The Great Madness (13) — Why the Fuck Are You Here, Bro?
I froze, my mind going completely blank. For a split second, I even forgot I was in the middle of a fight. What the actual fuck? Why was he here? Was this because we were inside a dream? No, that was bullshit. Even if this was a dream, I still had a firm grip on my sanity. Sure, there had been times before when people I knew popped up in my dreams according to the flow of my consciousness, but this wasn’t one of those situations. And of all things—Professor Slayer? This guy was supposed to be nothing more than a hallucination born from my own neurons!
I’d never given it much deep thought, but I’d always just vaguely chalked up this white shadow to something spawned from the madness of Beast Regression. That cursed magic made it incredibly difficult to control the user’s rage and the insanity that came with it. The signs had been there for a while. I first noticed the side effect when I watched Tirsi have her thesis stolen right in front of me. From that moment on, I realized Beast Regression fed on my anger and grew stronger. Then, when my own thesis got swiped by bandits, I saw the white flame erupt from my head for the first time. That flame eventually evolved into Professor Slayer—an entity that spewed out my rage in my place.
Because of that, I’d always treated this thing like a hallucination that only appeared when my brain short-circuited, like some kind of schizophrenia. That much, at least, I had no doubt about. Professor Slayer was simply a character born from the embodiment of my fury. It was basically the same as an imaginary friend a kid makes up. So whatever was happening now had to mean that someone was hijacking my dream by borrowing the “character” template of Professor Slayer.
The moment I reached that conclusion, I figured out who it was.
The pale shadow didn’t answer. It simply faded away as if it had run out of strength. Was it trying to stop me from going into berserk mode? But then what the fuck was I supposed to do about that old bastard?
Gooooooo……!!
Spacing out like that had been a terrible idea. It couldn’t have been more than five seconds, but in a battle between masters, five seconds was more than enough time to die two or three times over. The old man had already stolen my mana and was building a spell formula.
─Tick. Tick-tick!
The label of “low-grade magic” had lost all meaning. It felt like a carnivorous dinosaur tied together with Hotchkiss clips and duct tape was slowly rising to its feet. That damn professor magician was preparing a massive technique using my own pathetic mana and knowledge!
Low-tier magic? Meaningless. A monstrous spell is being constructed using stolen mana.
“Mommy fuckerrrrrr!!”
I was screwed! While I was spacing out, all my remaining mana had been sucked dry! Transforming now would be pointless. What the hell was I supposed to do with no mana? If I didn’t want to die, the only option was to dodge like crazy!
“This is a rage-quit moment! Straight-up rage-quit!”
Even though it was just a dream, I really didn’t want to die. I was about to hit the emergency escape button when I suddenly felt something strange in my chest. I pulled it out.
It was the Ogre’s Seal.
I didn’t need to wonder why it was there. The pink mana rising from it told me everything.
……Larilura!
She must have seen that my wives had woken up and shoved the seal into my hand while I was unconscious. Since my mana kept draining even though I wouldn’t wake up, she probably gave me the seal and started mana-to-mouth resuscitation. When it came to quick thinking in emergencies, Larilura was always top of the class in our party.
Fwaaaat─!
An enormous amount of mana erupted from the seal. And it wasn’t just from Larilura. My wives had all poured their mana into it as well. I used the roughly two seconds left before the old man finished his spell to think.
……With this, I can actually put up a fight!
At the end of that thought, I saw a path to victory.
─Taat!
I absorbed the mana from the seal as if my body was starving for it and sprinted forward with everything I had. A storm was raging where the old man stood. Winds spinning like a typhoon! I knew exactly what magic it was. Fuck, some people had to spin a goddamn windmill just to use that!
“You thieving son of a bitch──!!”
My legs, strengthened by Beast Regression, accelerated. I poured mana into my fist. The moment the old man raised his staff, the storm began to compress. No matter how fast my feet were, the distance was still too great. The spell would explode before my punch could reach him.
Still, I grit my teeth and kept running. As a result, I had to stare down the storm exploding right in front of my nose. If I collided with it head-on, even with runes raising my magic resistance, I’d be turned into Nord-pulp in a blender in no time. If the output of the attack spell exceeded the damage reduction of my runes, I was dead.
So I neither dodged nor blocked it.
“Mirror Dimension.”
Instead, I rotated the entire landscape 360 degrees with the incoming storm as the axis. The cloud platform spun my body at ultra-high speed like it had been thrown onto a disco dance floor. Using my ability to manipulate dreams, I escaped the storm’s attack range in the blink of an eye.
If the environment around me moves however I want, there’s no reason not to use it!
It probably couldn’t be used for attacking, but it worked perfectly for movement. It was a total cheat that took advantage of the unique nature of fighting inside a dream. Besides, that fucker was stealing other people’s mana too, so we were both playing dirty anyway!
“The one who rules the sky rules the battlefield!!”
Reciting the wisdom of my predecessors, I slammed an uppercut into the old man’s chin. Of course he tried to defend with magic, but it was useless.
─Clunk!
Even when the old man swung his staff, no magic manifested. There was no way it could. In that instant, I had dumped almost all of my mana into the Ogre’s Seal, leaving only the tiniest bit for myself. It was a fleeting gap made possible only because I had the seal! The old man’s magic formula was sucking in mana so violently he was on the verge of fainting, but I grit my teeth and endured. Even if he might be a strength mage too, I had seized the initiative in this moment.
The moment my fist connected with the old man’s exposed jaw, I released the mana in less than a second. A sincere punch powerful enough to scrap a dump truck slammed into the macho old man’s chin. If our maximum mana capacity was equal, there was no defensive technique he could create in a single second that could block the full power of Beast Regression.
The old man’s head snapped back, and for the first time, I saw his face. It was a pitch-black darkness like chaos itself, and in the center of it, a single eye gleamed with a terrifying light. It was the exact opposite eye from the one I had seen on the goddess Odin.
Kwaaaaaang─!!
And then, the fist carrying the dragon power of the Earth Hero exploded the nightmare’s head into pieces.
After blowing the nightmare’s head clean off, I collapsed on the spot like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Kuh, haaak……”
The reckless mana manipulation seemed to have caused internal injuries. It was mental damage, but thanks to that, even inside a dream my skull felt like it was splitting open. Only after I clearly saw the nightmare old man blur and vanish did I finally relax and lie flat on my back.
“……Fuuuuck. What the hell just happened?”
From start to finish, nothing made any sense. Why did I suddenly have to fight some isekai Gandalf? Why did Odin, borrowing the appearance of Professor Slayer, try to stop me? Everything was a mystery. I had only come here to teach Veronica how to fly through the air so we could head to Romania. How the hell did it end up like this?
Still, the one who stopped me was definitely Odin’s avatar.
Just like how he had appeared in my mother’s form before, this time he had borrowed the form of Professor Slayer. Since there was no other character who could intervene in that situation, that part made sense. But then why the fuck did he set up this entire space and then try to hold me back?
No matter how I thought about it, there were only two possibilities. Either he was trying to stop me from going berserk, or—
“……This space itself wasn’t Odin’s will?”
It could be both. I was used to situations where thinking about them wouldn’t give me any answers, so I stopped there. This fucking isekai world was as unfriendly as ever today.
That was when I noticed something in the sky that hadn’t been there before—a pure white sun. I swallowed hard. It was the accumulated mana of the ancient gods that I often saw in my inner world.
“Goddamn it. It keeps getting bigger every time I see it.”
It had grown a bit larger than when I last dug through Yerna’s memories. As I muttered that and stared at the non-blinding sun, something fell from it.
……An apple?
It was a golden apple.
─Thud!
I caught the apple that was falling as slowly as if it were made of paper. The moment I looked closely at its smooth surface, I felt an instinctive urge to eat it—like grabbing kimchi from a side dish plate at a diner.
─Crunch!
I bit into the apple as if it were the rightful reward of the victor. It looked like it had been sprayed with something that should have killed my appetite, but it was surprisingly delicious. If school cafeteria apples tasted this good, the trash bins would never be filled with them.
─Munch munch.
I lay there like some idle bastard from the Goryeo Dynasty and devoured the apple. The core, all that remained, turned white and then disappeared.
“Fuck. I even caught a god’s avatar and all I get is this?”
It was so delicious I even licked the juice off my fingers, but I still felt a little disappointed.
“……Senior! Senior!”
While I was lying there resting with that lingering sense of dissatisfaction, I heard a voice. A high-pitched, youthful tone. Was that Larilura?
─Thump!
The moment I realized it, the dream landscape collapsed. It felt like waking up after falling off the bed in the middle of a deep sleep.
“Senior! Are you okay?!”
Larilura, who had been shaking my lying body while crying, shouted.
“Ugh……”
With a still half-asleep head, I looked around. My wives had collapsed from mana exhaustion, and Larilura, whose front was soaked with mana potions, had been shaking me awake. It was unfortunate that I felt like absolute shit despite it being just a dream, but it looked like everything was finally over.
I patted the sobbing Larilura on the shoulder to reassure her. Then I said,
<Crunchy ass of the sealed butt.>
“……Huh?”
Larilura blinked at me in confusion. Naturally, I blinked too before muttering again.
[……Mask jogging gourmet society?]
What the hell is this?
The words coming out of my mouth were completely different from what I was trying to say. I had meant to say “What the fuck?” just now. What was going on? Did the translation function get a bug or something?
I covered my mouth and carefully spoke one word at a time.
“I. Hate. The. Communist. Party.”
【Sliding door circumcision tentacles wobbling guten-tak!!】
Larilura, who had been hugging me, finally burst into tears.
“Uwaaaaaang──!! Senior’s broken──!!”
Yep. Looks like it.