Chapter 83: Relieving Needs 4
Chapter 83: Relieving Needs 4
I pulled my attention away from Lee Ha-rin's desires—she'd been tending to me like some devoted caretaker spoon-feeding me water and meals—and looked back at the screen.
The moon that had been hanging high overhead had crept much lower while I wasn't paying attention.
I'd been zoning out in the bath, blissed-out from her languid service, completely unaware of the time slipping by.
The only thing that actually happened was an underwater blowjob in the hot spring, but the time had stretched out almost as much as it had in Han Ye-ji's fantasy.
'And Kim Ha-eun is... here.'
I found her asleep in her single dorm room, surrounded by towers of boxes she still hadn't finished unpacking. Given how early my Incarnations tend to wake up, there wasn't much time left—but curiosity pulled me onward anyway.
I only have three Incarnations. Stopping after just two would nag at me.
If I'm going to look, I should look at all of them in one go.
I steadied myself and slipped into her lucid dream.
The massive ritual from earlier in the day must have left a strong impression, because tonight she wasn't dreaming about the gym—she was at the Academy. I headed straight for Kim Ha-eun, who was in the middle of a workout on the Academy training grounds.
"Ah, my Constellation—you're here—ack?"
"Let's get you under first."
She'd been running hard, still breathing in rough gasps. Before she could even steady herself, I poked her forehead, same as the other two. She isn't as skilled with magical power, so I need a physical trigger like this to handle my Authorities smoothly.
"Nngh... what brings you here?"
"Don't resist. Just let yourself sink in."
Even so, her outstanding mana sensitivity kept her from slipping into unconsciousness right away. I tapped her forehead a few more times.
Only after hearing those words did she finally stop reflexively clinging to the lucid dream, unwind the mana she'd wrapped around herself, and let herself fall into unconsciousness as I intended.
Seriously, even in her own lucid dream she puts up a fight.
I followed Kim Ha-eun's slow descent into her unconscious world.
What unfolded before me was a battlefield. I had the sense I'd seen something like it before. Kim Ha-eun's strongest impression came from The Incinerating Tyrant's event. Her desire was the thrill of watching monsters get swept away in a cathartic slaughter.
There's nothing more tedious than watching the same thing twice.
Great classics are worth rereading, sure, but what reason is there to sit through a simple dream like this a second time? Mildly disappointed, I was about to leave—but when I looked closer, Kim Ha-eun wasn't here.
Last time, she'd been manning a cannon turret like something out of The Incinerating Tyrant's fleet, firing wildly. Not tonight.
So there's a different desire at play?
Curiosity drew me into the battlefield.
What I saw was bombardment raining down from high above, denser than a downpour. Showers of crimson light pillars overturned the earth, sent lava geysering skyward, and pulverized monsters.
As I drew closer and observed with a spectator's eye, it became clear this dream was nothing like the last one.
"Push! Push! Push them back!"
"Ho! Ho! Ho!"
"The flow of Providence is with us!"
"A single lantern shall light the battlefield!"
Even as the ground churned and lava surged, there were muscular women in the thick of it—hurling themselves into brutal hand-to-hand combat against the monsters, their war cries savage, their shouted chants reeking of sweat and camaraderie. Like primitives driving mammoths in a hunt, these slabs of muscle herded building-sized monsters into one spot. Then cold-weapon fighters came dancing over clouds and wind, threading through the gaps between the creatures.
Beyond the ridge, a modern army rolled in with howitzers and tanks, firing nonstop. Incarnations dangling from turret mounts straight out of a video game duplicated bullets in midair. When hazy light sketched patterns between the laser beams and conventional ordnance, flames, lightning, chunks of ice, and clouds of poison came pouring out of them, charring the monsters alive.
'Is this some kind of all-star match?'
Martial artists in flowing silk robes. Knights in steel plate. Mages in billowing cloaks, jeweled staves in hand. Hunters draped in beast hides, swimming beneath the ground to reposition. Even armored soldiers charging with massive heavy weapons, micro-generators strapped to their backs.
It looked like every Incarnation in the world had gathered to slaughter monsters.
The monsters themselves were anything but ordinary. A creature with thrashing tentacles dozens of meters long oozed across the ground like a land octopus, spewing ink that rolled forward as a black poison fog. Man-eating locusts the size of forearms swarmed in clouds, their wings slashing like blades. Packs of grotesque beasts surged through the artillery fire, using their fallen comrades as shields.
Overwhelming firepower kept them at bay, but the numbers were unmistakably against them.
'So where the hell is Kim Ha-eun?'
She was nowhere to be found in any of it.
Was her desire simply to watch monsters get wiped out? No action movie in the world could match this spectacle. There were easily over ten identifiable Constellations and thousands of Incarnations here—who could possibly render all this in CGI? Watching it was viscerally satisfying, I'll admit. But it was hard to call this an unconscious desire.
As I was puzzling over that, a low, ominous horn sounded from somewhere.
Hard to say whether it was a trumpet or a war horn. A deep, dull note that pierced straight through the din of battle and rang in the ears. At the sound, every Incarnation on the field turned toward the same spot.
The ridge opposite the hill where the artillery units were dug in and firing.
Beyond the smoke and dust, backlit by the sun, a beautiful man appeared holding a banner.
No matter how I looked at it, that man was me.
※
The first to react was the army, stationed a step back from the front lines—from the soldiers loading howitzers to the riflemen in the trenches, tense fingers on their triggers. A stream of unfamiliar words spilled from the lips of men and women alike, soldiers who had been firing breathlessly moments before.
Nightmare-Devouring Nightmare. The Living Breath of Dreams. The Violet Uniform. The Deathless Veteran. The Returned Incarnation.
Strange phrases rolled off their tongues. Thousands of soldiers—and even the generals with ornate insignia on their shoulders—recognized me, standing on that hill with the banner in hand.
Next came the Incarnations.
The muscle-bound warriors hoisted steel masses bigger than a person and locked into formation. Knights and murim fighters rallied into battle lines. Mages, espers, and gunslingers clustered tightly in the rear.
Seeing all this, I finally understood Kim Ha-eun's desire clearly.
Influence that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the Incarnations representing all four continents. Authority so absolute that showing a single banner was enough to make armies and Incarnations respond on instinct.
She wants me to rise to the same level as The Incinerating Tyrant.
That's one hell of an ambition. Too big, even.
That influence had been simplified inside her unconscious mind and was now expressing itself as a display of raw military power. There was nothing remotely sweet or lewd about it—this desire was a long, long way from anything like that.
I gave up on any hope of a sex scene and settled in to watch what this version of me inside Kim Ha-eun's unconscious would do next.
A white banner with a purple butterfly emblem. The design was a little blurred—she hadn't settled on the details yet. Beyond it, I spotted a familiar shade of purple hair. Kim Ha-eun, no question.
She extended her violet mana in a long wave, and it flooded across the ground like water streaming down a slope. Should I call it a purple lake, or a vast carpet unrolling?
In true dream-world fashion, an absurd quantity of mana blanketed the battlefield. The earth was consumed by violet power so thoroughly that it began to rise off the ground in shimmering heat-haze wisps. A pale-purple mana mist spread like sea fog over the water, blotting out everything more than an inch ahead.
Inside that violet haze, Kim Ha-eun unfurled enormous wings.
No war cry, no shout—just that low, ominous horn echoing once more.
Then shapes began surging out of the fog, shoving the front lines back. Soldiers in uniform. Incarnations in attire like Kim Ha-eun's. But what stood out most were the others—entities unmistakably alien, neither monsters nor Incarnations nor soldiers.
A pierrot floated aloft clutching a bundle of balloons, smashing monster skulls with a wooden mallet. Its lips were painted garish red, split ear to ear, and every time it grinned, the shark teeth inside that cavernous mouth flashed. Sticky saliva stained crimson—had one of the smaller creatures been bitten to death?
A massive woman in a pure-white mask trudged through the heart of the battlefield. Monsters lunged at her, but she stabbed them just under the ribs or the foreleg, and they crumpled to the ground twitching, dying with a thin whimper. All she used was a single kitchen knife.
A woman whose limbs bent backward at grotesque spider-like angles crawled upside-down across the ground, snatching up small insect-type monsters with her hair.
Elongated beast arms reached up from inside shadows and dragged creatures underground. High overhead, a hideous bird of prey swooped down to pluck up monsters of convenient size.
Scenes ripped straight out of a third-rate horror movie parody.
"Reinforcements! Reinforcements have arrived!"
"Don't let up! Push them back now!"
From my perspective, it was absurd enough to draw a dry laugh, but what could I do about it? This was Kim Ha-eun's desire. Not to kill monsters—to drive them entirely off the continent so they could never set foot here again. To avenge her parents. To make sure no one else ever lost their family the way she had.
That was her desire.
Compared to Han Ye-ji, who fantasized about being led by a rugged older man through a movie-perfect first night, or Lee Ha-rin, who seethed with jealousy at the thought that anyone but herself could look after me—wasn't this downright admirable?
'Should I just watch and leave, then?'
Seeing Kim Ha-eun spread her mana wings, basking in the cheers of soldiers and Incarnations alike, I didn't feel any urge to approach. Watching monsters drop like pesticide-poisoned rats, I thought, well—if nothing else, there's a silver lining to this: some serious stress relief right here.
'Still, that's kind of embarrassing.'
Everything else was fine, but seeing myself march forward holding a banner made me cringe a little. What was that famous painting from my old life—Liberty Leading the People? Like that woman charging forward with the flag at the head of the citizens, watching myself strike a dramatic pose with a banner in front of advancing Incarnations was a bit mortifying. Thank god this was an unconscious world with no one watching.
I'm used to lurking in the dark and driving a blade into someone's ribs. Leading from the front like that doesn't suit me at all. Sorry, Kim Ha-eun, but I don't think I'll ever be standing at your side holding a flag like that.