They all call me an Outer God.

Chapter 354 True Believers

The Dreamland is a real place. To enter it, you need enough imagination and you can't have too much faith in science. The more you believe in science, the lower the probability of entering the Dreamland.

According to those fantasy books, there are currently two known methods to enter the Dreamland.

The first method is through dreams.

In the dream, you descend the seventy steps of light sleep and enter a cave filled with flames. After encountering two ferocious-looking gatekeepers, you obtain their permission to descend the seven hundred steps of deep sleep.

From there, one can reach the gate leading to the enchanting forest in the dream world.

The second possibility is still dreaming.

But compared to the first method, the second method is much simpler and more direct: all you need to do is find a cliff in your dream and leap off into the void of darkness—

There seem to be other methods, but they are not recorded in books.

"The author of this book seems to have visited a dream world and used his experience to write this seemingly fantastical autobiography. Perhaps I should visit him."

Lia closed the book in his hands, having taken the opportunity to glance at the author's self-introduction beforehand.

Then he discovered that the author of the book had passed away several years earlier, at the age of only forty.

However, his readers have differing opinions on whether this person is dead or missing in the dream world.

It is said that those who have been to the Dreamland have the opportunity to live there forever after death, so death and disappearance can often coexist without conflict.

"If we can't find this person, we can only start the investigation from other places, at least we can start with his fans."

"I don't believe that no one among the fans has ever fantasized about entering the Dreamland; perhaps some have already seen it."

The sky outside was still dark. When Little Swarth saw Ria looking at him, he immediately closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. A moment later, he quietly opened his eyes and found that Ria had handed him a hot water bottle.

Ria placed the hot water bottle on Little Swarth's belly. He figured the mythical creature must have gotten cold from roasting its scales over a fire in the middle of the night, otherwise it wouldn't be behaving this way.

"After daytime, we went to find a few people who love reading. These people wrote letters to the book's author, mentioning that they had also dreamed of dreamscapes. The author's reply was quite intriguing."

The author said, "I hope we can reunite there."

This doesn't sound like a compliment, but fans might not think so, and might even be willing to work towards this goal.

Of course, to ensure everything went perfectly, Ria also used the Batantusa coin for divination, and the answer from the mystery item was "correct".

These people are still alive, and their addresses are marked in the books, so he can indeed find them.

"As expected of the books I collected, they even have records of such private matters."

The author's self-description in the book is practically saying that the author himself, Falmanf, has a few hairs, although he himself is bald.

According to the book, Farmanf's head was shiny and easily recognizable in a crowd.

Rumor has it that this person once used sandpaper to polish his scalp, but it's unclear whether it's true or not.

In order to emulate him, many readers also shaved their own heads.

“How horrible.” Ria exclaimed at their madness, then began to examine the map of Enderus.

The journey from North Edellin to Cranbea will take you through the Kolabend Forest, the city of Sirogomes, and several towns of varying sizes. The road is not smooth, and you may encounter supernatural creatures and the underground church that are hunting you.

But Ria didn't care; those people who encountered him now would most likely only become food for Swarth. So this trip was still no different from a publicly funded vacation. If anyone among them could threaten Ria, he would become extremely excited.

The feeling of gradually uncovering the secrets of the extraordinary was irresistible, and he also wanted to know where the Plague Knight was hiding.

Although the Battantusa coin can be used for divination, it is easily affected by interference, so many things must be investigated by Ria herself.

Since arriving at Meme Five, Ria's mind has become more active. He has shown a much greater interest in the supernatural, and he often hears himself talking to himself. Occasionally, he can also hear someone calling out the name of Trade.

For example now——

"The supreme soul that murmurs in the depths of darkness,"

Wandering the world, witnessing the decadent pleasures of paper money and gold,
Reconstructing nihilistic bliss, bestowing upon the dark truth of decadent pleasure, the embodiment of desire.
We sing praises of desire.

Offering gold as a gift

Praise trade…

This is a prayer that Little Swarth filtered out for his believer, who was so devout that he went to great lengths to obtain it.

But very few people knew about Ria's prayer, which made him wonder where the believer had gotten the content from.

Amid the questioning, the eye behind Ria's neck slightly opened, and an image entered Ria's mind.

It was a ragged child who scattered a few gold coins on the ground and prayed fervently to Ria, hoping that he could grant his wishes, such as killing those who often bullied him.

The money was obviously stolen, and as for the prayer, it's possible that the damned Hephaestus spread it out, causing believers to harass him.

But Hephaestus overlooked one thing: the faith bestowed by Ria could be terminated at any time. He could make his followers forget the existence of trade, but this forgetting was merely the result of hypnosis.

He can only continue to believe in trade whenever he needs to believe in himself; this is what he calls "freedom of belief."

"Perhaps I should pause the faith of the masses, but this is the first time someone has seriously offered me a sacrifice, even though his money was stolen... Do I look like an evil god who would accept such a sacrifice?"

He likes money, but at the very least, believers must make sure that the things they offer to him are their own; they cannot use things that do not belong to them.

Ria didn't want to cause any unnecessary trouble; he was too busy to deal with these things every day.

Thinking this, Ria patted little Swarth's head.

"Go see that child and tell him that what he did was wrong."

"Goo."

Little Swarth nodded, somewhat reluctant to part with his hot water bottle. Even though its feathers had become warm, it now had to leave its warm bed, blankets, and hot water bottle, and even had to leave Ria behind.

This made it extremely, extremely, extremely unhappy.

It's as if it's sleeping soundly in the dead of winter, and suddenly someone pulls it out of bed and throws it outside to run 800 meters.

……

At the other end of the sacrificial array, a boy with dirty bloodstains at the corner of his mouth looked greedily at the gold coins on the ground, but he knew very well that he could not possibly spend the money.

(End of this chapter)