“Right now, you sound like you’re running a pyramid scheme.”
Elias rolled his eyes and plopped back onto the three-legged chair, which let out a screeching groan.
“What even is a pyramid scheme?”
Edmond expressed his confusion at this new, profit-scented term.
“It’s an organization that... well, gains profit by developing downlines, usually involving brainwashing and selling a pipe dream.”
Elias explained.
“It’s practically identical to your current behavior.”
“Like a missionary!”
“Then I am indeed a missionary.”
So he understood that part.
The old ghost didn’t feel there was anything wrong with that at all.
“Under the holy radiance of the Moon Lord, I believe you will surely grasp the true essence of spirituality, as long as you open your heart and accept—”
“Hold on a second.”
Elias mercilessly interrupted Edmond’s fantasies and slapped the spirit vision potion recipe onto the table.
“If, and I’m just saying if...”
He extended a finger, pointing into the air.
“If a person doesn’t sincerely believe in a god, what happens if they drink the spirit vision potion?”
“Take me, for example. If I drink this thing while my mind is on what I’m having for dinner tonight instead of your Moon Lord, what happens?”
“Nothing happens!”
Edmond answered as if it were a matter of course.
“...”
Elias felt a surge of frustration stick in his throat.
“That’s completely unreasonable!”
“So I risk my life to get materials and go through all the trouble of brewing the potion, only for it to be a waste because I don’t believe in a god?”
“My friend, occultism! Occultism!”
Edmond said earnestly.
“This is an interaction of spirituality, not a chemical reaction.”
“Are you sure a bunch of transcendent materials won’t produce some strange reaction in a person’s stomach?”
Elias felt this explanation was quite unscientific.
“Like biological toxins? Or food poisoning? At the very least, it should cause diarrhea, right?”
“Then would you, after working so hard to obtain transcendent materials, risk diarrhea just to experiment and see if the potion works without faith?”
Edmond countered.
“That...”
Elias was at a loss for words.
It was indeed a paradox.
Who would drink this stuff for fun?
“Are there no precedents of the Faithless drinking it?” He wasn’t ready to give up.
“There are, my brother, there are.”
Edmond sighed.
“And then?”
Elias pressed, a small spark of hope igniting in his eyes.
“I already told you—no effect.”
Edmond ruthlessly extinguished that little spark.
Hearing this, Elias was out of options.
He slumped back dejectedly, staring up at the pitch-black ceiling.
This was asking too much.
As a fine young man of the 21st century, raised on science and reason, being asked to sincerely engage in feudal superstitions and turn himself into some kind of cultist was a bit much.
“Old Edmond.”
Elias called out weakly.
“Just call me Old Ed.”
“Fine, Old Ed.”
Elias sat up straight, his expression serious.
“Tell me, even if I agree to believe in your Moon Lord right now, how does the Moon Lord confirm that I believe in it?”
This was the key.
How could he bypass the server’s verification mechanism?
“The spirit vision potion isn’t a hundred percent successful to begin with. If you have no faith, it’s a hundred percent failure,” Old Ed explained.
“A deity obviously won’t be watching an ant like you all the time, but spirituality does not lie.”
“Your subconscious and your perceptions will all be projected through your spirituality.”
“Then it’s over. A dead end.”
Elias spread his hands.
“My greatest virtue is honesty; I can’t lie to myself.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry, young man.”
Old Ed’s voice held a hint of cunning, as if he had anticipated this scene.
“If you aren’t certain of your faith in a deity, or rather... if your faith is ‘flexible’...”
“Then, before drinking the potion, perform a corresponding offering ritual.”
“A ritual?”
Elias raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, a ritual.”
“It’s like... sending a special request packet to a server, or submitting an application form.”
Old Ed seemed to have learned Elias’s way of using analogies.
“Through a tedious, solemn ritual, you forcibly adjust your mental state to a frequency close to the deity’s.”
“Even if you don’t believe in your heart, as long as your behavior, your language, and your spiritual fluctuations meet the standard, the Origin Web will judge you as ‘verified’.”
“And it’ll work?”
“Basically.”
Old Ed gave an ambiguous but hopeful answer.
“That makes things easy!”
Elias slapped his thigh.
As long as it was a problem that could be solved by ‘following procedure,’ it wasn't a problem!
When it came to formalism, he had seen it all!
“So how do I get these materials?”
His fighting spirit rekindled, Elias pulled the recipe from his pocket and pointed at the string of bizarre names.
“Tell me, how do I get this ‘murmurs of the fallen’?”
“You need a transcendent tool to collect it,” Old Ed said lazily.
“But you’re quite lucky, kid.”
“Behind you, those bottles.”
Elias turned around and looked at the dusty shelf in the corner of the basement.
On it sat several old-looking glass jars containing unidentified liquids and some disgusting-looking floating matter.
“They’re all in there?”
“Not all of them, just a part.”
Edmond’s voice carried a hint of pride that practically begged for praise.
“Back then, I prepared quite a few good things to advance to Scale Three. Unfortunately... I kicked the bucket before I could use them.”
“The blue bottle contains the ‘murmurs of the fallen’; it was extracted from nightmares using a dreamcatcher.”
“The thing next to it that looks like a pile of hay is moonlight grass.”
“Next, you just need to find a way to collect the ‘eyeless eye’.”
Elias looked at the last missing ingredient on the recipe.
“A blind salmon can be caught in the sea; it’s a type of mutated deep-sea fish,” Edmond explained.
“Though they’re a bit hard to catch.”
“Hard to catch?”
Upon hearing this, Elias’s eyes instantly lit up.
Wasn’t this right in his comfort zone?
“What bait does this fish take? Will earthworms work? Or do I need to use lures?”
Elias was already starting to plan his fishing rig in his head.
“Use the rotting flesh of a transcendent creature—the smellier, the better.”
Old Ed answered.
“Fine, that carapace husk is still drying outside anyway. I’ll cut off a few pieces to use as bait.”
Elias made up his mind.
But before that, he needed to go to the top of the tower to confirm the lighthouse’s operation again.
After all, that damn dream demon had created a vivid hallucination yesterday, making him think he had already gone up to check and even making him think he had finished all his work.
If the main lamp really went out, he feared that tonight wouldn't just bring a dream demon, but a whole party of carapace husks.
“I just remembered, what’s the deal with that map of yours?”
Elias asked breathlessly as he climbed the spiral staircase.
Reaching the top of the lighthouse and seeing the familiar displays, the sense of reality made him feel slightly more at ease.
He couldn't help but think of the map he had seen in the basement.
“Remember when I said there’s more than one lighthouse in the Moon Bay area?” Edmond asked.
“Mhm?”
“I suspect that lighthouses surround the entire Moon Bay area, probably one every certain distance, like this one on the reefs or others built on the shore.”
“And don’t you think Moon Bay is very circular?”
Edmond suddenly posed a question.
Hearing this, Elias connected it with the map in his memory.
He recalled that the coastline of Moon Bay was indeed very circular.
That smooth curvature didn't look like a naturally formed coastline.
It was as if someone had taken a giant compass, used a spot on the land as the center, drew a circle on this vast earth, and then dug out all the soil inside to turn it into the sea.
Although he also felt the circularity was somewhat supernatural, he just shrugged and responded:
“That’s why it’s called Moon Bay, right? Circular like the moon.”
“Perhaps.”
Edmond remained noncommittal.
On the table next to the tower lamp, the heavy lighthouse log sat intact, covered in a thin layer of dust.
As expected, the version in his memory was an illusion concocted by the dream demon.
Only, that map from his memory wasn't here.
Elias walked over and gave the log a cursory glance.
Next, he refilled the oil in advance and repeated the task of winding the mechanical structure.
The sound of gears meshing echoed at the quiet top of the tower, sounding exceptionally pleasant.
“I was investigating this while I was alive, after all, For—”
Edmond’s voice suddenly rang in his mind, carrying a hint of reminiscence.
“What is that?”
Halfway through his sentence, Edmond seemed to notice something and spoke up to ask.
“What?”
Only then did Elias notice a subtle difference from the display at the top of the tower in his hallucination.
In front of the thick glass facing the sea stood a strange instrument.
It had a brass casing and was covered with a row of indicator lights.
Most of the bulbs glowed with a faint green light.
However, in the middle of this row of green lights, two bulbs had turned a piercing red.
Only then did Elias connect everything that had happened yesterday.
“You don’t recognize it?!”
Elias pointed at the instrument and asked loudly.
“How should I know?!”
Edmond seemed very confused.
“I’ve been dead for fifty years!”
A thousand words finally converged into a single type of plant.
“Fuck!”
Rate on N.U.
