City of Dreamers (5)
"Kgh— what, earplugs in? The only one I serve is the Great Emperor…… Kghk!"
With a face devoid of all expression, Oscar drove his foot firmly into the nape of the man sprawled beneath him.
One more ounce of pressure here, and his neck would snap.
"……I've seen men like you until it made me sick."
Even at the height of the war, they had been everywhere.
Those so terrified of the demons that their minds finally snapped and they simply lost it.
Or opportunists seduced by the sweet rewards the demons promised.
Beasts wearing human faces, who would shamelessly sell out yesterday's comrades for the sake of surviving one more day.
'For example, the likes of the Black Tower Master from back then.'
Men he could tear apart limb from limb and still not feel avenged.
Oscar remembered.
He remembered exactly how many people had been forced to die — without reason, without meaning — because of those men's betrayals.
Recalling those faces, Oscar bit down hard on his lip.
'……But the war is over.'
These were peaceful times, weren't they?
There was no longer any need to face demons on the battlefield, no reason anyone should have to sell out their own allies to stay alive.
And yet why — why were men like this still roaming around, preying on innocent people?
"Talk."
Exercising a truly superhuman patience so that he wouldn't kill the man by accident, Oscar asked,
"The Great Emperor is dead. So why do you still believe in him? Why follow him?"
"Kk— the Great Emperor is mightier than any being alive, more merciful than any, more perfect than all things in creation. The day he returns to this world, the filthy Empire and all of humanity will be destroyed. Only we, the chosen few who believed in him from the beginning, will be reborn as the new mankind."
"……"
Oscar's brow furrowed at that blind, rancid faith.
But one phrase the man had uttered kept snagging strangely in his mind.
'……The Great Emperor will return?'
In the old days, he would have dismissed it as nonsense. Now, he couldn't afford to.
After all, he himself had come back from death.
"What do you mean, he'll return?"
"K-Kkk……"
With one hand raised, the man gazed at his blackened fingers in rapture.
"He will come back to us. He must……"
"……"
Religious fanaticism, in the most literal sense of the word.
Unable to stomach any more of the babbling, Oscar put more weight into his heel and growled.
"Enough. Just tell me what you've done to this city. Why won't the people wake up?"
"The people? Ahh — have you ever heard of the Nightmare Baron?"
"……What?"
Why would that name come up here, of all places?
Seeing Oscar's eyes waver violently, the man snickered.
"Judging by your face, you know of him. He himself has put every human in this city to sleep. By nightfall, all of them will have lost their lives—"
Crunch!
Oscar crushed the man's vertebrae underfoot and spun away in a single motion.
There was far too little time left to waste on conversation.
'The Nightmare Baron. If he's the one behind all this, every question answers itself.'
The reason why, with the entire city asleep, he alone remained awake and unaffected.
It was almost certainly because he was already under a dream curse.
'When I fell asleep last night, the two curses must have conflicted with each other.'
In that collision, the stronger curse would have triggered — and naturally, that would have been the one already carved into him.
A curse cast over five thousand people, versus a curse cast over a single one. There was nothing to debate.
Thud! Back inside the inn, Oscar looked down at the people sunk in their deep slumber.
'First, I need to identify the wavelength of the dreams they're having.'
If he could capture that wavelength and imitate it, he would be able to enter the same dream himself.
His own soul was already engraved with a dream curse, after all — slipping in and out of dreamscapes would be no trouble at all.
"Scan."
His mana swept through the entire inn.
It took several minutes for the results to come back.
Oscar went upstairs and found an empty room.
'……'
After a few moments of steadying his breath and waiting, the results surfaced before his eyes.
He tore through the data in seconds, and his gaze sharpened.
'Found it.'
An identical wavelength, present in dozens upon dozens of the sleepers.
Copying it wholesale into his own mana code, Oscar lay down on the shabby bed.
Then he cut off every last thread of oxygen flowing to his brain — deliberately, coldly, in order to pass out.
"Hahk!"
His eyes snapping open, Oscar shot upright.
When he made his way down to the first floor, the scene that greeted him was nothing like before — the hall was thronged with people.
"……"
The sight was as vivid as reality itself, but Oscar didn't panic.
He was, after all, the only man alive who had dreamed this particular kind of dream countless times before.
Forced to put a label on it, he might be called the continent's one and only expert on nightmares.
'Sometimes a dream curse simply runs its course and ends gently, with nothing happening…….'
But if the curse's purpose was the victim's death — and it almost always was — then a corruption of the dream would inevitably occur.
And within that nightmare, there was only one way to wake up.
'Defeat the corrupted entities inside the dream. That's all there is to it.'
Hurrying out of the inn, Oscar found Christmas carols and the ringing of Salvation Army bells chasing each other past his ears.
He studied the enormous crowd flooding the streets and thought.
'……First things first. Whose dream is this?'
Even in a dream shared by five thousand people, there was always a protagonist.
And the reason he had to find that protagonist was a simple one.
'There's exactly one way to shatter the Nightmare Baron's dream: eliminate the corrupted entity.'
And the corrupted entity always lingered at the protagonist's side.
'But……'
Scanning the sea of faces, Oscar frowned.
He had no way of knowing which of these people was the one.
'And I can't just start killing people at random, either.'
Because every one of them was a living, breathing human being.
Die here, and you would die in the waking world too.
Just as he was biting his lip and racking his brain for a solution, a familiar face slipped past right in front of him.
"Huh? Veronica!?"
"……Gah. What the hell, why are you grabbing me? Did you eat something bad this morning?"
"Perfect timing. This is no time to be standing around out here."
"Huh? Wh— hey!"
Seizing her hand and hauling her into a deserted back alley, Oscar launched straight in.
"Veronica, listen to me carefully. We're inside a dream right now. The dreamscape."
"……Is this fun for you?"
When her half-lidded eyes turned on him, Oscar hastily amended his explanation.
"I'm not joking. Have you ever heard of the Nightmare Baron? He cast a curse over the whole city last night."
"Whew. Nightmare Baron, Lucky-Dream Count, whatever — that's your problem. I have somewhere to be, so I'm leaving."
Oscar trailed after her as she genuinely started to walk out of the alley, pressing his case again and again.
"I'm dead serious. If we don't eliminate the corrupted entity fast, everyone here is going to die."
"Give it a rest. Today isn't April Fool's, it's Christmas. Keep this up and I swear I'll curse you out."
"When have you ever known me to spout nonsense? I was right about the mana power plant, wasn't I?"
"That time…… a giant cocoon showed up right in front of us. You only got believed because we saw it."
Veronica glanced sideways at him without breaking stride.
"So unless you've got some believable evidence this time too — got any of that?"
"Evidence……"
He didn't. He couldn't even tell yet who the corrupted entity was.
While he stood there in silence, Veronica stopped in front of one of the restaurants and snapped at him.
"How long are you planning to follow me? I have an appointment, so buzz off already."
"……This is where your appointment is?"
Oscar looked up at the upscale restaurant — expensive at a glance.
Through the window he caught a glimpse inside: a formally dressed ensemble was even performing live.
Reading the thought off his face, Veronica flushed red.
"Wh— what. Is a poor person not allowed to eat somewhere like this?"
"No, that's not what I meant…… Fine. Then I'll eat with you."
"Don't be ridiculous. Why would I eat breakfast with you?"
Just as the two of them, still bickering, stepped through the door the waiter held open —
a voice called out to her from a corner of the room.
"Veronica! Over here!"
Veronica turned toward it, spotted the people she'd come to meet, and broke into a radiant wave.
"Mom! Dad!"
"……"
What did she just say?
His expression turning grave in an instant, Oscar stared at Veronica.
'……Found her.'
The protagonist of this dream was Veronica herself.
The ensemble was magnificent.
The gentle piano and the delicate cello played in perfect harmony, pleasing the ear from start to finish.
'……I'm going to die.'
Yet Oscar, seated at the table, was suffocating slowly, gasping for air.
It had gotten to the point where fighting demons actually seemed more relaxing.
Whether or not she sensed it, the elegant unfamiliar lady opposite him was smiling warmly at him.
"So — this handsome young man, is he your sweetheart?"
"Ah— Mom!"
When Veronica exploded, the quiet, reserved gentleman of a father chided her.
"Becky. Don't shout at your mother."
"……I'm sorry."
"And you, stop pestering the girl over nothing. Look, you've made her sulk."
"Ahem. Well, I only worry about her because……"
The three of them were as harmonious a family as if they'd stepped straight out of a children's storybook.
A bright, vivacious mother; a quiet but gentle father; and a shy daughter who adored them both.
'……They look happy.'
Was that why?
Veronica — who had never once struck him as anything but sharp-tongued and ferocious — had turned into a docile little lamb.
This, surely, was the very picture of family that even in her dreams she must have longed for.
'She really is different from me, then.'
He himself had been different.
From childhood, he had never particularly wanted family, nor missed one.
Now and then he'd wondered what family was supposed to be, but that had been nothing more than a passing, innocent question.
'Whereas this girl…… she wanted a family this badly, all along.'
Personally speaking, this was the first time he had ever seen Veronica smile so brightly.
If she had grown up in an ordinary household, this was precisely the woman she would have become.
With no reason to harden herself, no reason to keep her spines bared and exhausted all the time.
'But.'
This couldn't go on. Seeing her like this only made him more determined to wake her from this dream.
If it lasted too long, she might come to know it was a dream — and still refuse to leave it.
"Veronica."
"Hm, what? And eat something already. You haven't touched a bite since we sat down. Not hungry?"
"……We have to shatter this dream."
"That again?"
Veronica let out a soft sigh, and her mother leaned in.
"Shatter the dream, sweetheart? What on earth does that mean?"
"No idea. He's been spouting nonsense all morning — dreams this, corrupted entities that."
"Ohoh, I suppose your young man had a bad dream last night."
"He's not my young man, I keep telling you……!"
Irritated, Veronica shot Oscar a small, pointed warning.
"Hey. If you're going to keep spouting that crap, get out. Don't ruin a perfectly good mood."
"……"
Wearing an utterly grave expression, Oscar asked,
"Veronica. You said earlier that if I had evidence, you'd believe me."
"I said give it a rest."
"Then here it is. Your evidence."
With that, he rose from his seat and extended a hand politely toward the elegant lady.
"Forgive me for introducing myself so late. I am Oscar Crucian, a 3rd-level mage of the White Tower."
"Ohoh, think nothing of it. Such formalities. I'm Veronica's……"
Her voice trailed off — and for one instant, her expression froze solid. Then, as if nothing had happened at all, she smiled brightly once more.
"I'm her mother."
"Forgive my impertinence, madam, but I would like to hear your honored name."
"Oh my, well then, my name is…… my name is……"
The focus in the lady's eyes dissolved into fog.
Then her pupils began to whirl in circles, like a machine that had broken down.
"Her— her mother……. I'm this child's mother……. I……"
Watching her, Oscar spoke — as much explanation as accusation.
"A corrupted entity is a kind of automated puppet the Nightmare Baron builds. It cannot execute any command that deviates significantly from the behavior patterns written into it in advance."
"……"
"The simplest way to expose one is exactly what I just did — ask it an unexpected question."
"……"
Veronica said nothing. She simply stared at her mother — no, at the corrupted entity.
"It has to be destroyed. Otherwise, thousands of citizens will die."
"……"
Just as Oscar parted his lips to plead his case to the silent Veronica one more time —
Snap. The ensemble's music cut off mid-note, and a frigid silence settled over the restaurant.
At the same moment, Oscar felt stares pouring in from every direction. He turned, slowly, to look around him —
waiters frozen mid-step with trays of food and wine, even the musicians with their instruments still raised — every single one of them staring at him, motionless, unblinking.