The Lost Homeland was sailing at full speed.

In the pale glow cast by the Creation of the World, the translucent spirit sails blew without wind. The huge and complex mast and cable system creaked as if controlled by countless invisible hands, adjusting the angle quickly and sensitively. Duncan felt the ship under his feet swaying and tilting slightly, and pointing the bow to a certain direction in the vast ocean. The sound of tiny waves hitting the hull was mixed with the "perception signal" sent back by the Lost Homeland itself, echoing softly in the depths of his mind.

For some reason, the moment the ship changed course, he suddenly felt as if the atmosphere on the ship had quietly changed. The scenery around him was still exactly the same, but...

He seemed to hear the ship let out a sigh of contentment.

Duncan left the captain's room and walked to the deck. He looked up in the night, gazing at the bulging sails and towering masts. He reached out and gently tapped a railing nearby, and said thoughtfully, "Are you also bored of drifting aimlessly?"

The Lost Homeland did not speak, only a slight creaking sound came from below the deck, and several ropes nearby made rustling sounds, swimming over like snakes, and swaying beside Duncan.

"...This isn't cute, it's even a little scary." Duncan glanced at the cables. "Isn't this how you scared Alice last time?"

The cable swayed twice in place and then quickly slipped away.

Duncan took a deep breath and prepared to enjoy the refreshing night breeze on the sea, but suddenly, a distant "touch" suddenly appeared in his consciousness.

He didn't react at first, but then he realized that the sensation came from the city-state of Pland.

In the city-state of Plande, Duncan, who was on the second floor of an antique shop, suddenly blinked, and then immediately looked in a certain direction - that was Nina's room next door.

In his field of vision, a cluster of green flames was rapidly jumping in the room - but it was not Nina, but the mark left on Shirley's body.

The flame sensed the growth of supernatural power and the abnormal fluctuations in the host's emotions.

What happened to Shirley?!

Duncan didn't hesitate. He got up and rushed out of the room and came to Nina's bedroom door. He knocked on the door gently, but there was no movement inside.

He was a little hesitant at this time, but the next second, he felt the mark left on Shirley's body beating again.

You can't think too much at a time like this—Duncan pushed open Nina's door.

Just like when she was a child, Nina never locked the door when she went to bed.

The bedroom was dark, with only the faint light from the street lamp outside the window illuminating the outlines of objects in the room. As far as he could see, Duncan did not see anything abnormal.

Shirley and Nina were sleeping quietly in bed, one with her head facing the end of the bed, and the other lying sideways on the other's belly.

...The sleeping posture is very artistic.

Of course, Duncan was not interested in the sleeping positions of the two girls. He had already noticed that Shirley's brows were furrowed, and on her arm, which was usually used to summon Agou and coexist with the chain, a fine black line was slowly moving.

Duncan frowned slightly, then activated the mark left on Shirley, trying to use the special properties of the spiritual fire to find the source of the "erosion" in the room.

In his opinion, Shirley's current condition, coupled with the warning of the mark, is undoubtedly a sign that the extraordinary power is eroding.

A tiny green flame rose up beside Shirley, and the dim green light illuminated the surroundings. However, the flame flickered a few times and finally remained in the same place.

There is no corrosion in the room.

Duncan frowned, he moved closer and observed Shirley's tightly furrowed brows.

Because he was unsure of the extent of the impact of the spiritual fire on living people, he could not directly release a large area of ​​fire to "scan" the entire room like he did in the factory. However, even if it was just a spark of the spiritual fire, he should have reacted to the unfamiliar supernatural power.

The erosion... is not in the real world? In the spiritual world? Or something else?

Duncan was thoughtful, then he seemed to have thought of something, he stood up and quietly left the room, after closing the door and returning to his bedroom, he saw the pigeon spirit napping on the windowsill.

"Walking in the spirit world."

Amid a series of "cooing" protests from Ai after he was woken up, Duncan once again entered the dark space filled with endless starlight. Then he calmed down and sensed the surrounding starlight for his own "mark" just like he had sensed the White Oak and Vanna before.

This was not difficult, because the mark was left intentionally by him, and it was much clearer and more stable than the "spark" on Vanna's body. Duncan locked onto the starlight belonging to Shirley almost instantly...

Shirley opened her eyes in the dark and found herself sleeping on a familiar yet unfamiliar bed.

She sat up in the dark, her mind was dull for a long time before she regained some clarity. She looked around in confusion and finally made out the outlines of some objects in the darkness.

Some familiar yet distant memories gradually came back to her, and after seeing the scene around her clearly, Shirley finally opened her eyes suddenly.

The next second, she suddenly jumped down from the bed, uttering a series of extremely angry curses, even to the point of shaking with anger, as if revealing fear and nervousness in her trembling: "Damn it, damn it, damn it...F*ck! It's this again, and this again! Damn it!"

A series of loud curses broke the silence in the darkness. The curses were not the voices Shirley was familiar with, but rather the childish voices that were younger and more immature, which existed only in her memories. She jumped to the ground and saw that her hands and feet had become as thin and tender as in her memories. She was wearing a light pink pajamas, which were exactly the same as in her memories, with the familiar puppy embroidered on the torn cuffs with a clumsy technique.

"Stop the fucking tormenting me! Stop the fucking tormenting me!"

Shirley screamed in the dark room. She rushed to the tightly closed door, trying to break the mottled wooden board with her punches and kicks, but the door was as motionless as cast-in-place concrete. She banged her head against it and bit the door handle with her teeth, but it was a completely meaningless act of venting. She could only bang against it again and again with her small body, letting time pass, letting a little morning light come in through the nearby window, and letting the sound from outside the door come that she least wanted to hear in the early morning of that day.

She heard someone getting up in the next room, footsteps, and the sound of things being put away.

She heard one of the footsteps approaching the door, and a very gentle, very familiar voice whispered: "Shirley, Shirley? Are you up? Are you still angry?"

Shirley suddenly stopped banging on the door, as if all her strength had been drained away. She leaned against the wooden door, pressing against it with all her strength. She didn't want to listen any further, but she was greedily listening to the noise coming from outside the door.

"Shirley, my dad and I are going to buy you a cake. Today is your birthday... When we come back, you won't be angry anymore, okay?"

"Don't go..." Shirley suddenly made a sound. At first it was just a low murmur, but soon, the murmur turned into a shout, "Don't go... Don't go! Don't go! Don't go!"

She finally started to cry and scream. Even though she knew it was useless, she still shouted loudly: "Don't go! Don't go out! Don't go out, damn it! Don't go out!"

However, time still moved forward to the next second, just like the memories engraved in the mind cannot be turned back - the footsteps outside the door faded away.

The sound of picking up a handbag, the distant and blurred conversation of my parents, the doorknob turning, opening, closing, the key turning a circle, and then half a circle.

Shirley sat down slowly in the dark and began to count her heartbeats.

When my heart beat to 1,200th beat, screams of fire came from afar.

When my heart beat to 1,600th time, the pungent smell of smoke and choking fumes began to penetrate the crack of the door.

When my heart beat to the 1,800th time, the streets were already filled with frantic shouting and blinding red light filled the windows, as if the entire city had been thrown into molten magma.

When my heart beat to the two thousandth time, a heavy muffled sound came from the direction of the house - the door was broken, as if some giant beast was walking in with heavy footsteps, step by step, approaching this locked room.

Then, the door of the room finally fell down - the wooden door that Shirley had tried her best to break open was now shattered like pieces of paper.

A terrifying creature appeared there, a huge pitch-black demon dog, a nightmare twisted and pieced together from bones, shadows, smoke and burning ashes. This demon from the deep was almost a behemoth for a six-year-old child, and now, its empty bloody eye sockets had captured the "living things" in the room.

Shirley calmly looked at the demon dog that appeared before her.

This is a Deephound - but it is not her dog yet.

This is not the Agou who has a "heart", not the Agou who would search the trash can for food to feed himself, not the Agou who would try hard to tell lame jokes to amuse himself but ended up only teaching himself a bunch of swear words.

The Deep Hound stepped into the room.

The sound of chewing flesh and bones was heard.

Shirley lay on the floor, feeling her limbs being devoured by the demon dog. The piercing pain spread dully and numbly in her mind through the memory curtain of eleven years. She continued to count her heartbeats, counting when Agou would be hers, and calculating how long she would have to stay here - based on past experience, would it be a week? Or two weeks?

Her consciousness gradually became blurred. Even in this dark dream, the distant, dull and numb pain finally caught up with her. In her increasingly blurred vision, she suddenly saw a figure appear on the bed not far away, in the deepest shadow of the darkness.

That figure didn't seem to appear suddenly. It seemed as if he had been there from the beginning, from this dream, from every dream, and even - Shirley didn't know why this amazing idea came to her mind - even since eleven years ago.

He was sitting there, but it was not until now that she noticed the existence of this figure for the first time, as if a long-lasting fog had suddenly broken, allowing her to glimpse the existence behind the fog.

A tiny bit of green firelight appeared from nowhere, illuminating the face of the figure, which was gloomy and majestic - Shirley had never seen this face before, but she felt inexplicably familiar with it.

"No offense."

The gloomy and majestic figure spoke.