I don't want to conquer witches anymore.

That is the opposite of the beautiful things in the world.

That is all the evil in this world.

A beautiful blessing turned into an ugly curse, a nightmare silently woven, enveloping the world and trapping the girl herself.

The girl... a girl named "Talia" is still asleep.

……

"There really is nothing in this world."

Duke walked at the front of the group, frowning as he surveyed the desolate world. After a long while, he complained to his companions, "Have you ever seen a floating city at four in the morning? A floating city at four in the morning is a million times more lively than this place!"

Amber gave her boyfriend a strange look: "What are you doing out at four in the morning?"

Before Duke could explain, Amber figured out the answer herself:

"Got it. You just left some witch's house at four in the morning, and you're reminiscing about last night's wonderful moments while smoking a post-coital cigarette, right?"

"Of course not! You're a perverted elf with a head full of filthy nonsense!"

Amidst the stares of the crowd, Duke decisively denied Amber's guess and offered his reasoning: "I don't smoke, so where would I get a cigarette afterward?"

Is this the key point?

The others who were watching the young couple's playful bickering wiped the cold sweat from their brows, but only Ms. Fei blinked, completely disregarding the atmosphere they exuded, and interrupted without looking at the air around her, "Why did they leave from some witch's house? I don't think Duke is that kind of person, is he?"

"Ms. Fei, you understand me best!"

Just as Duke was about to burst into tears of emotion, he heard Fei continue, "Couldn't it have come from the red-light district?"

Duke: "?"

I never expected you to be like this.

"There shouldn't be a red-light district in the floating city, right? This is a spellcaster city that was notified by the witches, so why would there be something like this?"

Duke defended himself somewhat indignantly, saying that he had been in the floating city for several months and had never seen such a place before. However, after he finished speaking, everyone present, except for Grete and Xingyin, who had arrived in the floating city later than him, showed some pity.

Seeing these expressions, Duke understood.

"So floating cities actually exist... Wait, how do you guys know all this about it?"

Amber, weren't you obsessed with doujinshi? Joseph, didn't you have a childhood sweetheart fiancée? Thunder Witch, you're a respected professor, look at the lewd expression on your face! And Lady Fei, you were the first lord of the Floating City, for goodness' sake! Does this red-light district really reflect your original intention when you built the Floating City...? No way, no way, could this red-light district have been built by Fei herself?

Everyone looked away. Amber muttered something like, "I was just curious," and "I only looked at the girls cosplaying succubi at the door, and I didn't dare to go in." Only Fei looked at Duke expressionlessly and said frankly, "Women also have physiological needs. Don't demonize witches."

Is this what a true champion of equality looks like?

"In short, it seems like there's nothing in this world." Duke coughed, abruptly pulling the topic back on track. "We've been walking for so long, and we haven't seen a single person, not even a single living creature."

The place where they fought Talia was a place resembling an altar. The structure was very simple. Duke and the others did not find anything useful from the altar and quickly left, truly entering the world of the Sleeping Beauty game.

Just like the evaluation of the witch, this was a deathly silent world. Duke and the others could hear nothing except the sounds they made for each other. The entire world was asleep. There were no living, talking creatures, not even the sound of wind. Not a single cloud could be seen in the azure sky. The "sun" radiating a soft light in the sky was less a powerful celestial body and more a symbol of light.

They had been walking around the world for about an hour or two, but the angle at which the sun hung in the sky and the intensity of its sunlight remained unchanged.

If Duke were to describe it, this place is not just a gentle "sleep," it should be a dead world!

Instead of destroying Talia's body, they kept the soulless form with them. Duke had actually suggested burning the legendary body; after frequent encounters with Talia, it wasn't just Talia who suffered from PTSD, Duke himself was also afraid of this somewhat lingering spirit.

He would rather waste a legendary, unclaimed body than give Talia the opportunity to return to the body and obtain the complete legendary power.

However, Ms. Scarlet voted against it, thinking it would be interesting to keep the body and thus stopping Duke's actions.

According to her, "It doesn't matter, she can't beat me anyway."

For some reason, Ms. Fei's style reminded him of Guangbao, which had been excluded this time.

Does becoming strong enough mean becoming a brainless brute?

However, Ms. Scarlet wields considerable influence within the team, and since she had spoken, Duke no longer objected. Initially, Joseph carried the soulless body, but later Gretel...

He cast a spell on a nearby tree, summoning it into a treant with a legendary body, before freeing Joseph.

Grete's actions reminded Duke, who stared at the tree-man for a long time before pulling out the Voice of All Things, which he hadn't used in a long time.

Chapter 147 Crossroads of Fate

[Item Name: Voice of All Things.]

[Item Description: The sounds of all things are like vast clouds and mist, while humans are constrained by their physical bodies, existing independently in this mortal world.]

[Item Effect: Allows you to hear the sounds of all things.]

This is an item obtained by increasing Grete's favorability. Favorability items in the Witch Conquest system are all very powerful. Whether it's the spatial anchor that anchors space, the misaligned coordinate that combines "absolute defense" and "guaranteed hit", or the Truth Tome that is currently on a 666-hour cooldown, they are all very powerful items.

However, the abilities of the Space Anchor and the Voice of All Things have a relatively small scope of application, which directly leads to a significant decrease in the frequency of their use. The Space Anchor was recently lent to Amber by Duke so that she could practice using spatial magic under high pressure, which is quite a good use of it. As for the Voice of All Things, it really hasn't played a substantial role for a long time.

Or rather, aside from leading him back to yesterday once, the Voice of All Things only had a decent effect in the original Casino Tower.

"However, it is finally working now."

As Duke said this, he brought up the Hearing Aid-like Sound of Everything.

Even after the sounds of all things were introduced, the once desolate world remained desolate.

"Strange, is there no sound at all?" Duke frowned. Logically, the Voice of All Things should be able to hear some of the sounds of plants, but in this deathly silent world, even the plants seemed particularly taciturn. "Grete, can't you hear any sound either?"

"You can hear them?" The Cake Princess tilted her head, looking at Duke with some confusion, seemingly not understanding why he said that. "Brother Duke, can't you hear them? These children are making painful, sleep-talking noises."

Greta's unique spell as a witch is the ability to listen to and communicate with all living things. Back in the original Candy Castle witch game, she demonstrated this power to Duke by communicating simply with a tree and receiving its help.

After arriving in the floating city, Princess Cake cooperated with the city's researchers to study her unique spell, attempting to recreate its magical power. Unfortunately, they never succeeded. However, Grete benefited from this misfortune, as the spell's effectiveness was greatly enhanced with the researchers' help.

Now, the precision of her spells even surpasses that of the Voice of All Things that Duke wears in his ears.

"Dreaming?" Duke paused slightly, repeating the question instinctively. Having received a prompt from Gretel, he reached out and adjusted the Voice of All Things in his ear, then listened more carefully to the sounds. "You mean, they're dreaming?"

“That’s right, they’re dreaming, having a nightmare.” She pointed to the trees beside her, then patted the towering tree she had turned into a tree person, and said with some regret, “But only this child responded to me from the dream.”

In other words, this tree that responded to Grete's spell turned into a tree spirit... was it just sleepwalking?

Soon, Duke also heard some faint sounds through the Voice of All Things. These were the sounds of the trees, just as Gretel had said, occasionally uttering painful murmurs, as if they were having some kind of nightmare.

However, due to the limited power of the Voice of All Things, Duke was unable to determine the content of the nightmare, and had no choice but to look at Gretel.

The Cake Princess, on whom high hopes were placed, reached out and pressed down on the tree-man beside her, closing her eyes to listen to the contents of its nightmare.

"The first day of creation."

"The girl blessed the newborn world with life, and so all living things began to be born. She wished all living things happiness, health, and precious wisdom, and that they would not be affected by trivial matters such as disease, pain, and death."

"The second day of Genesis."

"The girl wishes the world fertile land and abundant resources..."

"The third chapter of Genesis..."

"The twelfth day of Genesis."

"The girl couldn't think of anything to bless, as if all the beauty in the world was right before her eyes, but she still racked her brains. Her magic could last until the thirteenth day. But at this moment, she made a terrible decision. She decided to lock all the evil in the world in a box and not let it out."

"The ugliness, evil, and curses gathered together are condensed in the box. The girl did not hand over Pandora's box to mortals, but she herself became Pandora. In an accidental slip, all the evil of this world was thrown to the center of the world."

"The world has been sentenced to death; it will be destroyed when the sun sets on the thirteenth day. But the girl who possesses the last remaining power is unwilling to end it like this."

"She left behind her final blessing."

"The world will not die, it will only fall asleep."

"So on the thirteenth day of Genesis, the world came to a standstill."

Gretel slowly read out the poem-like content, which was the content that the tree people had been repeating in their nightmares. From the perspective of Duke and other bystanders, the myth of creation did not seem like a nightmare, but for the creatures in this world, the creation of creation, which ended abruptly on the thirteenth day, meant that they were stillborn.

What's even more terrifying than this nightmare is that it's not just a dream, but a reality that has stepped into the dream.

“Hmm…” Gret pouted, then suddenly looked at Talia’s body, which was being held by the treant, and pointed at it, saying, “That girl looks exactly like her.”

In other words, Talia is the creator of this world, possessing the power to put the entire world into slumber... No wonder she did the same thing in the Cinderella game.

"Did the nightmare mention what happened to the girl afterwards?"

“Hmm… nothing special.” Gret shook his head. “In the Tree People’s nightmare, the girl who created the world seems to have stayed in the nightmare and hasn’t left. She is waiting for someone to wake her and the world up, end the stagnant state, and save everything.”

"Too bad, she got what she wanted from us." Duke scoffed, glancing back at his companions. "Let's go, we still need to rescue the hostages she kidnapped. Who cares what Talia thinks? Who's going to save that idiot?"

"But where should we look for Joan and the others?"

Joseph frowned. He already knew the name of his childhood sweetheart and fiancée from Duke. He had no memory of her at all, but just hearing the name was enough to make him feel a deep sense of nostalgia.

"I think it's here."

He pointed in a direction based on his intuition.

The Thunder Witch Rose followed suit, closing her eyes to sense the sensation before raising her head and pointing in another direction.

"what?"

Seeing the two desperate men pointing in two different directions, Duke rolled his eyes. But at that moment, he also felt a mysterious guidance that led him to point in a third, different direction.

In the vast wilderness, the group found themselves at a crossroads in their destiny.

Chapter 148 The book is truly honest!

"I want to go in this direction."

“My intuition tells me that Jasmine is in that direction.”

"Tch, if intuition worked, I would have brought along Cecil and Starflower, those beastly types... That being said, I also have a feeling that Annie is most likely going in this direction."

Joseph, Rose, and Duke made three completely different judgments, and each of them was convinced of their own judgment and had no intention of changing it.

Duke didn't know the reasons why Joseph and Rose made their judgments, but he guessed they were similar to his own.

His intuition told him clearly that "Anne is somewhere in this direction, some distance away."

Generally speaking, intuition is a vague feeling, such as the sense of crisis felt when stimulated by murderous intent, or the feeling of hearing the church bells when falling in love at first sight. In most cases, there will not be such a clear intuition.

Moreover, for some reason, Duke had an extremely high level of trust in this intuition deep down. If he weren't a rational person, he wouldn't even realize that his trust in this intuition was almost unconditional.

"To be honest, this level of trust is a bit strange," Duke clicked his tongue, turning to his companions for confirmation, "Is it the same for you guys?"

He told Joseph and Rose his feelings in detail and received their affirmative answer.