Mysterious journey

"Kelly! Wake up! Kelly!! Wake up!!"

Suddenly, a rapid cry came from my ears.

Garen opened his eyes suddenly, and a burst of dazzling light made him squint. The mercury in the tower next to him was patting his face in confusion.

"What's wrong? What are you doing here in the tower?" Garen sat up and realized that the scene just now was just a dream.

"Why did you come to the basement to sleep?" Mercury in the tower looked at Garen strangely, "Did someone come over last night to study, and when you were sleepy, you just turned to who was here? I didn't tell you not to act alone, Do you want to wait for me to come with you?"

Only then did Garen realize that he was actually lying in the basement, surrounded by narrow gray-black walls, empty of anything, and the floor and walls were covered with cold gray-black stone tiles.

This basement is not entirely underground. Half of the skylights are on the upper part of the wall, shining bright sunlight. It looks more like a dungeon than a basement.

"What's going on? I remember that I was sleeping in my own bedroom?" He lowered his head and felt a pain in his head.

Suddenly, he felt a chill in his heart, and there was no sound around him.

In just a blink of an eye, the mercury in the tower in front of him disappeared.

Surrounded by empty basement rooms.

"Tali?"

"Tali?!!"

Garen got up from the ground and shouted several times.

No one answered.

Suddenly, his head hurt, and he suddenly remembered a memory, which he remembered vaguely. Tali woke him up from the basement, which seemed to have been three days ago.

"Three days ago?" He covered his head, his eyes a little blurry. "What's going on? If it was three days ago, then what on earth was I doing in the past three days?! How come I don't have any memory? He was standing in front of me just now!"

He felt a sharp pain in his temples. My mind is a little confused.

"No! We can't stay in this castle any longer!!"

He hurriedly opened the door, rushed out of the basement, and ran along the empty and straight corridor towards the castle gate.

The thumping of footsteps continued to echo in the castle.

Bang! !

The castle door was blasted open. Gallon rolled out of the door, rolled down the stone steps, rolled several times on the lawn, and finally lay on his back on the grass.

Huh. Huh. Huh.

He panted heavily, and a sudden wave of intense sleepiness came over him inexplicably, and Garen fell into a deep sleep without any resistance.

I don't know how long it took, but he slowly opened his eyes again. He was still lying on the bed in the bedroom in the castle.

"Kelly, are you awake?" Mercury's voice came from outside the door.

"Come back again?! Was this all a dream just now?" Garen was startled and sat up. "This place. This place is so weird!!" He had goosebumps all over his body. The warm sunshine shone on him from the window, but he didn't feel any warmth at all. But recalling the scene just now, the scene now feels much clearer.

"Is this a dream?" He took a deep breath.

After getting up, he quickly put on his clothes. He opened the door and saw Tali Mercury standing at the door, looking at him in surprise.

"What's wrong with you? There are dark circles under your eyes, and you look like you haven't slept well."

"It's nothing, I just had a nightmare." Garen forced a smile.

"Nightmare?" Tali Mercury laughed, "A nightmare scares you like this? What's going on? Come over and have morning tea and tell us about it."

"Okay." Garen rubbed his eyebrows, feeling a little ridiculous. "It's just that this nightmare is not an ordinary reality."

"You go ahead. I'll lock the doors and windows in the lobby on the first floor below." Tali Mercury patted Galen on the shoulder, "It seems I shouldn't give you that information."

"It's okay, I'm not someone who gets scared easily." Garen laughed dumbly, left the room and walked downstairs.

He didn't see Tali Mercury standing behind him with a slightly depressed expression.

*********************

Lobby

Going down the middle staircase, Garen saw Miss Silan sitting in the corner, holding a cup of hot black tea and drinking it slowly. She had also changed into a dark brown tight-fitting hunting suit, with her long pale blond hair tied into a bunch hanging down her back. It brings out the fair and delicate skin color more and more.

"Mr. Kelly is up too? Why does he look not in good spirits? Is he not resting?"

"I had a nightmare, it doesn't feel too real." Garen rubbed his brows, walked to the table next to Silan and sat down.

"Let's drink tea. The newly brewed black tea is the tea I brought from Gelfide." Silan made a gesture of invitation.

"Thank you."

Gallon picked up a cup of slightly hot black tea, put it to his nose and smelled it. Suddenly, a freshness like mint came to him, mixed with a touch of cream and sweetness.

I took a sip and felt like I was drinking mint water.

"What kind of tea is this? It tastes weird."

"I added other spices to refresh the mind and help wake up the brain in the morning. One of my uncles is a professor of medicine at Sirius University, and this is the method he taught me." Silan smiled.

"Not bad, not bad." Garen nodded, "I do feel much clearer."

Tali Mercury also walked to the table and sat down. He picked up the prepared mahogany cup and took a deep sip of the tea in it.

"This is my plan for a while. I will go hunting first, prepare food for noon and afternoon, and then go get water and wash the dishes. I will spend the afternoon checking the castle and the surrounding environment."

"You are much more experienced than me. It all depends on your arrangements. I have no objection." Garen shrugged.

"By the way Mr. Kelly."

"Just call me Kelly."

"Well, Kelly, you just said that you had a very realistic nightmare. What kind of dream can make you like this? It seems that you are mentally weak and depressed." Tali Mercury asked doubtfully.

Garen took a sip of the hot tea. The coolness of the mint and the heat of the hot water mixed together, sliding down his throat and into his stomach. He felt warm and awake all over his body.

"I dreamed," he paused, "that someone kept opening my door in the middle of the night, again and again. Every time it was when I was about to fall asleep."

He frowned. "This is very weird. I have never been here, never been to this castle. I didn't expect that I would have such a nightmare when I came here."

"I remember that the information I gave you recorded the death information of the three previous owners here. They were said to have had nightmares before their death. It's possible that you felt a little worried after reading the information. , to have such a strange dream." Tali Mercury analyzed.

"Are there any records of the specific circumstances of their nightmares?" Gallonchi asked.

"That's not true, but I also had a dream yesterday, but it wasn't a nightmare." Tali Mercury held his cane and looked up at the skylight, with a trace of nostalgia and confusion on his face.

"Have you remembered that thing again?" A trace of worry flashed in Silan's eyes. "It's been so long, haven't you let it go yet?"

"If only it were that simple." Tali Mercury smiled, but there was a bit of bitterness in the smile.

Garen sat aside, glanced at the two people's expressions, and said nothing.

After slowly drinking their morning tea and eating some pastries brought by Silan, the three of them stood up and picked up their shotguns and knives.

Mercury in Tali held a shotgun, changed into dark green clothes similar to military uniforms specially designed for hunting, and wore a cylindrical hat.

Galen was carrying a half-meter-long machete, but his clothes were still the same as yesterday, so he didn't look like he was hunting. It's not as simple as Miss Silan's outfit. In the end, I just picked up a linen bag and started doing the logistics.

The three simply packed up the tableware and walked out of the castle gate one after another.

The door slammed shut and locked. Tali Mercury took the lead and walked towards the right side of the castle.

"There is a big hole in the fence there, and you can go directly to the woods from there." As he walked, he began to load the shotgun, sliding it up and down from time to time, making a clicking sound.

"There are not many animals around here, but fortunately there are not many of us. As long as we catch something, we can eat several meals."

Garen nodded, said nothing, and just raised the pocket in his hand, which meant that he was just doing logistics to help get things, and the rest is up to you.

Tali Mercury smiled, patted the shotgun confidently, and stopped talking.

The three of them came to the right side of the castle. There was a large hole in the black iron fence that was two people wide and one person high. The metal railing of the fence seemed to have been smashed by something, bending and breaking inwards.

Mercury in the tower carefully got out of the big hole first and stood on the other side waving to the two of them.

Silan was the second to get through the hole, moving swiftly. Garen followed quickly and ducked in, but a corner of his clothes almost got caught on the broken metal railing.

Outside the fence is a deep, dark green forest, with densely packed small trees four to five meters high, some thick and thin, plus dense ground shrubs and grass. You can feel a coolness coming from the depths of the forest before you even walk in.

The newly rising sunlight failed to penetrate the woods at all, and even the warmth of the light was blocked out. Waves of crisp bird calls continued to come from the depths, and occasionally there was the rustle of the grass, as if something was scurrying through the grass quickly.

"This is the movement of mountain rats. They are big and fat." Tali Mercury whispered, bending down and walking as softly as possible. , “I didn’t expect to encounter something good just after I came out.”

Silan smiled and began to move slowly behind him.

Although Garen had never hunted before, he knew that there must be no loud noise at this time. He stood on tiptoes and followed at the back.

boom!

Suddenly there was a gunshot in front of him. He looked up and saw Tali Mercury lowering his gun. White smoke was coming from the barrel of the gun, and a strong smell of gunpowder filled the air.

"Hey, I'm hit!" Tali Mercury rubbed his nose, strode forward, walked to a bush more than ten meters away, pushed aside the grass, rummaged inside, and directly took out a bush. Football-sized black and gray mountain rat.

"It's actually so big!" Garen said in surprise, and followed up to look at the mountain rat. It looked like an enlarged version of the rat, except that the head was shot to pieces, and the fur on its back was splashed with tiny particles. Blood spots.

"Your shooting skills in the tower are really good. You can see the mountain rat running so fast through the grass so far away." He gave a thumbs up to Mercury in the tower, and Gallon patted the mountain rat's fur. "It seems like just this one is enough meat for the three of us today."

"This is not enough. If you have to remove the internal organs and fur, there won't be much meat left. You have to beat more." Tali Mercury shook his head and smiled.

Garen had never handled wild game by himself, so he didn't understand anything, but everything felt quite new. The gloomy mood caused by the nightmare last night suddenly relaxed a lot.

The three of them continued to wander in the forest, with Garen following at the end. The mountain rat was placed in his pocket. It was a bit heavy, weighing almost twenty pounds, which was close to twenty kilograms in weight.

Following Miss Silan, Garen checked his body attributes. The attributes haven't changed much, but the strength has increased a bit. The change from the original 2.08 to the current 2.09 is obviously the result of Dacheng's Baiyun Secret Technique.

"Many people know the growth rate of the third-level Baiyun Secret Technique, but for this fourth-level secret technique that no one has ever achieved, no one knows what level it can reach. Now the martial arts is on the right track, it's just the absorption of potential. It has begun to stagnate again. If we can figure out the source of the potential of the doomed antiques, we can search in a clear direction instead of running around like headless flies like now."

Garen followed closely behind the two people in front while checking his physical condition. During this period of time, in the process of sparring with his senior brothers and sisters, he had gradually acquired the temperament of a martial arts practitioner. This is a change that slowly occurs from deep within, a change that occurs naturally due to changes in one's own strength.

After wandering around for a while, the three of them failed to encounter any other prey. Tali Mercury turned around and said loudly.

"There is a castle cellar ahead. Do you want to take a look? This is already nearby. We can go there to rest. The sound of gunfire just now probably scared the surrounding animals. Anyway, there is nothing to hunt around now."