Chapter 317: Bracelet and Awakening (Edited)

Taking into account the genres from the previously provided list, translate the following text into English:

Tom was stunned for a moment as he looked at the bracelet. At that moment, a shout was heard beside him.

"Watch out!"

Then, a bowl of thick French fish soup spilled over Tom, leaving him covered in sauce.

"Sir, I'm so sorry!" The trembling waiter who made the mistake was apologizing while holding the tray. The restaurant manager also quickly arrived and began apologizing to Tom while using a napkin to clean him up and apologizing.

Tom felt that something was not right. He reviewed his day's experience and suddenly realized what the problem was: every time he tried to put on the bracelet, various accidents happened: a teapot exploded, the subway arrived earlier than expected, or a waiter spilled fish soup on him...

Not only when he tried to put it on, but even just by looking at the bracelet, accidents and distractions occurred that made him forget about it. It felt as if someone didn't want him to wear that bracelet! If it weren't for the number of accidents he had experienced today, Tom wouldn't have realized this. No, it wasn't too many accidents, but rather the presence of the bracelet was too strong, causing a series of accidents and finally making him aware of it.

Tom ignored the chattering manager beside him and reached into his backpack. He had made a decision: today, he had to take out that bracelet and put it on. Nothing and no one could stop him.

The moment he reached into the backpack, the crystal chandelier from the restaurant ceiling came crashing down, hitting the waiter and the manager next to him. There were many screams and cries.

The chandelier reinforced his belief that he was now going to take out the bracelet and no one could stop him.

He reached into his backpack and took out the bracelet that looked a bit rough and very simple. The moment he touched it, the restaurant ceiling began to shake.

"An earthquake, it's an earthquake!" That voice was heard shouting beside him. Tom heard it clearly. It was the same girl he had gone on a date with.

With a strong tremor, the floor collapsed, the walls crumbled, and Tom fell to the ground. A large piece of ceiling fell near him, but the table behind him blocked it, preventing the ceiling from falling directly on his head, forming a simple triangular structure with the table and the floor.

"No resources," Tom said, lifting his head and looking at the ceiling, as if he were looking through it to the existence in the sky, with a contemptuous expression. "Hehe."

The moment he put the bracelet on his hand, he felt a burning sensation on his wrist, and a strange vision appeared before him: what looked like a beautifully decorated train carriage, memories rushed into his mind as if they had broken through the chains, and Tom opened his eyes.

He was still in the luxurious dining carriage of the Golden Eagle train, only now the diners who had been laughing and joking before were lying unconscious on the floor. Hermione was also crouched over the table, her bracelet had fallen to the ground, although the bell on her ankle bracelet continued to ring as the train moved.

Before he could do anything else, he felt a strong breeze behind his head and ducked as an ice pick grazed his ear and stuck into the table.

The attacker was the same waiter who had served him the food earlier. He missed and immediately pulled out a watermelon knife from under the cart and tried to stab again, but Tom also drew his wand: "Expelliarmus!"

The watermelon knife flew upside down and stuck into the carriage wall. Tom disarmed the waiter with a quick movement and then, with another petrification spell, had him completely under control.

Before he could approach and ask questions, hurried footsteps were heard from outside the dining carriage. In the next moment, several burly and robust train guards kicked open the carriage door and entered with their weapons.

Tom felt a sense of danger in his mind and cast a repelling spell (Depulso) directly at them. In this strange situation, he dared not reason with the Russian guards, so he decided to overpower them with force.

The repelling spell (Depulso) worked well in the confined space, and the three guards who had entered first fell to the ground as if they had been hit by a stunning grenade, but the next moment they were standing up and pulling the triggers with a speed that exceeded human reaction.

Although their aim was slightly off, those guards who had been knocked down by the explosive spell seconds earlier were able to quickly get up and retaliate by firing. It was suspicious, but as strange as it was, he couldn't defy the laws of physics or the conditions of their own bodies. For example, the guard in front had a fractured wrist, and his hand holding the gun was drifting upward each time he fired. How could he aim properly?

"Protego!" Tom conjured a protective charm and blocked the point-blank shots, while quickly transforming into a giant snake and pouncing on the guards: physical attacks were not very effective, so it was time to resort to magic.

Three of the guards were petrified under the basilisk's gaze, while the remaining stewards and waiters were petrified upon encountering Tom's gaze.

Tom moved his enormous body and pushed the tables and chairs along with the petrified guards aside, exiting the dining carriage to eliminate the remaining conspirators.

In theory, normal people would be scared and flee in all directions upon seeing a giant snake emerge from a train carriage that petrifies anyone who looks at it, but this group of train staff approached like fearless soldiers. After several of them were petrified, they also found a countermeasure: closing their eyes. If they didn't look at the snake, they wouldn't be petrified.

Then, several members of the train staff advanced toward Tom, waving fire axes with their eyes closed. Tom didn't want to prolong the battle, so he transformed back into his human form, quickly retreated into the dining carriage, and continued casting stunning and petrification spells.

The train staff was limited, with only about a dozen frenzied individuals, and Tom quickly brought them down. Some were petrified by his basilisk form, others were stunned by the stunning spell, and then tied up like crabs.

Tom wiped the sweat from his forehead, the encounter had been quick and fierce, and although the battle was one-sided, he had the advantage. The small size of the carriage and the amount of decoration in it were not conducive to the use of long-handled weapons, and if the guards had had automatic rifles and shotguns in their hands, he might have been the one lying on the floor now.

Tom stepped over the equipment that was strewn on the ground and rearranged the table and chairs that had been knocked over in the fight when he felt a wave of dizziness in his brain and the dreamlike scenes came back to him, as if in one moment he was on the Golden Eagle train and the next back in the Muggle city, and staying there for longer each time.

Tom suppressed his discomfort and pointed his wand at the carriage window, "Reducto!"

With a crunch, the window shattered, and a cool breeze entered the carriage, refreshing the air inside and lifting Tom's spirits from the confused state he was in.

He found Hermione's bracelet on the floor and put it on his wrist. After putting it on, Hermione shivered and opened her eyes.

Her eyes were a bit dazed as she woke up, but soon cleared.

"Tom?" Her lips parted slightly as she called his name, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

"I'm here, I've always been here." Tom quickly grabbed Hermione's hand and let her rest her head on his shoulder.

"That dream... it was truly horrible..." Hermione seemed to have experienced something terrible, her body trembled slightly.

"It doesn't matter, it's alright, it was all false," Tom comforted, then turned to the bouquet of flowers that the waiter had brought to the end of the dining carriage. "It's this bouquet that's playing tricks on us."

Tom took a deep breath, held his breath, and approached the bouquet of flowers. He cast the Fire-Making Spell (Incendio) and watched as the blazing flames consumed the flowers, releasing twisted black smoke until there was no trace of ashes left.

"The nightmare is over, now let's go to the source of the dream," Tom returned to Hermione, wand in hand, ready to attack. "In my opinion, the culprit is in these two carriages-"

"You're lying!" The waiter who entered first suddenly shrieked sharply, grabbing both of their attention.

Tom and Hermione: ?

Of course, the waiter was still immobilized by the petrification spell, lying rigid on the floor. His eyes were blank, with only a blood-filled white pupil remaining.

But there was something to be said about the petrification spell, skilled wizards could cast it in a way that the victim couldn't even blink, but ordinary wizards could only petrify the target's limbs, and even some mediocre spells could only lock a joint, and the duration of the spell varied.

Perhaps because the effect of Tom's spell was slowly fading, the waiter surprisingly was able to speak.

"What I give you is not a nightmare! It's a good dream!" Although the waiter didn't change his facial expression, Tom could hear the indignation in his tone. "How dare you tarnish my reputation without any evidence?"

"I offered you a job on your first day, then you'll fall asleep, get a job, your book will sell, and you'll meet a beautiful woman on a blind date and be happy for the rest of your life. Can you call that a nightmare?" The waiter explained his plan to Tom in a rapid voice.

Telling Tom's dream wasn't enough; he turned to Hermione. "And you, don't you like reading and getting good grades on exams? Then I'll set a trap for you, ensure that you get perfect grades in every subject, always be first, get into the Ministry of Magic after graduation, and eventually become the Minister of Magic... Is there anything you can complain about?"

Tom: ...

"Well, I'll borrow what an old and unpleasant bee used to say because you don't know 'love,' so you can't shape our true dreams." At this point, Tom sounded like Dumbledore: Dumbledore would have laughed with relief and given Ravenclaw ten bonus points if he had heard it.

"I don't know love? How can that be?" The waiter put on a face as if he had heard a great falsehood. "I have looked into the minds of so many people, no one in the world knows more about love than I do! The crew, the passengers on board, all of them, surrender to the dreams I've woven. And you tell me I don't know love?"

"Yes, you don't understand," Hermione replied determinedly. "The dreams you gave me... they were boring and lonely. I didn't like them."

After saying those words, she smiled. "And I don't need your dreams to get first place in every subject."

Waiter: What?

Tom extended his hands. "I don't even need a blind date to find the person I love the most. Isn't that unnecessary? Besides, the dream you gave me on my first day was also terrible. Who would consider an office worker's dream a beautiful dream?"

"Listen to my explanation," the waiter hastily explained that the pleasant dream was coming after the initial suffering.

"Listen, then I can judge your dream based on the experience of online writing, the beginning is utterly incompetent, your start is so depressing that I leave before reaching the so-called 'good part.' What sense does such a dream make?" Tom also gave up.

"It's a society with increasing pressure. Even web novels have changed because of it. At first, the protagonists of web novels traveled to a different world and thrived with their own abilities. Then, they were failed individuals who discovered extraordinary talents when traveling to a different world and then rose up. Then, a little supernatural help had to be added to survive in the different world. But soon, even that became unpopular. Authors made the protagonists go back to Earth years earlier, becoming winners in life thanks to their knowledge of the future. You see? They no longer believe they can succeed through effort alone. But even gradually knowing the future wasn't enough, so the protagonists started having supernatural powers, becoming more powerful every day, even reaching the point of having all sorts of divine abilities just by signing..."

Tom looked at the waiter lying on the floor. "You sent me back to that reality and made me an office employee. Do you really think that's a beautiful dream?"

The waiter was left speechless.

"That's enough, we're going to find its true origin. This situation should end now," Tom said, with no intention of continuing to talk to this stranger. He could tell that the culprit behind this series of events was some special plant that controlled people's minds with its aroma, plunging them into addictive dreams. He was still unsure how it controlled the train staff, but it could be something related to spores that parasitized the brain.

He decided to search the train, looking for the culprit's hiding place.

"Wait, I think we can still cooperate..." the waiter shouted from behind, but seeing that Tom didn't react, he began to threaten loudly, "It's useless, you won't be able to find me!"

"So, Tom, do you know where it is in person?" Hermione caught up with him and asked after exiting the carriage.

"I don't know, but there's a simple way: just burn the entire train. Wouldn't that be a way to eliminate it?" Tom smiled slightly, providing a very radical solution.