Chapter 10: No Dream Importing Part 4
by fnovelpia
A being that cannot be killed, no matter how hard one tries.
Even if you cut off its head, pierce its heart, or blow up its skull—it doesn’t die.
In fact, one might wonder if it even has a brain or a heart to begin with.
Only Soren knows the truth.
No one else realizes that the innkeeper is immortal.
“Prepare for battle!”
When Soren shouted that, not a single person hesitated to follow.
Yerena and Lura dragged Karel by the arms, hauling him across the floor.
“Let me go! Arghhh!”
“Karel! Snap out of it!”
“What’s wrong with him?!”
Leaving that pathetic scene behind, Soren turned his gaze toward the innkeeper.
His bloodshot eyes fixed squarely on the creature.
The innkeeper’s twisted body had become so grotesque, it was hard to even call it a living being anymore.
“Deril! You have to distract it!”
Moss shouted.
He meant for Soren to use necromancy.
“Deril!”
“Damn it, I know!”
The unfortunate truth was, Soren didn’t know the first thing about necromancy.
Letting out a shaky breath, Soren reached into his bag and pulled something out—a small glass vial.
Thanks to post-processing, the contents hadn’t evaporated yet.
It still held his father’s final tear.
“Buy me some time!”
The situation was still critical.
Soren didn’t have the luxury of calmly performing a ritual.
The innkeeper started moving.
In the violently trembling inn, the only one moving normally was the monstrous innkeeper.
“Come at me, you vile beast!”
The barbarian Bork charged at him head-on.
Karel and Lura, having regained some composure, quickly joined his side.
Three warriors now stood to restrain the innkeeper.
But that wasn’t enough.
Human stamina is finite.
And an immortal being that keeps getting back up clearly has no such limits.
“Deril! Whatever you’re doing, hurry up!”
“Yerena! Support with magic!”
Moss joined the warriors’ formation, raising his shield.
A soft golden glow enveloped their bodies.
The God of Glory may have long since fallen, but his power still lingered, performing miracles throughout the dungeon.
“Aren’t you a necromancer?! What the hell are you?!”
“……”
Yerena stormed over, demanding answers, but Soren couldn’t spare her a glance.
He needed to focus on the ritual now.
“Etur, Nakal, Ash Kel’nar… the mushroom that turns into a rabbit, bark of the Razur tree. O Tlatskani, you who mold chaos itself.”
He closed his eyes, slowly drawing forth the chaos and betrayal buried deep within.
Ritual magic is about resonance.
Offering a sacrifice to receive power is a transaction—and to make a deal, one must know what the other side desires.
That lies within the realm of resonance.
“If your will to receive is strong, then the other side will show intent and respond.”
“Master of betrayal, daughter of chaos. O Tlatskani.”
With his murmurs, the vial of tears opened.
In that moment, Soren felt a deep yearning scrape against his heart.
The one he was calling to hungered for the tear he held—drooling over it.
The tear of a dying man is sacred.
With death’s final breath within it, it holds immense value as an offering.
‘It’s a shame, but…’
There was no helping it.
Survival came first.
The entity Soren was summoning had a mind of his own.
Sometimes he would help, but at other times, he could make things worse.
In a crisis like this, he had no choice but to offer the best he had.
The tip of Soren’s staff struck the ground with a thud.
The candlelight flickered precariously, and darkness writhed, slithering toward his feet.
“Bring chaos into the dreams of the sleeping. Tlatskani, Tlatskani of betrayal and chaos.”
Soren tilted the vial toward the darkness pooling at his feet.
A clear tear rolled out and plummeted to the floor.
And the moment that single drop touched the dense darkness—
“Chaos has come. Tlatskani, there are no dreams in this sleep.”
Pitch-black chaos swallowed the entire inn.
***
[The innkeeper is an intruder born of an anomaly conjured by dream boundaries. Within the “Anomalous Phenomenon: Dream Import Prohibited,” they are immortal and undying as long as the dreamer exists.]
The strategy guide warned not to fight the innkeeper.
At first, Soren planned to follow that advice.
It was unwise to fight such an outlandish monster.
The same went for both Moss’s party and Karel’s.
‘Who in their right mind would willingly take on such a creature?’
But life never goes as planned.
Especially in a dungeon filled with misfortune and chaos, unpredictable variables are inevitable.
[It’s foolish to fight an immortal being—but if you must, use the laws of dreams and sleep.]
The guide did include a strategy assuming you had to fight the innkeeper.
Whether it deserved to be called a “strategy” was up for debate, but for Soren, it was helpful.
‘The laws of dreams and sleep, huh.’
Sleep is something all living beings must experience, and dreams are byproducts drawn from that sleep.
Without sleep, there are no dreams.
But the reverse can exist.
Dreamless sleep.
The kind where you blink once from exhaustion and suddenly it’s morning.
And the innkeeper feeds on dreams.
So Soren’s plan was simple—make sure the innkeeper couldn’t consume any dreams.
The phenomenon was labeled “Dream Import Prohibited,” and he intended to honor that name to the letter.
***
Thud—!
Weapons fell from the hands of the explorers charging the innkeeper.
The first to notice the change were the three warriors in the front lines.
Soren frowned as he noticed boils emerging on Lura’s skin.
“Ugh, uaaah…!”
“W-Where am I?! Where is this?!”
“What the hell is happening now?!”
And the strange phenomena didn’t stop there.
Karel’s eyes completely vanished from his face, and Bork shrank to a comically small size.
“Deril! What is all this—?!”
Moss’s face swelled like it was about to explode.
Even now, it continued to puff up little by little.
Yerena had turned into a wooden doll, collapsed on the floor, while Loreia crawled along the ground, giggling like a madwoman.
The inn was suddenly engulfed in chaos—and Soren wasn’t spared from it either.
‘Shit, my ear…’
He felt something shooting out from inside his ear and reached up to check.
A cuckoo doll, spring-loaded like from a cuckoo clock, kept popping in and out of his ear.
It was an absolutely disgusting sensation.
Like someone was poking around inside his skull.
“Blegh…!”
Soren clung to a table and vomited.
Undigested food splattered wetly on the ground, and acidic bile clung to the inside of his mouth.
The goddess of betrayal and chaos—Tlatskani.
Her power turned everyone caught in her chaos into grotesque playthings.
***
As the inn fell further into pandemonium, the innkeeper’s piercing screams echoed in every direction.
The innkeeper was in a monstrous state.
Each time a limb was severed and tried to regenerate, a plate from the kitchen flew in and sealed the wound.
When its neck was cut, the severed area was blocked.
When flesh was torn away, plates clung to the wounds.
Then, countless plates began to shatter with a shrill, avian screech.
The enraged innkeeper started tearing its own body apart.
The sight looked like a clown dancing.
The twisted limbs only made it more grotesque.
Plates shattered, skin ripped, and instead of blood, milky white fluid gushed forth.
From the puddles of white fluid on the floor, human-like figures began to crawl out.
But they could only hold their form briefly before dispersing like dust into the air.
They were the dreams the innkeeper had collected.
‘Kik, hehehe…’
Suddenly, a faint mocking laughter echoed in Soren’s head.
Tlatskani was laughing at the spectacle.
She delighted in pure chaos itself.
“Should I be relieved…?”
Soren shot a glare at the innkeeper, who was still raging like a madman.
The goddess of betrayal and chaos had been satisfied—which meant this chaos would last a bit longer.
That, at least, meant the innkeeper had been temporarily neutralized.
Dreams are born in silence.
In this kind of madness, there was no way anything resembling a dream could take shape.
“Everyone! If you can hear me, listen up!”
Soren shouted loudly.
With the exception of Yerena, who had turned into a wooden puppet, most turned to look at him.
“We don’t have much time left! Get ready! We’re getting out of here soon!”
“But…!”
“He’s moving again!”
At that moment, the innkeeper—who had been smashing plates without pause—let out another roar.
Having just barely come to his senses, the innkeeper was now frantically sweeping up the shards of the broken dishes.
Crunch! Crack!
He didn’t care if the shards were digging into his skin—he clutched them in his arms like a madman.
The sight was so grotesque it was terrifying.
The goddess of chaos laughed maniacally.
She seemed thoroughly amused by the innkeeper’s frantic flailing.
‘What the hell is this lunatic…?’
Even in the midst of the madness, Soren kept moving.
He still had things to do.
He stuffed various items into his bag and forced himself to grab Loreia, who had been crawling on the ground like a drowning swimmer.
Lura had Yerena, who had become a puppet, slung over his shoulder.
The three warriors who had tried to confront the innkeeper had regrouped as well.
Vico, who had already gone limp, was beyond saving.
It couldn’t be helped.
The living had to survive.
“Just hang in there! Don’t waste your strength for nothing!”
“Goddamn it! Why did it have to be like this?! Wasn’t there another way?!”
“Who even are you? You said you’re a necromancer!”
“Ugh, can’t this wait until we’re out of here?!”
“My muscles… they’re all gone! This is hell!”
They had moved away from the innkeeper, but the chaos still clung to everyone like a thick fog.
Soren felt a wave of dizziness and clenched his eyes shut.
‘Why the hell did I get involved with people like this…?’
“Uwaaah… huuuh!”
The innkeeper, who had been obsessively scooping up shards, suddenly burst into tears.
He looked like a monster, but the sound coming from his mouth was unmistakably human.
It was chilling.
‘How long has it been? Ten minutes? Twenty? Has it been a whole hour already?’
A sense of urgency gnawed at Soren.
His foot tapped anxiously on the floor.
At the edge of his vision, the darkness began to recede.
The veil of chaos was slowly fading.
“Kyaaaaagh!!”
***
A little more time passed before the innkeeper screamed again.
His eyes, now streaming with white tears, suddenly snapped toward Soren and the others.
The innkeeper had escaped the chaos.
Tlatskani had apparently decided that things were more fun this way.
‘Kyahaha!’
The goddess’s laughter echoed incessantly in Soren’s ears.
It was getting hard to hear anything else.
“They’re coming! Get ready!”
“Goddamn it! Why are we still trapped?!”
Thud! Thud!
The massive innkeeper began stomping toward them again.
Soren’s eyes widened with fear.
If he got caught by those hands, he’d be dead.
His dream would be stolen.
And then he’d be left like Vico—completely limp and lifeless.
‘How much time has passed? Isn’t it about time we got out of here?’
“Damn it! When the hell is it—?!”
Suddenly, someone blew a gust of wind into Soren’s ear.
At the same time, the laughter he’d been hearing changed into a whisper.
“That was fun.”
The chill of that breath sent a shiver down Soren’s spine.
He knew instantly.
***
A day had passed.
His vision distorted, and all the strength drained from his body.
The charging innkeeper began to blur.
The lights of the inn faded.
Everything became distant.
Soren surrendered himself to the shifting sensation.
Even as his body went limp, he managed to raise a middle finger toward the innkeeper.
“Eat this, you monster freak…”
And then, his vision turned completely black.
“Hrk!”
Soren shot upright, gasping, and looked around in alarm.
Stone walls, scattered plants, and a damp, sticky darkness—it was clearly a thickly overgrown dungeon.
‘I’m back.’
It didn’t take long to figure out the situation.
A day had passed, and they’d returned to the dungeon.
When he tried to get up, his bones screamed in protest.
His mouth fell open in a silent grimace.
“Get up.”
Someone approached him.
When he turned his head, Loreia was standing there, her lower face still covered.
“Loreia?”
“Watch shift.”
“Huh?”
Her words were fragmented, but he pieced it together—some time had passed since their escape, and now it was their turn to stand watch.
At least half a day, if not more.
No one had a watch, so it wasn’t exact.
“We’re… on watch duty now.”
“So the others kept watch until now, and now it’s our turn?”
“Yeah.”
He looked around.
Sure enough, the survivors were all sleeping as if dead.
Soren trudged over to the campfire at the center and sat down.
Loreia silently followed and took a seat across from him.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, well…”
Soren nodded, and Loreia nodded back.
The fatigue had dulled his mind, but he felt strangely clear-headed.
They didn’t talk for a while.
Loreia wasn’t one for many words, and Soren didn’t have much to say.
They stared blankly at the crackling fire for a long moment, until Loreia finally broke the silence.
“So… who are you, really?”
“…Sorry?”
“You’re not a necromancer, are you…”
Her gray eyes were tinged with suspicion.
She was questioning the fake identity Soren had used.
There was no point in keeping up the lie.
Soren sighed and wiped his face with both hands.
“My real name is Soren. I’m a shaman.”
“A shaman.”
“Yeah, a shaman. I don’t know a thing about necromancy.”
Loreia clammed up again.
So did Soren.
There wasn’t much else to say.
Just because they’d survived together didn’t mean there was anything more between them.
“Hey.”
“I’m listening.”
“What happened at the inn—forget it.”
“You mean the part where you were swimming across the floor?”
“…Forget it.”
As if he ever could.
He felt bad about it—truly.
Soren stared silently into the fire.
Loreia, as if annoyed by the lack of a response, furrowed her brows slightly, then turned her gaze to the fire as well.
Sharing a night in the dungeon with another person… wasn’t all that bad.
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