stonecrandall Chapter 344 Stay Calm When Poisoned
Chapter 344 Stay Calm When Poisoned
Chapter 346 Stay Calm When Poisoned
"Truffle, this note—it seems a bit ominous."
Outside the laboratory, Dr. Zhenyan, the director of the Dream Research Institute, held a dictation record in her hand and frowned as she spoke to her research assistant, who was also her younger sister and was responsible for maintaining various instruments in the Dream Research Institute.
"Really? I think it's pretty ordinary. Although the green stone tablet and purple mist sound a bit strange, isn't that what most people's nightmares are like?"
Having just listened to Azure's account, Truffle was somewhat confused. Having participated in dream research with her sister, she had also read some classic dream analysis cases. Compared to the dreams experienced by those case patients, Azure's dreams did not seem to have anything particularly unusual.
"But here's the problem." The doctor shook his dictation notes, speaking seriously, "Miss Azure is conducting a dream connection experiment this time, but how many elements related to dream connection do you see in this notebook?"
"Um, the scene where you see Miss Mia at the beach at the end?" Truffle tilted her head. "There was indeed a bit little interaction, but it's still within the margin of error."
"It's not just a matter of the level of interaction. Don't you think it's very unusual for dream connections to intersect in this way? You see, under normal circumstances, when one person wants to intervene in another person's dream, in what form do the two dreams intersect?"
"It depends on the situation—based on our past Pokémon dream experiments, sometimes two completely different dream scenes are spliced together, and the two dreamers can meet and interact like two players in a multiplayer game; sometimes there's only the scene of the dreamer's side, and the two players can still interact; besides that, there's the soul-possessed dream connection."
The entity that intervenes in a dream will possess the original owner of the dream. In this case, it can be divided into several categories, roughly distinguished by whether the dreamer can freely control their perspective and mental state, and whether they can have an out-of-body experience.
The doctor's sister took a sip of coffee and continued, "Finally, there's a rather exceptional case: the one who enters the dream can observe it from all angles, like a god. This requires the intruder to have extremely strong mental abilities. If their mental strength is slightly weaker, it will become a case of possession, only with a freer perspective, allowing them to fly around like a ghost."
"So, in your opinion, what kind of connection mode does Miss Azure belong to?" Dr. Zhenyan pressed.
"From the initial narrative, it seems to be a player mode where one side enters Miss Mia's dream. However, starting from the middle, Miss Azure's perspective begins to shift rapidly, and she develops a strong intuition that transcends cognition. In the end, she even experiences a God's-eye view that keeps zooming in, like an overhead view of the sky. This seems to be very close to the special case of the god mode—it is indeed a bit strange."
Truffle pondered, glancing thoughtfully at Azure, who wasn't fully awake yet: "Miss Azure, you wouldn't actually be a superpowered person, would you?"
"Huh?!"
While still dazedly reviewing her dictation notes, Azure was suddenly asked a question that caught her off guard, leaving her momentarily speechless: "No, that's not true at all. Why are you asking that?"
The Dream Doctor's assistant, however, shook his head to himself: "No, no, judging from your transformation from player mode to god mode, your mental strength must have suddenly increased midway through the dream. Perhaps Miss Azure suddenly awakened superpowers midway through the dream!"
"Huh?" Azure was speechless, while Dr. Zhen Gu's eyes turned fiery.
"Wait, wait, wait, this can't be right. I just had a dream, how could I awaken superpowers so easily?"
"That's really hard to say," Dr. Zhenyan said, raising her index finger with great enthusiasm.
"Many Pokémon awaken their hidden abilities in their dreams. Although the exact mechanism behind this phenomenon hasn't been fully understood, it might have a similar effect on humans—this is a huge discovery, and it could even ignite a passion for dream research among ordinary people! Truffle, quickly get a spoon, let's test whether Miss Azure can use psychic abilities right away!"
"No, please calm down, both of you. I feel that even if I wanted to bend a spoon, I would most likely not rely on telekinesis, but rather on cheating methods such as using special metals or magic tricks. If I claimed to have awakened superpowers, I feel like some superpowered gym leader would chase me down from the Kanto region. Besides, I really don't feel like I've awakened any abilities at all."
Azure tried her best to defend herself—
"You see, when Pokémon awaken their hidden abilities in their dreams, they can all notice the change immediately after waking up, right? But for me, it was just a strange dream. To be honest, even now when I reread my dream report, it feels as unfamiliar as reading someone else's story. I've almost completely forgotten what it felt like to dream."
"That is indeed a problem. If she insists on this, perhaps Miss Azure really hasn't awakened any superpowers. After all, that kind of situation is a low-probability phenomenon. Using it as an explanation for Miss Azure's strange dreams is ultimately not rigorous enough."
Having regained her composure, Dr. Zhenyan apologized to Bilan, saying, "I'm sorry, Miss Bilan, I got a little emotional for a moment."
"It's alright, it's good that the misunderstanding has been cleared up."
Only one person was very dissatisfied with the situation. The doctor's sister walked up to the two of them with her hands on her hips, holding a spoon in her hand: "Then I've just taken this spoon for nothing."
Perhaps awakened by the noise of their discussion, Mia, who had been sleeping in the lab, stepped out of the room. "Miss Azure, Dr. Zhenyan, that experiment was called the Dream Connection Experiment, wasn't it? Is it over? Why did I have that strange dream about memories with Aiya Mushroom?"
Zhenyan took nightmare patients who came to her door very seriously. She immediately went to Mia's side. "Miss Mia, the experiment can be considered complete. Putting everything else aside, what are your impressions of the dream you just experienced?"
"It's no different from the strange dreams I've had in the past," Mia said, shaking her head.
Upon hearing her speak, Miss Truffle immediately put down the unused spoon and began to record Mia's narration in the notebook that was filled with Azure Oral Report.
"I dreamt of fragments of memories from the past related to Oya Mushroom, and just like before, those fragments were like movie flashbacks."
It plays out in my dreams without any rhyme or reason—
"No, that's not specific enough." Seeing that Miss Mia's narration was becoming increasingly vague, the doctor promptly reminded her, "It doesn't matter if it's chaotic, and it doesn't matter if you can't remember some dream details clearly. Please be sure to share every scene and every detail that you thought of and saw in the dream as specifically as possible. I think those details might be related to the source of the strange dream."
"Okay." Mia nodded and began to recount the memories she had experienced in her dream in fits and starts.
First, there's the scene of releasing the Breloom, then the scene of spending childhood with the Breloom, then the scene of college, then the scene of staring at the motionless Breloom, then the scene of happily walking back and forth while holding it, then the scene of talking to the Breloom before going to sleep, and finally the moment when the Breloom was put into a Poké Ball and brought home by the father.
Countless fragmented scenes, because of Aiya's quiet and unassuming personality, may not contain many particularly heartwarming elements, but you can hear a faint sense of nostalgia in Miss Mia's tone.
However, the expressions on the three people's faces turned strange as they listened to Mia's story.
"Miss Mia, did you see any recent memories in your dream?"
After Mia finished recounting her story, the Doctor carefully asked her questions. She avoided mentioning Azure's description of seeing Miss Mia at the beach at the end of her dream, fearing that her words might mislead Mia's memories.
"I don't think so," the woman shook her head. "Releasing the agaric mushroom was something that happened several years ago. The scenes I see in my dreams are all related to it, so it's impossible for something like this to happen recently."
"Hey, Doctor, the two of them are dreaming completely different things. Is the dream connection device really working properly? Could it be that Miss Azure and Miss Mia are actually having two completely unrelated dreams?" Truffle looked at her sister suspiciously and asked in a low voice.
"It ran perfectly smoothly, and all connection parameters reached normal levels. Moreover, according to the principles of the dream connection experiment, if she doesn't connect into the other person's dream, Miss Azure won't see any images in her dream," the doctor replied firmly.
His brows furrowed even deeper.
"Is there something wrong with my strange dream?" Mia asked somewhat guiltily, seeing the three people in front of her all looking somber.
Azure glanced at Dr. Zhenyan and saw her nod helplessly. The detective's assistant then explained to Mia the reason for their confusion: "Miss Mia, as you know, when you entered your dream, I also used Dr. Zhenyan's dream connection device and intervened in your dream—but the dream we experienced seems completely different."
"Completely different? Miss Azure, didn't you see those memories of the 'Aiya Mushroom' in my dream?" Mia asked, puzzled.
"I didn't even see a shadow of the Ayaka Mushroom," Azure denied definitively. "Not only that, at the end of the dream, I also saw you, Miss Mia, crying on the shore. And according to your description just now, that scene also never appeared in your dream."
"Is this phenomenon strange?" Mia, who didn't fully understand the mechanism of the dream connection experiment, still didn't get the situation right.
"This is really strange; it's never happened before in Pokémon dream connections," Dr. Zhenyan replied. "If it were that parts of Ms. Mia's dream didn't appear in Azure's dream, it would be somewhat understandable, perhaps because Azure's connection happened relatively late, missing some of the dream content. But in your case, it's the opposite, which is inexplicable."
"Moreover, people generally have the strongest memory of the last dream they have before waking up, so it's hard to explain it by the fact that Miss Mia just happened to forget that dream," Truffle added.
"It seems even here, we can't find a reason why I'm having these strange dreams," Mi Ye said dejectedly.
"By the way, Miss Mia, do you still have that feeling—of wanting to end your life?" Looking at Miss Mia...
The detective's assistant asked cautiously.
Mia nodded helplessly: "I know this is illogical, but people are trapped in that kind of deep depression, wanting to end their lives. But don't worry, I can control myself now and won't do anything dangerous like trying to commit suicide at the beach anymore."
Azure sighed, "Looks like we've reached another dead end, just like with the poisoning incident. Right, Hugo, why haven't you said anything? That's not like you at all—hey! Detective Hugo!"
"-·Um?"
After a brief silence, the detective looked up from the chair he had been sitting in since entering the room.
"Have you finished your experiment? Excuse me, I was thinking about other cases—"
"Is it that series of cases you said were incredibly serious?" Azure asked.
"Yes," said the detective in the white coat, his deduction intoxicated. "Leaving aside the Akroma affair, there's a clear connection between Selvik's poisoning and Voodoo's poisoning, but a central thread connecting the two incidents is lacking. The fact that two criminals, both notorious for manufacturing toxins, could successfully go into hiding suggests the support of at least a powerful organization like Team Plasma. However, Team Plasma used the Voodoo incident to distance themselves from these criminals, and other organizations have no reason to send their recruited subordinates to the Unova. The reason for their strange behavior and death must be related to the potent poison they were ingested. They might even have been aware of their poisoning long before their deaths, and their strange behavior was likely carried out under the assumption that they were about to die."
But what common thread exists between the widespread poisoning around Castelia City and the culling of wild Pokémon along the way? I still don't understand that.
"Hahaha."
Hearing this long, information-dense conversation, the detective's assistant gave a wry, resigned laugh. "I see. So another criminal named Voodoo has been poisoned? And it's related to Group Plasma. I understand this case is extremely serious. But Hugo, you might not have noticed, but almost two hours have passed since you came in. Staying motionless and lost in thought like this isn't a good idea. How about we think about something lighter to clear our heads?"
"I feel that Miss Azure is quite remarkable for being able to understand such a long string of case analysis in one go. I must say, she truly deserves to be called a detective," Miss Truffle whispered to her sister.
At that moment, the detective stretched his shoulders, which were stiff from sitting for so long, and stood up from his chair: "An easier case? You mean Miss Mia's dream? So you're facing difficulties?"
"Well, here's what happened," Azure continued, telling Hugo about the strange occurrences that had happened during the dream connection experiment.
"I understand. The two people whose dreams are connected are dreaming of completely unrelated scenarios, yet the dream connection experiment itself was undeniably successful. You believe there's a contradiction between these two phenomena that needs an explanation, right?"
"Yes, Detective Hugo, that's it." Dr. Zhen looked expectantly at the detective in the white coat, hoping he could give a reasonable explanation for the bizarre results of this experiment. "Well, although it's a low-probability event, and even as the answer to a mystery in a detective novel, it's a bit too cliché, but there is indeed another possibility that can explain the current situation." Hugo rubbed his neck and said in a tone as if he were calculating the hit rate of his reasoning.
"Could it be that my superpowers suddenly awakened in my dream again?" Azure asked warily.
"No, that doesn't explain the difference between the two dreams," the detective said.
Truffle couldn't hold back any longer and asked Hugo directly, "So, what exactly is that possibility?"
The detective in the white coat coughed twice and, under the watchful eyes of everyone, slowly began to speak, "I wonder if any of you have heard of the psychological term 'dissociative identity disorder'?"