Five Hundred and Seventy-Fifth Cleaning
Within the Dream Realm, amidst the forest, countless towering trees stretched out endlessly, their lush canopies replacing the sky and enveloping the entire forest in darkness. Countless white dream cocoons hung from the branches of these giant trees, while colorful memory bubbles floated among the dense woods, emitting cold, fluorescent glows. Flowers and plants with glowing petals and leaves swayed slightly on the ground.
In an open area, the gigantic Dream Moth larva lay weakly, its withered wings missing several pieces, drooping lifelessly on the ground. Its body and swollen abdomen were covered in terrifying cracks, and about one-third of its numerous tentacles had broken off, oozing phantom bl**d.
“Huff… Huff…”
Inside the injured pseudo-moth, within the head area, the Dream Realm Being known as Dry Wing was panting with a lingering fear. His face still bore traces of the tension after narrowly escaping. After relentless struggles, he finally managed to escape from Moncala and avoid the full pursuit of the veteran Red Tier Edward. Regardless of his current state, this was a significant achievement for his extraordinary life.
‘Huff… Why? Why would that madman Edward suddenly target me? Saying I stole something from him? That’s absurd… If he wanted the Black Moon Amulet, he wouldn’t have let it be auctioned off…’
As he panted, Dry Wing thought to himself. Besides relief, all he felt was confusion. He could not understand why Edward would target him! Wasn’t Moncala an open city? During his time there, he hadn’t done anything to provoke the notorious pirate.
‘That’s not right… There must be some trick here. That madman seemed genuinely angry, almost losing his mind. He must have lost something important and found me during his search, accusing me of being the thief…
‘Therefore, someone else must have interfered. They used some method to instigate conflict between me and Edward, creating a rift to achieve their own goals. We were both used…’
Dry Wing quickly pondered as he finally had time to carefully analyze the strange events after narrowly escaping the battle. After careful consideration, he realized that the series of explosions that helped him escape seemed highly suspicious.
‘Those explosions that destroyed the water snakes weren’t made by me, nor by Edward who desperately wanted to keep me. It had to be the work of a third party. They provoked my conflict with Edward and then helped me escape. Their goal must be…’
At this realization, Dry Wing’s pupils dilated slightly. He suddenly understood the true target of the mysterious mastermind behind the scenes. Panic surged through him, and he decided to leave immediately and return to a completely safe place.
Then, Dry Wing concentrated his energy, making the pseudo-moth begin to absorb the live dream cocoons stored in its abdomen, planning to drain the nutrients to rapidly repair its body and continue moving. To deal with such situations, the pseudo-moth always kept a large number of live dream cocoons stored inside.
Under Dry Wing’s control, the pseudo-moth began to lose nutrients at an accelerated rate, aiming to completely drain them. However, shortly after, an unexpected change occurred.
The pseudo-moth’s swollen abdomen began to undulate irregularly. The abdomen swelled rapidly to one side, and Dry Wing felt his spiritual energy flowing abnormally.
“What! This is…”
While Dry Wing was surprised by the sudden anomaly in the pseudo-moth, a large bulge on the side of the pseudo-moth suddenly burst open, spraying a massive amount of phantom bl**d and dream cocoons. Then, a huge dragon head emerged, covered in hard scales, with sharp spines and majestic horns, and sharp teeth.
“Roar!!!”
With a roar, the giant trees trembled, the hanging dream cocoons swayed, and floating memory bubbles shattered. The dragon emerged from the pseudo-moth’s abdomen, bathed in shimmering phantom bl**d. Behind the dragon head were its wings, which mercilessly tore and slashed the fragile abdomen of the pseudo-moth, more efficiently than the water snakes that had previously attacked it. In an instant, over half of the pseudo-moth’s abdomen was torn apart, revealing most of the dragon’s body. The pseudo-moth emitted a silent wail of extreme pain, which also affected Dry Wing, causing him to cry out in agony.
“Ahhh!!!
“Dragon! Why!!”
Dry Wing, eyes and mouth wide open, cried out in despair and confusion amidst the pain. But he did not give up. With great effort, despite the loss of most of its abdomen, the pseudo-moth forced itself to try to take flight and escape.
However, as a much more terrifying hunter than Edward’s water snakes, the dragon would not allow its prey to escape. As soon as the pseudo-moth took flight, the dragon’s wing claws grabbed hold of its wings. Seeing this, Dry Wing extended the pseudo-moth’s tentacles to whip the dragon below, but the tentacles barely had any effect against the dragon’s rock-like scales.
Facing the pseudo-moth’s retaliation, the dragon responded immediately. With a powerful pull, it dragged the pseudo-moth back to the ground, then continued tearing off its wings. The pseudo-moth, in silent agony, used its phantom tentacles to counterattack, but the dragon bit and tore off each tentacle.
Without any mercy or hesitation, the dragon dismembered the already injured pseudo-moth with both its claws. In the excruciating physical and mental pain, Dry Wing gradually lost consciousness. His spirit and soul were being ruthlessly crushed along with the pseudo-moth.
After the brutal slaughter, the fragmented remains of the pseudo-moth began to dissipate, including the dream realm manifestation of Dry Wing. Once both vanished, only the giant dragon remained, leaving behind tiny purple and silver light points, with a few blue bubbles mixed in.
Besides the light points and bubbles, two other ethereal objects hovered in mid-air: a hollow carved sphere and a damaged black jade piece. Additionally, scattered dream cocoons were slowly disappearing. Observing this scene, Dorothy’s will within the dragon’s form relaxed slightly.
‘Sigh… Finally resolved… Using the dragon’s mimicry really makes everything easier. Indeed, for me, the Black Dream Cult is the easiest to handle.
‘As long as I can reach the coordinates of the pseudo-moth’s dream realm, even high-ranking members of the Red Tier Black Dream can be defeated directly. This is defeating an enemy in their domain…
‘Considering this, Dorothy thought to herself after hearing from Little Fox that she would face the Red Tier Black Dream. She had already set her basic strategy: find the target, force out the pseudo-moth symbiont, capture the dream cocoon, and use the dragon’s mimicry to eliminate the pseudo-moth, just like she did in Navaha.
‘The difficulty lies in finding and forcing out Dry Wing’s symbiotic pseudo-moth in Moncala. Fortunately, thanks to Edward and the Abyss Cult, this challenge was successfully overcome. Edward used all means to locate and force Dry Wing out. Now, Dorothy needed to focus on how to make Dry Wing capture her.
To achieve this, Dorothy used the puppet mark left by Vania on the city guards to attack the fleeing pseudo-moth with spiritual ammunition she obtained in the black market of Moncala. This created an illusion for Dry Wing that Edward’s subordinates were not fully hypnotized and were still attacking him. This led him to attack the city guards to seize the dream cocoons. Later, Dorothy pretended to be a city guard and joined the fight, allowing Dry Wing to take her dream cocoon. Thus, Dorothy’s dream cocoon could enter the dream realm space along with the pseudo-moth.
To ensure safety, Dorothy entrusted her unconscious body to Nephnis, who could possess souls, to prevent any unforeseen incidents.
Now that the pseudo-moth and Dry Wing were gone, Dorothy’s objective was achieved. It was time to clean up the battlefield.
Looking at the remnants of the battlefield, Dorothy first focused on the two hovering ethereal items. Concentrating her attention, she guided them towards her dragon mimicry, which caught them with her claw and examined them closely.
‘This… is my main target, the Illusory Scale Incense Cage… And this thing… If I remember correctly, it should be the Black Moon Amulet auctioned in the second half. Looks like this was Dry Wing’s main goal in coming to Moncala. Since it was on him, he must have collected it using his tentacles during his escape.
‘Besides these two things, he didn’t have anything else. No storage items, no sigils, and no other extraordinary items. He doesn’t seem to be a Red Tier at all. This must be due to the dream realm transformation. Little Fox mentioned that although the Illusory Scale Incense Cage has the ability to turn solid matter into a dream realm entity, for other extraordinary items besides “Shadow,” turning them into dream realm entities consumes a lot of additional spiritual energy and leaves them very fragile, unable to function properly and easily damaged. They can’t last long either because the dream realm is not their spiritual inner realm, so transmitting people or objects through it poses such problems.
‘That guy got himself turned into a dream realm entity and tangled with Edward and his water snakes for so long, then got beaten up by me. Other dream realm items and low-intensity “Shadow” items must have been shattered. Only these two remained. Although it’s a bit disappointing, at least the main target was secured, and I got an extra good item as well.’
As she spoke, Dorothy focused on the floating Black Moon Amulet. Dry Wing came secretly to Moncala for this, ultimately losing his life. It was unclear what Dry Wing intended to do with it or what significance it held for the Black Dream.
‘In any case, this item can fetch ten thousand pounds. Getting it is never a loss.’
Thinking this, Dorothy moved her thoughts, integrating the dream realm version of the Illusory Scale Incense Cage and the Black Moon Amulet into her mimicry body. These items were useless in their dream realm state, but once she handed them over to Little Fox, they could be restored to physical form and utilized by Dorothy.
After securing the two extraordinary items, Dorothy turned her attention to the purple and silver light points scattered on the ground. Her mood brightened as she noticed them.
‘Ha… Dream realm spirituality, this time I won’t miss you guys…
‘Looking at these light points, Dorothy thought happily. She had encountered them before but didn’t know what they were, so she ignored them. However, after the event in Navaha, she learned through the Black Dream member’s memory spheres that these were actually spiritual energies! Ignoring one of the pseudo-moth light points at that time made her feel like she had missed out on a fortune!
‘Fortunately, thanks to the Navaha incident, Dorothy successfully mastered the dream hunting technique to absorb spiritual energy from dreams. She wouldn’t miss these now.
Concentrating, Dorothy began to perform the dream hunting technique in her dragon mimicry form. As her will spread, the silver spiritual energy points on the ground floated up and converged toward her, quickly merging into her dragon mimicry body. The purple points gradually faded and dissipated.
The silver light points from the Red Tier pseudo-moth were extremely abundant, covering the entire forest clearing. Even staying in one place wasn’t enough to absorb all of them; she had to fly around like a vacuum cleaner to collect them all. Finally, after feeding for a while, Dorothy absorbed all the light points. She patted her sturdy belly and belched contentedly.
“Hic… Thanks for the meal…”
Dorothy absorbed all the “Shadow” spiritual energies from the Red Tier pseudo-moth, leading to an unprecedented surge in her “Shadow” reserves. Her “Shadow” storage increased from single digits to overflowing levels, reaching the maximum limit of 50 points instantly, equal to her 50-point “Enlightenment” storage. If Dorothy didn’t count the “Enlightenment” portion, her “Enlightenment” and “Shadow” were now equally balanced. If her “Shadow” storage hadn’t reached its maximum, it could have increased further.
Such a massive influx of spiritual energy was a first for Dorothy since becoming extraordinary, causing her excitement momentarily.
‘Wow… My “Shadow” is full now. This is the value of a Red Tier extraordinary creature! With so much “Shadow,” I don’t have to worry about divination anymore. I can effectively hide from even a Lamp-level Archbishop for quite some time…
‘Looking at the vast amount of “Shadow” she absorbed, Dorothy thought excitedly. She also noticed the fading purple light points.
‘Those purple light points… should be “Enlightenment” spiritual energies… After all, the nature of the Dream Realm is “Shadow” and “Enlightenment.” I wonder why the current dream hunting technique cannot absorb “Enlightenment” spiritual energies… Has the technique to absorb “Enlightenment” been lost, or is there another reason?
‘Looking at the fading purple light points, Dorothy pondered briefly but didn’t delve deeper. For her, “Enlightenment” was never lacking.
Afterward, Dorothy collected two blue memory spheres and observed the dream cocoons released from the pseudo-moth’s body, which were scattered and gradually disappearing. Dorothy knew these were returning to their proper places in the Dream Realm. The people once imprisoned by the pseudo-moth to extract nutrients would gradually return to normal. Of course, those whose dream cocoons were completely drained would become invalids, just like what Dorothy witnessed in the Navaha psychiatric hospital.
Among the dream cocoons, Dorothy saw one belonging to herself. It had almost completely disappeared, indicating a relatively quick return. The reason for its rapid return was that it had just been captured by the pseudo-moth and had not undergone prolonged extraction, thus remaining healthy. Those severely drained by the pseudo-moth returned very slowly and with great difficulty.
‘They’re going back, so it’s time for me to go…
‘After her dream cocoon completely disappeared, Dorothy activated the ritual to return to her dream cocoon.
