Ch.172172 – Child Trapped in a Nightmare

<172 – Child Trapped in a Nightmare>

The Academy has items that can be obtained at specific times and places with a certain probability.

A prime example is an item that can be obtained by drilling a hole in the tile at the 11 o’clock position from the entrance of the empty room below the art room, counting five tiles horizontally and seven tiles vertically, during the “Curse Commotion” weekly event before midterms.

<Curse Storage Device>

Grade – Magic Level 7

Description – A special laser pointer that can store and fire curses below a set capacity.

Effect 1 – Stores curses touched by the laser.

Effect 2 – Ejects curses into spaces touched by the laser.

When used in combat, it can distract enemies, and when used for training, it can automatically increase curse resistance every night. It’s a convenient device so famous that veteran players consider it a must-have item when Curse Week arrives.

‘I managed to obtain it successfully!’

An item with a 40% chance of acquisition failure.

Usually, this spot only yields throwing weapons or materials.

Why can’t you get the item sometimes?

I’m not curious about that.

As long as I got what I was looking for, why would I need to know the inner workings?

“Oknodie. Don’t come over here. There’s a very suspicious curse here.”

While searching for curses among the trees, Dorothy’s face suddenly popped out from between the leaves nearby.

An unusually tall tree.

A blanket with claw marks hanging from a branch.

It’s the blanket used in the “Sleep Anywhere” lecture.

What were they trying to sleep next to?

“I noticed the trees in the forest behaving strangely, so I investigated and found a curse at the top of this tree.”

“Hmm. I see.”

“The tree is so tall it reaches the third-year zone. There might be a third-year level curse up there.”

“Thanks, Dorothy!”

“That’s what friends are for. We help each other when things get dangerous… Aaaah!? I just told you it’s dangerous! Why are you climbing up there!?”

There it is.

At the top of the tree, an ominous nest woven from human hair and a mysterious black egg.

It’s an egg containing the <Random Nightmare Curse> that I’ve often seen in the game.

*Click*

When I pressed the button, the curse was sucked into the laser pointer.

The nest made of woven hair, the mysterious black egg, and the ominous aura hanging over the tree all disappeared into the curse storage device.

“This device can remove curses!”

“Ah… what? I thought you were about to jump into the curse for resistance training. Even you wouldn’t be that reckless, right Oknodie?”

“…”

“Oknodie?”

“I, I forgot my homework, so I need to go first!”

“OKNODIE!?”

I gritted my teeth and ignored Dorothy’s voice calling after me as I ran away.

* * *

Random Nightmare Curse.

As the name suggests, it’s a curse with the properties of an “egg” whose contents are unknown.

This curse isn’t particularly popular.

If you’re lucky, it might increase a specific resistance you need, but it could also trigger a nightmare of extreme difficulty where resistance can’t be increased.

If you’re unlucky, you might get afflicted with a high-level debilitating curse that requires stat consumption to wake up, or if you encounter a curse you can’t wake from with your current specs, it could lead straight to game over! A terrifying curse indeed!

But I have a method.

A way to know the contents before entering the curse.

“Responding Wall, Responding Wall. What curse is inside this egg?”

Just ask the <Responding Wall>!

“…Something dangerous.”

“Can’t you tell me more details?”

“…Don’t want to.”

The Responding Wall’s reaction was curt, probably because I’ve been shooting curses outside every night and haven’t worked on raising its affection.

But I don’t have the confidence to raise its affection higher than Hestia, who works on it daily.

This called for a change in approach.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll reveal your identity to Hestia!”

“…That would be troublesome.”

“If you tell me, I’ll let you know how to escape from there!”

Make the wall cooperate willingly, and set up insurance to prevent it from lying and trapping me in a dangerous nightmare!

“…The curse in the egg is the death experience curse.”

“Wow. That’s an extreme curse.”

The death experience curse requires you to experience death in your dreams a specified number of times before you can wake up.

Of course, it’s incredibly painful and agonizing, and normally, the more you struggle not to die, the longer your suffering extends, driving you mad even in reality.

The escape method is to simply close your eyes and die the specified number of times.

But this method doesn’t increase resistance.

It’s like not gaining resistance to a tickling curse if you scratch yourself when tickled.

However, what makes this curse high-level is not just the difficult escape method, but also the strict conditions for increasing resistance.

‘The way to increase resistance in the death experience curse is to resolve the cause of death!’

In a curse where you must die a hundred times to escape, you must resolve the cause of death a hundred times.

“…Now tell me. How to escape.”

“After I confirm your words are true!”

I lay down on the bed and pulled the blanket up to my neck, tucking both hands and feet under the covers.

Knock knock.

Close my eyes and wait for sleep to come, and preparations are complete!

Knock knock knock. Knock knock. Knock knock knock.

“Geez. I can’t sleep with all this noise.”

“…Keep your promise.”

“I said I’ll tell you after I confirm!”

Knock knock knock knock. Knock knock knock knock knock knock.

Thoroughly annoyed by the knocking on the wall, I jumped out of bed and headed to the desk.

“Waaah?”

“Mandrake. Fire a powerful 5-second wail toward the wall!”

“WAAAAAAAAAAH!”

The wall writhed and expressed pain at the mandrake’s powerful cry, which could burst human eardrums when fully grown.

“If you act up again, next time it’ll be 10 seconds!”

After establishing the pecking order, the Responding Wall finally fell silent.

[You are experiencing the high-level Death Experience Curse.]

[You cannot escape from this curse until you fulfill either the escape condition or the resolution condition.]

A biting wind swept across the campus.

I could see senior class students gathered in a lecture hall filled with an ominous atmosphere.

“Hello everyone!”

“Who is that guy?”

“Don’t know.”

Their reactions were aggressive, as if all previous friendships had been reset.

Giselle, Isabelle, and Son Ocheon, friends I’d made in this playthrough, were nowhere to be seen.

In the place of the familiar.

In this campus that was the same yet different, I suddenly realized.

This is a memory from a different playthrough.

Thud. Thud.

A person walking down the corridor in the distance, bringing the scent of blood.

Seeing her insane laughter and eyes full of contempt for humanity, I called her name.

“Hestia.”

From her hand fell the head of the martial artist Lotta, with her neat hair and headband.

<Chapter 1 Main Boss>

<Frenzied Hestia (100%)>

With the familiar game screen, I understood the nightmare’s gimmick.

This is a gimmick that makes you either be killed by or kill friends with whom you have even a slight intimacy.

The <Intimacy Adjustment> gimmick that wouldn’t have occurred in low or mid-level death experiences!

“Hmph. How foolish.”

The Academy I’ve repeated countless times.

The clears I’ve achieved over and over.

How many battles in this Academy have I not experienced, and how many opponents have I failed to defeat?

“Only a top-tier nightmare would be worth my time.”

I started running to stop Hestia, who was wielding an axe.

* * *

Oknodie didn’t come to class.

Isabelle couldn’t help but worry.

“Has this happened before?”

“No. It’s the first time.”

“Maybe she’s off somewhere looking for some weird hidden piece or whatever?”

Isabelle was momentarily convinced by Son Ocheon’s suggestion that this would be typical of Oknodie’s personality, but Giselle disagreed.

“Oknodie is not that kind of person.”

“Bookworm, how would you know that?”

“I’ve observed her longer and thought about her more.”

“You bastard…”

Son Ocheon questioned her with a serious face.

“Tell me the truth. Oknodie is your child, isn’t she?”

“…What nonsense are you suddenly spouting?”

“How else could you say something like that if she’s not your child?”

“She’s been on my mind since before the entrance exam.”

“What about the little mouse caught your attention?”

“Her… lack of childlikeness, I suppose.”

Not all children live in a happy world.

There are plenty of laborers who are forced to become immature adults before they can be children.

“That youthful face still retains its purity. Like an essence that cannot be erased no matter how twisted or suppressed.”

“Hmm.”

“Our little lady deserves a smiling face. I don’t want to see shadows cast over that smile… Didn’t the three of us make that pledge?”

Isabelle sympathized with Giselle’s feelings.

“That’s right. Oknodie doesn’t express her emotions clearly. She easily shows positive emotions but doesn’t even recognize negative ones as bad. Like someone with broken value judgments.”

“The little mouse isn’t ‘like’ someone broken—she already is broken.”

“Anyway. I understand why Giselle is reacting sensitively. If we don’t approach her first, we might never know if something happens to Oknodie.”

The three were in agreement.

“Let’s go to Oknodie’s dormitory room.”

From there, they would work backward to find clues.

Where Oknodie might be now.

What kind of trouble she might be in.

“A student missing lectures… in that case, I have no choice. I’ll give you the spare key to room 111 kept in the dormitory office.”

The dormitory supervisor willingly handed over the key.

The three entered Oknodie’s room.

“Oknodie…?”

The three who entered the room discovered Oknodie writhing in bed, sweating profusely.

* * *

“This nightmare is seriously crossing the line.”

The high-level Death Experience Curse that I started with the casual intention of working on resistance while sleeping at night.

With each increase in difficulty, more gimmicks were added, including some truly maddening ones.

Following the <Intimacy Adjustment> gimmick came the <Consecutive Victories> gimmick.

I was cursed to remain asleep until I cleared an unknown number of consecutive nightmares from beginning to end.