In the end, Luke and the others returned empty-handed.
By the time they got back to their lodging, they were both tired and sleepy.
Before returning to her room to sleep, Lux asked, "Do you think that demon, if it notices us, will use the same trick to interfere with us too?"
"We'll only know after we sleep."
Luke yawned and walked toward his room without much concern. "What, are you afraid of having nightmares?"
"Please. Who'd be scared of that?" Lux lifted her head disdainfully. Thinking it over carefully, she really had no reason to be afraid of nightmares, so she returned to her own room as well.
After a full day of work, everyone fell asleep quickly. They had only just lain down on their beds when their eyelids grew heavy with exhaustion, and one after another, they drifted into dreams.
In the middle of the night, Lux woke from her sleep with a start. Her heart was pounding fiercely, and her breathing was rapid. She wiped the cold sweat from her forehead and heard footsteps outside. Then she got up and walked out.
When she opened the door, she saw Luke walking out with a sleepy face and a yawn, his hair as messy as a bird's nest. He was pouring himself water, and when he saw Lux come out, he poured another cup.
"You had a nightmare too?"
"Yeah."
Lux nodded, walked over, and sat beside Luke. Her face was still a little pale.
Luke handed her the cup of hot water. "Looks like we really did get hit. What kind of nightmare did you have?"
Lux accepted it, first taking a small sip to warm herself. Only then did she say quietly, "It's a little hard to explain. In the dream, my magic was discovered. You, Aunt Tianna, and the others ordered the Mageseekers to capture me. I kept running and running. The more I ran, the fewer people were around me, until it felt like I was the only person left in the world. Everything was pitch-black. I don't know what I stepped on, but I slipped and fell into an abyss."
The reason nightmares were called nightmares was because they showed the things a person most resisted, worried about, and feared in the depths of their heart.
The nightmare just now had been so real that Lux still had not fully recovered from it.
Luke looked at her. The girl's long lashes were lowered, her expression somewhat dejected, and the light in her eyes was not as bright as usual. So he reached out with his large hand, pressed it onto her head, and ruffled her golden hair into a mess. "Weren't you not afraid of nightmares?"
Lux was very dissatisfied with him rubbing her head back and forth. After dodging away, she widened her eyes and glared at him through gritted teeth. "Of course I'm not afraid. I'm just upset! In the dream, you were the fastest one to sell me out!"
Even though she knew it was not real, that version of this guy in the dream had sounded way too much like him.
Luke withdrew his hand and coughed dryly. "You have to understand, dreams and reality can't be treated the same way. I'm not that kind of person."
Lux snorted. "That's hard to say. Anyway, this started because of you. Let me vent a little."
"?" Luke slowly showed a question mark with his face. "What do you mean by, hey, ow."
Before he could finish, Lux had already grabbed his arm, opened her mouth, and bitten down without the slightest politeness.
After biting him so many times, she already knew exactly where Luke was weakest. Even without using her full strength, that one bite made Luke suck in a breath.
Then Lux raised her head. Her expression relaxed a little, and she let out a long breath. "I feel much better."
Luke had suffered for absolutely no reason this time. Having never endured this sort of injustice before, he immediately struck back with a flick to her forehead.
With a crisp clang, Lux, who had only just recovered, immediately let out a pained "Mm," and covered her head.
Only then did he say, "Now we're even."
"Even my foot!" Lux clutched her head, gritted her teeth, and was about to get angry when she suddenly remembered something and asked, "Didn't you have a nightmare too? What was it?"
Luke thought for a moment and said, "In my dream, I became an overworked office drone. It was terrifying."
"..." Lux was silent for one second. "That counts as a nightmare?"
"Isn't it scary? I was the kind of office drone who worked like a dog."
Even now, thinking back on it left Luke with lingering fear, and his expression changed. He absolutely never wanted to experience that kind of life again.
The gap between their nightmares left Lux feeling a little unfairly treated.
Before long, another room door opened. This time, Katarina and Yurna walked out.
The two of them had been sleeping in the same room. Yurna still had no expression, while Katarina's face was somewhat pale. Clearly, she had also had a nightmare.
"What kind of nightmare did you have?"
Luke asked curiously.
"In any case, it wasn't a good dream."
Katarina seemed unwilling to talk about it. She walked over, poured herself a cup of water, and drank to calm herself.
In the dream, she had accepted a new assassination mission. However, she had failed once again, and this time, her father, Du Couteau, had acted personally.
The two of them fought a duel to the death. Yet the final result was Katarina's defeat. A dagger pierced her heart without mercy.
The suffocating feeling of death came upon her, followed by an inexplicable cold, then endless darkness and loneliness.
Katarina never wanted to experience something that real a second time in her life.
A mere dream had somehow been so vivid.
"What about Yurna?"
Luke looked at Yurna again.
Yurna only shook her head slightly, seeming unwilling to say as well.
Luke did not even know whether she had actually had a nightmare, because not the slightest change could be seen from her expression.
Since neither of them wanted to share their nightmare experience, it was not long before Poppy and Sona also pushed open the door to their room and came out.
Before Luke could even ask, Poppy held her hammer tightly with a lingering look of fear and muttered, "I dreamed I lost my hammer. I searched for a very, very long time and still couldn't find it."
For a yordle, "a very long time" was truly a very long time.
One could imagine what her dream had been like.
Next was Sona. She looked at Luke, and her inner voice came through, somewhat downcast. "I dreamed of Ionia."
In the dream, she had finally returned to her first homeland as she had long wished. But what she saw was not at all what she had hoped.
Ionia had still been breached. Noxus's iron hooves had trampled that land flat, destroying its peerless scenery. Corpses lay everywhere, with countless dead and wounded. Her former home, the monastery, was burning in a great fire. Whether the nuns or the abbess, all had been burned until only corpses and bones remained.
The wails and cries of pain made Sona's heart ache as if it had been cut by a knife.
Luke looked at her and comforted her. "It was only a nightmare."
"Mm."
Sona nodded gently. She knew it was only a nightmare.
But it had been far too real.
At this point, the people in the room finally understood why Fossbarrow had turned into the way it was when they arrived.
If these kinds of nightmares continued, even they would not be able to endure them.
Luke went outside and took a look. Everything was silent. The townspeople in the shelter camp were sleeping peacefully.
After returning, he said, "Looks like only the six of us were hit."
Under these circumstances, it could only mean that the demon knew about them and had begun targeting them.
As long as they fell asleep next, the same thing would likely happen again.
All of them could feel that after one nightmare, their stamina had been consumed to varying degrees.
And under these circumstances, they could not even sense that demon's existence. Dreams were the domain it excelled in.
So the first problem they had to solve now was the nightmares.
At that moment, Sona said, "Let me try."
After sitting down properly, she took out her etwahl and said to Luke through her inner voice, "The piece I played this afternoon was called Celestial Purification Melody. This one is called Celestial Requiem. It should be able to serve as prevention."
Through the music scores Luke had given her, Sona had now learned many pieces, which also represented many different kinds of magic she had comprehended.
As for the charm of her music, everyone present had long since experienced it.
After one piece was played, they immediately felt refreshed in spirit, and their whole bodies relaxed considerably.
So everyone returned to their rooms and tried to sleep again.
Facts proved that Celestial Requiem was indeed very effective. Luke and the others no longer had nightmares. On the contrary, they slept extremely soundly.
They slept all the way until daybreak. The townspeople in the shelter camp had not had nightmares either. Everyone woke very early, and at a glance, the atmosphere was clearly much better than yesterday.
The dark clouds in the sky had also scattered, restoring a calm stretch above them. From the surface, it was as if the demon did not exist at all.
With Sona here, that demon could no longer freely make use of nightmares to do anything it wished.
Luke did not know whether it would choose to leave after seeing this situation.
However, if it stubbornly refused to go, then they absolutely had to eliminate it completely.
In the afternoon, a new team arrived in town, though it was an unexpected reunion.
"Vayne?"
Lux had not expected to see Vayne here. Her face lit up with joy, and she happily ran over.
After seeing Lux, Vayne's eyes also brightened a little, and she walked forward. "Long time no see, Lux."
"Yeah, long time no see!"
Lux was very happy to see her. Then she greeted Frey, who was standing beside her. "Long time no see."
"Long time no see," Frey replied with a smile as well.
Vayne's team had more than a hundred people in total. Each of them looked travel-worn. After all, they had been pursuing demons the entire way.
By now, this demon-hunting squad was already very experienced. Along the pursuit, they had fought other demons many times as well, and their overall bearing looked entirely different from before.
"Your Highness."
At this time, Vayne looked toward Luke, and her eyes grew even brighter. "Long time no see."
"Long time no see. Did you come here because of Evelynn?"
Luke smiled and asked.
"Mm." Vayne nodded and said, "After the last battle with her, we were delayed by a group of demons. Afterward, we continued tracking her and came all the way here."
Both sides were quite surprised by this reunion.
Vayne had not expected to run into Luke here, and Luke had not expected to see Vayne here either.
However, seeing Vayne here also proved one thing.
Evelynn had come this way.
He immediately fell into thought. If Evelynn had been here, then was the demon in Fossbarrow connected to her?
Under these circumstances, it was hard not to link the two together.
At that moment, Vayne and Frey also saw that there was something strange about the town. They smelled the lingering demonic aura in this place and could not help asking, "This town..."
"That's right. There's a demon here too." Luke nodded, then roughly explained the situation in the town.
After hearing it, the expressions of Vayne and her mentor turned somewhat grave.
Naturally, they could sense that a demon capable of interfering with an entire town was not low-ranking.
If it joined forces with Evelynn, that would obviously become a major problem.
This matter had to be taken seriously. Luke had been somewhat at a loss before, but after unexpectedly joining up with Vayne and Frey, things became simpler.
So he called Frey over.
"Nocturne... That is the demon's name?"
Frey could not help confirming it again.
Luke nodded. "Most likely. After knowing its name, can you confirm its location?"
"If you want to confirm a demon's location, knowing its name alone is not enough. But after possessing its name, we have already seized a great deal of initiative." Frey explained, "At the very least, I can confirm whether it is still here."
In truth, she was very curious about how Luke knew the names of so many demons, but she did not ask.
Then, using Nocturne's name, Frey began casting dark magic.
Very soon, she obtained confirmation. Nocturne had not left the Fossbarrow area.
Clearly, it intended to stubbornly hold its ground.
Elsewhere, inside a cave.
"Damn that woman."
A cold, deep voice rang out, accompanied by the appearance of a figure wreathed in black mist. Its form was impossible to pin down. Within a faceless mass of shadow, a pair of cold eyes opened. On both sides of its body were a pair of terrifying blade-like appendages, and its tone was exceptionally furious.
"Aren't you the lord of nightmares? How are you this useless, letting a human woman disrupt your rhythm?"
A seductive voice sounded from the other side. It belonged to a demon with an alluring figure leaning against the wall, several lashers behind her swaying as they emitted a pink glow.
"Shut up. Weren't you tricked by humans too? We're in the same boat."
Nocturne looked at Evelynn without the slightest pleasant expression. A large part of the reason was that this woman had woken him from his slumber.
As a result, his strength had not recovered at all.
Having her old wound exposed, Evelynn's aura fluctuated for a moment, but she still calmed down. "There is no point in us arguing. Instead of throwing a useless tantrum here, you'd be better off thinking about how to deal with those humans. I'll kindly remind you that among them is the descendant of the human who gravely wounded you back then, the prince of this country, and that woman with the instrument you mentioned. Not one of them is simple."
"You don't need to tell me that. Otherwise, I would have left already."
The dark aura around Nocturne churned, revealing the unwillingness and rage in his heart.
Back then, he had been cut off a cliff by a human's sword. He had lingered near death for a very long time before finally recovering from the fatal wound. He would never forget that hatred.
Now that he had been woken early, the first thing he wanted to do was take revenge on that town from the past. But before that, he needed to absorb their demons to replenish some of his strength and make up for what had happened recently.
Later, he learned that the human from back then had also died in that battle.
That left Nocturne lost for a time.
But when that human's descendant came to the town, Nocturne sensed it instantly.
He decided then and there that since he could not take revenge on the original target, he would have to take revenge on his descendant instead.
Nocturne simply had not expected this group of humans to destroy the nightmare he had constructed so quickly. And that human woman who played the instrument greatly restricted what he could do.
But with his great hatred before him, Nocturne was unwilling to simply leave like this.
In the next second, the dark aura around him surged. He rushed out of the cave and flew high into the sky.
Standing there in the air, Nocturne stared from afar at the town. The reason he was unwilling to leave was not only hatred.
He fed on nightmares. Nightmares were the source of his power. And the nightmares of those humans who had arrived later were also of extremely fine quality.
If he could control them, his full strength would certainly recover very quickly.
So he had to find a way.
Evelynn also left the cave. Looking at Nocturne above, the corners of her mouth curved into a smile.
Then her gaze also turned toward the direction of the town.
Even she had not expected to meet that human prince again here.
Her gaze turned cold, and the aura around her began to fluctuate constantly.
This time, she would definitely reclaim her power.
//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810