Chapter 9: No Dream Importing Part 3
by fnovelpia
There are people who are always drawn to deeper, darker places.
People who prefer damp, shadowy corners.
It’s simply in their nature.
Then there are those who avoid such places.
The kind who flounder helplessly without light, unsure of what to do.
Soren was the former.
The cabin where he had lived with his father had always been deep, dark, damp, and chilly.
To Soren, darkness was already a familiar companion.
***
As silence settled over the inn, the atmosphere grew heavier with each passing moment.
Outside, the cold mist curled along the ground, and the sharp wind blew.
The flame of the oil candle sputtered with occasional sparks.
The innkeeper continued to scrub the dishes with tireless focus.
“Damn it. Does he have some kind of grudge against those plates?”
Karel muttered under his breath.
But the inn was so quiet that even his grumbling reached Soren at the far end of the hall.
Soren agreed with the sentiment.
There were only eight customers in the inn for the past few hours, and yet somehow the innkeeper always had more dishes to wash.
Squeak. Squeak.
That sound, constant and grating, felt like it could drive someone mad if they tried to stay awake while listening to it.
“Khrrrr…”
“Bork, you can’t fall asleep.”
“Mm… yeah. Thanks.”
To make things worse, the barbarian Bork kept nodding off, his head drooping again and again.
‘Maybe it was because of his large body and high metabolism.’
‘Or maybe it was all the food he forced himself to eat while insisting they shouldn’t worry about him.’
Either way, it wasn’t helping Soren’s fraying nerves.
‘How much time has passed?’
He had been shaking off drowsiness for what felt like over ten hours.
His sense of time was long gone.
The inn had no clock.
Well, clocks were expensive even outside the dungeon.
And it’s not like sunlight reached the dungeon, so the sundials he learned to use as a kid were useless.
Soren quietly chewed on a hunter’s herb.
He had packed a generous amount from home, but somehow it had already dwindled to a small handful.
“Soren, can I have one too?”
“……”
Moss and Loreia reached out their hands.
Soren grabbed some herbs and passed them over.
“Here.”
“Thank you.”
“Thanks.”
But even with that, the exhaustion didn’t fade.
Time crawled forward like a swamp snail.
The two adventurer parties kept watching each other with wary eyes.
The innkeeper scrubbed his plates with the same diligence as before.
‘I’m going to lose my mind.’
And with that, Soren unconsciously sent his thirtieth ‘I’m going to lose my mind’ drifting across the sea of his thoughts.
His eyes blinked slowly.
His eyelids felt dry and burned as if they were being scorched.
He had to force them open.
At this point, a question suddenly came to him.
‘What exactly did the guidebook mean by “one day”?’
‘Was it a literal 24 hours stuck here?’
‘Or would they be released as soon as the date flipped?’
Soren assumed the former.
Only someone living in a fantasy world would expect the latter.
It was foolish to hope for anything in a dungeon.
Which meant he’d have to hold out for who knows how many more hours.
“Um… Deril?”
As Soren was picturing that depressing future, Moss—who looked like he’d aged several years—spoke up.
“Yes?”
“It’s nothing major, but I was thinking… maybe we should talk a bit.”
“Talk?”
“Yes. Might help us stay awake.”
He wasn’t wrong.
If they didn’t do something, someone would eventually fall asleep.
Soren nodded without hesitation.
“Sure.”
“Then let’s talk more about this place.”
“You know more about it?”
“Not exactly, but if we put our heads together, we might figure something out.”
‘What an optimist.’
‘Were all priests like this?’
‘Still… not a bad idea.’
Group intelligence shouldn’t be underestimated.
Soon, four of them, including Soren, sat around a round table.
“Since I brought it up, I’ll start.”
“Go ahead.”
“Yeah, let’s hear it.”
“First of all, about the innkeeper…”
Moss began laying out his thoughts in a calm, measured tone.
First, the innkeeper doesn’t like fighting inside the inn.
Second, it might be because he doesn’t want any of his belongings damaged.
Third, the plate he’s been scrubbing seems very suspicious.
These first two points, Moss explained, might be connected to the third.
Which led him to his conclusion:
‘The innkeeper is afraid of the plate breaking—or he absolutely hates the idea.’
“That’s all.”
“Hmm.”
Soren let out a quiet hum.
Outwardly he looked calm, but he was honestly impressed.
‘That actually makes sense.’
Moss’s deductions were sharp.
He had a good grasp of the innkeeper’s behavior.
And the way he questioned the act of cleaning the plate was something Soren knew he should’ve noticed himself.
Soren’s guidebook was reliable.
But it didn’t list every tiny detail.
Just like you don’t need to say “an apple has poison in its seeds” when all you want is to offer someone a tasty snack.
“A plate, huh… that is kind of odd.”
Bork muttered while flexing his muscles.
Loreia, who had been silently listening, nodded in agreement.
“I’d like to take a closer look at the plate…”
“Yeah, no. Best not to touch it,” Moss said firmly.
“…Right?”
They weren’t about to go snatching it away.
Moss scratched his head awkwardly.
“I saw it briefly during dinner. It looked like a normal plate.”
“I saw it too. Shiny, clean, ordinary.”
“Nothing unusual on the surface, then.”
“Right.”
As Soren and Bork, who had both eaten, added their observations, Moss stepped back and accepted it without argument.
Whatever suspicions they had, the most important thing was still escaping this place.
That went for Soren too.
He had to get out.
He had to move forward.
‘Just a little longer…’
Toward the deepest part of the dungeon—toward the treasure that awaited there.
***
More time passed.
Soren couldn’t even guess how long.
His thoughts were growing hazy, and his mind sluggish.
He had long since stopped functioning clearly.
Just staring blankly at the flickering candlelight…
Even shaking the sleeping barbarian beside him had its limits.
Thankfully, Soren had stronger mental fortitude than most.
The others were already squirming and fidgeting in their seats.
‘It said the innkeeper moves once all the adventurers enter their rooms…’
Soren’s sharpened gaze shot toward the innkeeper.
The guidebook had clearly warned:
[Do not fall asleep.]
The innkeeper will act once everyone enters their rooms.
So then, another question came to mind.
‘What if they fall asleep here, in the main hall, without going into the rooms?’
‘…No.’
Soren shook his head.
There was no way the innkeeper would overlook something like that.
He wasn’t stupid.
And the stakes were too high.
Their lives were on the line.
Everyone knew the rule—’don’t fall asleep.’
‘No one would be foolish enough to test that…’
‘No one would…’
Creak—
The sound of wood shifting snapped Soren’s eyes open.
A strange weight pressed through the floorboards.
Soren slowly lifted his head.
Polished leather shoes.
Pant cuffs damp from the mist.
A worn tunic.
The innkeeper was standing right in front of him.
And when their eyes met—
Soren’s breath caught in his throat.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me…’
He thought he had just blinked.
But it wasn’t that.
Dozing off for even a moment came at a steep price—death was right at our doorstep.
My heart dropped, and for a second, I felt the blood drain from my face.
“…Everyone, get up. Now.”
The innkeeper turned his gaze.
Bork was there, nodding off.
“Mr. Bork, Mr. Moss.”
Soren desperately moved his stiff hands.
He shook the nearly-asleep men by the shoulders and jabbed at their sides with his fingers.
Cold sweat poured from his body, but this wasn’t the time to be frozen in shock.
***
“W-What the…? Grrrk…?!”
“D-Deril?”
Moss and Bork rubbed their eyes groggily as they woke, then gasped as they saw the innkeeper standing right in front of them.
Loreia seemed to have woken up on her own.
Even her dazed, gray eyes froze the moment they landed on the innkeeper.
“Don’t fall asleep.”
The innkeeper’s expression was eerie.
It was as if he’d only been pretending to be human up to that point—his face no longer held any trace of emotion.
He simply stared at the four of them in silence, then turned around and walked away.
“Hoo…”
A long sigh escaped them, no one in particular leading it.
Soren roughly wiped the sweat from his forehead.
His heart was still pounding—it was no joke.
***
“Thank you, Deril.”
“Thanks, kid.”
“Appreciate it.”
Waking up in time was a huge stroke of luck.
Death had been right in front of them.
That chilling sensation made Soren’s body tremble.
He quickly took out some Hunter’s Herb and chewed on it.
A sharp, minty taste filled his mouth, and the dizziness in his head began to clear.
“Deril, over there…”
“Yes?”
Soren followed the direction of Moss’s pointing finger.
In that moment, the rest of his drowsiness vanished completely.
The innkeeper was standing in front of the Karel party.
The four of them were fast asleep, completely unaware.
“What do we do? Should we wake them?”
“Let’s not cause a scene.”
“Let’s just wake them up. If the innkeeper does anything weird—”
But before anyone could take action, Vico’s head was seized by the innkeeper.
And then… nothing.
The innkeeper didn’t hurt him—he simply held Vico’s head.
That was it.
Vico’s body went limp, his fingers trembling slightly.
It was as if his soul had been sucked out—his mouth hung open, drooling.
“That’s…”
It was a disturbing sight, but Soren’s gaze drifted elsewhere.
A pale, white object had appeared in the innkeeper’s hand—a round, flat dish.
‘Is that supposed to be a plate? The souls of those who were sacrificed?’
‘If so, it was horrifying.’
That meant Soren had eaten food served on someone’s soul.
The innkeeper wasn’t done.
He tossed Vico aside and reached for Karel’s head.
“Uh, uh—”
At that moment, Karel woke up.
His dazed eyes blinked slowly and then froze when he saw the innkeeper.
Behind him, Vico’s soulless body lay sprawled on the floor.
Soren felt a sense of unspeakable dread.
His hand fumbled along the ground and gripped his staff tightly.
No doubt about it—
***
“Uwaaaah!!”
Karel was the first to react—but not in the way anyone expected.
Though Soren noticed the abnormality quickly, Karel’s freak-out was even faster.
‘Maybe seeing Vico like that had pushed him over the edge. He started grabbing anything within reach and hurling it wildly.’
His eyes, sunken with fatigue, were now wide with terror.
Crippling fear—so intense it drove Karel’s mind right to the edge.
“Hey! Karel! Calm down!”
“Chill out, you twig!”
“Get away from me! Fuck off! I said get away!”
Thrashing and screaming, Karel’s chaos woke the other two.
They too witnessed Vico’s fate and immediately clenched their weapons with pale faces.
Worst. Possible. Decision.
Soren gritted his teeth audibly.
Fighting the innkeeper would do them no good.
‘If they provoked him, their side could end up dead next.’
His hands dug into his bag, frantically grabbing whatever he could for the ritual.
“Deril?”
“There’s no time! We have to stop him now!”
“Uoooooh!!”
Thud, thud—Bork roared as he charged toward Karel.
But the innkeeper was already within reach, and Bork was still a good distance away.
“Die, you bastard!”
Panicking, Karel swung his club at the innkeeper.
Clang!
The club struck the plate that had once held Vico’s soul.
The dish shattered.
Rumble—!
“Ugh!”
“Grab onto something!”
The whole inn began to shake as if hit by an earthquake.
It was hard to stay on one’s feet.
Bork stumbled and fell flat on his rear.
“…!”
Soren managed to grab a window frame and quickly assessed the situation.
The Moss party was still safe, but the problem was the Karel party.
Karel seemed half out of his mind, while Yerena and Lura looked more alert.
But in front of them, the innkeeper’s form began to twist and deform.
His legs stretched out, his arms elongated, taking on a grotesque shape.
Before long, his facial features were scrambled—an unrecognizable mess.
It was horrifying.
A gut-wrenching sense of danger ran down Soren’s spine.
That thing wasn’t pretending to be human anymore—it had become a real monster.
“Moss! We need to get out of here!”
“Where are we supposed to go?!”
“That’s…”
The floorboards rolled beneath them like waves crashing on a ship.
Soren gritted his teeth and clung to the window frame, peering outside.
The fog still blanketed everything.
Only two options remained.
‘Breathe in the fog and fall asleep… or stay and fight.’
His sense of time had faded—it was hard to tell how long they had left.
All he could trust now was his biological clock.
And from what Soren could tell, there wasn’t much time left before “one day” passed.
The inn continued to rumble violently as Soren shouted with all his might.
“Everyone, prepare for battle!”
His sharp eyes locked onto the innkeeper.
The man was gone—what now stood there was a grotesque monster.
Undying.
Unfathomable.
Impossible to deal with.
Creak. Creak—
It made a sound.
Each twisted joint cracked as it moved, and its jumbled face contorted grotesquely.
Soren bit his lip hard.
A primal fear clawed at his chest.
It was already bad enough to end up in this place—luck clearly wasn’t on his side.
‘No Dreams Allowed.’
That rule fit perfectly.
Because right now, there was no dream and no hope in sight.
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