Chapter 12: A Dream Within a Dream
Chapter 12: A Dream Within a Dream
A critical decision that would define her future.
The kind of choice that made filling out a career aspiration form on a high school home correspondence sheet feel like nothing at all.
Plenty of people well past twenty still couldn't settle on a direction, even after drinking themselves sick over it and grinding through endless counseling sessions.
What hope did a high schooler have?
"My Constellation, what should I do?"
The decision clearly wasn't an easy one to make, because Han Ye-ji's clinginess had intensified today. The moment she entered the dream she forgot about everything else, threw herself straight into my arms, and launched into rapid-fire mumbling.
"I know you respect me and believe in me, but I'd rather you just decided for me. I'm your first Incarnation. If I mess this up, what becomes of you?"
She buried her face against my chest and muttered through it. The breath from her fluttering lips cut clean through the single thin shirt I was wearing. A stretched-out short-sleeve tee and shorts that rode up her thighs — an outfit with some real lived-in realism to it.
"You're right, you are my first Incarnation. I said what I said because I wanted you to choose the path you actually wanted, but..."
"Still, my Constellation... I know it's pathetic, coming from a woman. But I can't shake this anxiety. If I make a mistake and end up wasting your points, I don't think I could live with myself."
So that was why she'd been agonizing to this degree. She already understood the relationship between a Constellation and an Incarnation, and how the points system worked. Well, I didn't know how many Constellations were out there, but there was bound to be at least one with a loose mouth. Or maybe a Constellation had asked their Incarnation for advice — the survivors were the Constellations, and the Incarnations were the talented ones.
The mental image of a Constellation who found thinking hard confessing everything to their Incarnation and leaning on them for consulting pulled a quiet laugh from me. That was probably how the cycle of points between Constellation and Incarnation had become public knowledge.
"Points work themselves out with time. It seems I've put too much pressure on you."
I patted Han Ye-ji's back as she clung to me like a sloth, all four limbs wrapped around. Not a trace of embarrassment about being held in a man's arms — just those small lips running on and on. The burden must have been heavier than I'd realized.
Then again, my sense of scale and Han Ye-ji's could hardly be the same.
"And honestly... the instructors kind of scare me. They each have their own guild affiliations, so they're all incredibly intense about pulling me toward their side..."
"Okay, okay. You've had it rough."
Incarnations and guilds.
This was territory I didn't know well, so I held her close, arms wrapped around the back of her head and her shoulders, and let my reply go vague. I'd heard that Incarnations banded together to form guilds, contracted with nations, and got deployed to the outer defensive walls of the continent or ran inland patrols.
But that was about the extent of my knowledge. I only knew that Incarnations formed guilds and worked under contract. Did they pull off transfers like soccer players, with money changing hands and scouts in the mix? I barely followed sports either, so I couldn't really say. The most I'd ever seen of terms like transfer fees was on a newspaper front page a handful of times. So I just kept patting her without a real answer.
Stuck between three instructors, drained of mental energy by their hostile ego clashes — today she just nestled in my arms with nothing else happening and breathed evenly.
Two women and one man. The martial-arts-school swordswoman who taught close-quarters weapons. The Incarnation who instructed in basic magical theory. An academy firearms officer with military ties. Not exactly a combination built on mutual warmth.
And since they doubled as both instructors and scouts, their tongues were exceptionally well-oiled.
The close-combat instructor pushed the line that real women had muscle, trying to fire up Han Ye-ji's hero worship with the image of a woman standing guard on the front lines. She added that even without the front, a woman like that could absolutely protect her family if an inland breach ever happened.
The basic magic instructor took the opposite approach, emphasizing that Han Ye-ji was a first Incarnation and stressing the profound bond between an Incarnation and her Constellation. Since the magic instructor was herself an Incarnation, she steered hard into how important and glorious that first relationship was.
Then there was the last one, the sole man: the marksmanship instructor. He was busy rattling off a list of state-contract guilds that could bundle Incarnation support, guild backing, and military resources all at once while dangling the lure of fire-support duty from the safest possible position. He even brought up her younger brother.
"I don't... think any of them is outright lying...?"
"Stop thinking complicated thoughts and get some real rest."
I shifted my gaze and saw the room had changed again — no bedroom this time, but a warm, heated-floor interior room with a plush cotton blanket. That explained the thin clothes. The hot ondol floor, the soft cotton blanket, the bare, warm skin pressing against me through a thin short-sleeve shirt and shorts.
I heard steady breathing and looked down at Han Ye-ji in my arms. She'd wrapped her arms tightly around my solar plexus and fallen asleep just like that. Watching her, I felt a pang of guilt for leaving her to navigate the instructors' turf war alone. So I held her close and closed my eyes too.
Sleeping while holding someone was less lonely than sleeping alone.
※
I grabbed hold of my groggy head and let my eyes track from top to bottom.
A grimy ceiling dripping beads of water. Blue-fluorescent moss blooming in the jagged cracks. A rusted-out, shattered drain pipe. The dismal chorus of creatures echoing through the pipes. A torn strip of old cloth twisted into a handle. Steel pipes stained with the blue-green-splotched fluids of creatures.
The moment that air — familiar to the point of horror — seeped through my nose into my lungs, I understood the situation.
A dream within a dream.
Dream-within-a-dream.
If the hand gripping the steel pipe had been just a little more wrinkled, if my steps had been just a little more unsteady, if my field of vision had been just a little lower and my posture more hunched, this nightmare would have been vivid enough to fool me completely.
"What the hell is this now?"
My mutter came out louder than I'd expected, and I sucked in a sharp breath.
The thought that I'd grown soft after only a few months in comfort crossed my mind at the same time as the reminder that this was, just a dream. I wasn't in that starving, aging, muscle-wasted wreck of a body anymore. This was a powerful body — strong enough to make the steel pipe in my hand screech under my grip.
...Thank god Han Ye-ji isn't a shotacon.
From the six-pack on my stomach to my broad shoulders, lean arm muscles, solid muscular thighs, and tall, well-built frame — and the heavy thing swinging between my legs — it was, by every measure, a body women would appreciate.
I walked through the underground passage with a strange mix of familiarity and foreignness thrumming through me. Somewhere nearby, a generator was running — the dim tunnel was dotted with old lights flickering on here and there.
Splash, splash. I ducked around the wet concrete and muffled my footsteps. Even my breathing slowed, and I kept my heartbeat as quiet as I could as I moved through the old corridor. The electricity was a good sign, at least — it meant there was a large group somewhere holding their ground despite the generator noise.
Except that also meant conditions weren't great for moving around unseen. I'd have been better off with no lights at all — let my eyes adjust to the dark. The erratic bursts of lighting only made it harder to keep my field of view clear. You never knew what might be crouching in the shadows between one light and the next.
'Is this just a worthless dream?'
I was making too many mistakes. It'd been too long since I'd walked terrain like this. A chunk of concrete I kicked went rattling down the corridor with a sharp tack. I stepped into a puddle between two lights and left wet footprints with an audible splash. And still, the passage stayed dead silent. By now, at least one or two drifters who'd given up on life and were curled up in the shadows — or creatures exiled after mutating — should have shown themselves.
Maybe it was the dream's strong body and inexhaustible stamina, but my confidence swelled and my pace quickened. If all this dream had to offer was endless walking, I'd rather wake up fast and get back inside Han Ye-ji's dream. If I guided her right in there, I could at least taste food — café stuff, Korean snacks — that didn't exist in the Constellation's studio-apartment fridge.
As if it had read my mind, a heavy footfall sounded far ahead. Unconcerned with stealth — huge steps, a ragged breathing I could hear before anything came into view, and a grinding, guttural noise that made my skin crawl.
"...What the... fuck is this now?"
Like a scene from a horror movie, an enormous foot came first from beyond the flickering lights. Massive, two-toed, hoof-like feet. Thighs and knees thick with veins bulging like muscle. A lower half barely covered at the waist by a tattered scrap of sackcloth, and above it a trunk like a load-bearing beam.
"Huuun... gry?"
That was all I needed to see. I turned and ran without hesitation. I didn't know its name, but a creature that size — three meters tall, its head scraping the lights — I'd heard a rumor about one turning a group armed with priest-class firearms into ground meat. A six-pack and full stamina meant nothing. A single steel pipe wasn't going to cut it against that thing.
No eardrum-shattering roar came. Just a grinding, bubbling, horrible wet-lung sound creeping closer bit by bit. A three-meter frame, probably close to a ton of knotted muscle and bulging veins. A monster made of blood-vessel-ridged meat charging at full speed — and I couldn't hear its footsteps.
I wanted to look back. But the ground was littered with broken concrete and pockmarked with puddles — rough, uneven terrain. I didn't have the nerve to glance over my shoulder at a full sprint here. If it caught me, things would get ugly. Every time a light flickered, the presence at my back closed the distance. Nightmare or not, the fear was real.
Through the quiet rhythm of my breathing, the air suddenly split with a rush of wind. The hairs on the back of my neck spiked and I threw my head down as if I'd tripped forward. A crushing weight passed right over my scalp, a massive shadow swallowing the dim light entirely for an instant. That thing's hand was big enough to grab me with one palm.
If I kept running straight, it was going to catch me. I kicked off a wall in the maze of passages and shot into a side corridor. Right turn, left turn, blindly wrenching myself down alleys while keeping my speed — my calves felt like they were about to burst.
After so many dodges I'd lost track of where and how I'd turned, a strange-colored heat-haze shimmered ahead. At the same time, a bizarre, drawn-out breathing sound — huuuunnnh — reached me, and then even that small trail of footsteps vanished.
I pressed myself into the shadows between two lights and stared back the way I'd come for a long time. I waited until the pounding of my heart went quiet again.
Once I was certain the monster was completely gone, I headed toward the strange, blue-and-purple-swirled heat-haze. In a normal version of this place, this spot should have had an old instrument panel or a breaker-box housing. Instead, set into this wall was a piece of glass about the size of a fist.
No way. This is...
I reached out and picked up the fragment. The moment I did, a message rang through my head.
[Fragment of Nightmare acquired.]
[A Fragment of Nightmare is the most fundamental Origin that a Dream Demon can handle.]
"The fuck — what is this, a horror game...?"
A player wandering a maze. An invincible monster roaming at random. And an objective somewhere inside the labyrinth. No matter how I looked at it, the setup mirrored the horror games I'd seen streamed a handful of times.