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

"But if that Diesel is really a dream..." The witch bit her lip, "Then why can we participate in that dream? Why can the Diesel people in the dream leave Diesel freely?"

But without the hero's explanation, the witch soon figured out the answer to the question on her own:

“It’s a wall!”

It's the Wall of Sighs.

No, now that the truth has become obvious, it is no longer appropriate to call that wall the Wall of Sighs.

The witch thought so, and almost tremblingly looked up at Longin Tyr, looking at the square trioctahedron floating in the emperor's chest.

In the blazing light, in the transparent "shell", she saw that there seemed to be something inside.

With the help of the True Sight spell, she finally saw the truth hidden in the trapezoid -

A city, or rather, a country.

——Diesel.

That's like a miniature version of Diesel!

But it was also a dream, a dream created by the emperor and his subjects.

At this time, the brave man whispered:

"We are not participating in that dream. We just entered that limited wishing machine. Just like what Ivan Thorne wrote in that letter, 'the wishing machine is dreaming.' So the wishing well in the Wishing Square is not actually a wishing machine at all, or in other words-"

"When we are in the wishing machine, everything we see belongs to that wishing machine. The wishing well is the bridge connecting wishes and reality, and the wall of sighs that prevents us from leaving Diesel..."

The witch understood what the hero wanted to say, and she couldn't help but clench her fists and hold them close to her chest.

"That is actually the 'shell' of the wishing machine," the witch continued the hero's words, her voice bitter, "...similarly, it is also the 'cage' that seals off the entire Diesel."

Longin Till never forgot his experience as a student in the White Tower.

He never forgot what his teacher taught him -

"This white tower was built to make this world a better place. We built this towering white tower because we want to prove to everyone that there are always beautiful things in this world."

So, Longin Tyr made a wish to the wishing machine.

He wants his kingdom to be eternal.

He wants his fellow man to transform from monsters back into humans.

He wanted to lock up all the Slender Man and all the pollution in Diesel.

So the emperor rebuilt his kingdom in his dream. He carried his people with his dream. He might not be able to make the world a better place, but he...

At least he couldn't make the world a worse place.

"The shadows that have fallen into deep sleep are harmless," Charles whispered, "They will not cause any pollution to the outside world."

"So over the past thirty years, many Diesel people have left this dream and gone to the outside world without causing any pollution. I don't know how Longin Tier did it, but there is no doubt that he may have found a way to safely contain those shadows."

"But this method also has a disadvantage - once those Diesel people are 'awakened', they will turn into shadows again."

"Although they will soon fall into deep sleep again at the emperor's request."

"I think that's why old Mr. Schilling was tainted—because he awakened some dark figure."

"And this just corresponds to the content of the letter that Mr. Ivan Thorne left for us..."

Xia paused and read out the sentence:

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

The shadows fell asleep at the emperor's wish, and in their dreams, they turned back to their original appearance. They "woke up" and lived in the quiet and peaceful, false Diesel with their former identities.

This corresponds exactly to the first half of the sentence.

The investigators from the White Tower woke up after noticing Diesel's abnormality, but they soon paid the price for their clarity. They were contaminated by the black shadow that was accidentally awakened and eventually fell into madness.

The second half of the sentence also came true.

But is that really the truth?

The brave man always felt that he had overlooked some details, as if there was a voice... no, there were countless tiny voices ringing in his ears, whispering something to him, interfering with his cognition, and making him ignore a crucial thing.

"What on earth is that?"

He frowned, trying to remember.

But at this moment, he heard the witch's scream:

"Crazy John…what are you doing?! Stop it!"

The tiny sounds in the brave man's ears were dispersed, and the details he had ignored emerged.

He instinctively gripped the holy sword tightly and slashed at the old man who was kneeling in front of the emperor at the fastest speed.

But it's too late.

The old man's body had disappeared, replaced by a tall, lonely ghost with thin limbs.

The ghost figure tightly grasped the cane sword left by old Mr. Xilin, his body trembling, and stabbed towards the emperor's heart desperately.

The sane are crazy.

In the entire Diesel, in the entire dream, apart from those outsiders who were naturally awake, only one person noticed the abnormality from beginning to end.

It's Crazy John.

He woke up early and was controlled by the dark shadow early.

And it only takes a little bit of cognitive interference, just like inducing Mr. Schilling to leave Diesel, the shadow guides Crazy John to doubt the emperor, guides him to keep contacting strangers who have mistakenly entered Diesel, and guides him to leave the dream and enter the real Diesel...

Then, the half-asleep and half-awake Mad John will naturally wake up completely after discovering the truth, and will naturally fall into madness after waking up completely.

Naturally, he turned back into a black shadow, which would completely kill the emperor who had only a glimmer of life left. It would...

It would destroy the fragile dream born from the limited wish-granting machine, it would end the Emperor's wish, and it would awaken all the shadows.

The brave man realized it too late and was unable to stop it, even though the holy sword had cut off half of its body.

But it was only a stone's throw away from the emperor, and the tip of the cane sword had even pierced into the emperor's fake heart that was temporarily replaced by a limited wishing machine.

This is a fateful sword.

——This was the eleventh and final assassination attempt on the emperor by the traitor.

[To be continued]

-

70. Other ways

The cane sword pierced the emperor's "heart".

The shining trapezoidal octahedron was easily popped like a soap bubble.

Originally, the cane sword made of ordinary iron should not be able to shatter the "shell" of the limited wishing machine, but in the hands of Mad John who turned into a black shadow, it was tainted with certain characteristics, a characteristic that was enough to easily tear apart the "shell" of the limited wishing machine.

The monster imprisoned in the emperor's dreams passed through the gap between the two Diesels and launched a final rebellion against the scholars in reality.

The brave's holy sword cut off the lower half of its body, and the witch and priest's magic bombarded the remaining upper half of its body, tearing out countless transparent holes - but none of them could stop the black shadow, and this conspiracy that had been brewing in dreams for thirty years finally came to an end.

The rectangular octahedron suspended in the emperor's chest changed from being constantly bright to flickering like breathing, and like a seriously injured and dying person, its flickering frequency was still slowing down, and it seemed that it would completely go out and stop working soon.

At that time, the dream maintained by it, by this limited wish-granting machine, will be shattered, and all the thin ghosts sleeping in the dream will be freed from the emperor's control and will slowly wake up.

They will remember who they are again.

——They are not the warm and simple Diesel people, but the thin and tall ghosts emerging from the ruins of the former civilization.

They will swarm out of the cage that has imprisoned them for thirty years, leave Diesel, and spread across the entire Pangaea like dandelion seeds blown away by the wind.

No one can stop them anymore.

The brave man heard a loud noise like the collapse of the sky above his head, so he subconsciously raised his head.

The vault of the palace had disappeared in the disaster thirty years ago, so the brave man could now face the sky directly.

He saw a faint, distorted shadow appear on the horizon.

Like a gigantic soap bubble, the shadow enveloped the ruins of Diesel.

It is almost completely transparent, and if you don't concentrate your attention, you might not even notice it at all - the brave man even had a very strange feeling, he felt that the shadow's real body did not exist in reality, and what he saw was actually some kind of "reflection".

"That's probably a reflection from a dream."

He gripped the holy sword tightly and thought silently.

"As the limited wish machine stops functioning, the dream will slowly collapse. Eventually, the dream will return to reality, and the two worlds... will probably overlap. Then, the shadows will wake up."

As for what the awakened shadows will do...

The answer is self-evident.

So the hero withdrew his gaze and looked at the witch.

Under the collapsing sky, in the gap between the gradually destructive dream and reality, he was incredibly calm.

He held out his hand to her, inviting her:

"Let's go, it's time for us to save the world."

The witch was stunned.

She instinctively lowered her head and raised her hand, but hesitated, not knowing whether she should accept the hero's invitation.

The priest was the one who had accompanied the hero for three years and should have followed him to save the world, while she was just a witch. When she questioned whether the priest was a fake, didn't she also question herself?

The priest is a fake, and the witch...is actually also a fake.

She probably didn't have the qualifications - she didn't have the qualifications to grab the hero's hand and stand beside him.

The witch slowly retracted her outstretched hand.

"Let a real priest fight alongside him."

she thinks.

But the brave man obviously doesn't think so.

He grabbed the witch's hand.

"Come."

He said.

"Huh?" The witch was stunned. She was caught off guard and was pulled to her side by the brave man.

"You come too."

He grabbed the priest again.

"Ah?" The priest was also dragged over by the brave man and forced to stand on the other side of the brave man.

Then he said:

"Let's go."

"..."

The witch and the priest looked at each other.

Their souls might still be feeling a little self-pitying and wanted to stay where they were, but their bodies refused to obey them, and just like what had happened countless times in the past three years, they followed the hero.

But after a while, the witch suddenly reacted:

"wrong!"

She stopped, looked at the hero's receding figure, and asked:

"What do you want to do?"

The brave man also stopped.

He turned around and looked at the witch with his iron-gray eyes. Under the gradually collapsing sky, amidst the ruins and the brilliant afterglow of the apocalypse, he smiled at the witch:

"I'm going to do what a brave man should do."

Others may not understand what he meant by "what a hero should do", but the witch understood, and the priest understood too. There was probably no one in this world who understood the stupid hero in front of them better than them... and now that the dream was about to collapse and the shadows might wake up at any time, it was obvious what a hero should do.