Chapter 38 – Return and Recap
Lumian had scraped together every ounce of strength he possessed to invent an excuse for his earlier behavior. Under Aurore's suspicious gaze he tottered up the stairs and into his room.
"…I, I only had a dream?"
He spoke in a hoarse voice:
"Godfather, this isn't a dream… is it?"
"I don't want to lie to you, nor dress it up as a sweet dream. Don't ask why I'm helping—am I not your Godfather?" Ning Lu glanced at Lumian.
"Tell me, can a life that lasts only twelve days be called a real life?"
Lumian's mouth opened; every scrap of strength seemed sucked from his body and he collapsed onto his bed.
Trembling hands hid his face. He wanted to cry, yet had forgotten how; in the end only a wind-like, anguished roar tore from his chest.
Ning Lu watched quietly; thin gray mist drifted around him.
After a long while, when the gray fog had begun to swirl about Lumian, he widened blood-shot eyes. "Then—is there a way to fix this? A way to break the loop?"
"There is." Ning Lu nodded. "I'll find you a Dream Weaver to spin you a beautiful dream of life after those twelve days; you can spend your whole life inside it and the loop will be solved."
Hearing this, Lumian fell silent.
Seeing the look of "grief beyond tears" on Lumian's face, Ning Lu added casually,
"But what if I told you Aurore's death isn't set in stone—yet the cycle you're experiencing was arranged on purpose?"
Lumian slowly lifted his head, blood on his gums. He drew a soft breath.
"Who are they?"
"Great beings whose names you're not even allowed to know." Ning Lu deliberately adopted a nasty tone. "Their goal is to mould a person formed of specific symbols—you—to become their tool."
"Oh, and though a few of them bear you some goodwill, they can't even protect themselves."
Listening, Lumian didn't know what to say. After a short silence he spoke with resolve: "Godfather, what do we do next to break this cycle?"
Seeing that Lumian had realized something, Ning Lu gave a slight nod.
"Explore the secret of this dream. I need it, and so do you. You know far too little right now, and I'm no mighty existence—just a rather special Beyonder."
"Rather special, huh?" Lumian said, word by word, then forced a bitter laugh from his throat. "I'll take it that you're not lying; I've no choice… do I? You're the only one who's told me anything related to what I'm experiencing, while those other great beings never gave me an option."
"One of them actually wanted to give you a chance—only no one ever gave him one."
Ning Lu looked earnestly at Lumian:
"Still, I truly haven't lied—I simply refuse to demote myself to a god."
…Late at night, Ning Lu looked at Lumian sitting amid the ruins, sensed the thin gray mist he had draped inside the Fool's Seal, and slowly exhaled.
When he opened his eyes again he was in his own room, crimson moonlight spilling through the window.
In a view only Ning Lu could see, the Heavenly Lord in ancient garb walked toward him from afar.
"Heh, I like what you said—'demote myself to a god'—such swagger."
With that he clapped lightly and added in an encouraging tone, "Don't you think there are too many so-called gods in this universe? Those fragile things can't be called true gods at all. For us, being addressed as 'true gods' is the greatest insult."
Ignoring the Heavenly Lord's barbed words, Ning Lu merely said, "Injuries suffered there feed back here in real time."
He opened his palm, revealing wounds from the fierce dream-battle and the black burns left by the Little Sickle's backlash.
The former had nearly healed, but the latter remained unchanged; apparently the flesh-magic from the Rose Bishop inside the artifact couldn't repair the side-effects of a Priest of Light item.
"So be careful—don't die." The Heavenly Lord spoke lazily. "I'm quite looking forward to the uproar you'll cause."
This time Ning Lu paid him no heed. He lay on his bed and reviewed everything that had happened over the past three days.
In this crossing he had first helped Lumian concoct the Hunter potion, turning him into a true Hunter; then he'd sparred and cooperated with the Heavenly Lord; next he'd stirred the gray mist of the Fool inside Lumian's dream, letting Lumian subconsciously accept the possibility that something was wrong with Aurore.
Finally, using the future Grisha Adam's distant gaze, a sliver of the True Creator's past blessing, and the power of Sefirah Castle within the dream, he had disguised himself as a terrifying, evil-god-like entity and ended the loop in the shortest time possible—solving part of the dream's problem.
By actively cracking part of Lumian's dream—and because the dream involved numerous high-level existences—Ning Lu felt his Cryptologist digestion advance by a large step.
"A Cryptologist doesn't merely need the ability to decipher; he must actively discover mysteries and break them… that should be one way to act as a Cryptologist."
Ning Lu murmured in his heart:
"Of course, knowing the Heavenly Lord, this Beyonder characteristic also demands profit while acting. From the entire Error Pathway, deciphering is the means, not the essence. Heh, after all, I'm no Detective…"
As he finished summarizing the Cryptologist Acting Method, a knock sounded at the door: thump, thump.
"Mr. L."
Mr. Z's fervent voice reached him: "I've come to treat your wounds."