Chapter 124: Nightmare (10)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 124: Nightmare (10)
The Succubus Queen took stock of the remaining Authority she could still wield.
…It wasn’t much.
Because her own power was insufficient, she had ended up pouring everything—save for the bare minimum required to maintain the Dream World—into binding a single boy.
Even so, she had believed it would be enough.
She had assumed no one else would come to interfere.
“It looks like this is the end of the line.”
However, in the brief moment she had spent fighting the boy, others had managed to slip through the cracks of her weakened Authority and awaken from the nightmare.
A beauty with long blonde hair and deep lime-green eyes stood before her.
After instantly reverse-summoning the lower succubi, the woman cautiously scanned her surroundings. Her expression twisted into a grimace the moment she spotted the black sphere floating in the air.
…Since the Queen had sent her other subordinates to manage the dreams, she would have to handle this intruder herself.
“…Did you do that to him?”
“I don’t see why I have to answer that.”
“Thanks for the answer. That’s enough for me. If it wasn’t you, you would’ve denied it immediately, wouldn’t you?”
The opponent lightly shifted her weight, finding her rhythm.
“I’ll give you a warning first. If you don’t want to get hurt, release that and surrender.”
Thanks to her observations through the dreams, the Queen knew who this woman was.
Cathy. A woman who had been born with a low-rank Talent but had honed it through sheer grit to claim a spot as an A-rank Hero.
She was one of the individuals the Queen had been wary of when creating this world due to her formidable mental strength. Having already overcome her past traumas, there were few ways to manipulate her, so the Queen had been forced to suppress her using raw Authority.
However, the Queen had only been wary of her mental fortitude. Against a combat-oriented hero, the Succubus Queen didn’t suffer from a significant disadvantage in terms of compatibility.
“I don’t think so.”
The moment the refusal left the Queen’s lips, Cathy, who had been stepping lightly, sprang into the air and unleashed a kick.
With a thunderous boom, the Queen’s head was sent flying. However, the shattered head soon dissolved into a pink mist and regenerated.
“…Ah, right. This is a dream. You’re the type that’s a bad match for me.”
A dream? A bad match? You just kicked me with the full intent to kill. Are you trying to brush that off?
Come to think of it, even within the dream just before she woke up, this woman had completely transformed the moment that boy appeared.
Perhaps a bit of provocation was in order.
“Is that so? Right now, that boy is busy having a wonderful dream. Do you really think he’d even want to wake up?”
“…What is that supposed to mean?”
There was a reaction.
It was difficult to break someone with strong mental fortitude within a dream. Since she could no longer use her Authority, the Queen decided it would be best to crush her spirit and corner her mentally first.
“What do you think it means? When boys that age are trapped in a dream, there’s only one thing they’d be doing. He’s already having a very… intimate time with me in there—”
Pang!
Huh? What was that sound?
Her head was blown away again.
Her body was cleaved in two by a palm strike, and the moment she regenerated, her throat was seized.
“I… really don’t like liars.”
The look in Cathy’s eyes was unsettling. The Queen felt the grip on her neck tighten with terrifying strength.
“Why would you think… I’m lying…”
With a sickening crunch, Cathy’s fingers dug into her throat.
“No matter how much of a dream this is, there’s no way our So-hyun would do something like that with a woman like you. Don’t lie to me.”
…It felt a bit excessive, but the Queen figured she had succeeded in her goal of making the woman lose her cool.
* * *
Looking back at my life before middle school, it really was something.
Reviewing it like this, I realize I lived a life that belonged in a TV drama.
Abandoned by my family, and then the mentor who gave me hope for life was caught up in a crime and taken away in what was labeled an ‘accident.’
Even so, I don’t remember ever really thinking about suicide or just throwing my life away.
“Get a grip. The living have to keep living, don’t they?”
Half of it was because choosing death now felt like a waste, and the other half was thanks to the fact that she was always by my side.
“Don’t act tough. It’s obvious you were just bawling your eyes out, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t cry as much as you. You liked Cathy-sensei.”
The others cried too, not just us.
The younger kids, especially, cried until their throats were raw and they couldn’t speak the next day.
Even that pathetic Director seemed to have some sort of epiphany; from that day on, he stopped drinking the alcohol he used to buy by embezzling our support funds.
“Ha-neul hyung. Where did Cathy-sensei go?”
When one of the younger kids, who didn’t yet understand death, asked that question…
I remember answering while instinctively trying to imitate Cathy-sensei.
“Who knows? If our Min-seo is a good girl and behaves, she might be back soon!”
It didn’t suit me. It really, really didn’t suit me.
Perhaps because I had spent every day scowling, my muscles only twitched when I tried to smile; I couldn’t do it easily. And because I had spent so much time speaking as harshly as possible, it was difficult to produce a gentle voice.
It was no wonder Min-seo burst into tears, saying my face was scary.
Still, I didn’t feel like giving up.
So I kept smiling.
Until I could manage a smile that resembled hers. So that even if we forgot her face and her voice, we wouldn’t forget her smiling face.
I smiled with a face that looked as much like hers as possible.
Ironically, life at the orphanage didn’t change much even after she was gone.
The Director didn’t do much of anything, but he didn’t cause trouble like before either.
The new teacher wasn’t as passionate as Cathy-sensei, but they weren’t particularly violent either.
As the older kids graduated high school and left the facility, we became middle schoolers.
“…I want to become an adult quickly. I want to get out of this crappy orphanage.”
“And what are you going to do for a living once you’re out?”
“Be a writer. They say being a children’s book author is crazy these days. I’m going to write web novels.”
“…You think people would actually pay money to read your boring-ass stories?”
“You’re crossing the line. You want to get beat up by your Noona?”
“Who’s a Noona, you brat? You and I are the same age.”
“Oh, really? Weren’t you the baby sobbing in the corner of the orphanage? Didn’t I totally wreck you?”
“Is relying on violence something to be proud of? If you were actually a guy, you’d be dead by my hand.”
“Hey, you’re so nice to the other kids lately. Why are you still such a jerk to me?”
“…Put your hand on your heart and think about it. Why do you think I’m only like this to you?”
Well, we were quite close.
Part of it was because we had known each other since we were little, and part of it was because the way society looked at orphans wasn’t great, so we didn’t fit in well with other kids.
To be honest, the blatant disregard was fine, but the gazes of hypocrites who treated us like pitiable objects made us feel even more wretched.
Ah, let me be clear: there were people who truly helped us with warm hearts.
When I say hypocrites, I mean the ones who were exactly that.
The school teachers would always say they were on our side, but whenever something went missing, they’d immediately suspect us. And even when the item was eventually found, they never bothered to apologize.
‘Adults act as if apologizing is something to be ashamed of.’
When an older boy who had graduated from the orphanage came back to visit and muttered that, we burst out laughing.
And every time that happened, we would mutter like a habit.
That we wanted to become adults quickly, just like him.
At least back then, I remember thinking that everything would change once we became adults.
The older boy told us then: becoming an adult doesn’t change anything dramatically.
He said the only thing that changes isn’t you, but the way people around you look at you.
* * *
“…Hey, why don’t you just give up already?”
“Give up?”
Cathy, whose shoulder had been pierced by a spike that had lunged out of nowhere, stared at her shoulder for a moment before violently ripping the spike out.
Blood splattered, but her expression didn’t even flicker as she glared at the enemy before her.
The Succubus Queen shook her head at the resentment-filled gaze directed at her.
“…Listen, just because this is a dream doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”
“I know. But I don’t have to worry about bones being displaced or muscles being torn. I can still endure this, so don’t worry about me.”
She’s insane.
This woman was definitely out of her mind.
What kind of person decides that because their bones and organs aren’t actually damaged, it’s fine to endure the pain of them being crushed and keep attacking?
It wasn’t just once or twice; the Queen had already dealt what should have been fatal blows more than ten times. But once Cathy realized she wouldn’t die even if she was struck down by the first blow, she focused entirely on charging in to crush the Queen’s head, regardless of the wounds she took.
The Queen had truly picked a fight with the wrong person.
“I’ll say it again. Wake So-hyun up.”
And to think the reason wasn’t even a sense of justice or duty, but simply to wake that boy up.
“I don’t know. He seems to be having such a good dream that he doesn’t want to wake up. Ah, is the reason he likes breasts so much because of you? They certainly are large.”
The Queen had no idea if he liked breasts or not.
It was a bluff, of course, but how many men were there who actually hated them?
Her guess hit the mark, and Cathy, seemingly finding the Queen’s words more credible, attacked even more fiercely.
If the war of attrition continued in the Dream World, the winner would ultimately be the Succubus Queen.
And yet.
“Shut up.”
That was one thing, but the look in this woman’s eyes as she charged was terrifying.
It wasn’t like these hits actually hurt—the Queen had blocked her own pain receptors—but the gaze was so savage it made her flinch right before the impact.
After digging through Cathy’s nightmares for a moment, the Queen found a memory she would hate even more.
“I suppose it makes sense. You must have liked him quite a bit to turn him into a donut.”
“…What?”
“How passionate. It’s not even a case of ‘if I can’t have him, I’ll destroy him.’ Does it really make sense to love someone whose stomach you put a hole through?”
The Queen had used polite speech to poke at her sore spot, hoping to make her lose her temper. She expected her to become even more agitated.
“Whew.”
However, contrary to her expectations, Cathy took a deep breath and steadied her posture, appearing to calm down instead.
“Right. I shouldn’t get worked up. I can’t let myself be played by nonsense.”
She was calming down at the very moment she should have been exploding. It seemed there was something even more powerful than her trauma following that memory.
As the Queen delved further into the dream’s memories, she finally understood the full story of the incident.
…Oh my, how romantic. Goodness, how could he say something like that so boldly? Is it because he’s still young?
No, that’s not what’s important right now.
“So? It’s a shame you’ve calmed down, but what does that change?”
The situation remained the same. Cathy still had no way to inflict real damage on her, while the Queen could continue to chip away at her.
There was no need to get worked up.
“Hm?”
But not long after that thought crossed her mind, she felt a presence approaching.
Something just as dangerous as this woman was drawing near.
The entrance opened once more, and two people walked in through different doors.
One was a boy holding a golden spear.
Fiddling with his spear with a confident expression, he grimaced for a moment upon seeing the black sphere, but soon regained his composure and leveled his spear at the Queen.
“…A nightmare. This place must be poison for that guy.”
The other was a girl dressed like a boy.
“…Is that So-hyun? He’s always getting caught like a princess.”
She flicked her pure-white blade, not even sparing the Queen a glance as she stared at the black sphere.
“A princess? He’d have a fit if he heard that. Thanks. I’ll be sure to tease him later by telling him you’re the one who said it.”
“Ah, you jerk. That’s playing dirty. You’re really going to hold a grudge over a little teasing?”
Their attitude was almost playful, but the battle spirit they radiated grew increasingly intense.
“Since the Professor couldn’t handle this, it must be a fairly troublesome enemy.”
“Well, it seems that way. But what does that matter?”
“…I suppose you’re right.”
Then, the two figures vanished.
A thrust of golden lightning and a chillingly cold slash brought the Queen to the brink of death once more.
She hurried to reconstruct her body, but this time, as if she had predicted the location, Cathy—who had already raised her leg—brought it down, crushing the Queen’s head.
“…Everyone, be careful. Physical attacks have little meaning against her in this space.”
She couldn’t hold out any longer in a normal fight.
Even if she wanted to use illusions, most of her Mana, like her Authority, was being used to keep the boy bound in the nightmare.
This was dangerous.
In the first place, it was nonsensical that she, a Queen-rank, was being pushed back on her own turf, the Dream World, even if she couldn’t fully utilize her Mana.
She couldn’t even pull back her Authority until she could control him.
…It couldn’t be helped.
She had to settle this quickly.
If she couldn’t use her Authority or Mana, she had to draw power from elsewhere.
She had tried her best not to use it, but if she dragged this out any longer, the world itself might collapse.
With that thought, the Queen began to drain power from the people’s nightmares.
Of course, the more she used the power of nightmares and their Life Essence, the weaker the connection to the dream would become, but it was better than the world collapsing entirely.
The intruders retreated at the sudden surge of energy, but this blow would not be easy to block.
That is, if a brilliant light hadn’t suddenly burst from beyond the passage.
A holy aura approached, purifying the Mana and Demonic Energy forged from nightmares.
What was this now?
“I’m not too late, am I?”
The aura of a Holy Sword surged from a blade engraved with a beautiful rose.
The Queen fired her Mana, unable to delay any longer, but it was ruthlessly cleaved in two. From beyond the exploding Mana, a kind-looking boy walked out.
“No, you’re late. Though it wouldn’t have changed anything even if you weren’t here.”
“…Is that So-hyun?”
“Everyone else has already asked that once.”
“Ah, I see. Well, I know what I need to do now.”
“…Isn’t it a bit cowardly for the four of you to gang up on me?”
“In the Leilan Academy Trash Talk class, there’s a saying: ‘It’s okay to jump a villain.’ Don’t you all think that’s a great sentiment?”
The moment Cathy finished speaking, four pairs of eyes pierced through the Succubus Queen.