An Anomaly
An anomaly.
Ilryun was drawn, inch by inch.
As the overwhelming power of its release tore through the dream, the color drained from Hisa's face.
"No."
Seluan turned his head.
"Hisa."
"No. No. No."
Hisa's voice grew frantic.
She scrambled to her feet atop the puddle.
"That can't go off. If it detonates here, all my butterflies will die."
Ena heard her.
Her gaze slowly turned ice-cold.
"What will?"
Hisa didn't answer.
Instead, she flailed her hands wildly in the air.
The bubbles floating over the black earth rushed frantically toward Ena, and thin cracks began to spiderweb across the crimson sky.
"Wake up."
Hisa said.
For the first time, it didn't sound like a command.
It sounded like a plea.
No, it was closer to the voice of a terrified child begging the monster outside the door to please go away.
"Just wake up. Get out of my dream. We're done here. I won, didn't I? You were trying to die anyway. So just go!"
The white heat radiating from Ena's sword flared slightly.
A portion of the Demon King's army crumbled into ash.
The figures of the Sword Order members wavered like bubbles.
Seluan's faceless surface hardened.
"Hisa. Cut the connection."
"I'm trying!"
Hisa screamed, her face on the verge of tears.
"But it won't cut! The dream is burning from the inside!"
Hisa's shriek shook the entire dreamscape.
"Wake up!"
At that moment, the crimson sky flipped upside down.
The black earth surged like water, and the ranks of the Demon King's army stretched and tore apart.
Roen's face, the voices of the Sword Order, and the red chains of the execution platform were all sucked into the white foam at once.
...Sigh. When will I ever get to actually use the release?
Once again, Ena had failed to use her release.
Ena slowly sat up.
The blanket slid down, and a few strands of silver-white hair clung to her cheek.
She hadn't fully shaken off the terror of the dream yet.
A faint tremor lingered in her fingertips, and the sensation of the blade against Roen's throat, along with the voice offering her own death as a bargain, still echoed in her ears.
But her eyes were already steadying.
Yet, the world would not let Ena sleep any longer.
Just then, a voice came from outside the door.
"Commander-in-Chief."
It was Roen.
Ena turned her head.
The Roen from her dream overlapped with reality.
Bloody lips.
A blade pressed against his throat.
A shattered expression.
The adjutant ordered to remember without his ledger.
And now, the real Roen standing outside the door.
Ena exhaled very slowly.
"Enter."
Creeeeak...
The door opened.
He was already awake.
There was no daze of someone trapped in a dream, nor the confusion of someone who had just woken up.
Only a faint shadow of fatigue lay beneath his eyes, and his grip on the edge of his ledger was tight.
Ena asked in a low voice.
"How did you..."
Roen was silent for a moment.
Then, he answered calmly.
"Even in dreams, there are things that cannot be."
Ena's eyes stilled.
Roen did not lower his head.
He looked straight at Ena.
"Because I know my place."
His words were strangely dry.
It was neither a grand declaration of loyalty nor a touching vow; he was as calm as someone reporting the morning temperature.
Ena stared at Roen for a long moment.
Then, she spoke in a low murmur.
"The current situation."
"Most have fallen asleep," Roen replied instantly.
"The Sword Order Headquarters is mostly asleep as well. The only confirmed conscious individuals are you, myself, a few guards on duty, and a handful of members who were training."
"Are they all sharing the same dream?"
"No."
Roen's eyes darkened slightly.
"They vary. Some are laughing, some are crying. Some are apologizing, and others are calling out the names of the deceased."
Ena lowered her gaze.
Roen calmly added:
"The demons did not cast a single, uniform dream."
Ena strapped Ilryun to her waist.
The black scabbard hummed softly.
"Gather only those who are awake."
Roen's pen was already in motion.
"Your orders?"
Ena walked toward the door.
Outside lay the sleeping Sword Order Headquarters.
In the corridors, members would be trapped in their dreams; in the training grounds, swordsmen who could not wake would lie fallen; and beyond, the entire continent—the city, the Holy Church, the Royal Family, the Magic Tower, and the front lines—would be bound by their respective illusions.
Scritch.
"Only those who are awake shall follow."
The door opened.
The cold air of the corridor rushed into the room.
Ena inhaled the chill.
The scent of blood from her dream seemed to linger, but she was standing in reality now.
And in reality, there was work to be done.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Footsteps echoed down the corridors of the Sword Order Headquarters.
It was not a single set.
It was a crisp, rapid rhythm created by Ena's footsteps, Roen's, and those of the few conscious Sword Order members running behind them in the same direction.
Under normal circumstances, such footsteps would not belong in the headquarters at dawn.
Dawn at the Sword Order Headquarters was usually cold and dry.
A time when the night watch exchanged shifts, early scribes opened the archives, and a few fanatics heading to the training grounds massaged their stiff fingers while grabbing wooden swords.
Normally, these quiet sounds would be scattered throughout the building.
The low murmur of human presence.
The distant creak of opening and closing doors.
Someone stifling a yawn to fight off sleep.
The slow, awakening breath of the organization.
But now, there were no such sounds.
There was breath, yes.
There were people, too.
The Sword Order Headquarters was not empty.
In fact, there were far too many people in the corridors, on the stairs, and before the doors.
Guards slumped against the walls.
Members collapsed at the foot of the staircases.
A scribe asleep on his knees, clutching his ledger to his chest.
A low-ranking swordsman with his eyes closed, his hand still frozen on a doorknob.
A recruit, perhaps on his way to the training grounds, head bowed over a wooden sword propped against the floor.
They were all alive.
They were breathing.
Cold sweat dripped, fingertips trembled, and lips twitched minutely as if calling out to someone in their dreams.
Yet, none of them made the sounds of the living awake.
Some were smiling.
Some were weeping.
Some muttered the same words over and over.
"Wait..."
"I'm coming..."
"I'm sorry..."
"Don't die..."
These faint voices slipped from the lips of the sleepers, but they could not fill the corridors.
Instead, they only deepened the silence of the headquarters.
A silence where people were present, yet felt entirely absent.
A silence where they were alive, yet seemed to have been dragged away to some distant place.
Ena ran right through the heart of that silence.
Her silver-white hair, with no time to be tied back, streamed over her shoulders.
The black-sheathed Ilryun swayed gently at her hip, and the hem of her Eastern-style robe billowed behind her like the wings of a black bird.
Traces of her sudden awakening still lingered.
A few strands of hair clung to her cheek, and the cold sensation of sweat remained on the back of her neck.
A faint tremor, like a lingering thread of the dream, remained in her fingertips.
But her gaze was already that of a warrior on the battlefield.
Cold and sharp.
The terror of trying to save the Sword Order at the cost of her own life in the dream.
The sickening sensation of the moment Hisa had panicked and forced her awake.
The image of the blade pressed against Roen's throat—all of it was locked deep inside her expressionless face.
As she ran, Ena scanned both sides of the corridor.
The faces of the sleeping members.
Their damp foreheads.
Their trembling hands.
Their motionless swords.
She saw everything, yet she did not stop.
Stopping to wake them one by one now would be too late.
Hisa's dream burrowed into each person differently.
It swelled the vulnerabilities deep within them like bubbles, binding them beneath their eyelids.
Forcing them awake could tear their minds apart.
The task now was not to shake each sleeper, but to sever the roots holding them captive.
And so, Ena ran.
Roen kept pace half a step behind her.
He did not let go of his ledger even as he ran.
Supporting the board with one hand, he scribbled down necessary details with the other, his eyes swiftly scanning the state of the fallen members on either side.
His breathing was slightly rapid but perfectly controlled.
His voice was the same.
"Cover your necks and wrists," Roen said in a low voice.
"Skin contact is the trigger. Touching armor or weapons does not activate it immediately. Prioritize protecting the eyes, lips, nape of the neck, and any open wounds."
The members following behind moved instantly.
Their numbers were few.
Too few to represent the grand name of the Sword Order, and absurdly few to claim they were going to wake a continent.
Yet, every single one of them was awake.
One who had slashed a bubble butterfly drifting through a gap in the window during watch.
Another who had instinctively twisted away just before a bubble touched the nape of his neck during dawn practice.
One who had batted away a transparent wing about to land on the back of his hand with his scabbard.
And one who, the moment he felt himself being dragged into the dream, had shallowly cut his own arm to anchor his mind with pain.
One still bled from his arm, another bore a raw red mark from biting his lip too hard, and others' eyes wavered whenever they passed their sleeping comrades.
Even so, their feet did not falter.
They were the Sword Order.
Even in fear, they maintained formation.
Even when shaken, they obeyed orders.
Even if their comrades lay fallen, if the path to salvation was set, they marched forward.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Rounding the end of the corridor, they entered the wide cloister leading to the training grounds.
This place, too, was asleep.
Ena swept past them.
Roen's Ten Thousand Black Iron Seas rose quietly from beneath the floor.
The black molten iron formed an incredibly thin barrier around the faces of the sleeping members, repelling any stray droplets or bubble remnants that might touch their skin.
One member began to slow down upon seeing a sleeping recruit.
Without looking back, Ena spoke.
"Do not stop."
The member grit his teeth.
"Yes, Commander."
Roen added:
"Rescue is safer after the nexus is severed. Shaking them now could damage their minds from within the dream."
His words were cold.
But it was a necessary coldness.
In war, saving people does not end with grabbing their hands and shaking them.
Sometimes, you must pass by the person right in front of you to save many more.
The people of the Sword Order understood this truth.
Ena passed through the cloister and threw open the door leading outside.
The cold dawn air rushed in.
The city, too, was asleep.
The road outside the Sword Order Headquarters was wide.
Normally, early carts would rumble by, smoke would rise from bakery chimneys, and outer patrol guards would walk slowly with their spears held high.
Today, there was absolute silence.
No sound of wheels.
No sound of hooves.
No distant tolling of bells, nor the bustling chatter of people starting their day in the market.
A single cart stood frozen in the middle of the street.
The horse stood sleeping with its head bowed, and the merchant had his eyes closed, his hands still gripping the handles.
Several sacks on the cart tilted precariously, on the verge of spilling over, yet remained perfectly still.
A bakery door was left half-open.
Inside, an old man lay slumped over, asleep with his hands resting on the dough.
The hearth burned weakly, but no one tended to the flames.
At a street corner, two patrolmen leaned against the wall, asleep with their spears propped against the ground.
One was smiling.
The other was weeping.
Though caught in the same spell, they did not share the same dream.
One was seeing what they longed for; the other was facing what they desperately wished to flee.
Ena narrowed her eyes at the sight.
Hisa had not cast a single nightmare over the continent.
She had targeted the weakest point within each individual.
That made it all the more repulsive.
"Roen."
"Yes. The nexus is located in the West Wastewater Area," Roen replied without a single break in his stride.
"Approximately three ri in a straight line from the West Gate of the headquarters. Considering the road conditions and the positions of sleeping civilians, a detour would normally be advised, but taking the shortest path is currently optimal."
"We do not detour."
"Understood."
Roen's hand moved.
"All units, tighten formation. Bubble remnants may drift in from side windows and alleys. The Commander-in-Chief leads. Rearguard, monitor for remnants. Avoid contact with civilians; if you must move past them, touch only their armor or clothing."
The orders spread.
The members gave brief acknowledgments.
Their voices were hushed.
Perhaps because the entire city was asleep, no one spoke aloud.
It felt as though a loud noise would shatter this frozen dawn.
But something was wrong.
As they ran, Ena quickly realized it.
It was too quiet.
Until moments ago, inside the headquarters and at the entrance of the city, there had at least been the murmurs of the sleeping.
Faint voices leaking from dreams.
Words calling out to someone.
Weeping.
Laughter.
But as they headed west, even those sounds faded.
At first, she thought it was because they were reaching the outskirts where fewer people lived.
Then, she assumed it was because no one inhabited the areas near the wastewater zone.
But that wasn't it.
There were no bubbles.
There were no butterflies.
No transparent wings crawling out of window gaps, no tiny droplets rising from the sewers, no dream remnants swelling like round eyes beneath the eaves.
It was too clean.
That was precisely what made it ominous.
If Hisa's spell had swept through here, there should have been traces.
If they were heading toward the nexus where the bubbles that put the entire continent to sleep gathered, the remnants should have grown denser.
There should have been voices catching people's dreams, unbroken butterflies, and the scent of scattered water.
Yet, there was nothing.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Only their footsteps resounded.
The breathing of the Sword Order.
The rattling of scabbards at their waists.
The faint sound of Roen's fingers brushing the edge of his ledger.
Other than that, there was nothing.
It was not the silence of a sleeping city, but the silence left behind after someone had already swept away every threat in the vicinity.
Ena read the silence.
Roen read it too.
His pen stopped over his ledger.
"This is strange," Roen said in a low voice.
"Speak."
"As we approach the nexus, the dream remnants should increase."
"Indeed."
"Yet, there are none."
Ena looked ahead.
The road leading to the western outskirts sloped downward.
As they neared the wastewater zone, the cobblestones became older and damper, moss clung to the building walls, and the faint stench of stagnant black water drifted up.
Even so, not a single bubble was in sight.
"Someone must have cleared them," Ena said.
Roen fell silent for a brief moment.
And reached the same conclusion.
Someone was ahead of them.
That fact brought a strangely heavy sense of relief amidst the anxiety.
But Ena did not lean on that relief for long.
"Maintain speed."
"Do not lower your guard until we confirm what lies ahead."
"Understood."
They kept running.
The scenery along the road grew increasingly bizarre.
There were sleeping citizens.
But there were no bubbles around them.
And over all these traces lay a consistent pattern.
Crushed marks.
Scrape marks where a massive shield had plowed through the ground.
In some places, the stone floor was gouged out; in others, broad impact craters scarred the walls.
A weathered stone statue at an alley entrance was snapped at the waist, tilting toward the canal.
Roen recorded them as he observed.
Approach route to the nexus.
Traces of numerous dream remnants removed.
Shield impact marks confirmed.
Ena heard the sound of his pen.
At those words, one of the members behind them caught their breath.
The smell of water.
The smell of rusted iron.
The smell of stale moss.
And.
The smell of blood.
It was faint at first.
But after a few more steps, it became unmistakable.
It was the blood of demons.
Different from human blood.
Thicker, darker, a stench of metal mixed with rotting earth.
The expressions of the conscious members hardened.
Someone adjusted their grip on their sword hilt.
Ena did not slow her pace.
Roen said quietly:
"Traces of combat."
"Yet, I hear no sound."
"Indeed."
Roen's voice dropped a fraction lower.
"If a battle were ongoing, there should be noise."
After he spoke, the reality pressed down on them even more clearly.
There was no sound.
Not even the clash of sword against shield.
Were they too late?
Or too early?
Ena did not ask.
She was one who judged by what she saw.
"We press on."
"Yes, Commander."
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Their footsteps quickened.
An old stone bridge came into view.
The ancient path leading into the West Wastewater Area.
Below the bridge, black water flowed sluggishly, completely devoid of the bubbles that should have drifted on its surface.
Instead, something else floated on the dark water.
Shards.
Carapaces.
Severed wings.
Broken bones.
Roen's eyes narrowed.
"Remnants of the Demon King's elite confirmed."
"How many?"
"At least ten visible."
"Any signs of life?"
"No movement."
They crossed the stone bridge.
Traces remained on the bridge as well.
Deeply gouged footprints.
They were not the footprints of an ordinary human.
The heavy, deliberate strides of a massive figure clad in full armor.
The stone around the prints was spiderwebbed with fine cracks.
And those footprints led straight forward.
There was no sign of hesitation.
No sign of retreat.
No swaying to the left, no pushing back.
Only forward.
Ever forward.
Ena's eyes darkened slightly.
He did not stop when met with enemies; he marched directly toward them.
He did not detour around danger; he raised his shield and plowed straight through its heart.
Carving out a path.
A fragment of a white mask was embedded in the railing.
It must have been one of Seluan's faces.
The face of a blind woman.
The half-shattered mask, wedged into the stone railing, still had its mouth open, yet it could utter no sound.
Over it lay a crushing indentation, like the grip of a giant hand.
Seized.
And.
Crushed.
Roen recorded:
Fragment of the White-Faced Duke, Seluan's face.
Destruction confirmed.
Crushed by external force.
The members said nothing.
Shattered.
That was all.
They crossed the bridge.
The entrance to the wastewater zone was obscured by collapsed walls and low-lying mist.
But the mist was strange too.
If it were the dream-mist flowing from Hisa's bubbles, blue or silver light should have shimmered within it.
It should have been laced with human voices or fragments of memory.
The current mist had none of that.
It was merely a cold vapor of water, blood, and dust.
A mere residue that had already lost its dreamlike properties.
Ena stepped into it.
The members followed.
One step.
Two steps.
And then, the wastewater area opened up before them.
At that moment, no one could find their voice.
A massive battle had taken place here, and it was already over.
The black canal was overturned in places.
The ancient stone walls were cracked as if they had exploded from the inside out, and a small bridge spanning the canal was snapped in half, its center plunged into the black water.
Every wall bore the deep gouges of a massive shield slamming into it.
The Demon King's elite lay dead.
A blade-winged demon was pinned to a stone pillar, its wings torn out by the roots.
Those wings, meant to slice through the sky, now hung limp like tattered black rags impaled on the wall.
The wolf-like stalkers, woven of bone and iron, had their bodies flattened, half-submerged in the dark water.
Their jaws were agape but silent, stone dust and black blood clotted between their fangs.
A four-armed beast was smashed so hard into a wall it seemed fused with the stone.
Its four arms were bent in impossible directions, and a wide crater indented the center of its chest, as if the edge of a shield had driven deep into it.
An armored ogre-type demon lay beneath the collapsed stone bridge, split from head to chest by a greatsword.
Its colossal corpse still steamed, retaining the heat of battle, but it did not stir.
These were monsters that ordinary soldiers would have to face in entire regiments.
Monsters that individual Sword Order members would have to risk their lives to fight.
Yet now, they were scattered like mere debris in the canal.
Someone inhaled sharply in a low gasp.
"What in the..."
The sentence was left unfinished.
It couldn't be finished.
There was no answer to complete it.
No, the answer was already right before their eyes.
At the center of the canal.
At the heart of all this death.
A single, massive suit of armor stood.
The Captain of the 3rd Squad, Edenkart.
He stood alone.
His greatsword was lowered toward the ground.
Black blood dripped from the tip of the blade.
Drip.
Blood dripped onto the black canal.
That tiny sound echoed with striking clarity in the silence of the wastewater area.
Edenkart did not look back.
Even though Ena and her party had arrived, he did not react first.
He simply stared straight ahead.
Before him was a massive bubble.
The nexus connected to the dreams of the entire continent.
Hisa's spell, not yet fully dissolved.
And around it lay the remnants of the two executives.
Hisa had practically burst.
A clump of wet, gray hair floated on the black water, and a single transparent eye was trapped inside an unburst droplet.
The droplet trembled ever so faintly.
This was her end.
A single tiny droplet.
A clouded eyeball.
A clump of hair floating on the water.
Before Ena could even draw near, that final droplet swelled, then quietly popped.
Pop.
With that sound, Hisa vanished completely.
Seluan's remains were scattered even wider.
A hundred faces lay shattered.
Shards of white masks littered the canal floor, the collapsed walls, and the black water.
Some were split by the greatsword, some were flattened beneath shield marks, and others were caved in at the center as if crushed by a bare hand.
A mask fragment bearing Ena's own face drifted to her feet on the dark ripples.
The mask seemed to look up at Ena with its half-broken eye.
Ena stared down at it for a moment.
And stepped on it.
Crunch.
The mask shattered easily.
At that sound, Roen's pen moved.
His gaze swept over the entire battlefield.
◈ Elite Demon Unit:Wiped Out
◈ Hisa:Deceased
◈ Seluan:Deceased
◈ Combatant: Edenkart (Solo)
Roen paused in brief silence before writing down the result.
"Edenkart."
Only then did the darkness within the helmet turn slightly toward her.
Ena looked at him.
"Well done."
There was no reply.
He did not bow his head.
He did not ask for gratitude.
Edenkart simply raised his shield once more.
The cracked shield rose slowly.
Seeing this, the members realized belatedly.
This battlefield was not yet cleared.
Even after slaying Hisa, Seluan, and the elite demons, Edenkart still intended to stand at the vanguard.
Roen said quietly:
"The nexus remains active."
Ena looked at the massive bubble ahead.
Hisa was dead.
Seluan was dead too.
But the dreams they had cast still lingered beneath the eyelids of the continent.
A spell already dispersed does not vanish instantly just because its master has died.
The residual structure remains, the threads hooked into people's dreams persist, and through those threads, the continent would gradually sink into an even deeper slumber.
"Even with the executives dead..." Ena murmured.
"The spell has already been dispersed," Roen replied.
"We must sever the nexus precisely. Burning it away roughly could shock the minds of those bound to the dream."
"I know."
Ena placed her hand on the hilt of Ilryun.
"Not burning it."
Her eyes darkened.
"I must cut it."
At that moment.
Clap.
In the silence of the post-battle wastewater area, the sound was bizarrely distinct.
Clap.
Once more.
Between Hisa's remains and Seluan's shattered masks, from behind the piled corpses of the elite demons, a dark shadow slowly rose.
"My, my. I'm impressed. Humans are surprisingly strong, aren't they?"
No.
They thought a shadow was rising, but everyone soon realized.
It was no shadow.
"But you know, I think you've got the wrong idea."
It was an excessively massive physique.
"Do you really think we'd be foolish enough to send only two mind-manipulators to the battlefield..."
The voice was deep.
The entire black canal seemed to vibrate in resonance with it.
"...and be that simple-minded?"
One of the twelve demons who received a constellation.
"The nightmare is only beginning."
Leo.
Tarkan.