Chapter 62: Challenge 3
Chapter 62: Challenge 3
In that darkness, so thick you couldn't see an inch ahead, we gradually bolstered our numbers.
Between a suppression team that had two people who could open doors and smugglers who couldn't even find the path, much less open a door, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
We moved flush against the walls, throwing open every door we found, and out they popped in groups of three, joining the growing column of suppression officers.
"You, are you Jeong Ah-rin?"
"Want me to tell the story about you calling your ex-boyfriend from the bar, crying?"
"Shit, does the proof have to be a story like that?"
Most of the officers, in the middle of all this, assumed we were illusions or hostile clones created by the Fallen Constellation, and so things stalled for a while. But there was no helping that.
If they'd swallowed their suspicions and trusted us without question in a mess like this, we probably would have been the ones to think something was off.
Their Incarnation Authorities and Talents were gone, their conditioned bodies grown soft, but numbers have a weight all their own.
Some of the Incarnations had flashlights clipped to their belts, and most were armed with Tasers or rubber-shot shotguns. Were a bunch of smugglers with nothing but rusty pipes and disposable lighters in a position to put up a fight?
A few charged in bravely, clutching a rusted steel pipe or a single short dagger, but the moment they spotted dozens of muzzles leveled at them from beyond the beam of a flashlight, most of them just quietly knelt down on the floor.
I confiscated a couple of knives, but there were far too many criminals to drag around with us.
The real problem was that this kept happening.
"What are we supposed to do to break this dream?"
"No idea. Is the enemy Constellation even in here with us?"
Dozens of people swarmed through the alleys, flashlights sweeping across the walls. The women naturally formed a ring on the outside, with Han Ye-ji's team escorting me in the center—a formation that seemed to show a reflex of consideration toward a man, regardless of how many smugglers I'd taken down.
We surged through the place like a gang off to war, mobbed every smuggler we locked eyes with, beat them unconscious, and cuffed them to the metal pipes along the walls—for nearly an hour. We'd run out of handcuffs, so we'd started stripping people's clothes and binding their limbs with them.
'Fuck, is the other side just as lost as we are, or are they running from us?'
The deadlock dragged on.
The barrier anchored to this Nightmare was a mess of my magic and the other Constellation's magic, mixed at something like a 3:7 ratio. And I was simply too inexperienced to track another Dream Demon through someone else's dream. So no matter how far we walked, only small fry kept popping up.
'If my magic is blended in and blocking me from pinpointing the enemy, or things have gone sideways and they're actively avoiding us—either way, there's nothing I can do about it, is there?'
We had no way to find the enemy. That alone made the whole situation a monumental pain. Were they rounding up more smugglers and swelling their own numbers, or were they just running like hell? We had no way of knowing, stuck as we were pacing a labyrinth of endlessly repeating cruciform corridors.
"By now, I think all our people are gathered?"
"What is this, a cockroach infestation? They keep pouring out..."
The suppression team, now swollen to a respectable size, appeared to be having the same thought. An hour of trudging through darkness so absolute that even with adapted eyes you couldn't see three meters ahead without a flashlight—nobody was enjoying that. The corridors hadn't widened to accommodate more people, either, so the simple act of moving together was becoming a chore.
'Wish I could do something.'
I'd tried what I'd seen in novels and comics—sending out threads of magic power like a heat haze, streaming them in every direction to try to map our surroundings. But the only thing that reacted to my power was Han Ye-ji. And even that wasn't detection, just some kind of magical contact—she just kept scratching at whichever spot the power touched.
As I walked, following that train of thought, a pale green light drifted toward us from somewhere, like fireflies.
The green light wove through the wary suppression team members and slipped right between me and Jeong Ah-rin. An Incarnation at the very front of the group opened her mouth at the same time Jeong Ah-rin did. Simultaneously, the pale green glow seeped into her wrist.
"Oh, this is—"
"Ah, there we go."
And her wooden bracelet blazed bright green.
"This way. Give me a moment—I'll take the lead."
"What, is an Authority manifesting?"
We were dozens of people depending on a handful of flashlights in a darkness where you couldn't see an inch ahead, so no one complained. They began following that green light—obviously an Authority at work—without a word.
Jeong Ah-rin took the vanguard, and I followed with Han Ye-ji and Namgung Hui just behind me, the rest of the crowd trailing after us.
A few more green fireflies drifted closer, and I felt the space around us brighten, little by little. I refocused to find that, at some point, I could see what was ahead even with every flashlight switched off. Not bright, exactly, but I could at least perceive that a light existed.
And at the end of that light stood a single blonde girl.
"The Unfading Giant Tree?"
"Come, come quickly. You're Lethargic Nightmare, aren't you?"
Maybe she was conscious of the Incarnations watching, but more likely she just hadn't introduced herself. Anyway, hearing someone greet me by my Constellation name sent goosebumps prickling across my skin. Once I got out of here, I absolutely had to learn her real name.
When the system text on the screen called me [Lethargic Nightmare], it felt a bit like a game chat. But having a girl barely reaching my chest call me "Lethargic Nightmare" out loud—that felt a little different. To be blunt, it was embarrassing. Would it be better if people called me a nickname, the way people shorten their handles at offline game meetups?
"This is... unbelievable..."
"Wow, this many of you were still alive?"
"Hey, that bastard's a spy. I remember his face from the op briefing yesterday."
While everyone else was still stunned from the Unfading Giant Tree's mental attack—a voice like a song that had just slapped our ears—she'd already neatly proven she was a Constellation. In this dark, cramped space, who else could manipulate tree roots as thick as a person's waist if not a Constellation?
Roots of a colossal tree smashed through rusted iron doors, prying apart gaps in ancient concrete as they grew. Where Han Ye-ji and I had placed Dream Demon magic in our hands to open doors, the Unfading Giant Tree had apparently just smashed her way through.
"The restrictions on Authorities here are absurdly severe. That's why it took so long."
A pretty little girl in a pure white tunic smiled the smile of a mischievous boy. As I stared blankly at the picture-perfect scene, she seemed to take it a different way—she puffed out her small chest and spoke proudly.
"Still, thanks to you, I have no trouble moving around. Maybe it's because of that Nightmare Fragment I ate back then?"
Now that I thought about it, the World Tree had swiped and devoured one of my Nightmare Fragments. That explained it. Everyone else had been sealed, Authorities and Talents and everything, so I'd wondered why that tree alone was squirming around just fine. Well, this was a being whose roots had already punched through the wall next to a Constellation's personal space—why would she have any trouble sinking roots into a Nightmare?
"I can't use any of my other abilities, but for some reason the World Tree's roots still extended all the way here."
Beneath the roots lay dozens of captured smugglers. If you counted the ones we'd already subdued, the number easily topped a hundred. The building had been, what, around twenty stories? Reasonable numbers, if you figured the place had been packed full. There were still plenty of bastards probably wandering around outside, lost.
More to the point: where had that singing, elvish way of speaking gone, and how was she talking this fluently? Had she been hiding her natural manner of speech the way a dialect speaker might deliberately use standard speech?
I tucked the curiosity away and asked the question I needed answered. She'd been a Constellation longer than me, and her abilities were far greater—there was no shame in leaning on that a little. Give me a single knife and I was confident I could wipe them all out, but when the hell was I supposed to finish searching this maze of underground passages?
"So, what do we do?"
"Don't worry. The tree will dig its roots in soon."
At the sight of two Constellations talking, Han Ye-ji, Jeong Ah-rin, and every member of the suppression squad tactfully cleared the space around us. Through the open view, I watched the tree roots bore into the floor with grinding, cracking sounds. Thick roots burrowed through the floor like a snake digging a tunnel, like a drilling machine made of wood.
"Ah, found them."
The girl flashed a cheeky grin, and a strange feeling came over me. Going by appearances alone, she was a delicate, lovely girl who belonged in a flower garden, wearing a flower crown and singing songs—but the smile curling the corners of her lips was the smile of a back-alley ringleader charging at you holding a dead frog.
The contradiction kept me from asking what was going on, and then she suddenly shouted.
"Grab hold of the roots, children!"
"Noooo!"
A man's howl, painful to the ear, ripped from somewhere in the distance, and at the same moment the world began to tremble.
This wasn't the spinning view you get when entering a lucid dream. The corridor really was shaking, like an earthquake had hit. The ceiling was ripped away and vanished. Aged walls crumbled; metal pipes were shredded and flung aside. Cracks split the floor, and people scrambled onto the tree roots. Like a dream world collapsing, everything around us began to physically rupture. Something like black fog roiled in through the shattered gaps, but it couldn't even get close to the roots.
No—rather, the roots drove forward and absorbed that darkness.
"Who—who are you!"
When my head cleared, a quiet garden greeted us instead of the dark corridor. The same lonely garden I'd seen in the Unfading Giant Tree's memories. If you walked far enough past it, you'd probably find the graves of the comrades she'd buried with her own hands. But that wasn't what mattered right now.
Fragments of concrete rained down, the earth bucked and heaved as if in an earthquake, and the enormous tree rippled and coiled like a serpent. Beyond it, at the edge of the garden, a man with exotic features was screaming, jabbing a finger toward the Unfading Giant Tree.
"How—how can an elf devour my Nightmare!"
"I am the Unfading Giant Tree. And what were you planning to do with my children after devouring them?"
Purple hair, snow-white skin, a tall and lanky frame—a pretty face like a model's. The lean man with only a hint of wiry muscle strode toward us, and the suppression squad's Incarnations tensed, shifting into combat stances.
"And I'm Lethargic Nightmare."
At that, feeling as though I ought to introduce myself too, I twirled the knife I'd taken and whispered into his ear. I don't have a hobby of murmuring into men's ears, but I wanted him to know who was killing him. The familiar sensation at my fingertips told me a Dream Demon's body isn't much different from a human's, I guess. What was he, an idiot? You can't just walk around in the middle of total chaos like this without watching your back. He didn't even notice me hiding among the snake-like wood-tendrils and closing in. The blade sank in smoothly, no bone to catch on—I'd stabbed him properly. I whispered softly.
"I'm not particularly curious about your name, though."
"...?"
A wet gurgle spilled from the man's mouth, blood-froth in place of last words. From behind him, I swept my palm down over his eyes.
Didn't want to look at a corpse whose eyes were still open.