Chapter 299
Chapter 299
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 299
Chapter Title: Ruler of Consciousness (3)
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“Do not threaten our peace!”
The massive axe descending toward her head moved too fast to follow with the naked eye.
In that fleeting moment, Amy realized this was her end.
‘Goodbye, Shirone…’
It was a bad ending.
But in a way, she thought it might be a fitting conclusion. This was Shirone's mind, after all. She would be falling into an eternal sleep in his embrace.
“Kuaaaaaaah!”
A ferocious roar, sharp enough to jolt her back to her senses, echoed in Amy's ears. At the same time, something dark flashed before her eyes.
When she came to, Ignite had been sent flying ten meters away.
Amy sensed a presence behind her and turned around.
But to get a proper look, she had to crane her neck all the way back.
It was an Egoist, its entire body covered in thorn-like protrusions. It stood over six meters tall, glaring forward in an awkward posture, somewhere between quadrupedal and bipedal.
The Egoist manifests in a specific form by borrowing the desires of its avatar. The process wasn't finished yet; all the Egoists in the square dissolved into black smoke and were drawn into it. It didn't grow any taller, but the thorns on its torso grew abnormally long.
“Kuaaaaaang!”
Egoist—Incarnation of Rage.
The giant shadow monster shrieked and leaped over Amy.
As the object blocking her view vanished, she saw Shirone, his face contorted into a terrifying scowl.
‘Shirone…?’
Shirone was the type whose reason was stronger than his desires. But this Egoist was exuding a strength on a completely different level from anything she had experienced before.
‘Could it be… to save me?’
Knowing the hostility Shirone's avatar held, Amy avoided jumping to conclusions.
But she couldn't help the heart-swelling anticipation. It had always been this way. Whenever danger struck, Shirone had always protected her.
The Egoist (Incarnation of Rage) tore through hundreds of Antitheses and still overflowed with power. Even Ignite's armed subordinates were sent flying with a single kick.
“Shirone! Do you dream of such a pathetic life to the very end!”
Coughing up blood, Ignite stood, grabbed his massive axe, and charged at the monster. He leaped high into the air, swinging the axe back.
Arching his back like a bow, he sprang forward and brought the axe down. The Egoist's head was split in two.
A smile touched Ignite's lips, but the scream he expected never came. The state of the Egoist, transmitted through the axe handle, was still enraged, seething, and on the verge of exploding.
The moment Ignite's expression hardened, the Incarnation of Rage's claws raked across his face.
Half his face gone, he crashed to the ground, only for a leg thicker than a pillar to stomp on him.
Kwoooong!
The ground trembled, and the battle ended.
“Aaargh! R-Run!”
The Antitheses scattered in all directions, aghast. The Egoist shrieked, chasing them down to annihilate every last one.
The square, now occupied only by Shirone's group, was clean, without a single corpse.
Amy, who had been on the verge of death, collapsed to the ground. Shirone approached her.
Turning her head, Amy's heart pounded as she realized Shirone was there. Had his anger subsided? Had he returned to the kind Shirone of old?
“Shirone, thank you. If it weren't for you…”
“You… piss me off.”
Shirone spoke while staring at the ground, not even meeting her eyes.
“You really piss me off.”
Then he turned coldly and walked away.
Even now, he couldn't understand why he had saved Amy.
Just before the massive axe split her head, he had been seized by an intense impulse. From the next moment on, his indignation had exploded, and he couldn't recall a thing.
Amy lowered her head, crestfallen.
Reina, who had secretly been hoping for their reconciliation, patted her on the shoulder.
“Don't be too disappointed. Once we save Shirone, all the misunderstandings will…”
Before Reina could finish, Amy jerked her head up.
Contrary to expectations, her face was bright. She even looked somewhat relieved.
“It's okay. He saved me, after all. I guess that means he doesn't hate me to the bone. So that's good enough. Haha!”
Despite her words, Reina could guess how deep Amy's sense of loss was.
She was desperately holding on, solely for the sake of saving Shirone.
“Right. Let's hang in there a little longer.”
Reina looked back at Armin. His clothes were soaked with sweat, as he had been disrupting the enemy deep within the Antithesis ranks.
“Are the Antitheses gone now?”
“They haven't disappeared. But there won't be any more manipulated ones. Still, we can't let our guard down. They are fundamentally mental constructs that criticize Shirone.”
After a short rest in the square, they followed Shirone's lead into the castle. Ignite had been there just a moment ago, but no more projections were in sight.
Shirone descended into the basement. He walked through the maze-like, winding paths without a single hesitation.
He opened a storage room door, revealing another staircase leading down.
On the first basement level, Armin took a torch and descended alongside Shirone. He stopped the group in front of an old wooden door and turned around.
“Through this door lies the world of dreams, the REM Zone. Before we enter, there are a few things I need to tell you. Everyone has had dreams, but in here, the laws of physics are different from reality. To put it simply, it's all about focus.”
“Like concentration?”
“Similar. Reality is a series of concentration and relaxation. In a normal life, the periods of relaxation are overwhelmingly longer. But dreams are only about concentration. It's like following the dramatic structure of a play. You only see what you want to see, and other circumstances don't exist. Therefore, if you lose focus, you lose yourself. This is called ‘Lilphin’.”
Armin held up five fingers.
“There are five main types of Lilphin. First, a sense of floating. Second, meaningless muttering. Third, repeating the same section. Fourth, viewpoint detachment. Fifth, the materialization of anxiety.”
Amy felt like she knew what he meant. These were things she had often experienced while dreaming.
“Dreams only imitate gravity; there is no actual gravity. Keep confirming the feeling of your feet on the ground. The moment you feel yourself floating, you'll rise endlessly. Also, don't say anything you're not sure of.”
“So our conversations need focus too. Like lines in a play.”
“Exactly. No habitual slang, either. If you lose linguistic focus, you'll just repeat meaningless words.”
“Then is repeating the same section a matter of spatial focus?”
“Yes. You can't turn back or run away without thinking. Your focus will disappear, and you'll repeat the same section. Fourth, if you focus too much on your surroundings, you'll lose yourself and fall into the role of an observer. Lastly, do not think anxious thoughts.”
“Because they'll become real.”
Armin nodded at Reina's words.
Lost in thought, Amy asked.
“What happens if we get caught in a Lilphin? For example, if we get caught in a floating Lilphin and start to rise, or can't stop muttering meaninglessly.”
“As long as we don't all get caught at the same time, we can get out. If you start floating, Miss Amy, we'll pull you down. If you're muttering nonsense, we might have to slap you.”
Amy puffed out her cheeks as if she had already been slapped.
Reina asked.
“And if we can't get out?”
“Eventually, you'll find a new focus. But it will be our focus, not Shirone's. In the end, it means you'll start a new dream.”
“A dream within a dream.”
“Correct. This is why Drimo is called a multi-dimensional world. It wouldn't matter in your own dream, but this is someone else's world. If you get buried too deep, you might never escape the dream.”
Hearing Armin's explanation, everyone tensed up.
“Don't worry. As long as we focus solely on following Shirone as he walks toward the next exit, there shouldn't be any problems.”
Shirone took a deep breath and grabbed the doorknob.
“Well then… I'm opening the door.”
With Armin's approval, the door slowly opened.
The faint sound of music grew until the performance of a court orchestra filled the air.
Amy narrowed her eyes at the familiar scene.
“This place is…?”
Countless couples were dancing in the grand hall. It was the ballroom of Kazra Castle, where they had been just a few hours ago.
Armin, as if realizing he'd missed something, quickly explained.
“The REM Zone is a single space that changes fluidly. It's like multiple plays being performed on the same stage. If the background is the grand hall, the exit should be close.”
“That's the exit.”
Shirone pointed to the other side of the ballroom.
Amy thought she knew why. It was the door she had left through with Zion. Shirone must have gone through that door to look for her. And that's when this whole mess started.
‘It was because of me.’
Amy gave a bitter smile.
If she hadn't followed Zion, if she had refused his request, would Shirone be in a different situation right now?
‘Heh, now that I think about it, I really do deserve to be hated.’
“Miss Amy, you can't lose focus.”
Amy quickly snapped back to her senses. She took repeated deep breaths, keeping her eyes sharp.
“Yes, I'm ready.”
“Then let's go. Shirone, please walk straight ahead, avoiding contact as much as possible.”
Shirone moved forward cautiously. He stopped and waited for dancing couples to pass. A slight detour could risk falling into a Lilphin.
Amy and Reina stared only at the back of Shirone's head. Armin, on the other hand, walked calmly, observing his surroundings. This was possible because he had obtained a lucid dreaming license to carry out certain missions.
‘What on earth could have happened?’
Since the real Shirone was awaiting a gruesome death, it was highly likely that the situation in the REM Zone was also a nightmare.
That's why he was tense.
At any moment, everyone in the ballroom could turn into monsters, or people could suddenly go mad and start a massacre.
But even after they had crossed half the ballroom, nothing out of the ordinary happened.
The path they had already taken was now out of focus, so it was safe to assume nothing would happen there.
‘Strange. What kind of situation is this nightmare about?’
Armin spotted something, and his eyes lit up.
‘I see. So that's what it was.’
A man and a woman were dancing in the center of the ballroom. The woman was beautiful, wearing a rose-red dress, and the man had a strange appearance.
The man's eyes were completely slanted upwards, his nose was upturned, and his lips were smaller than a chicken's anus. It was a human face, but its form was impossible in reality.
‘He must have really hated him.’
If this was all there was to it, nothing major would happen to a third party. But for Shirone, it must be the most terrible nightmare.
Shifting his gaze, Armin noticed someone serving near a long table.
He was wearing the clothes of a plains tribe, completely out of place in the castle scenery. He wore a red hat, had a magnificent beard, and was brazenly smoking a pipe in a non-smoking area.
The only being that wasn't one of Shirone's projections, a Dreamer named Louver, dispatched from Drimo.
Louver looked at Armin and winked. But Armin just stared back blankly before turning his head away.
He wasn't someone you could greet out of mere curiosity. Currently, Dreamers couldn't be analyzed by human intellect. They were simply acknowledged because they actually existed.
When Shirone reached the exit, the focus on the path behind them ended, and the music faded.
Was the ball still going on in the grand hall? The thought sparked curiosity, but no one looked back.