Chapter 124: Discipline 1
Chapter 124: Discipline 1
I was a Dream Demon. The instant I stepped into a dream, knowledge bloomed in me by instinct—the way a fish swims the moment it breaks free of the egg.
The Eastern-style manor I had glimpsed earlier wasn't a dream world at all. It was nothing but stale debris: scraps of memory and yearning and unconscious static.
This place, the space I had actually entered—this was the authentic domain of the unconscious, the true realm of dreams.
Which meant—
"Hyah! J-just one hit!"
"Eyes on me. Focus."
—the world in which Kim Ha-eun was getting clobbered by a female disciple with a wooden sword was, in fact, the female disciple's own dream.
"...?"
But if this was the female disciple's unconscious, why the hell was Kim Ha-eun planted right here?
I approached the two women clashing hard on that wide patch of bare ground.
"Keep your stance firm. If your wrist buckles, you lose the sword."
"Agh—fuck!"
I had always thought of Kim Ha-eun as a mage who crudely bulldozed problems with raw magic power. Watching her now, though, she handled that wooden sword with real skill. At least skilled enough to parry three, four strikes from the disciple.
Then her Authority clicked into place in my mind.
Hope Usurper.
An Authority that lets her slip into another person's dream and mimic the idealized future self that person envisions. She must have activated it to copy the perfect swordswoman the female disciple pictured. Her stamina was never an issue—she had been run through a meat-grinder by an incarnation of the Beating Lionheart long before the Academy. But talent has ceilings and tiers.
Kim Ha-eun wielded Dream Demon magic with genius-level ease; still, there was no way she could perfectly simulate a disciple of the Sword That Severs the Yoke in a single stroke. The ideal swordswoman that disciple held up as complete was, the Yoke-Sword herself.
'Well, obviously—what she pictures as perfection is the Sword That Severs the Yoke...'
As the situation clarified, anger began coiling, slowly, in my gut.
Once, there was a nightmare that had tangled my own darkness with Han Ye-ji's: a dilapidated subway tunnel, a muscle-bloated monster-woman from some game chasing us. By the same logic, this world was a fusion of Kim Ha-eun's Authority and the female disciple's unconscious.
To put it another way—
'This little shit has been playing me.'
Kim Ha-eun had lied to me.
Kim Ha-eun was fixated on gathering magic power, on growing stronger. Treating patients at the Academy, even having sex with me, her Constellation—she regarded it all as nothing more than a convenient method to stockpile power. And up until now, I had let it slide. She was a talented Incarnation, she had awakened an Authority on her own, and honestly, being clung to in a dream and drained of every drop of semen didn't exactly feel bad.
But this was over the line.
"C-constellation?!"
One step forward, and Kim Ha-eun spotted me. Her face went ash-white. The wooden sword slipped from her fingers, and the female disciple halted immediately.
"Is what I think is happening, actually happening?" I asked.
The disciple's unconscious was a psyche ground down until her self-worth was nearly dust. In that state, she was working off her frustrations through a training bout against Kim Ha-eun—someone she believed had talent comparable to her own, even though the talent had really been stolen through an Authority. The constant punching bag had turned into an instructor. That raised her self-esteem. Not that it could be fixed just by smacking around thugs. In practice, the disciple had already carved up plenty of monsters on deployment. She had enough talent that the Sword That Severs the Yoke acknowledged her, that her own master-to-be—the disciple herself—would one day acknowledge her as well. Normally, finding another person with that kind of gift would be brutally hard. But Kim Ha-eun could copy the gift in a dream. Problem solved.
The female disciple restored her self-worth through guided sparring with Kim Ha-eun. Kim Ha-eun used her Authority to acquire not just magic power but also swordsmanship talent. On paper, it was an ideal relationship with zero downside.
"Th-that's not—!"
If she had gotten my permission first, that is.
"Ha-eun. Were you really this desperate?"
There was a problem, and the problem was right here. The Sword That Severs the Yoke had bent her pride, had even sworn an oath and bowed her head to me, all to heal this disciple. The Academy had emptied storehouses for six straight days of ritual offerings. Lee Ha-rin and I had rearranged our entire schedules to care for the woman. And in the middle of that, Ha-eun had kept her mouth shut and acted for her own profit.
That was not conduct I could ever accept from an Incarnation.
At best, you could spin it as a subordinate discreetly covering for her Constellation's shortcomings. At worst, it was one Incarnation deceiving two Constellations to feed her own greed. If the Sword That Severs the Yoke got angry and accused me of staging this to extract an oath from her, what excuse could I possibly make? A green Constellation who couldn't even control his own Incarnation?
Ha-eun clearly knew that too. That was why her face was this pale.
"I'm sorry—I'm so sorry!"
She crumpled to her knees, pale as death, and cried out. I could see the terror in her: the terror that I, in my irritation, might simply sever the contract. But I had no intention of doing that. A contract alone cost a hundred thousand points. And Dream Demon talent was something I had scoured more than five cities for without a single trace. Canceling over anger would hurt me far more than it would hurt her.
'How do I handle her?'
The best option was punishment—something to fix her insolence. Ideally, I'd also use the chance to correct that arrogant habit of hers in dreams, measuring out my magic power like a fuel pump and extracting it through essence-draining sex.
If I abandoned her, her long-harbored dream of revenge against the monsters would evaporate. I looked into those eyes, trembling with a mix of fear that she might be discarded and a sliver of hope, and called up my magic power. This wasn't some basic child-rearing lesson; I couldn't just paddle her ass for misbehaving. So I would use power instead.
What Kim Ha-eun dreamed of was "a commanding version of herself." Revenge against monsters, social success, shining as an Incarnation—she wanted to lead and drive every single one of those victories herself. What she feared, therefore, was being treated like a tool.
My Dream Demon brain spun straight in that direction.
A beautiful woman trembling on the ground, bowing her head, while I was annoyed and freshly furious. Her casual clothes were disheveled from the rough swordsmanship practice, clinging to her skin. In a situation like this, a Dream Demon does exactly one thing.
I poured magic power into my hand and shaped an object.
The chain clinked, metallic and heavy. A leash with a thick black collar.
Coarser and more brutal than the one Lee Ha-rin had carried to me.
"C-constellation...?"
"I think I've been too lenient with you."
"What is—?"
"Stay still."
She reflexively jerked her head back. I seized her nape.
Now I understood why the black cat had expelled the elf form and reverted me to the original hulking muscular man avatar. A frowning, pretty-faced boy barely one-forty tall—how much menace was that supposed to command? For a moment like this, you needed a body big enough to wrap one hand around an entire pale throat.
Even the mild, soft words on my tongue shifted without effort.
"I wasn't aware the world had somehow become a place where an Incarnation gets to use her Constellation."
"That's not—!"
"Did I not tell you to stay still?"
One hand pinned her nape; the other fastened the collar.
This was a gender-reversed world, so a delicate-skinned beauty in a collar didn't read as erotic—it read as violence, torture. The way she quivered in pure dread stirred something in the male mind.
'Now that I think about it, Dream Demons are genuinely fucking dangerous.'
Out in the real world, human sacrifice and every conceivable crime were forbidden. But here in a dream, what law could possibly stop a Dream Demon from running wild? A bill to outlaw frightening dreams, cruel dreams, violent dreams? They'd get roasted for tax theft.
Click.
A grim sound. The collar locked shut.
Unlike Lee Ha-rin's leash—soft leather, like a pet dog's accessory—this one was thick, crude, stiff, more like a muzzle built for a dangerous hound.
I pulled my gaze off that seductive figure and swept the surroundings. A barren patch of dirt, nothing but dust. Rolling around here seemed a bit much. I reached out with my magic and seized control of the environment. The female disciple might have been a sword prodigy, but she had no talent for dreams—effortlessly, the training ground warped into the kind of house you always see in lucid dreams.
Then again, if she had talent for dreams on top of her sword talent, she would have overpowered Kim Ha-eun long ago and commanded this space herself.
The disciple, who had been standing like a stone statue, quietly wedged herself behind the sofa again. I left her there, gripped the chain of Ha-eun's leash, and headed for the master bedroom.
Ha-eun followed on her knees, mouth clamped shut, obedient.
'She's properly scared.'
To her, I was the soft Constellation who gave her whatever she wanted. All she'd ever seen was how unpretentious and gentle I was with Han Ye-ji and Lee Ha-rin.
I perched on the edge of the bed. She knelt before me, not in any suggestive way—like a kid kneeling in front of a scolding parent.
'Now what?'
Punishment was fine. Breaking her down so she'd never look down on me again was also fine. But I didn't exactly have a playbook for this, so I thought for a moment—
'Fuck it. I'll just pound her.'
I stirred my magic.
This wasn't some third-rate smut novel. One cock wasn't going to deliver remorse, obedience, and brainwashing all in one go. But magic power—that might just do it.
"What are you—?"
I forced violet magic power into her body. She gasped, twisting and bucking, as I ignored the way her back arched desperately, one hand holding the chain and the other pressing relentlessly over her heart.
"I said be quiet."
Her pale skin flushed red. Deeper red. Every inch of her.