The Weight of Forgotten Dreams
I turned down Mea’s offer to share her summoning spell for free.
Of course.
It was only logical.
You don’t become a demonologist by casually hoarding contracts. It’s simply not possible to stack that many high-ranking demons without consequences.
I could have tried. I could have crammed in every demon I possibly could, but then I wouldn’t have received any real authority at all.
Think of a contract as a stock certificate. Me—Roman Sun—am the company. I issue shares to the demon in exchange for worship, sacrifices, and a price, and the demon hands over power.
The value of the stock is determined by the rank of the demon.
It’s a fair analogy, right?
When a demonologist raises his own rank and contracts more demons, that’s like issuing new shares.
But existing shareholders hate that. Their ownership percentage drops.
Demons feel the same way.
There are limits to ranks, so some contracts are simply impossible from the start.
Great Marquees. High-ranking demons.
I already had two of them—Seir and Leraje—and I had no room for any more.
Even if I did, I almost certainly wouldn’t choose Mea’s demon.
Why contract with an Earth demon when you’re in this world? It didn’t make sense.
I still didn’t know the answer.
But Mea’s expression told me my refusal had hit her hard.
She sat there slumped, mouth shut tight, no words at all.
Offering to introduce her contract demon was the greatest favor a fellow demonologist could give. It had taken real courage for her to suggest it.
Had I been too blunt?
Even if it wasn’t now, I could have listened. When my rank climbed higher, I could have said I’d consider it.
Why do the good ideas always come after the fact?
Saying it now to Mea would sound like empty comfort. Awkward.
The awkwardness that followed was carried on ordinary conversation and serious training.
“…Hey.”
“Hm?”
“That’s a Plant Goblin. It mimics plants to hunt prey. And that thing over there is a Magnetic Beetle. It pulls in metal—stay sharp.”
Even in that situation, Mea moved with perfect composure, doing exactly what she was supposed to do.
She was an excellent guide.
So I had to live up to that expectation.
Ready, Ray?
[Of course, Roman.]
“I’ll clear the area right away.”
This was basically my first real combat experience in the Abyss.
This is an opportunity.
A chance to explain to Mea why I couldn’t contract her demon.
Monsters.
They were all gone.
§
Luckily the awkwardness vanished under the weight of casual talk and focused training.
It took the entire day, though.
By the time we finished, it was the third day when things felt almost normal again.
The original one-night, two-day plan had already been scrapped.
We had been pushing nonstop for days.
And Mea still hadn’t slept.
Even when I took the first night watch, she just lay there staring at the sky with wide-open eyes.
Not even pretending to sleep.
From the moment we entered the Abyss on day three, we had basically taken turns staying awake.
Day one: no time to watch our surroundings while guarding a four-person team.
Day two: barely out of the Main Base, constantly running into other explorers who made us stay on guard, plus the awkwardness.
Only on day three did Mea and I have a moment to actually enjoy the scenery.
And today—our fourth day in the Abyss.
As the crackle of dying wood crackled in the background, I sank into the strangely familiar yet alien view of the first floor.
Floating islands drifted under a pale blue sky, their shadows swallowed by dark mountain ranges that stretched endlessly.
The mystery was so profound it almost felt like being pulled in.
It was clear this was a world completely different from the outside.
But if this was the Abyss, something was missing.
“Must be the way we came down,” I said. “There aren’t many monsters.”
“There are.”
Mea pointed with her thin, delicate fingers.
A soft glow swayed in the wind—phosphorescent dust beetles.
“Oh, those?”
Back at the training ground I had thought they were like fireflies, but up close they were just sparkling dust.
“They’re harmless, so sometimes people ask if they can be classified as monsters.”
“They’re beautiful.”
If you thought about it, they were tiny insects, but when you forgot that detail they looked like a single slice of an aurora left to drift on the wind.
“It’s one of the reasons the first floor is called the Garden.”
Without a moon, the night darkness of the first floor was kept at bay by the explorers’ friends—phosphorescent dust beetles.
They supplied light that pushed back the darkness and acted as the bottom producers of the food chain in the Abyss. You could almost say they were the explorers’ livelihood.
But the relationship wasn’t one-sided.
It was mutual.
Because the beetles were both producers and decomposers of the ecosystem.
“…Maybe we’ll arrive tomorrow.”
Their nickname was the “Deathly Light Swarm.”
They followed the smell of death, moved toward corpses, and used them as nutrients.
Explorers who brought death were, from their perspective, the ones who created the food they ate.
Whether an explorer killed a monster or a monster killed an explorer, the light swarm would wrap around the corpse and feast on the death.
“Mea, you should get some sleep. Even you can’t stay awake forever.”
“I’m fine.”
“…It’s already day four.”
“I’m an elf.”
The price, right?
Sleep.
I hadn’t expected her to answer so directly.
Mea’s eyes widened in surprise for a moment, then returned to her usual blank expression.
Honestly, it wasn’t that strange once you knew the secret.
Refusing sleep this fiercely was obviously odd.
But since she was a demonologist, it made perfect sense.
Demonologists wore the collar of having to pay a price to the demon.
Mea, being an elf, was no exception.
Demonologists were the desperate ones who always tried to dodge or skim the price, so her refusal to sleep was just one more example of that.
“…Similar, I guess.”
Not sleep, then?
Dreams?
It wasn’t like she couldn’t sleep.
Mea didn’t sleep. She simply refused to.
The behavior itself was what she avoided, not the act of sleeping.
Either way, the price was terrible.
In practical terms, it was like giving up thirty percent of her life.
Humans need at least seven hours of sleep a day.
A third of human existence is spent sleeping.
Mea was an elf, so it was different, but the rule still stood.
“You mean the price you told me about—the demon’s price?”
“…Yeah.”
Her voice was completely flat.
Like she was hiding the fact that she had offered to show her summoning spell in the first place.
I had cut her off before she could say anything.
“Dreams. My contract demon takes dreams as payment. The leftover stuff is just nightmares.”
So that was why she refused to sleep.
If she avoided sleep that badly, the nightmares must be absolute hell.
“But even then, it’s a pretty decent price. It doesn’t steal your lifespan or leave permanent damage.”
“Coming from you, that sounds almost acceptable.”
Two nightmare-inducing wolves for summons… seemed like a pretty good deal for a contract.
“Even like this, it’s still a high-ranking demon. A Great Marquis.”
Mea had boasted that her contract demon was excellent in both power and price, but my standards were now too high.
I couldn’t accept anything that wasn’t free.
I practiced the words “I’m fine” in my head while I listened to her explanation.
Then, suddenly, her voice cut off.
She had fallen asleep.
Had the tension finally released?
Or had she fallen into a trap she didn’t even know about?
After four nights without sleep, she should have collapsed by now.
I had only seen her awake for four days, but she might have gone longer before.
I collapsed beside her because of the sudden sleepiness and adjusted her stiff posture into a proper lying position.
Not long after, a soft groan escaped her lips—unintelligible words, like a nightmare.
She looked like she was in agony.
Sweat dripping, face twisted, body trembling.
“It’s bad.”
I wiped the sweat from her forehead.
Fortunately she had no fever—probably because she was already exhausted from the nightmares.
Do you want me to help?
“Can you?”
Hm… accepting a price is a valid contract, so interference is tricky, but I can still try.
Seir, the Duchess of Hell, lived up to her title.
Not me—Leraje!
…Oh, oh, the Great Marquis!
Why, help me?
“Yeah. Please.”
It’s simple. When you summon me next, throw in an extra tanghuru. Got it?
Of course.
The Marquis-level demon who had just been sending me nightmares was offering tanghuru as a price?
Thank you, thank you, Earth demons!
§
The moment I opened my eyes, Mea knew something was wrong.
—Snap!
She sat up instantly.
The blanket covering her body flew off in the rough movement, but she didn’t even notice.
I… slept?
When? How long?
She hadn’t wanted to sleep.
She hated the nightmares that forced her to relive memories she didn’t want to remember.
She hated the nightmares that made her experience the same unbearable things again.
And above all, the crushing emptiness that followed terrified her.
Of all times… now…!
She had been underground in the Abyss for too long.
In the Abyss, even resting quietly built up fatigue.
She had been warned that the surface was completely different, but she had been the one who couldn’t manage it.
This is exactly the time…
“Are you awake?”
“Hm?”
“Rest well?”
Rest well?
I knew she hadn’t.
After all, she had been told the price of sleep was nightmares.
But right now…
“Eh?”
I felt at peace.
The sweat that usually soaked her sheets after waking had vanished.
The soreness from tossing and turning during sleep was gone.
The disoriented haze left by nightmares was gone.
There was nothing wrong at all.
In fact, she felt refreshed.
How long had it been?
The feeling of waking up after a deep, uninterrupted sleep.
I couldn’t even remember when I had last felt that.
“You…”
“Time for breakfast and to head out.”
“No, it’s not like that…!”
Sleep wasn’t the problem.
The real issue wasn’t even the sleep itself.
Roman had contracted Seir and Leraje, but Mea had also contracted multiple demons.
One of their prices was far more lethal than a simple nightmare.
Mea frantically searched for her notebook and flipped it open.
She read the first page, then the second, moving quickly and accurately through the last entry.
When she reached the end at high speed, her mind felt even more chaotic.
“Why…?”
She remembered everything?
---
Flashback Activation
The memory of the night before came rushing back in vivid detail.
Mea had been lying on the ground, eyes wide open, staring at the sky as if searching for an answer that wasn’t there.
Her voice, when it finally came, was barely a whisper.
“…I’m sorry, Roman.”
But I had already cut her off.
I didn’t want to hear the price.
I didn’t want to know what I was refusing to accept.
The guilt on her face after that had been the real weight.
She had offered the greatest favor a demonologist could give, and I had rejected it without even hearing the details.
Now she was the one carrying the burden.
The guilt I felt was heavier than any nightmare.
I won’t make the same mistake again.
I sat up, moved closer to Mea, and gently placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You don’t have to carry this alone,” I said quietly. “We’ll figure it out together.”
Mea looked up at me with those dark, empty eyes that somehow still held a spark of hope.
“…Thank you, Roman.”
Her voice was soft, but the relief in it was real.
For the first time in days, the air between us felt less heavy.
The journey had been rough, but we were still walking.
And for now, that was enough.