As the Dream Dispersed, Lavian of the Night Sanctuary was finally able to leave, but unlike when he invaded the dream, he had now become a loyal believer of the Goddess and Your Majesty the Emperor. It was time to return to the Night Sanctuary and become an undercover agent to make up for past mistakes.
The next day, the Gray Robe immediately sought out Bernice for a discussion because the intelligence obtained from the Night Sanctuary was too vital for Castile.
At that moment, Bernice was still contemplating the information from last night about how the Night Sanctuary invaded dreams when she heard the knocking brought by the Gray Robe along with Rosalind.
“We need to act quickly!”
The Gray Robe said urgently, “The Night Sanctuary has been secretly controlling many Great Nobles, including many offspring of His Majesty Gonzalez. If what that person said last night is true, Castile will soon become their testing ground!”
Rosalind, still half-asleep, immediately perked up when she heard the Gray Robe’s words. This little princess had been jerked awake early as the Gray Robe pulled her up, completely unaware of what was happening.
Seeing that although she had perked up, the little princess still looked confused, Bernice explained, “Last night, we had a visitor who provided us with some crucial intelligence.”
It seemed like Bernice was pondering how to explain it to the little princess. After thinking for a moment, she still felt it was her duty to let this little princess know the current situation in Castile, so she continued, “A cult transformed from the orthodoxy of the Morning Star Church—the Night Sanctuary, which exploits the power of dreams, has secretly controlled many nobles in Castile, including your older brothers and sisters. Now, about three out of seven in Castile may be completely controlled by the Night Sanctuary.”
“That includes your second brother at Cartiel.”
Hearing this news, the little princess Rosalind immediately exclaimed, “So it turns out my second brother was controlled by the cult to become like that? We must hurry to save him!”
Both the Gray Robe and Bernice remained silent. At this moment, Rosalind began to realize something and sat down again, indeed, the brotherly friendship and filial piety that she imagined were just her one-sided fantasies.
“The Night Sanctuary accidentally acquired brain puppetry technology and has begun studying dreams with it,” Bernice reminded her from the side. “However, their technology is indeed lacking—they not only require a large number of brain puppets, but their computational efficiency is also extremely slow, making it impossible to completely control the dreams. Only if the person has that idea can the Night Sanctuary use dreams to carry out suggestions.”
In other words, Xiya had the idea first, which made the Night Sanctuary target her.
Rosalind nodded silently. Since returning to the Solun Continent, there had been few good news, which made her fall into confusion for a moment.
Bernice did not stop after explaining, but continued, “They have gone down the wrong path just like we did initially, even more exaggerated.”
If Lantern Dream had continued to develop recklessly back in the day, it might have affected the political situation of the continent in the same way as the Night Sanctuary. In fact, Lantern Dream had already been doing so, but the Night Sanctuary was weaker in power, as it indeed had become the puppet master of the continental underworld.
They planned to turn Castile into their own testing ground and conduct their own brain puppetry experiments. From Bernice’s perspective, these brain puppetry experiments seemed rather primitive; the computational power they squeezed out might not even match what Lantern Dream achieved in its early days. Moreover, due to ongoing suppression, the doctrines of the Morning Star Church had gradually warped, and in order to enforce their brutal rule, the shadowy Night Sanctuary might even carry out bloody human sacrifices.
The Night Sanctuary was an organization that accidentally illuminated the path of consciousness and dream technology but fell into an erroneous direction due to its supporting technologies not keeping up. Unlike Lantern Dream, which had divine light as guidance, they dashed off in the wrong direction.
For instance, the Night Sanctuary fundamentally did not understand that dreams were supported by human brain computational power; rather, they believed it was formed purely from human magic power, throwing everything they couldn’t solve into magic. Those brain puppets, rather than providing computational power, seemed to be exploited for magic power, or rather, served as a kind of near-magic substance—the Night Sanctuary mistakenly thought that extracting computational power from the human brain was a kind of magic power that could not be detected.
In any case, whenever faced with uncertainty, they just attributed it to magic. After all, based on their experimental results, it turned out that using Mages to extract dreams was indeed more authentic than ordinary brain puppets. They mistakenly thought this was because a Mage’s magic power was more profound, but in reality, it was because the Mage’s mental computational capacity was stronger.
However, the Night Sanctuary’s technology was not without merit. Although their computational efficiency was low, they had relatively abundant redundant computational power and magic power. In such a powerful situation, their range for dream networking was much broader than that of Lantern Dream back in the day, though the signal quality was poor.
This was mainly because the situation in the Solun Continent was far more chaotic than that of the M Continent back in the day. Aside from the Avar people fighting against alliances with other countries, the other nations were also in a state of endless turmoil. Although the M Continent often experienced wars, as long as the two major kingdoms did not formally go to war, other places wouldn’t fight fiercely. But the situation in the Solun Continent was different: due to the absence of a leading great power, and the chaos caused by the misuse of Supremacy Magic, many small to medium-sized nations were either in conflict or on the verge of war. These nations and mini-states that sprang up just by occupying a village were breeding grounds for cults.
Seeing the little princess’s spirit diminished, the Gray Robe comforted her, saying, “Your Highness, we still have a chance.”
Almost all of Gonzalez’s offspring had some support, and some even directly split territory to establish nations. There was no reason Rosalind couldn’t.
Rosalind seemed to understand the Gray Robe’s meaning but shook her head, saying, “But, Master National Teacher, all my older brothers and sisters have noble support. Not only were those nobles hostile to me before, but now I don’t even have a piece of land. I can only live on the empire’s ship.”
“Who says no one supports you?”
The Gray Robe pulled out a contract from his bosom, saying, “Your Highness, our supporters are much stronger than all those nobles combined.”
Rosalind looked at the contract, and the more she looked, the more shocked she became. This was a hidden contract, sealed with the imperial seal of the Emperor. As long as Rosalind signed her name, this merchant fleet would help her restore her kingdom.
This contract was far more radical than the one Rosalind signed before setting off. Apart from the previous merchants and military guards, once she signed this, the empire would recognize Rosalind as the queen of Castile. The legal rationale was not important because she originally had a claim to Castile, but it was crucial in the sense that it meant Rosalind could gain support from the fleet and the church, and subsequently receive many forms of assistance from the empire.
It was clear that that Emperor was not omniscient, but judging from the guards brought by the merchant convoy and the hidden Lars Knights and Sisterhood members among the ships, it was evident that he had indeed made some special preparations.
The Gray Robe handed a delicate feather pen to Rosalind, noting that even if she were eventually integrated into the empire, it was still better than being occupied by a cult.
“Sign it, and you will be the new queen of Castile.”
