11. The Pink Saint (Side Story)
Extroversion. Akashiu’s Dream
After Cthulhu eroded Siu’s body, there was a time when it no longer belonged to Siu.
It’s the night when he falls asleep. The time of the story where the pages turn and return at will.
In today’s dream, Siwoo was a B-class hunter dispatched to deal with the dungeon break. Having recently fought a battle, he sat on the steps of a villa, caught his breath, and looked out the broken window. There, a giant, scale-defying monster that looked like a midge was standing upright, clad in flames, and moving around.
Dungeon Break. A symptom of monsters pouring into the real world if the dungeon is not cleared for a certain period of time. In the novel, it was merely a device to create a sense of crisis, but in reality, it was a natural disaster itself.
Kieeek – The sky vibrated so loudly that the monster’s cries could be seen. The clouds were scattered, and all the unbreakable windows in the area were broken. A roar that is in itself a sonic attack.
Siwoo also broke into a cold sweat, calming his trembling body.
How are you supposed to catch something like that?
Even more so, the work required below that was even more daunting. In the area where the dungeon break occurred, there will be no dungeons for the time being, so land prices will rise, and redevelopment will definitely occur, so we should capture the apartment complex as much as possible without damaging it. They were all words that lacked reality.
The illusion of those who use evil tactics without considering anything other than their own interests.
I was so disillusioned there that I pulled myself together.
‘… You have to do what you have to do. Still.’
If I just wanted to live, I wouldn’t have become a hunter. Siwoo waited for a moment for the guild to be called. Sure enough, the order to gather soon arrived.
Now that we’re done cleaning up the area, it’s time to catch that boss in earnest.
Siwoo checked his own weapons and armor and formed a formation in response to the call. The sight of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people moving together was rare in a typical novel, but it was also an extremely realistic sight.
Because accomplishing something alone is something only the protagonist can do.
From Noble mtl dot com
The guild that Siwoo belonged to began fighting the boss in earnest. Siwoo moved his body mechanically according to roles that were thoroughly segmented by type of arousal.
Siwoo’s guild wasn’t the only one fighting like that. The Army’s fire support adequately filled the gaps in battle that inevitably occurred, minimizing loss of life as much as possible. One might wonder whether heavy weapons could even scratch such a monster, but in terms of stopping power and guidance, the stakes were not small.
A fight that steadily gnaws away at the monster. The battle was going according to plan, but Siwoo felt frustrated even while fighting.
‘Originally, the air force should have bombed…’
This also failed due to real estate issues. Siwoo swallowed his sigh and continued to fight. Although he was much more tired than usual, it was not an impossible battle for him, who had reached the top level in both martial arts and magic thanks to the power of the chat room.
Although he does not reach the level of the main character, he is also a promising talent with dual awakening abilities.
We succeeded in cutting off the monster’s horn and entered the next stage in earnest. Originally, it was a pattern where you had to lie down on the ground close to the monster and hold on, as it spews out terrible flames everywhere except the ground nearby.
AccordinglySiwoo tried to get closer, but he soon stopped.
That’s because the monster was watching him.
It was no illusion. A monster whose eyes he could not tell was looking at him. The being beyond was also watching him.
At the moment when it felt like it was being crushed by the massive force and was isolated in the vast ocean of space, the monster’s body began to swell.
It was by no means the typical monster pattern he knew. A premonition instinctively came to Siwoo’s mind.
Self-destruction.
And the ominous premonition was never wrong.
Kwaaang-
A mushroom cloud rose from where the monster was. A huge explosion that engulfs everything nearby. Siwoo was no exception to that explosion.
Spurt. All the pain passes in just one moment. He died so vainly.
Death became a way out, and Siwoo woke up from his dream, his whole body covered in sweat, gasping for breath. Memories of dreams that fade away like the ebb of the tide. Si-woo felt his body, confirmed that he was okay, and let out a sigh of relief.
And then I turned on the chat room.
I didn’t mean to chat at this moment. It was because there was something I needed to check. Siwoo moved his chat window up.
Originally, when Siwoo woke up from a dream, he could hardly remember the contents of the dream. He only vaguely remembered that it had been very difficult and that he had suffered greatly.
But I remembered this dream strangely clearly.
There was one person that came to mind in that scene.
──────────────
[Hunter Siwoo died in the monster’s suicide.]
──────────────
“… Also.”
Siwoo’s dream was not just a nightmare.
The traces of death left only as a single line of text in the chat window.
Siwoo was experiencing that final moment.
*
──────────────
-Akashiu: Hey, I dreamed of Hunter Siu.
-Akashiu: @SF Siwoo @SF Siwoo @SF Siwoo @SF Siwoo
-Akashiu: Isn’t this the Cthulhu effect?
-SF Siwoo: What are you talking about?
-Akashiu: You said that after I got hit by Cthulhu, I was sometimes dazed and had rough sleep in my daily life.
-Akashiu: Up until this point, I just thought the dream was a lot of fun, but after putting on the navigator’s ring, I remembered the dream. But that’s exactly Hunter Siu’s content.
-SF Siwoo: Isn’t it just a dream mixed up somehow? What does Cthulhu have to do with Hunter Siu?
-Akashiu: No, this is certain. It’s a dream, but it’s strange that it feels so real and vivid, and I haven’t had any other dreams since I first got hit by Cthulhu.
-SF Siwoo: Then let’s assume it’s true. What exactly is Hunter Siwoo’s dream?
-Akashiu: Shows about 30 minutes to an hour before death.
-SF Siwoo: …
-SF Siwoo: I can’t even guess what it has to do with Cthulhu.
-SF Siwoo: @ London City Do you have any guess?
-London City: Not at all
-London Siwoo: In the first place, he was in all dimensionsWell, he’s the only case.
-London Siu: Who else but he was exposed to Cthulhu for less than a millisecond and had it grafted onto his soul through the artifact effect? No matter how fast a normal human reacts, it’s only 0.1 seconds, and it’s not like you can easily ignore Cthulhu’s reaction.
-SF Siwoo: Well… So what do you think about the connection between dreams and Cthulhu?
-London City: I think there is a possibility. Usually, the time when the soul is most vulnerable is when one is sleeping, so that is usually the time when Cthulhu-related phenomena are most concentrated.
-London Siwoo: I have no idea what it’s related to…
-SF Siwoo: Yes. Then I guess I’ll have no choice but to dig deeper into the dream.
[SF Siwoo is patching data. 71%… 89%… 100%.]
[From now on, you can set it to automatically send images and videos when you sleep.]
-SF Siwoo: I added a simple function, so record your dreams with this.
-SF Siwoo: I’ll find out something.
──────────────
*
A few days since then. Si-Woo’s dream replayed the final moments of other Si-Woos who had already died.
The content of the dreams was largely the same. A dream of meeting an enemy you can’t handle, dying due to a moment of inattention or an accident, being involved in a conspiracy, or being the victim of someone’s greed or jealousy.
Through that dream, Si-woo learned how miserable people in other worlds were living.
Meanwhile, experiencing death every day greatly helped Siwoo strengthen his mental strength. There is a reason why he was confident even in front of Cardinal Vince.
However, it was a pain anyway, and it was true that sleeping, which was supposed to be restful, had become very uncomfortable, so Siwoo was thinking of treating this symptom someday.
Meanwhile, Siwoo had a dream that was completely different from before.
As always, the main character of the dream was Si-woo from another world. It contained his final moments seen through his own eyes.
As is often the case with humans on the verge of death, their vision was blurry and out of focus, so the color of human skin was visible against the blurred background, as if it had been blurred.
As I focused on it, I was able to distinguish colors a little. Eyes, nose, mouth. And black wings? It seemed that the opponent was a demon.
He opened his mouth to ask what that was, but Siwoo couldn’t hear him as he was moaning in pain.
The muscles of my entire body contracted as if they were clinging to my bones. My throat was so dry that it felt like my esophagus was clogged, and the root of my tongue seemed to be dry and not moving properly.
It was as if someone had stretched the nerve cords arbitrarily, and the nerves only occasionally tingled for no reason and did nothing. The brain had long since lost its ability to make normal decisions. The sensation on my skin became so numb that I couldn’t feel anything.
He just lay there. He offered no resistance. He really didn’t have the strength to lift a finger. It seemed like the opponent was unilaterally trampling on his body.
His body shook sometimes. It was lifted, moved, and the action was repeated again. My heart was beating like crazy from earlier. Like the last struggle before death.
But that didn’t last long either. The drop in heart rate was rapid. The muscles, which had been so tight as if they were going to become one with the bones, relaxed. My vision cleared and it was dark. Ridge. Ridge… The weak heartbeat slowly stopped, as if announcing his end.
So, he died.
And then I woke up.
“…”
A familiar morning. Siwoo opened the window, his body throbbing from the aftereffects of his dream. It was as if he could feel the thirst in his dream, so he drank a lot of water and felt the morning breeze, and he seemed to come to his senses a little.
Since it was a dormitory, Siwoo still had some time to spare, so he looked back on his dream. What kind of death was that? Poisoned? Or a battle with demons?
But actually, the answer was obvious.
“They said he died fighting for his life…”
The cause of death that Siwoo found by going back through his records.
The end of the dream owner was written as follows.
[He died after a bloody battle with the Succubus Queen.]
Si-Woo, who experienced the pain himself, can’t laugh, but how much other Si-Woo would laugh when they see their recorded dreams.
Shiwoo shook his head and put on his school uniform.
Even though the opponent is not a succubus, he does not know that it could become his job at any time.
Extroversion. Akashiu’s Dream – END