Chapter 54
Chapter 54
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 54
Chapter Title: A... Nightmare...?
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"Mmm~ So delicious~"
A pink mist settled thickly over the marquisate.
Sitting on the inn's roof, Nightmare Lilith licked her lips.
A night when everyone was asleep.
She alone, bathed in the moonlight, was serenely enjoying her gourmet meal.
For her, a meal was not something material, but rather immaterial.
The prime examples were the emotions of others, such as fear, anger, and sadness.
The pink mist currently blanketing the marquisate was one of her abilities.
The mist's effect was to force people to sleep and simultaneously compel them to dream.
Just because it was night didn't mean everyone was asleep.
Soldiers standing guard, couples engaged in pleasant activities, a child waking up to use the restroom.
For whatever reason, there was never a time when everyone was asleep simultaneously.
Moreover, dreams were always capricious.
One couldn't just dream because they wanted to.
Some days brought pleasant dreams filled with one's ideals, while others brought nightmares showing the most dreadful scenes one wished to avoid.
All of it was a variable.
In such an unpredictable situation, Lilith had to make humans fall asleep and dream at the same time.
That was why the first ability she learned was Puppet.
It was named for its meaning: controlling human consciousness.
That was the true nature of the mist blanketing the marquisate.
It acted as a sleeping agent while also inducing dreams, eliminating the variables.
Furthermore, it was designed so that the dreams would only manifest as nightmares.
"Heehee~ There are quite a few decent humans here~"
She could peer into the dreams of others.
The present was no different.
She was feasting on negative emotions as sustenance while peeking into others' nightmares.
The nourishment varied depending on the intensity of the human's emotions.
For example, between the sadness of a child who scraped their knee and cried after falling while playing, and the sorrow of an old man who lost his life partner, whose emotions would be more intense?
Without a doubt, the latter.
In that sense, this marquisate had many humans dreaming high-quality nightmares.
Who was having what nightmare, what made them angry, sad, or scared.
Such things were of no concern to her.
She just wanted them to be angrier, cry more, and be more afraid.
That was all.
"Humans are so weak."
Why do they struggle so much in a mere dream, not even reality?
But the creature called human was one to crumble easily, even in a mere dream.
However, there was no way she could have known that.
In a way, her ability could be considered stronger than mere physical prowess.
It was no different from delving into an opponent's subconscious and launching an indefensible attack on their weakest point.
"Alrighty~ Shall I go take care of my objective now?"
She rose from her spot and spread her wings.
Although she had enveloped the entire marquisate with Puppet for good measure, her original target was a single party.
Lilith first entered through the window of the room where the beastkin woman was.
The beastkin woman lay on the bed, shedding tears.
Lilith placed a hand on her forehead.
"Hoo... A nightmare of this magnitude. Your trauma is deeper than I thought, isn't it?"
Just a slight peek gave her a feeling of fullness so intense it made her lips tremble.
"I'll be looking forward to it, okay? Grieve for me some more~"
With that, Lilith left the room and headed to the opposite side.
This time, it was a room with a small, silver-haired woman.
Just like before, Lilith placed her hand on the silver-haired woman's forehead and peeked into her dream.
"Oh? This one's a vampire? I heard they were all dead, but I guess not."
Not just any vampire, but a queen.
"I wonder why she's here."
It was an unexpected variable, but this one was also having a pretty decent nightmare, so it didn't matter.
Lilith thought that at this rate, the job would be finished smoothly.
And finally.
Heading to the room next door on the opposite side, Lilith could see a black-haired man lying on the bed.
This time, she didn't place her hand on the man's forehead, but on his stomach.
It was to use another of her abilities.
"Well then, shall I go in and finish this?"
Her other ability was to directly intervene in another's dream.
Literally, the power to intrude upon another's dream.
This was her most powerful ability, barring a few problems.
The first problem was that since it was an ability where she personally intervened in the dream, she could only enter one person's dream at a time, unless she used some kind of cloning technique.
Even considering that, it was still a terrifying ability.
The most frightening aspect of this ability was that if she killed the target within the dream, she could shatter their mind completely.
They wouldn't die in reality, but when they woke up, they would be a vegetable, with not a shred of reason left.
And so, her form was sucked into the man.
***
The emotion she felt upon entering the dream was not ecstasy or pleasure, but bewilderment.
Because what she saw right after entering the dream was a completely pitch-black room.
No, to be precise, it was shrouded in darkness, save for a few streaks of light.
Nightmares were originally dark and gloomy, so there was nothing strange about it.
She had seen the dream of a child locked in a room by abusive parents before.
Lilith looked around the room.
A desk, a bed, and so on. She recognized them, but their appearance was far different from what she knew.
Furniture that seemed much more luxurious than what she was familiar with.
And the most suspicious things were the box under the desk emitting colorful lights and something resembling a box on the desk emitting a pure white light.
Seeing these unfamiliar objects, she wondered if the dreamer was some kind of visionary.
Her bewilderment was brief; she recalled her original purpose and began to search for the master of this dream.
A moment ago, she had been distracted by the light-emitting box and hadn't checked properly, but looking closely, she saw a person sitting in a chair in front of it.
But it was strange.
If there was only one person in this dream, the man sitting there must be the dreamer himself.
But he was distinctly different from the man she had seen before entering.
A face stained with deep dark circles and exhaustion.
The only resemblance was the hair color.
The color of his irises, the shape of his face.
Everything belonged to a different person from the man she had just seen.
"...Who in the world are you?"
An unfamiliar place, a person different from the dream's owner.
Lost in her confusion, Lilith spoke without realizing it.
At that moment.
*Crack, creak.*
His neck made a sound as it turned in Lilith's direction.
Then,
—*Grin.*
His eyes, smiling so wide his lips seemed to tear, reflected Lilith.
The momentarily frightened Lilith blinked once.
"E-Eek...!"
The man who had been sitting just a moment ago was now standing.
Was it because she was scared?
It seemed like she was seeing an optical illusion of him getting closer with every blink.
No, now that she looked, it wasn't an illusion.
He was really getting closer.
"Let's do something fun togetheeer—"
"D-Don't come any closer!!"
She raised her hand.
It was to change the dream in her favor and simultaneously cast a spell.
But nothing happened.
"W-What kind of mental fortitude...!"
This was the second problem with her dream-intervention ability.
Although she could alter a nightmare to her advantage to some extent, the owner of the dream was ultimately the dreamer themselves.
Meaning, that man.
Manipulation beyond a certain point was impossible, and if the dreamer's mental fortitude was strong, she could conversely be trapped in the dream or get caught up in the nightmare herself.
The reason she hadn't considered this problem was that she had entered and exited the dreams of thousands of humans, but had never encountered one with such mental strength.
In other words, Lilith, having entered the dream of this mentally strong man.
Was now a weakling, unable to use magic or manipulate the nightmare.
"Heheh... A newbie. A newbie. So lewd. *Slurp.* My mouth is watering... hehehe."
"Please, stay awaaaaay!!!"
***
-I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella.
A woman's voice flowed out from another box on either side of the glowing one.
Soon, text filled the box before her eyes.
-YOU DIED.
How many hundreds of times had it been?
Lilith had no time to marvel at the unfamiliar object.
The reason was exhaustion.
Three days in dream time.
Seventy-two hours.
Four thousand, three hundred and twenty minutes.
Two hundred fifty-nine thousand, two hundred seconds.
That was how long Lilith and the man beside her, the owner of the dream, had gone without rest.
Lilith hadn't been killed since then.
She had thought it was a relief, but as time passed, she gradually realized that death would have been better.
He kept saying strange things she couldn't understand, constantly talking next to her.
His lines were so numerous that even without listening, her fatigue kept piling up.
Furthermore, he wanted something from her.
He made her operate an unfamiliar machine to move the picture inside the box, feeding her some unknown information every ten seconds.
"It's Waterfowl Dance! Fucking run!!"
"O-Okay...!"
"Not like that!! You have to parry three times to get one riposte, I told you!"
"Y-Yes!!"
Unable to escape and with her power reduced to that of an ordinary person, Lilith had no choice but to do as she was told to survive.
In the process, she was able to deduce a few pieces of information from what he was saying.
This box that showed pictures was not a magical tool but a machine, and she was currently playing a game.
But...
'Why do humans play games like this?!'
The man in the box, presumably her character, was naked.
No, to be precise, he was in his underwear.
His skin wasn't human-colored but purple, and his face was distorted even more bizarrely than a goblin's.
All he held was a small shield and a single wooden club.
The difficulty was insane, she died in one hit, and even when she landed an attack, the enemy's health barely budged.
She couldn't understand it at all.
Why would anyone do this?
No, before that, for what purpose was something like this even made?
Was it made to torture someone?
Why? What was there to gain from a fellow human torturing another human?
It was full of things she couldn't comprehend with her knowledge.
On top of that, the man next to her didn't allow her to just hit and kill the enemy; he only permitted the special technique of deflecting the opponent's attacks.
The first time she swung the club, not knowing what to do, his gaze was truly terrifying.
His eyes were like... those of a seasoned veteran who had fought through countless wars.
Anyway, after that, she only did as she was told.
After three days of toil, her efforts finally paid off.
"I... I did it...!"
The woman with the tachi in the picture, who had tormented her so, knelt and collapsed.
'Finally, I can get out of here...!'
"Get ready, quick!"
"Huh...?"
She thought it was over, but it wasn't.
A red flower bloomed from the woman she thought had collapsed. She threw off her helmet and ascended with wings.
"Phase two is starting! Phase two begins with Scarlet Aeonia!"
Phase two?
What's that?
I don't know what that is.
Wasn't it over?
By the time she came to her senses, a red flower was in full bloom inside the box.
-YOU DIED.
"Ah... you died. Gotta start over. Now that we've seen phase two, we should be able to beat it with a little more effort, right?"
From the beginning?
I have to do this from the beginning...?
"N-No...!"
I can't take it anymore!!
As she wished desperately, a door appeared in the previously doorless room.
Her desperation had briefly opened an escape route.
Lilith scrambled from her seat and rushed towards the door.
And when she barely managed to open the door and escape, she was back in the inn room she knew, with the beastkin woman and the vampire standing beside her.
"S-Save me!!!!!!"
She begged the two of them to save her.
I feel like I'm going insane.
Being trapped in a dark room, repeating the same action in the same posture for three whole days.
"No!!! I quit!!! Just kill me insteaaaaaad!!!!!!"
If escape was impossible anyway, death was preferable.
"Where do you think you're going?"
*Grab.*
A rough hand grabbed her horn.
There was no way she could forget the voice she had just been hearing.
"Kya, kyaaaaaaahk!!!!!!"
In the end, she missed her first and last chance to escape and was sucked back into the dream.
And so, one day.
One day in reality, but a full week in the dream, Lilith finally managed to escape the nightmare.