“In the gloom I find myself, and in my finding there is fear.
The music rises, then falls in a cacao…
or is it a cacophony?”
A young man with dirty ash-grey hair, protected by light black armor with terrifying claw-shaped gauntlets, held in his hand a shovel made mostly of what looked like granite, inlaid with various precious stones — diamond, gold, silver, ruby, and various colored gleams he didn’t recognize.
A fitting Memory for his line of work.
[Seeker Below]
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Level: I
Memory Type: Tool
Memory Description: [Below.
Dig downward, you useless thing.]
Memory Enchantments: [Below]
[Below]: Digging downward lets you dig faster.
He was digging while reciting, though the attempt wasn’t very good.
He’d already repeated it a couple of times and after two lines it all fell apart.
“Cacao sounds nice, but it feels wrong.
I think it was a plant or some ancient bug people used to eat.
Cacophony sounds elegant — I once heard the Handmaidens use that word and it seems related to music.
Very interesting.
Should I learn to play an instrument?”
Cian, seated beside the hole, nodded.
“That would be fun.
Though there are so many kinds.
It should be something like…
how do you say it…?
Aquatic?
I don’t know, but they use strings.
Or there are the ones you hit…
ahm…
persecution?
It really is a human talent to take something simple and give it complicated names just to feel special.”
Cian moved her arm from up near her neck down to where her waist would end.
“The aquatic instruments look nice; if I ever end up using a persecution one I’ll get carried away and break it.”
He kept digging, carving out a tunnel until he heard a hard sound.
He’d reached his target, running his hand along the wall and finding slabs of intricate stone, clearly not formed by nature but by human hands.
He put away his Memory and looked up.
A horrible, grotesque, immense structure of terrifying shape, casting a shadow that covered him along with a large area.
It had the form of a skull, and its size was so large it must have belonged to a giant, though its shape wasn’t entirely human and looked more deformed.
He couldn’t recall any house or building in the waking world that matched that size, except for the Awakened academy, which had large facilities and grounds — but that only covered width.
Height was a different matter.
Aisling didn’t know how to add large numbers, but he guessed it measured more than two hundred meters, or at least more than the Headless Statue he’d traveled on during his first month in the Dream Realm.
The Deformed Skull must have belonged to some terrifying or very powerful Nightmare Creature; whatever it was, it didn’t interest him.
Aisling was right behind the skull, where the surface of the cranium, though deformed, had no entrance at all.
The only way into the skull had to be through the eye sockets or the mouth, but those places were guarded by territorial monsters that massacred at the slightest disturbance.
That was fine.
The problem was that they didn’t stray from their territory and he couldn’t distract them. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
On his first attempt to infiltrate, he’d nearly died.
He’d managed to get in, but the Nightmare Creature residing inside had nearly killed him, and he’d had to flee.
The escape had also been complicated, surrounded as he was by Nightmare Creatures, so he’d climbed and exited through the eye sockets.
He hadn’t stopped climbing, and in the end had to slide down the back of the Deformed Skull, taking advantage of the cranium’s curve, while dodging the flying creatures hiding in the clouds.
After that, he’d returned to the Bright Castle for supplies and Memories to be better prepared.
On his second attempt, he’d entered from above, climbed up to the eye sockets and gone in.
That time, his goal was to scout the Nightmare Creature residing inside.
He never went too deep, even though there was only one Nightmare Creature inside and the rest were like guard dogs.
It was more dangerous to be inside with nothing to find than outside, surrounded by monsters in the world’s natural light.
On his third attempt, since there were no other entrances, he decided to make his own.
Based on the shape of the skull itself, he figured the underside could be a good way in without being discovered.
“Time to try it.”
He summoned a Memory in the shape of an opaque white sphere.
[Light to Illuminate]
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Level: I
Memory Type: Tool
Memory Description: [It is light.
If you ask for more, you’re a creature of darkness.]
Memory Enchantments: [Light]
[Light]: Illuminates without discrimination and tends to shine brighter in places where light is absent.
Don’t demand it, or you’ll lose the light of your life.
Inside the hole, he approached the wall of slabs, different from the hard material the giant creature’s skull was made of.
He dismantled the wall until he made a small crack.
He finally managed to enter the hidden site — a scene of darkness.
He couldn’t see anything around him, only black, coal, ink, ebony, and more shadowed colors.
The only illumination was the white glow from the tunnel he’d made, but, being underground, barely any of it got through.
The Presentiment rang like a sharp noise in his head.
He opened his hand, revealing the Light to Illuminate, which at once shone like a sun in the midst of the darkness.
A great flash that lasted an instant, as if the light deeply hated being surrounded by so much black, revealing the entire interior of the Deformed Skull.
In that instant, Aisling had already turned around, finding a horrible, illusory humanoid being — only its rotting claws and ruby-like eyes solid and tangible, unlike the rest of it.
The flash made the stealthy creature scream in pain, lunging with growing rage.
Aisling dodged the claw and grabbed one of its eyes, tearing it out on the spot.
He lunged again, aiming for its other eye at great speed, but the darkness enveloped them once more and he couldn’t grab anything.
He was about to use his light-generating Memory again, but for it to reach the same intensity, several minutes would need to pass, with the risk of it breaking if he forced it.
He was about to retreat into the tunnel and get to safety, but he was pulled by an invisible force into the depths of the darkness.
With no other choice, his only goal now was to survive.
Aisling didn’t stand still waiting to be attacked again; he moved nonstop within the vastness of the Deformed Skull.
There was no other Nightmare Creature there besides the Fallen Beast of that place, and the reason was its evident invincibility and intangibility within the darkness.
He didn’t know how to kill it, but the gems serving as its eyes were very suspicious, and just as owning a precious gem makes one greedy, he had to take the remaining one.
At that moment, something fell — an object very close to Aisling.
Before he could tell what it was, something else fell, and with that, Aisling collapsed into the darkness.
It seemed the Fallen Beast had cut off one of his arms so fast he hadn’t felt it, then went on to cut his leg.
Crawling through the darkness toward the light of the tunnel, his remaining limbs were cut off mercilessly, but it didn’t deal him the killing blow.
A sound resembling a sadistic growl echoed through the darkness.
The Presentiment of danger rang once again in his head, and he activated his Memory at full power.
A flash occurred.
The monster’s expression contorted, and a claw-shaped gauntlet grabbed its other eye and crushed it mercilessly.
Along with a scream of agony, the Spell’s voice rang in his ear.
[You have defeated a Fallen Beast, Red-Eyed Spectre]
[You have received a Memory: Moonlight Shard]
[Your Memory has been destroyed]
“What a waste — I burned through several Soul Cores for that Memory.
At least I achieved my goal.”
That Memory had only one enchantment that allowed it to illuminate, which was already quite a lot for its range.
Though it had a time limit at full power and needed to recharge, Aisling hadn’t hesitated to use and destroy it to survive.
Inside the darkness, Aisling didn’t retreat; he kept moving forward.
He summoned a Memory with less power than the last one, just enough to light his path, while leaving trail markers behind him so he wouldn’t get lost.
He continued until he reached a stone wall…
but it wasn’t a wall.
Looking up, a Headless Statue stood with a dagger in hand.
Another Headless Statue, what role will this one represent…?
I think I’ll call it: Bandit Statue.
The second time he entered he’d only managed to reach this statue before retreating.
Another place explored…
What’s next?
The journey from the Dark City to the Deformed Skull took a week, that is, if he didn’t get sidetracked or lost.
It had already been a full year since he first found the Deformed Skull.
He’d spent the first few months not paying it much attention, investigating the surroundings and the Nightmare Creatures nearby out of simple curiosity.
And, once he had little else to do, he decided to go in and see what he could find.
He remembered how, in his first year inside the labyrinth, he’d return every month from making simple mistakes and escaping deadly situations, just like in his early days arriving at the Dream Realm.
By taking risks, he sacrificed his body; by sacrificing his body, he needed sustenance; by needing sustenance, he returned to the Bright Castle.
As the years passed, the time he spent in the labyrinth grew, and he no longer needed to return every month, but instead every three months, four months, five months, and had even managed to stay out for half a year…
alone, but with a rather unique kind of company.
“Let’s get going before the Nightmare Creatures find out the owner of the house isn’t home anymore.”
Suddenly, his Presentiment grew stronger, like thunder before an unforeseen threat.
He tilted his head quickly and something flew past him, piercing his ear and passing through the Memory he was using as a lantern.
Before he could move, his eye was pierced, going through his head and out through the back of his neck.
With a hole in his head, Aisling didn’t think twice and ran to retreat.
Whatever was attacking him knew him well enough to target his Memories and his most vulnerable spots.
Barely sensing his surroundings, he carefully followed his trail markers while barely dodging the silent attacks.
He couldn’t see anything, and although he knew when it would attack, he didn’t know from where.
Worse still, whatever was piercing through him seemed to have a life of its own, moving with too much flexibility whenever he was about to be caught.
At times he would use his body to block attacks and create openings on his enemy, but the creature avoided his bones and any armored spots, focusing on making him bleed as much as possible.
He caught sight of the tunnel’s light in the distance, and the attacks grew less and less frequent until they stopped completely, as if the creature were aware that its attacks were more effective within the darkness.
He left the Deformed Skull and sighed.
“I survived.
I really am the strongest.
Did another creature live in that place, and now I just handed it custody of it?”
Cian appeared on his shoulder, making a quick gesture with her hands.
They were broad but precise movements.
“There really are strange dangers in this world.”