Chapter 64: Fragment
Chapter 64: Fragment
At the tail end of that chain nuclear detonation, the Dream Demon became a Dream Demon—past tense—and vanished. The incident was closed.
The Suppression Unit, impressive as they are, had no authority to interrogate two Constellations. The case was settled based on the Incarnations' testimony: two Constellations neutralizing one.
Some of the Unit members who'd raised hell in the middle of the night were now grim-faced, drafting the morning patrol roster. The Unfading Giant Tree had already returned to her own space. And I was back in my studio with fourteen Nightmare fragments.
After fighting another Dream Demon, killing him, and ripping open my Origin in the process, a small rush of Dream Demon clan knowledge had trickled into my head—like a level-up notification for my brain.
So it really was a scrub-tier fight.
With the new knowledge settling in, the whole incident can honestly be boiled down to one phrase.
Scrub-tier fight.
In a world where alien monstrosities rampage against Constellations, the bastard who got his Origin snuffed out by a few nukes was, just like me, a nobody beginner Constellation. I only had to look at the Unfading Giant Tree: every other Authority of hers was sealed, and she still tore the guy's barrier apart with a single root.
Thinking back, it was blindingly obvious.
If this were a sci-fi setting like the Incinerating Tyrant's, would a couple nukes even scratch him? He roams the cosmos leading squadrons of space battleships that incinerate whole planets. The idea that he wouldn't have countermeasures against a nuclear missile is laughable. Any missile, nuclear or otherwise, would be intercepted by his anti-air defense net, and the radiation scrubbed away before it could touch him.
The same goes for fantasy-world Constellations. A magic-using Constellation would surely have some kind of combustion-suppression spell to defuse bombs—nukes would drop by the hundreds and just thud into the dirt without ever detonating. Or they could simply teleport the missiles away like someone casting Meteor.
And a physical-fighter Constellation with a sword? They'd slice me to ribbons hundreds of times over before a bomb-bay missile ever kissed the ground. Even a top-tier Incarnation can shatter a tank battalion with a kick-off and bare fists, so what do you think a Constellation would be capable of? With a gap that wide, obviously none of the Nightmares I throw at them would make them so much as flinch.
As the sun rose, Han Ye-ji—freed from morning duty—was heading home with a blissful smile, while Lee Ha-rin finished breakfast and dove straight back into her magic research. Kim Ha-eun had woken up in the foyer, hobbled stiff-legged through a shower on aching muscles, and was promptly collared by the gym director and dragged back to the weight room. She hadn't eaten yet, so the director kindly pressed a lunchbox of chicken-breast salad into her hands. Truly a heartwarming sight.
Watching all this, I sank into a small dilemma.
So am I supposed to just eat these?
In my hand: Nightmare fragments. They looked exactly like violet glass shards—thoroughly unappetizing.
While I waffled, a branch of the World Tree crept slithering toward me from behind. I smacked it away. A few leaves fluttered down, and I felt a small pang of guilt, but I'd already fed it one. I'd been wondering what the fragments were even for, and now I knew—they're basically experience potions. And you don't get them by sincerely healing someone else's Nightmares.
The Incinerating Tyrant called us "dream-dwellers," and the Unfading Giant Tree treated Dream Demons as unremarkable, so I'd figured we were just another fantasy race. Now I finally understood why the "demon" part of Dream Demon (夢魔) uses the same character as "devil" (魔).
So the method isn't resolving nightmares—it's inflating them until they burst.
No wonder I'd been breaking my back trying to soothe my Incarnations' nightmares and heal their traumas, and never got a single fragment out of it. The Dream Demon species: beings who inflate other people's nightmares to the bursting point and let the fallout manifest in reality. The way vampires live on blood, Dream Demons live on the sensation of agony within nightmares. Every method I agonized over up to now has been completely backwards.
A black mage trying to cast white magic—no amount of training is going to raise that level.
So the play isn't to target my Incarnations, but to grab suitable criminals—back-alley thugs—and harvest Nightmare fragments from them. Manually scanning through screens for victims is a pain, so wouldn't it be easier to use the criminals Han Ye-ji already arrests? That more or less sets my growth path. My Incarnations almost certainly won't be heading beyond the continent to fight monsters anyway.
So I'll grow the roster of Incarnations who capture human criminals inland, then inflict severe mental anguish on the prisoners and reap the Nightmare fragments.
I dodged the branch creeping toward me again, and bit into one of the Nightmare fragments with my front teeth—like snapping a square of chocolate.
In my hand, the shard had been hard as a metal splinter and wouldn't crack when thrown against the floor. The instant it met my front teeth, it crunched apart like a thin shard of ice dissolving in an iced americano, melting down my throat in a cool slide. A raw, minty clarity. So minty it felt like swallowing toothpaste.
Mint-chocolate ice cream I can handle. Pure, one-hundred-percent mint might've been too much for me. I drew a slow breath—the air hit cold, and my whole mouth tingled. Exactly the sensation of accidentally swallowing spit before you've rinsed while brushing your teeth.
Still... no reason to hoard these, right?
One shard, two, and then all fourteen fragments. I ate every last one. The branch drooped down over my head toward my lower back, but too bad. It's not my tree, and I'm still a low-level nothing who keeps getting sucked into weird trouble. The Incinerating Tyrant pulled me in the moment I got near his Incarnation, and I got dragged into that barrier cast by the Unforgotten Whatever even through indirect contact. Like a goldfish in a tank getting battered around by the current. No—wait, can't goldfish at least swim against the current? I'm getting tossed around like drifting plankton, and that doesn't feel great. My self-assessment sank from a one-year-old newborn to phytoplankton adrift in the waves... Maybe the bleak, sour turn of my mood is just the mint still clinging to my mouth.
And simultaneously, something surfaced in my mind. The way you'll suddenly remember, while walking outside, that you left the fridge door open—little shreds of Dream Demon memory were worming into my brain, a piece at a time.
※
A daydream. A dream dreamt while the sun is up.
The Dream Demon clan handles dreams. Did anyone think a little daylight would stop us from reaching in?
"Constellation, you're here."
Han Ye-ji, who'd slept like the dead all morning, hauled herself creakily into the office. Barely half a day had passed since that massive incident, yet the place was utterly still. The morning shift had gone home with funeral faces after pulling a double, and the afternoon and night shifts—since it wasn't patrol hour yet—were all slumped face-down at their desks, dozing.
Even a healthy Incarnation, operating under restricted physical ability and wandering in the dark for hours, is going to be mentally wrung out. Hard to blame them.
"I'll get the coffee."
"Yah, Han Ye-ji, save the sleep-talking for when you're fully asleep."
Poke. Jeong Ah-rin jabbed her in the side. So dozing was fine, but sleep-mumbling was off-limits? Han Ye-ji, indignant, turned her head away—then whipped it forward again. Naturally, the coffee-bearing image of me she'd just seen was no longer there.
"Huh? I'm sure the Constellation came with coffee..."
"Did you not sleep at home? If you're going to be like this anyway, just faceplant like the others—there's no way we're getting called out."
"No, I'm serious..."
Han Ye-ji scrubbed at her face a few times and collapsed onto the couch. Summoning Nightmares and Clones is visible to everyone. Daydreams, apparently, are illusions projected to a single target. As an unwitting test subject, Han Ye-ji was getting nagged for the first time in a while—I felt a little bad, but what could I do? Lee Ha-rin was buried in her magic circles again, and Kim Ha-eun was trapped in one more layer of the gym director's hell, shrieking, "Eight, nine, nine, nine, nine—one more!" I have no idea what country's counting system that's supposed to be.
After getting scolded to the last, Han Ye-ji grumbled under her breath and sank into the sofa, slipping into a shallow sleep.
Let's see what she's dreaming about.
Not lucid dreaming—just a regular unconscious dream. I slipped closer to watch. The Protector was gone, too—now I finally have something to do again.
On the sofa, Han Ye-ji dreamt of being called out again. The events from last night into this morning must have really seared themselves into her mind, because her dream played out almost identically. Well, she hadn't just tackled an ordinary criminal—she'd encountered a Fallen Constellation. Come to think of it: why did that bastard fall in the first place? What exactly was he trying to do? The only one who knew the truth has long since vanished into my stomach, and the underlings are all in custody being interrogated—no way for me to find out.
I was mulling this over while spectating Han Ye-ji's dream when—
What on earth is this now?
Apparently my appearance last night left quite an impression, because I had just made my entrance into her dream. Not as my usual benevolent self, but in some kind of black biker suit.
This feels incredibly weird to watch.
This wasn't a lucid dream; it was Han Ye-ji's unconscious fantasy version of me, and seeing it was... disorienting. There I was in a black biker suit, a cigarette dangling coolly from my lips, dramatically dropping in to subdue criminals—watching this was both embarrassingly awkward and mortifying. In her fantasy, I took a deep drag on the cigarette wedged between my index and middle fingers, then drew two daggers from the belt at the hip of my biker suit and wove through the horde of criminals, slashing in all directions. I wanted to lodge a protest that I am not some kind of dual-wielding devotee, but Han Ye-ji was sinking deeper and deeper into sleep. Waking her up over it felt a little too mean, so I decided to let her be.
Ultimately her fantasy progressed to the point where I, drenched in blood, slicked my sweat-soaked hair back with one hand, then—because it was hot—unzipped the suit to expose my chest. On a well-built guy standing over 180 centimeters, the image came off, to me, as aggressively macho and hyper-masculine. But to Han Ye-ji, she was experiencing it as a steamy dream—like watching a sexy older woman. She's been working hard... maybe I should actually try on the suit for her tonight?