Chapter 149: Snake's Resolve 2
Chapter 149: Snake's Resolve 2
I'd just barged into someone else's office—their Sanctum, to be precise.
But ever since becoming a Dream Demon, I'd been through this kind of spatial displacement once or twice before, so I shook off the disorientation fast and started searching the place.
Compared to some crumbling underground facility with a muscle-bound monster on your heels, or a decrepit mansion where you solved puzzles while dodging patrol-creatures, a clean, classically furnished office might as well be paradise.
'Was this part of the Tyrant's plan too?'
Getting yanked into someone's Sanctum out of nowhere was strange—but the moment I remembered that the stone had come from The Incinerating Tyrant, suspicion crept in. He'd probably handed it over with exactly this in mind.
The man knew the method for breaching another Constellation's Sanctum. He had the materials. He had the relevant abilities. He was just missing the Dream Demon piece—so maybe buttering me up was the fix.
Perfectly rational suspicion.
Every time he needed a favor, he coughed up a decisive hint, like that earless blue cat robot pulling gadgets from its pouch. The more I thought about it, the more it felt like he had everything except me.
I rummaged through the office while chewing on that idea. Unlike my own Sanctum—a studio apartment at its core—this place had plenty to poke through.
'Nothing useful, though.'
Sanctums, apparently, tended to be like that.
Lots to look at, nothing worth pocketing. The document folders on the desk were stuffed with blank paper. The drawers were completely empty. Even the books on the shelves had covers but blank pages. If you wanted to get technical, this wasn't an office but a stage set of one.
There was no obvious objective, like "escape the monster," and no unsolved puzzle board staring me in the face. Honestly, what was I supposed to do—wander into an ownerless room with no goal?
It'd be nice if, like in some detective dream-game, every object I picked up triggered a message like Progress: 10% or Key Clue Acquired!.
But I wasn't in a dream. I was in clear, unambiguous reality. No such convenient pop-ups existed here.
After a few dozen minutes, my total haul came to exactly two items: a fancy fountain pen and a paper knife that had been sitting artfully on the desk. That was it.
'If I sharpened the edge a little more, this might work... Should I just jam it into her throat?'
All roads lead to Rome, right? What The Incinerating Tyrant wanted was for me to infiltrate this Sanctum and kill the Heart of the Exiled Serpent—wasn't it? He hadn't asked me to bring her in alive, and he hadn't asked me to teleport the Tyrant here himself.
The paper knife was hopelessly dull, but the fountain pen's nib had been ground to a wicked point. When she opened the office door and stepped inside, I could drive it straight into the nape of her neck. I squeezed the pen, weighing it in my hand.
Unlike the bookshelf's hollow volumes, which existed purely for intellectual vanity, or the document folders pretending to be full, the fountain pen seemed to cross over into genuine hobby territory—it was quality. I knew absolutely nothing about fountain pens, but the heavy wooden barrel and the gold nib engraved with a signature gave off the air of a luxury item, not a writing instrument. It was almost uncomfortably hefty and large, which also made it look perfect for stabbing into a human throat.
With that cheerful thought, I waited in the empty office for its owner.
When I returned to my own Sanctum, I usually came to near the bed—near a World Tree branch. The Heart of the Exiled Serpent would probably appear somewhere in here by the same logic. She'd either walk through that big wooden door, the same way I'd entered, or manifest right there in that oversized executive chair. This was a Sanctum, not some ordinary room; walking through the front door wasn't the default.
I crouched in a corner with both approaches in view. A blue flash of mana-light flickered at the office entrance—the same glow I'd seen in that criminal's memory.
'Right on cue.'
Three steps. The perfect angle—out of her sight line, close enough to lunge for the neck. The shimmering light faded, and the woman inside it materialized, eyes closed.
I took one step, gripping the fountain pen in a reverse hold. Two steps, closing on the defenselessly exposed nape of her throat. Third step—I drove the pen downward like a hammer blow—
"...Constellation? Is something wrong?"
"Huh?"
Clang!
My bare fist swung through empty air where the pen should have been, and a navigation drone trying to drift out the window got swatted to the floor.
"Did one of the robots malfunction?"
I was staring at an office, all right—but it wasn't the Heart of the Exiled Serpent's executive suite. It was Kim Ha-eun's workspace, the one where she sat surrounded by holograms, sculpting a city with her fingertips.
※
The world doesn't hand out free lunches. That was my conclusion after several repeated attempts.
'What's the point of going if I can't even meet her?'
I'd gone back into the office once clutching a crowbar I'd pulled from a dream. I'd waited with my back to the wooden door for a long time—long enough to crack her across the back of the skull the moment she appeared at the entrance.
But the instant the mana-glow faded and the Heart of the Exiled Serpent began to manifest, I was forcibly expelled back into this city before I could even try anything. I had no idea why. If I didn't understand the reason I could get in, I couldn't understand the reason I kept getting kicked out either.
'Guess I really do have to wait for the research results.'
And so my daily routine split neatly into three parts.
Mornings with Han Ye-ji, making the rounds of the Academy's patient ward.
Afternoons watching Lee Ha-rin collaborate with the alchemist.
Nights spent in the city Kim Ha-eun was busily manipulating.
"Anything unusual today?"
"No, no special patients. Apart from a big influx from the Southern Continent, nothing much seems to be going on."
Walking through the Academy, I'd noticed the number of bobbing heads—people bowing to me—kept increasing. A Dream Demon who healed souls, openly running a dwelling inside the Academy, living that way for nearly a year—fame was inevitable. I figured I'd turned into a sort of Academy mascot. To speak plainly, this body of mine was the local standard for sexiness. Saying it myself was a little ridiculous, but I was basically a sexy school nurse.
Grafting words like "sexy school nurse" onto the body of a man who could probably bench well over five hundred pounds. Though those weren't my words—they came from a site Han Ye-ji had been browsing.
"So if you have some free time, want to prep a white coat for me?"
"Augh, Constellation, I'm really, really sorry...."
"You're not saying no."
I poked her scarlet cheeks. Han Ye-ji was this flustered because of the dream she'd had the previous night.
There's an internet site where people talk about famous Constellations and Incarnations. Han Ye-ji, who loves watching livestreams, and Lee Ha-rin, the Constellation otaku, both frequent it. The same site where a photo of me buying coffee for Han Ye-ji's team had gone up. People there debated the design of space battleships and futuristic SF weaponry, and ran VS matches pitting Constellations against Incarnations, almost like Earth in my past life. Naturally, since the site was anonymous, the conversation got filthy.
[I heard there's a Dream Demon school nurse at the Academy?]
— I'm already dying of jealousy that they get to use psychic magic in reality
and now you're telling me there's an incubus when you drag yourself to the nurse's office exhausted?
Non-Incarnations must be so goddamn salty about life
└ It's not an incubus, you moron, it's a Dream Demon
└ Same thing, isn't it?
└ If you can't tell species apart, why are you even on Seonghwa Gal?
└ This idiot doesn't know the difference between a vampire and a dhampir
It started as nothing—just another baseless internet rumor. I still don't know how "healing souls" got twisted into "school nurse," or why a short, brainless horny-post—no substance, just heavy breathing—caught fire.
Anyway, for the layabouts killing time on online forums, a single short post that name-dropped the Academy, a Constellation, and the rare Dream Demon species all at once appeared to have proven deeply compelling.
[The name's "Academy" but it's not the kind from your weeb trash]
[Does the Academy even have a nurse's office?]
[Verifying I've been to the Academy lol]
[Academy interior photo.jpg]
Cyber-ghosts swarmed it, and the topic became me. Specifically, the soul-healing Dream Demon.
The gallery might be called the Constellation-and-Incarnation Gallery—Seonghwa Gal—but it was an online forum anyone could access and browse. Rumors ran wild, and plenty of users weren't Constellations or Incarnations at all. Among them were lunatics who didn't care whether their target was an Incarnation or a Constellation and never spared a thought for their own future.
[If I go to the Dream Demon Constellation, can I get lewd dreams?]
— So you drag yourself to the nurse's office after training, drenched in sweat, and the Dream Demon in the pristine white coat says you've worked hard, doesn't even check your condition, just lays you down on the bed. You were only planning to grab a pain-relief patch, but the second you lie down, you're out cold, and the Dream Demon comes into your dream saying we've got plenty of time—
└ Now he's dropping just 0.5 chapters instead of a full one, this bastard
└ Can we ban this prick for a year, until he finishes a full-length serial?
└ You crazy bitch, aren't you gonna add the "I almost—" bit at the end?
└ "Almost" what? It's probably already screenshotted
[Is it okay for an incubus to be in the nurse's office?]
— Lmao the insatiable incubus whore who can't go a single day without lapping pussy?
Fucking hell, but it's so goddamn hot, I want to toy with his glans with my tongue
while I fondle his nuts, lmao
I'm scared of getting sued so I'll stop here, lmao
└ Hey you fuck, the thread's gonna blow, mods!
└ Should we prep a backup shelter?
└ This guy might end up on the network news
My last life had trolls who'd fling dead-mom insults at lawyers. Why would the trolls in this world be any different? After surviving game chat in my past life, running across sex jokes while web-surfing here was nothing—I could just laugh it off.
I figured it had blown over as a passing thing. Then—
"...Looks like you watched it pretty closely."
"No, that's, it's not—"
In Han Ye-ji's dream, I'd been wearing a pristine white coat.