Chapter 729: City of Dreams (2)
The wind was pale. It brushed my cheek and circled gently around me. The view before my eyes, sparkling endlessly like water full of sunlight, slowly came into focus. Even so, it still felt like there was a thin veil laid over everything.
I was sitting on a long bench. Huge glass doors stood wide open, the space in front of me completely unobstructed. Beyond them, I could see a summer garden. The greenery was in full force. Every leaf held breaking light and spilling shadows. Inside all of that, I could feel time moving very, very slowly. Summer was here, and at the same time, it was quietly on its way out. The breath of the season was peaceful.
I felt like I could sit here, blankly watching, until the green leaves turned all sorts of colors, dried, and fell in a rustling pile, and it still wouldn’t get old. Until white snow neatly filled the empty branches, until the ground froze and cracked… and then, between the falling snow, early flower buds would poke their heads out. I suddenly missed flowers as white as the snow.
Ting. Somewhere, a sound like a tiny bell rang.
My toes tickled. When I lowered my gaze, I saw my bare feet stretched out in the white sunlight. The slippers were worn and familiar. As I wiggled my toes a little, a hand suddenly appeared in front of me. It was holding a bar ice cream. I took the pale sky–blue bar. My little brother sat down next to me.
This is a dream.
“Yeah. It’s a dream.”
My twenty–five–year–old brother said. Dressed in comfortable clothes, Yuhyun looked like a college student on summer break. In his hand was the same sky–blue ice bar as mine. There was so much I wanted to say that I couldn’t say anything at all.
I bit off the tip of the slightly firm ice cream. It was a dream, but the cold sweetness still spread through my mouth. Beside me, I heard the crunch of another bite.
It was a time we might have had.
Yuhyun looked at ease. With a faint smile on his lips, he looked at me. The arm revealed under his short–sleeved shirt, the hand holding the ice cream, both were spotless, not a single wound in sight. Suddenly, something someone who’d lost their family before me once said came to mind. They’d said the person they lost had appeared in their dream.
‘They didn’t say much. They just stayed there like it was real life and then left. They didn’t even say they were doing okay, they just looked… at peace.’
Watering the plants they used to care for when they were alive, sitting on the couch, looking out at the sky beyond the window. Just peaceful.
‘It felt like they were telling me it was time to let go.’
That’s what they’d said. I know everything has an ending. And I know I have to live my own life. A lot of time has passed since I let go of Yuhyun.
We turned time back to the doorstep of summer, to late spring, and it’s already crossed into a new year. Summer, and then autumn, have passed, and winter has deepened, just waiting for the moment it falls away. It hasn’t been a full year for me, but it’s been about nine months. Enough time for a thin layer of fresh soil to pile up in the hollow of my chest.
“I know I’m being stubborn.”
To anyone else, he’d be a dead person and just a body. The living have to live. I know that, but…
“I just can’t let go. Some people are like that, right?”
Maybe that’s just how I was born. I finished the ice cream. Holding the stick, I turned to look at Yuhyun. He was looking at me, smiling silently. It was a face, and eyes, full of affection.
“Seeing you like this just makes it even harder to give up.”
Because I know what you were like before this.
“You should’ve come home in the end, at least. Yuhyun, you wanted to be with me.”
Even if you got yelled at, you should’ve stuck to me somehow. I should’ve thrown a fit and screamed that I’d die if you abandoned me. No matter how much worse things got, it would’ve been better to cling to each other to the very end.
So I had to bring him back. If the place he wanted to stay was by my side, then how could I leave him alone somewhere else, body or not, and live comfortably? Unless I planned to beat my chest in regret for the rest of my life, I had to go get him, no matter what it took.
“So even if you say you’re fine, it doesn’t matter. This is for me, too. I want, with my own hands…”
“Yeah.”
A voice that sounded endlessly far and painfully close at the same time reached me.
“I’ll wait, hyung.”
Eyes that saw only me drifted away. They sank into the water. Air bubbles scattered. My eyes flew open.
[Honey!]
A message window was flashing urgently. Coughing, I pushed myself up. It was dim all around; I couldn’t see very well. My eyes felt weirdly blurry.
“H–how are the others– cough.”
[You got separated! I can’t tell their exact locations, but they’re pretty far. Uh, Park Yerim, Noah, Liette, Hwang Rim. Those four landed in the same area.]
At least Yerim wasn’t on her own. Hwang Rim worried me a bit, but with Noah and Liette there, they should be fine.
[Han Yuhyun, Peace. Those two landed together in another area.]
Looked like people who dropped at the same time got grouped. If it’s Yuhyun and Peace, they’ll head straight for me. I wasn’t too worried about them either, so… don’t tell me.
[Seong Hyunjae, Song Taewon. Those two are in yet another area together. All three teams are pretty far apart, so regrouping quickly is going to be difficult.]
…Chief Song, I’m sorry. It just kind of turned out that way. Seong Hyunjae, don’t bully Chief Song.
“Can we at least contact each other?”
[No! Even sending messages to you is hard! I can barely talk to you because you’re classified as a system administrator, but it won’t last long. That world doesn’t even have the system installed yet!]
This was the dream world Mari made. But…
“Ah, Crescent Moon said this wasn’t Mari’s dream.”
[Yeah, Senior Sloth said that too! That it felt like the ‘owner’ changed at the end. Uh, the dreamer got switched, apparently? So the power to materialize the dream actually got even stronger, but…]
“…It’s probably a Transcendent’s seed Crescent Moon planted. That’s the pillar.”
I didn’t know how a Transcendent’s seed ended up taking Mari’s place, but thinking back on Crescent Moon’s words, it sounded like that. Then what happened to Ms. Mari and Mr. Samir… I hoped they’d both returned to the real world safely.
[A Transcendent! If a Transcendent is the pillar, that would explain it. Anyway, Honey, that place is pre–system and the mana’s still unstable.]
“…Wait.”
“Inventory!”
[Right. Inventory is unavailable.]
“My status window won’t open either?!”
[Skills are going to be hard to use too.]
“Items? Grace!”
No answer. The jewel’s glow was dim. Hopefully that didn’t mean anything serious.
[Item effects will have trouble activating as well. And your stats are going to be close to an unawakened state.]
“What? What about my kids!”
I was still at least F–rank. I’d leveled a bit, so I was stronger than before I awakened, but most of my stat difference was basically thanks to my items. But the others were S–rank. Even if they dropped close to unawakened, they’d still be stronger than me, but the gap would be enormous compared to before! At this rate, Peace might be the strongest of us. Lions are scary even without awakening.
Ah, in that case, could Chief Song restrain Seong Hyunjae? Seong Hyunjae was a bit taller, but I felt like Chief Song would be stronger. Maybe about the same? Anyway, it’d be easier to deal with him than when he was awakened, so that was at least something.
[Once the system gets installed, you’ll be able to use inventory again! Mana stabilization takes a bit longer, but if you get used to the unstable flow, it might be manageable.]
“Okay, Newbie. More importantly, what about the Transcendents? Crescent Moon? She’s definitely out of my body now.”
I’d used a potion, but my punctured shoulder still hurt a bit. Guild Leader Seong really didn’t hold back. Somehow, that made me feel safer.
[…Be careful, Honey. I don’t know why your connection to Crescent Moon got stronger, but this is really dangerous now!]
“Y–yeah. I’ll be careful.”
Thing is, I sort of found out about Crescent Moon’s past by accident. No wonder Transcendents go out of their way to hide their names. Just knowing their essence is enough to strengthen the bond…
[The dream world you fell into is a place Transcendents can interfere with more easily. It’s still a world, so it has a power of rejection, but originally it’s like a copy of your world’s dream, right? So once the system is installed, they’re going to start really pestering you!]
“Is there any way to slip back into our world before the system gets installed?”
[…No. Movement itself relies on the system. A Transcendent might manage it, but Honey, you can’t do that alone. So for now, before the system gets installed, you need to find your group.]
“We meet up, then as soon as the system comes online, we bail?”
[It won’t be easy. You’ll get interference, and the mana has to stabilize for the transfer to be safe…]
The message window shook violently.
[Be careful, Honey. The materialization is so strong that, for all intents and purposes, it’s just a normal world now. If you get hurt or die here, there’s nothing I can do.]
If Transcendents couldn’t interfere right away, there shouldn’t be anything too… oh, no way. I slowly looked around. I was inside some stranger’s house.
“…Are there monsters here?”
[They’re the dreams of people from your world.]
If it’s dreams, then…
“Oh, if someone dreams about monsters.”
[They’ll appear… right?]
Oh, come on. I pushed through the darkness and headed for the kitchen first. I grabbed a kitchen knife, some smaller knives, forks, and started looking for food.
[At least, since the mana is unstable, you can assume only low–rank monsters will show up!]
“Even an ordinary tiger can tear a person apart.”
Instant ramen, canned tuna, dried seaweed… So this was Korea. I hoped the others ended up in Korea too. Since the world was just as big as ours, they could be on the other side of the planet. In that case, meeting up before the system install would be basically impossible.
[When it’s time for people to dream, they might show up here too.]
“People? And if those people get hurt or die in the dream, what happens?”
I went looking for a bag and headed toward the bedroom. In one corner of the dressing room, I found a backpack. I changed out of my torn shirt too.
[Getting hurt in a dream is common, right? They’ll wake up with a start. They might forget, or it’ll get fuzzy. As long as they come here as a normal dream, there’s no problem.]
“That’s something, at least. If they run into me, they’ll just think they dreamed about me.”
[Yeah. They’ll think of you as a dream, Honey.]
But really, I’ll be the real deal. I repaired the waist of my pants a bit and slid the kitchen knife into it like a sheath. I stuffed the food into the backpack. I didn’t know whose place this was, but thank you for your hospitality. I drank some water from the fridge and bit into an apple. It tasted real. Fresh, too.
“Car keys, car keys…”
If possible, a truck would be ideal. Low–rank monsters can just get plowed over by a big truck. With the backpack slung over one shoulder, I walked slowly toward the front door.
“The Transcendents are mostly interested in me, right?”
[They think there’s something about you. Some of them are saying you’re the one who broke the system. They know that’s supposed to be impossible, so they’re also saying there must be a Transcendent helping you. How did you do it, Honey?]
It wasn’t some huge secret, so whatever.
“Achievement settlement. I ended up classified under Seong Hyunjae’s side at the very end.”
[Ah…! Honey’s achievements… Right. We excluded them from the calculation, but the system would have mechanically included everything… There should still be automatic limiters, though. I think the issue is that you’re influencing things more than a temporary administrator would.]
That was thanks to Wildflower slipping me in with the system’s original developers. I didn’t really feel like bringing that up, so I just said, “Something like that.” I quietly opened the door. An apartment hallway stretched out in front of me. The motion–sensor light flicked on with a sharp click, making me flinch as I scanned my surroundings. It was quiet. Maybe it was daytime in Korea. Didn’t seem like many people were asleep. Or it could just be early evening. People stay up late these days.
I thought about taking the stairs, but then I saw the number 27 and meekly headed over to the elevator. I couldn’t use stamina potions, so I needed to conserve energy. I pushed the down button. The elevator was working just fine.
“They’re not all that interested in Seong Hyunjae?”
[Chain is a strong Awakened, but that alone isn’t enough. More like a potential candidate to pull out later?]
Newbie still didn’t know much about Seong Hyunjae. Looked like the other Transcendents hadn’t noticed either. So the primary target would be me. Honestly, I’d love to use myself as bait and send everyone else back… but that wasn’t going to fly. Yuhyun would absolutely refuse to leave, and Yerim would find some way to come back.
With a soft ding, the elevator doors opened. I hit 1 and closed the doors. Should I look for a big truck first? Maybe there was a car dealership nearby. And if possible, I needed to get my hands on a phone too…
Ding!
The elevator chimed. It wasn’t the first floor. It stopped on the 19th. I set my hand lightly on the knife at my waist and leaned back into the corner. The doors opened.
“…Huh?”
A slightly blurry–looking student stood there. They looked like a high schooler. Their eyes went wide as they stared straight at me.
“Director Han Yujin!”
“…Uh, yeah.”
“It’s really you! What are you doing here? Whoa!”
“I just had a quick errand.”
“What about Peace? Didn’t Peace come with you? Oh no, why are you alone? You’re not supposed to walk around by yourself, right? Where’s Guild Leader Han from Haeyeon? Shouldn’t you have a bodyguard? Are you trying to get kidnapped again! My mom’s always going, ‘Ugh, he’s F–rank, basically a regular person, why does he have to suffer so much,’ she feels so bad for you! One of my friends is F–rank, you know. He’s so scrawny! But then I told her Director Han is F–rank too, and that F–ranks can totally smack S–ranks around and I was gonna become a Hunter, and my dad smacked me on the back and–”
Uh. Wow.
The student checked that 1 was already lit and stepped in next to me. Their sparkling gaze was a little overwhelming.
“Can we take a picture together?”
“Of course.”
“My phone… huh? Oh man, I didn’t bring my bag. I’m losing it.”
They let out a big sigh, saying they’d have to go back up. Looks like dreams were a little loose around the edges.
“If you visit the Breeding Facility, I’ll take a picture with you then. What’s your name?”
Even if they wrote it off as a dream or forgot, I’d remember. Hearing that, the student looked even more disappointed.
“We’d have to go all the way to Seoul.”
“…Uh, where is this, exactly?”
“Busan.”
…Oh. I’d thought their accent was a bit strong, but so this was Busan. Maybe I’d been dropped near the sea. Flying felt risky, so… were the high–speed trains still running? Or was I going to have to drive all the way to Seoul? When we hit the first floor, the student reluctantly headed back up. I pulled myself together again and walked out of the apartment building. The sky was dim. Around nine or ten at night, maybe? It looked like only the people who went to bed early, or who’d just lain down for a quick nap, were sleeping right now.
‘First I need a car, so let’s hit a phone store.’
If the elevator was working, the internet should be too. I turned in the direction of the shopping area when…
– Grrrrr.
Out on the road, blue–furred wolves were prowling. Low–rank monsters that had appeared in Busan during the initial dungeon break. Someone’s nightmare.
–TL Notes–
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