Steampunk: Sixth Era Epic

"Cough, cough!"

It was as if he suddenly emerged from the dark underground lake. Shard opened his eyes abruptly, then sat up from the bed, coughing violently from the dust.

"Damn it, has this place not been cleaned in centuries?"

The room was almost completely dark, with only a slight glow of the gas lamp leaking through the door cracks. The air was extremely cold, and the smell of mold and dust permeated everywhere. This damp, cold, and decayed environment, caused by years of uninhabitation, was more astonishing than the lighthouse on Heart Lake Island of Pantanal Lake. Shard even wondered if he was sleeping in a cemetery.

"Silvermoon."

The golden spots gradually brightened on his body, illuminating the bed beneath him. The moonlight at his fingertips lit up the entire room. Seeing the full view of the room made Shard's eyes widen slightly.

This was actually the master bedroom of No. 6, Saint Delan Square, second floor, room number one, where he'd fallen asleep in reality, as evidenced by the room's decorations and furniture.

However, compared to the bedroom that had been renovated and had its furniture replaced in reality, the layout of the room in the dream was exactly the same as it had been when Detective Sparrow was dying, even down to the bed, which was the very bed where Detective Sparrow had died.

At this moment, most of the furniture in the room was covered with white cloth, and Shard had also sat up from beneath the white cloth on the bed. In reality, the atmosphere of the same location was entirely different.

Jumping off the bed, he touched the white cloth, feeling a thick layer of dust. The dusty floor sent up a cloud of dust as Shard's feet hit the ground. Pulling away the cloth from the bookshelf, he saw the metal pot and black and white photo frames.

These furnishings were exactly those of Detective Sparrow's master bedroom before his death, almost identical to those in Shard's memory.

"I'm certain, this is definitely not my dream. But why are these things in Luviya's dream? I've never described the details of this bedroom to anyone."

[Maybe, you should look elsewhere.]

"She" whispered softly in Shard's ear, even in the dream, "she" was still with Shard.

Aside from the dust and white cloth, what made this place different from how the bedroom had once appeared in memory was that the windows were completely sealed off by layers of wooden planks, which was also the reason the room was almost without light. And this method of blocking windows was something Shard had only seen in mental hospitals or buildings afflicted with plague in this era.

"Though I had anticipated that Luviya's dream would be special, I didn't expect it to be like this..."

He walked to the window, the moonlight at his fingertips illuminated the wall, revealing the gray-green marks resembling moss on its surface. The No. 6 Saint Delan Square in this dream was in complete ruin. Even knowing this was just a dream, the feelings of the Outlander, who regarded this place as his only home, were quite complicated at this moment.

Having confirmed there were no other noteworthy details in the bedroom, Shard pushed the room door open and stepped out, then frowned when he saw the layout of the living room, which was also from the era of Detective Sparrow's Detective Agency.

All the furniture was covered with white cloth, only the sofa and coffee table showed signs of use. All visible windows were similarly nailed shut from the inside with layers of wooden planks. The living room fireplace, which had been repaired for the arriving winter in reality, was still in its original abandoned state.

The only gas lamp on the wall emitted an exceptionally weak flame. This was not only due to insufficient gas in the pipeline but also because the lampshade looked as if it hadn't been cleaned for centuries. The living room was equally cold and damp, lacking the warm homey feel Shard and Mia had when they lived there, and it bore no difference to the haunted houses in urban legends.

Under the dim light, Shard moved to the wall by the fireplace, frowning as he looked at the moss-like gray-green marks, then tried to push it, finding no trace of the secret door that connected to room number two, which was only constructed during the renovations:

"Indeed, this is the layout of Sparrow's Detective Agency era. It seems like after Detective Sparrow's death, this place was completely abandoned and unused. After the Church reclaimed it and checked the dangerous house, they sealed it up."

Suddenly turning his head to look behind him, in the weak light, he glanced at another door:

"If no one inherited this house after Detective Sparrow's death, then 'my' bedroom..."

With that thought, he walked toward the side room, which was the place the original owner had lived in while Detective Sparrow was still alive. The door wasn't locked; he just pushed it open and saw a storage room loaded with random old furniture and miscellaneous items, naturally also covered by white cloth.

Shard entered the room and pulled off the white cloth, confirming that there was no bed where it should be. This place was indeed used as a storage room, and it was definitely not the bedroom it once was.

"Everything is the same as it was, except the room 'I' lived in bears no trace of 'me'."

If this wasn't a dream right now, this scene would be a bit too horrifying. The intriguing nature of Luviya's dream far exceeded Shard's expectations. He stood at the side room's doorway, thought for a moment, and then gently closed the door, contemplating testing where the boundary of this dream lay.

"Meow~"

The dilapidated Haunted House was originally silent, but a sudden cat's meow broke the stillness, and the sound was astoundingly familiar.

Shard hurriedly turned around and walked towards the doorway of Room No. 1. After opening the door, the corridor and staircase entrance were filled with an oppressive, strange, and terrifying darkness.

Out of the blackness from downstairs, an orange and white cat darted up, ignoring Shard standing at the doorway and continued running up to the third floor.

"Mia?"

Of course, the cat was just a creation in the dream. The real cat was still in the wardrobe, not having direct contact with Shard. This dream belonged solely to Luviya.

Shard slightly raised his right hand to illuminate the stairs leading from the second to the third floor. Just as he thought, the stairs, which had been repaired by the Church after he arrived in this world, were not in their repaired state. Someone had bizarrely gathered a pile of door panels and forcefully adhered them to connect the second and third floors.

The assembly of those door panels was extremely haphazard. If Shard wasn't mistaken, that was the effect of Sorcery[Adhesion Technique], which was a type of Basic Sorcery he also knew.

Using the door panel stairs, Shard reached the third floor. The third floor was in its pre-repair state, mold everywhere, and even the gas lamps on the walls were absent. The door panels to both rooms on the third floor were gone, and Shard suspected they were among the pile used on the stairs. The windows in the rooms were also all sealed shut, their dark voids exceptionally eerie.

Though the cat that darted upstairs had vanished without a trace, there were still traces of cat paw prints in the dust on the floor. Following the paw prints led to the staircase going up to the attic, and in the darkness, Shard stepped on the creaking old stairs to climb up to the attic.

The "Water of Moonlight" and "Sunfire" ritual were not present in the attic either, and the piled junk was covered with white cloth. Looking around, the cat was still nowhere to be seen, only that on the east side of the attic there was an added rusty metal triangle ladder, and the small door above the attic, barely large enough for one person to pass, was now open.

The rooftops of the houses around Saint Delan Square were covered with tiles at an inclined angle, preventing residents from moving around or hanging clothes on the roof. In reality, Shard had only climbed the roof once during house repairs to check the waterproofing layer.

Under normal circumstances, an extra ladder is needed to climb from the attic to the roof. In reality, Shard had long since put away the ladder at home, and also locked the small square door on the attic roof to prevent the mischievous cat from climbing up and accidentally falling off the roof.

"Luviya, are you on the roof now? Why is Mia in this dream too? Just like Lecia, does Luviya also harbor intentions towards Mia?"

He stepped next to the triangle ladder, looked up. Through the square opening, one could see the dingy yellow sky resembling an eerie oil painting. It seemed the outer world in the dream was just as bizarre as inside the house.

After a moment's hesitation, Shard climbed the ladder. As soon as he poked his head through the rooftop, he finally saw the full view of this eerie world within the dream.

In the dingy yellow sky, countless building debris and corpses were floating. The distant sun still hung in the sky, but it was black in color, surrounded by a white edge with a red halo on the outskirts. The black sun resembled a hole, emitting a fiery red line downward.

The world seemed to have turned to a yellow-brown hue, the sands engulfing most of the city, grains of sand dancing in the wind, even layering the rooftop tiles in fine sand. Initially thinking only the inside of the house resembled a cold, damp Haunted House, stepping outside revealed the temperature had dropped even further.

Shard climbed fully onto the roof from the attic, standing up to gaze over Tobesk City. The once flourishing "Northern Pearl" now appeared to have endured the effects of a hundred years, with a third of the cityscape severely damaged, the remaining buildings riddled with signs of decay. The roads, if not blocked by collapsed buildings or mounds of sand, were filled with trash and debris. Occasionally seen pedestrians, wrapped in cloaks and hunched over, quickly darted through the alleys.

In the further distance, the western part of the city seemed as if struck by a giant meteor, leaving a smoking crater, black smoke rising ominously towards the dingy yellow sky. In the northeast part of the city, writhing tentacles seemed to dance from the dust towards the sky, but on closer inspection, it seemed to be just probabilities of black smoke in the wind.

In the far, high sky, amidst the swirling debris and corpses, a massive Floating Island-like structure drifted silently, enshrouded by a storm, with dark lightning flickering in the tempest.

Compared to everything else around, Saint Delan Square was considered, structurally the most complete, the only Sanctuary within this dream of doom.