Chapter 182: When the Nightmare Calls (2)
Splash—
Waves crash.
But Lourens has nothing.
A small wooden box, barely large enough to squeeze into, drifts upon the sea.
Inside the box.
Lourens, closer to a child than a boy, sits huddled, embracing his knees.
No, he was being contained.
“I will kill them all……”
He vows revenge.
He hates those who made him like this, resents his adoptive parents who threw him away.
All that remains for young Lourens is venom.
Splash, splash—
Adrift on the vast ocean, all he can do is rage.
Then.
Thump—
He hears the sound of someone touching the box.
Lourens raises his head in surprise.
Creak—
The box, tightly nailed shut, has no handle. Someone outside pries it open with brute force.
“Lourens?”
A man with violet eyes.
It was Cain.
Cain, in one swift movement, reaches into the box reeking of rotting wood and soaked with the stench of the afternoon, grabs Lourens by the collar, and lifts him out.
Splash—
The weightless box is swept away by the waves.
But the warrior Cain, standing tall on the sea, remains unaffected.
“Procell didn’t come.”
“You are……”
Lourens, his original memories obscured, only partially intact, doesn’t recognize Cain.
But one thing is clear.
This man, with his unkempt black hair and cold violet eyes, is dazzling.
Like the salvation he desperately yearned for but gave up on!
“So he threw you away as a distraction and left.”
Cain clicks his tongue.
Devils are a nuisance to deal with, always flitting about.
“Let’s go, Lourens.”
Cain draws the magic sword, ‘Winter’, strapped to his back, and lightly taps Lourens’s head with the pommel.
And Lourens’s nightmare crumbles away.
🔹🔹🔹
A gigantic mansion.
There are no windows.
Just countless doors lining both sides, impossible to count, and only antique, beautiful magic lamps flicker.
“It’s scary……”
A young girl walks the endless hallway, holding back tears.
Margette Wiseman.
Not a wizard, not an adult, just a powerless child, she continues to walk.
Thump, thump.
She tries to open the doors, desperate to escape the hallway, but none of them budge.
All that remains for Wiseman is to keep walking or to stop.
In this endless hell, where she knows neither day nor night, season nor location.
Thud—
Hearing an impossible sound, Wiseman turns around.
“Greetings, Headmaster.”
A girl, about her age, bows politely.
Wiseman blinks, racking her brain, but she doesn’t recall ever seeing such a beautiful girl.
Her beauty outshines any sculpture or painting.
“The Headmaster’s nightmare is quite amazing. Did you experience a place like this when you were young?”
“W, Who are you?”
To Wiseman’s frightened question, the girl smiles, brushing back her luscious blonde hair.
“My name is Elena.”
“Elena……?”
“It seems Procell didn’t come here.”
“Who’s Procell?”
Wiseman isn’t someone who routinely scrambles her memories like this.
Elena smiles wryly, realizing that even a Magic Marquis like her can’t recall anything with just a few hints, proving that she’s just an ordinary human after all.
Feeling the stark difference between herself and ordinary people, Elena takes Wiseman’s hand.
Then, they stand side by side in front of a closed door.
The desperate marks on the handle are a testament to Wiseman’s recent attempts to open it.
“I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge……”
Wiseman says dejectedly.
Elena pats her shoulder reassuringly.
“This door needs to be pushed open.”
“I tried that too.”
Judging by the hinges, she mainly pulled on it, but just in case, she had also tried pushing. However, the door remained as immovable as a wall.
“Let me show you how to push.”
Boom—
Elena stomps her left foot on the hallway floor. The tremor is so deep that it reaches Wiseman’s chest.
Crack—
Elena gathers all her strength into her right fist.
It’s just pure force, yet a heat haze seems to rise around her.
“What in the……!”
Crash—
With a gust of wind, Elena’s fist slams into the door. Even as Wiseman cries out and tries to stop her, the wall-like door shatters.
A white light shines through the gap.
Elena clicks her tongue, looking at the partially destroyed door.
“It’s quite sturdy.”
“You call that sturdy?”
She may be young, but even Wiseman can sense the amount of force behind that punch.
“One more hit should do it.”
And Elena raises her left foot, the one she was stepping forward with.
Crash—
She kicks the door, and the seemingly sturdy door crumbles like a dry biscuit.
“Let’s go.”
Elena reaches out her hand to Wiseman, just like Cain did, and she takes it, stepping past the door that was once her despair.
🔹🔹🔹
“Gasp—!”
Lourens and Wiseman, awoken from their nightmares by Procell’s power, lift their heads from the table and gasp for air.
They should be regaining their original memories now that they’re free from the nightmares, but.
“My body shrunk.”
It was Lourens.
His body, tempered by countless hardships and experiences, is gone, replaced by the young physique he had when he was abandoned in that box at sea.
“……Damn it.”
Young Wiseman covers her face with both hands, recalling the memories from moments ago. Reliving that time, buried deep within her memories, is unbearable.
And she finally understands why she wanted to create the magic of ‘night’.
She has faced the darkness she never wanted to see again.
“Cain-nim.”
Shrunken Elena gets down from her chair and approaches Cain.
Lourens and Wiseman, still disoriented from their nightmares, finally turn their heads.
There stood a man.
Not the young hero Cain they knew, but a complete man, his body seemingly forged by thousands of hammer blows.
A warrior, carrying an unknown pure white greatsword on his back.
[‘Winter’ rejoices, saying it’s a good thing it can only manifest within this magic.]
It was Cain.
He draws the holy sword, ‘Summer’, he had plunged into the table earlier and sheathes it at his hip.
[‘Summer’ says it will yield this time since ‘Winter’ finally has a chance to be wielded after so long.]
[‘Winter’ retorts, asking who ‘Summer’ thinks it is to talk about yielding.]
[‘Summer’ sticks its tongue out, saying it won’t listen to ‘Winter’ since it doesn’t even have a proper wielder.]
Cain smirks at their usual banter and turns around.
Elena tugs at his cloak.
“Considering Procell is gone, it seems he escaped the dungeon.”
“I’ve looked around, and I agree. He probably realized he wouldn’t be able to make a contract with the four of us after granting our wishes and decided to cut his losses.”
Cain clicks his tongue, standing in an unnatural gazebo built amidst a field of blue hydrangeas bathed in the summer sun.
“Unlike devils, who can wander around as hearts, we have no choice but to clear this dungeon since we’ve entered the boss room.”
Cain looks at Wiseman.
A high-ranking wizard like her could escape a low-level dungeon midway. However, that’s only possible before reaching the boss room.
In other words, they had only two options: clear it or die.
“I’ve sent in many people so far.”
Young Wiseman, her original memories restored, speaks in a monotonous tone.
“It’s the same place as the ones who entered through communication devices described. The problem is, no one has ever come back out.”
“No one?”
It’s just a 1-star dungeon.
Cain is baffled to hear that no one has ever escaped alive.
“We couldn’t find the boss.”
Wiseman, already half-resigned, takes a sip of the tea Procell prepared and slumps her shoulders.
She may look like a young girl, but her actions betray the weight of her experiences.
“It’s incredibly vast. We searched every nook and cranny, but there’s nothing but this endless field of flowers and scorching sun. So, it’s the kind of dungeon where you’re supposed to create an opening near the boss room to escape.”
“……You should have mentioned that from the beginning.”
Lourens, unaware of these specific details, is flabbergasted.
Wiseman pouts.
“I thought Procell was going to be the boss. I didn’t expect him to just scram like that.”
“So it was a trap from the start.”
“……”
Wiseman doesn’t respond, simply sitting there listlessly.
For her, usually so driven, to be this dejected means the situation is truly dire.
Lourens smiles bitterly and turns to Cain.
“That’s how it is, hero.”
“Hero only when it’s convenient?”
“This is precisely when you need to be a hero. Just like how you saved me from my nightmare.”
A hero is someone who overcomes hopeless situations, forging a path forward. It is the role of one who shoulders the weight of the seasons.
Cain looks around at the endless expanse of blue hydrangeas. Then, he looks up at the sky.
It’s daytime.
“It’s the opposite.”
Elena, standing beside Cain, points a small finger at the sky.
“Indeed. The first room was also a field of hydrangeas.”
“But it was nighttime.”
“If you get rid of the red hydrangeas among the blue hydrangeas, it clears, so is it the opposite, like day and night?”
“Then we just need to plant them.”
Elena picks up a random hydrangea outside the gazebo. The roots of a normal hydrangea would be brown, but the roots of this one are blue.
Wiseman, who had almost given up, overhears their conversation as they effortlessly figure out the rule of the boss room, which is the opposite of the first room.
“Everyone thought of that much. The problem is, how do we find hydrangeas with red roots in this vast field?”
Lourens can’t help but chuckle bitterly.
This field is not just “vast.”
How are they supposed to find hydrangeas with red roots in this endless expanse where the horizon is visible?
“Headmaster, why do you only try to pull open the door?”
It was Elena.
Having just been rescued from her nightmare, Elena looks up at Cain as she speaks.
“No matter how closed off a place may seem, there’s always a way.”
“……This isn’t a place where Your Highness’s power works.”
Wiseman mutters with a frown. But Elena smiles brightly in response.
“If my power doesn’t work, then the power of someone stronger than me will.”
“I don’t know how the hero became an adult unlike us, but there’s no answe……”
“There is.”
Now that he understands the rules of this place, it’s not difficult at all.
Thud!
Cain draws ‘Summer’ and plunges it back into the center of the table. Then, he calls Elena, Lourens, and Wiseman to sit around it.
“Do not leave the vicinity of the holy sword under any circumstances.”
“……”
“……?”
Elena clasps her hands together and prays for Cain, while young Wiseman and Lourens blink in confusion.
And Cain steps out of the gazebo, standing amidst the field of blue hydrangeas.
“Do you know the temperature of the night?”
Shing—
His magic sword, ‘Winter’, grasped in his hand after a long time.
[‘Winter’ rejoices, saying there will be almost no consumption of the future thanks to ‘Summer’.]
Crackle—
Pure white lightning erupts from Cain’s entire body.
Following its white trajectory, extreme cold spreads out, freezing everything in place.
Crack, crack, crack—
The chill of ‘Winter’ slowly advances towards the horizon, the mighty power that only the master of ‘Winter’ can wield.
Winter of Night.
The extreme cold, capable of freezing even the sea in an instant, freezes the flowers solid.
All the way to the distant horizon.
“This is a hero……”
The three, under the warm influence of ‘Summer’, watch in awe as he paints the world white with his miracle, each harboring different thoughts.
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