Chapter 98: Constellation, A Tiny Nightmare 2
Chapter 98: Constellation, A Tiny Nightmare 2
Standing before the knights as they drew their practice swords and formed a corridor for me, I couldn't help but feel the weight of it.
"For honor!"
"For glory!"
The Incarnation I'd healed, at the head of the line, called out, and the knights lined up behind her roared the answer as one.
Their voices boomed across the grounds, dragging every gaze in the vicinity.
Maybe it was inevitable. A whole assembly of knights—women built to match any man—raising a ruckus was bound to draw eyes.
I was still debating whether to walk through that intimidating corridor.
Then I spotted Lee Ha-rin and one of the patients—another Incarnation—waiting on the other side of it, so I stepped forward.
As I passed, with Kim Ha-eun at my back, the knights lowered their swords.
"What is all this?"
"You've arrived, my Constellation."
Lee Ha-rin, who was supposed to be checking the magic circle, and Kim Ha-eun, who was supposed to be handling the patients' nightmares, both stood here together.
This didn't feel like the kind of thing Lee Ha-rin would stage with her beyond-a-hobby obsession, or Kim Ha-eun with her mana-hoarding fixation.
Why were the two of them gathered here at this hour?
Had something serious happened?
At that thought, I glanced back at the knights falling into formation behind me.
Well, having this many Incarnations gathered in one place was already a serious event.
"I greet the Constellation."
A woman swept back her wavy blonde hair, bowed her head with elegance, and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, knelt before me.
Curious, I offered the back of my hand. She brought her lips to it—barely grazing the skin, maybe not touching it at all.
So this is my life now. Getting kissed on the hand by a kneeling woman. That's a thing that happens.
"I have come to repay the grace you have bestowed upon us."
At those words, I focused magic into my eyes.
The knights in formation behind her were all wreathed in faint violet mana.
So, every one of those knights was a patient we'd already treated.
True to an Incarnation of the Martial Epic that Sings of Romance, this woman launched into a speech thick with florid rhetoric. I listened.
"Thanks to your mercy, vast as the sea, the foul delusions that veiled my eyes and stopped my ears have been washed away. A mere knight such as myself has nothing to offer you but glory on the battlefield. Might we be permitted to raise the violet pennant and ride across the field?"
listening and understanding were two different things.
The Incarnation posed her solemn question, and the knights behind her readied their practice swords for a salute.
Even so, I had no intention of asking, "What the hell does that mean?"
I figured I should at least play along with the atmosphere.
'You know what she's saying?'
I whispered, channeling mana so only my Incarnations could hear.
Thankfully, now that the Dream Demon's rank had gone up, I could manage some of the skills sold in the shop.
Lee Ha-rin answered without missing a beat.
'Among knights who have sworn an oath to a Constellation, certain individuals can receive bonus points under the name of "offering glory" when they go to war and achieve merit. I believe she means to offer that bonus to you as payment for the treatment.'
A low murmur, her own voice laced with mana, whispered in my ear.
Not exactly proper conduct while someone knelt waiting before you, but what choice was there?
I needed to know what was being proposed to give permission, or refuse—or react at all.
So, in short, she was offering to pay points under the guise of treatment fees.
I had no reason to refuse, so I gave a small nod. Again, soft lips brushed the back of my hand.
Then, with a deep bow, she vanished—swept away with the same sharp click of boot heels I'd heard before.
All twenty or so knights along with her.
'Come to think of it, should I have asked about that maid, or butler?'
Not one person, but a whole order of knights—plucked up and moved by a maid.
Curiosity flared late, but the knights had already disappeared without a trace.
I thought that marked the end of today's receiving line—
"There are a few more visitors."
Lee Ha-rin's voice came just as I was turning to leave.
What kind of day was this? I headed toward wherever the two Incarnations were leading me.
To a reception room inside the Academy building.
Kim Ha-eun opened the door, and Lee Ha-rin stepped aside so I could enter first.
"...?"
What met my eyes through the open doorway was a giant steel head.
I mean a truly massive metal suit—so enormous that even sitting down, she still loomed over me.
"What the hell is this...?"
A gigantic armored soldier hissing with noise was the last thing I'd expected.
An armored soldier who looked at least two and a half meters tall.
With the hiss of an engine, a huge steel fist extended something toward me.
The smell of gunpowder wafted off the metal plates—the armor itself resembled a heavy weapons platform.
A scrap of knowledge in the corner of my head screamed.
What was the Empress's favored Imperial Guard doing here?
In the memories of The Incinerating Tyrant, it was this very armor that kept vigil over the Empress's cryo-capsule until the end of its service life.
A monster forged from pure loyalty—365 days a year, if the suit didn't malfunction, that helmet never came off.
"I will accept it."
The monster's Incarnation extended her giant fist to deliver a letter.
Seeing that, Kim Ha-eun, who'd been standing behind me, hurried forward and took it in my stead.
A steel hand that looked as though it could crush my skull—and both of theirs—in a single grip.
And the massive scroll, proportioned to match that huge steel hand.
As Kim Ha-eun unrolled the scroll from top to bottom, a familiar magical signature hit me.
Even though it was just a mana remnant, the pounding, raging heartbeat—the explosive, thumping rhythm—felt uncannily like its owner.
"This is a letter... from The Incinerating Tyrant."
Counted among the oldest and most powerful Constellations, The Incinerating Tyrant.
A missive from such a heavyweight—Lee Ha-rin and Kim Ha-eun clearly hadn't expected it. I could feel their emotions waver.
Meanwhile, the giant armored soldier who had delivered the letter stood utterly motionless after handing it over.
"The Incinerating Tyrant..."
Kim Ha-eun's voice cut off.
Because of the magical storm erupting from the scroll.
Red mana-light flared bright enough to sear the eye. Lee Ha-rin, who'd been behind me, hurriedly wrapped her arms around me.
In that blinding storm of magic, only the armored soldier and I stayed calm.
- I assume it's being delivered properly. Hmph. As if a child I cherish so would fail to deliver a single letter.
Because the Tyrant's voice had begun echoing in my head just before the light erupted.
※
I wondered if this was how it felt to be thrown naked before a whale.
A storm of magic so powerful—mere lingering traces of it—pressed down on two Incarnations and one Constellation.
In the middle of it, Kim Ha-eun seemed to reach some kind of enlightenment, abandoned the treatment, and bolted for the training room.
And I, too, returned to the temporary sanctum to sort through my tangled thoughts.
'Why is he being so nice to me?'
The scroll the Tyrant sent was no ordinary message.
Knowledge and information, forcibly injected straight into the brain via mana wavelengths.
Just like when I'd first met him and received the knowledge of future Dream Demons—Dream Walkers, he called them—he had sent information again this time.
How to handle mana. How to forge dreams. And how to pull things out of dreams and give them form in reality.
Every piece of it was critical information, the kind you couldn't buy with points.
It wasn't framed as repayment for some favor, and it wasn't some woman smitten and courting me.
It's hard to imagine that a man driven mad by his wife's death has suddenly discovered a taste for men.
A man who was, rather, driven mad by a love so pure.
So mad he burned over a hundred worlds. The Emperor of humanity.
That man, awakened to homosexuality by grief over his dead wife, now making a pass at me?
If you wrote third-rate erotica like that, your inbox would overflow with 5,700-character hate letters.
Or maybe not. Weren't some of the trash web novels from my past life even worse?
'Well, he gave it, so I'll take it...'
Still, maybe an emperor was still an emperor—the gift landed right on the edge of my psychological resistance.
It was precious enough to be beyond comparison with perfume, a handkerchief, or a jeweled necklace.
But it also wasn't the kind of gift that would make me panic and refuse, demanding to know why the hell he was giving me this.
Sifting through the memories, I gathered mana in the air before me.
True to this world's idea of "masculinity," my specialty as a Dream Demon leaned closer to delicate mana manipulation.
I couldn't enhance a body to boost marksmanship like Han Ye-ji did.
I couldn't reinforce memory to churn out magic circles like a photocopier, like Lee Ha-rin.
I couldn't mimic others with overwhelming mana output, like Kim Ha-eun.
Instead, I was confident in copying other people's nightmares exactly as they were.
And the knowledge The Incinerating Tyrant gave me... let me copy things that weren't nightmares at all.
Threads of violet mana gathered into a round tangle, like a skein of yarn.
What I was shaping was a heart—a heart transformed into something almost cute.
I sculpted a pounding heart, the kind of vaguely heart-shaped heart you see drawn in cartoons.
I gave it shape, leaving an opening on the right and left for mana to flow in and out.
Over the heart, I laid blood vessels where mana, not blood, would course through.
Purple veins throbbing and squirming in time with the palpitations in the empty air—watching it was truly grotesque.
The color was pretty, so it looked more like jewels than blood—that had nothing to do with it.
Unlike a nightmare, which makes a flashy appearance only for a moment, these were the veins of a wolf beastman meant to live permanently.
As if I'd unrolled an anatomical chart in a corner of my mind,
I layered bones, muscle, and a hide of pure white fur over the mass of blood vessels, rendering every last capillary.
"Ah..."
The white-furred wolf beastman shook out her full-figured body, her fluffed-up pelt shuddering.
The wolf beastman straightened her fur, like a rain-soaked dog shaking off water, and took a step toward me.
"Grrrh, urrk."
No vocal cords? Or did I have to decide her voice too?
While I mulled that over, I admired the wolf beastman I'd created.
Did she see me as her master? Or was she trying to ask something?
A large, unrefined white-furred hand reached toward me.
Toward my face, claws sheathed.
The white fur brushed gently across my upper lip, soft as a top-quality handkerchief.
"Blood?"
Only after that soft touch passed did I realize what had stained that fur was blood.
And that this blood was streaming from my own nose.
Hot blood running past my lips, pooling at the tip of my chin, dropping onto the floor in fat drops.
"Ah, fuck..."
Finally, my head—drunk on mana moving at my own whim—snapped back to normal.
"M-My Constellation?!"
What The Incinerating Tyrant had given me was knowledge, not mana.
My total mana capacity hadn't changed. So if I recklessly spammed a high-level technique just because I'd learned it—
"What is this?!"
I couldn't even answer Lee Ha-rin's voice in my ear before my vision went dark.