Chapter 97

I had a dream.

It was a nonsensical one.

I was walking, but I didn’t know where.

The only clue that I was walking on snow was the crunching sound beneath my feet.

And it was cold.

Ever since I had possessed Winter Winslet’s body, I had never once felt the cold.

But in the dream, I felt a strange chill. An unfamiliar chill like a newborn feeling snow on his forehead for the first time.

Just as I was about to rub my forearms together to create some frictional heat,

A voice called out.

– Are you shivering?

“Who’s there?”

Instinctively, I turned toward the voice.

But it wasn’t easy.

I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

When I looked up, thinking it had come from above my head, the voice came from behind me.

When I turned around, it came from in front again.

After a few more tries, I realized it was pointless.

– You’re confused.

The voice echoed as if shouting from a distance, yet also tickled my ear like a whisper.

It sounded like a woman’s voice but at the same time, like a man’s.

It was a voice filled with both mockery and curiosity.

Was it even a voice at all?

When I realized the sound had come from inside my head, chills ran down my spine.

“I asked who you are. You’d better not make me say the same thing a third time.”

– How insolent you are, mortal.

At that moment, snowflakes swirled through the air, and a piercing cold swept over me.

It was a knife-like wind blowing at me from the ground beneath my feet, cutting into my flesh.

No, this wasn’t the wind blowing.

I was falling.

The fall was brief.

Something had seized my body.

An icy hand.

Cold and enormous, like the one I had created when I snatched the pleasure boat carrying the Longsoniere agents.

The rough hand gripped me and squeezed hard, and a thin, powerless breath escaped from my chest.

– I am ■■■■■. The greatest among the Five Usurpers. The embodiment of a diamond will that will not perish even through eons.

I frowned.

There was one part of what the voice said that I couldn’t understand.

■■■■■? What was that supposed to be?

It was a sound too strange or too complex to be expressed in human language.

Could something like that even be a name?

– Do you reject perception? No… you are being suppressed. The Dragon’s Ban still lingers? Truly, such persistence, such wretched struggling.

Why the sudden talk about dragons?

As I listened to the voice, a splitting headache began to form.

The more I tried to recall the creature’s name, the worse the pain grew.

– The prohibition of perception is like a blindfold upon the soul’s eye; the pain you feel is like a snare that cuts deeper the more you struggle to escape. Thus, I shall awaken your mind and grant you the discernment to perceive all things without the eyes. Yet this is not an act possible within the frame of a human soul; rather, your being has taken one step closer to me.

I had no idea what it was talking about.

But at some point, I became able to hear, understand, and recall the name of the voice’s owner.

■■■■■. That was its name.

■■■■■… I pondered the name.

But I had never heard such a name before, anywhere.

Well, considering Candela of Judgment was a game that stuck to heavy mystical-based worldbuilding, it wasn’t strange for it to have hidden lore that never appeared in the actual game.

Anyway, what mattered was this—

I was inside the world of Candela of Judgment.

The moment I remembered that, my mind snapped into clarity.

Ah.

This was an event.

A dream-encounter event.

An event that rarely occurred when you achieved merit in the Church and received a baptism, or drank that suspicious powder handed down by druids, or touched a relic or artifact left behind by one of the great old gods…or something close to them.

An event where a transcendent being would appear in your dream and grant you a gift.

What the gift was varied every time.

Sometimes it was advice or a prophecy; other times it could be an item, a weapon, armor, a boost in stats, or a blessing.

The problem was that more often than not, the “gift” was something closer to a curse.

So the moment I felt something was off, I immediately raised my right hand and punched myself hard in the face.

To force myself awake and prematurely end the event.

Smack!

A flash sparked across my vision, and my skull rang with the impact.

The voice murmured softly.

– What is the meaning behind that action?

By all the probabilities I knew, the chance of gaining a positive outcome from a dream-encounter event was about one in ten.

And even that was only if you forced a certain style of play; most of the time, it was better not to accept it at all.

Let alone an encounter with ■■■■■, a new entity completely absent from my data.

I struck my face again with my left hand.

I wasn’t holding back at all, having already resolved that if even this failed to wake me, I would resort to something more extreme like pain from my groin to break the dream.

Suddenly, the heavy slap I’d received from Josephine on the first day of my possession crossed my mind…

The voice warned me.

– You cling to a life burning like a withered firebrand, mortal. Do not act rashly. Do you even know before whom you stand?

“I couldn’t care less who or what you are. Get lost.”

– Not knowing the worth of your own life, you’re like a gnat. Mortals are truly pitiful beings. Tell me, insect….do you even know that you were born under the fate of death?

The fate of death, huh.

Wasn’t Winter Winslet a villain character with a hundred-percent death rate?

Because ■■■■■’s words somehow got under my skin, I deliberately snorted in derision.

“Every human is born already holding a summons to death.”

– I, however, am immortal. And immortality is but the smallest fragment of the power I possess. You shall kneel before me and seek wisdom, for within me are visions and taboos you will find nowhere else in this world. Therefore, you must pay me due respect, and…

A human facing a transcendent being ought to watch their words and actions carefully, to restrain themselves and make every effort not to provoke it.

However, Winter Winslet was an “S-rank”….a person who had thoroughly obliterated their humanity at the very limits of being human.

And drawing upon Winter Winslet’s nature, I expressed my refusal to the great being in a most respectful manner.

“Didn’t you hear me tell you to get lost? Don’t talk in a way that makes my head throb. Shut it.”

– …You will come seeking me in the end.

***

I woke up from the dream.

A ridiculous dream.

But… what was it about again?

An unpleasant sensation clung to me.

Usually, it’s natural to forget dreams after waking, but right now, I felt this eerie sense like I’d lost something I absolutely shouldn’t have.

Just what kind of dream was that?

In any case, it was definitely a nightmare.

I was drenched in cold sweat from head to toe.

And my body felt as heavy as a waterlogged cotton ball.

…And I quickly learned the reason for that.

Several layers of thick blankets were pressing down on me.

What, were they trying to steam me to death? Who pulled this prank?

That nightmare. I must’ve had sleep paralysis because of this.

As I reached to push the pile of blankets off, I noticed someone leaning over the edge of the bed.

It was Dahlia, hands neatly clasped, muttering something like a prayer.

Just as she seemed to finish praying, she unclasped her hands, lifted her head, and our eyes met.

And then she said:

“Ah!”

Her eyes were red. She must’ve been really worried.

Only then, a beat late, did I realize:

This was the Academy infirmary, and I had collapsed.

“Ah, ah… aaah!”

To Dahlia, who was so startled that she kept repeating the same syllable, I said the first thing that came to mind.

“Water.”

No joke. I was seriously parched.

***

After calmly drinking the water Dahlia brought me, I began asking questions to get a sense of the situation.

But her answer caught me off guard.

“How long was I unconscious?”

“Exactly three days. Well, to be precise, around sixty-nine hours… but when I found you, it looked like you’d already been unconscious for quite some time, so honestly, it might’ve been even longer.”

No wonder my throat felt like it had cracked dry. I’d been out for three whole days.

“Wait, you’re the one who found me?”

“That’s right.”

“Where did you say you found me?”

“In front of the entrance.”

“……”

With my head still foggy, I tried to recall what had happened right before I passed out.

I had successfully tracked down a member of the Longsoniere organization who was carrying a Caraphine bag and cornered him.

But instead of surrendering, he attempted to blow himself up, and I hadn’t been able to stop him in time.

What I had done was keep the explosion from harming anyone else.

Just as I realized that the Longsoniere agent had lied about handing over the Caraphine bag in exchange for his life, he triggered an explosion spell scroll.

At that very moment, I diverted as much magic as I could into a defensive barrier. As much as my reflexes would allow.

At the very least, that meant he’d discovered who I really was.

“Dahlia.”

“Yes!”

“What happened to my mask and coat?”

“Your mask? I didn’t see anything like that.”

Come to think of it, the mask had been made by freezing water vapor with magic.

While I was unconscious, the magic must have worn off and it simply dissolved into nothing.

Dahlia added,

“I burned the coat in the incinerator. It was in tatters, and I started thinking something must have happened… and, well… if you’d gotten into trouble, someone might recognize it and use it against you…”

“Well done.”

As expected, Dahlia was a sharp-witted servant.

“One more thing. Who brought me to the front of the house?”

Dahlia hesitated before answering.

“Um, well. I was told not to tell you under any circumstances…”

“Tell me.”

At my firm demand, Dahlia clenched the hem of her skirt and answered.

“It was the professor next door who brought you home, Master.”