and go back to his room to sleep, the pastor suddenly stood in front of him.

Charles was forced to stop.

"..."