Chương 399: Chapter 388 - A Wrong Turn

Alonso stood silent. It couldn't be, he remembered it all. Gregor had… Gregor had… He gulped as the realization hit him. He couldn't remember it. The memory of him receiving the package… wasn't there.

"Houston… what's going on?" Houston took a deep breath and stared at him, trying to look composed.

"You are under an illusion, Alonso." Alonso's fist tightened slightly, and despite the nature of the virtual world, he could feel the tension rising inside him… yet he exhaled as he forced it down, and focused himself. Whatever was happening, he needed to face it calmly. He gave himself time to cool down before speaking.

"Ok… an illusion. So, do you know who is causing it?" Houston drew his lips between his teeth before exhaling and giving a single slow nod.

"Yes… yes I do."

"Who is it?" Alonso asked, yet he could already tell from Houston's manner… the answer was not something good.

"It's better if you see it yourself," Houston said after a moment.

"I will replay the events that happened in reality from my perspective as an observer. Are you ready?" Alonso nodded, and before he knew it, he was looking through his own eyes, yet had no sensation or control over his body whatsoever, like watching through a 3D camera inside his head, while still receiving sound and smell. He was moving fast through the forest, his boots skimming rocks and trees, when suddenly he stopped, almost too suddenly.

Then his body seemed to be ripped from where he was, like a long hand or rope had grabbed him and pushed him at incredible speed towards… A cave? Shortly after being dragged deep enough, it became too dark to notice anything, the cave swallowing the last traces of the forest behind him, and then… his body stopped, completely motionless. He could tell he was being held, his back straight, arms and legs spread as he floated in mid-air, like he was pinned to an invisible cross.

A faint flicker from a small lantern somewhere ahead barely pushed back the darkness, its weak light trembling over damp stone walls and slick patches of ground that glistened like old oil. His head was fixed in one direction, his gaze locked forward, so he could not turn or look around. For a moment nothing happened, only the distant drip of water echoing through the cavern, and then he heard footsteps, slow and steady, moving toward him.

Two sounded like feet scraping lightly over grit, a third like a wooden cane striking the uneven underground surface with a dull, hollow knock. It took a moment, but then part of her face entered his vision, sliding into the edge of the lantern glow. Alonso gulped. Her skin clung too tightly to her skull in some places and sagged in others, grey and waxy, crisscrossed with dark veins that pulsed faintly beneath the surface.

One eye was milky and swollen, bulging slightly, while the other sat deep in shadow, small and sharp, its pupil moving on its own in odd patterns. When the lantern light hit her face more clearly, her split lips pulled just enough to reveal long, uneven teeth, some sharpened, others broken into jagged stumps. Thin ropes of greasy white hair hung from her scalp, swaying with each slow step, and every breath she took rattled wetly through her crooked nose.

Yet more than the hideous appearance of the creature, it was the prompt that appeared on her that froze him. Morvethra, the Dream Hag [Daemon] Stage 1 –??? What the— Yet the closer she got, the colder he felt, as if the pulse inside him were slowing under her presence. Alonso gulped as her long, rotten nail slid across his body, tracing a slow path over his chest before pressing in and dragging downward. For a moment he thought she was only grazing his skin in some twisted gesture. Then he saw it clearly.

The nail split flesh as if it were soft cloth. His chest and belly opened. Skin parted. Dark blood welled out. From the corner of his vision, he saw the slick sheen of his own tissue beneath. Suddenly she hooked something inside and pulled. A wet tearing sound filled the cave. Blood spilled over her hand as she lifted a piece of him toward her mouth… and bit down. Her uneven teeth sank into what looked like part of his insides.

He knew that if this were not a virtual projection, he would have been vomiting from it all. She… she was eating him alive? While he was trapped in this dream!? What the hell was— She continued almost calmly, as if inspecting him, pushing her fingers into the opening, tearing loose strips of muscle from his arms, snapping off a finger with a sharp crack before crushing it between her teeth and swallowing." If you don't want to keep watching—" Houston's voice echoed in his head, but Alonso shook it off.

This was his own body, for God's sake! Why the hell was this happening!? He had just been travelling, barely a week into this stage, everything had been fine, so how… how was he now being eaten alive by a hag!? His fist clenched as fury, uncertainty, disgust, and fear churned inside him, yet he did not close his eyes. He endured it all. The sound of her mismatched teeth crunching through flesh, the wet tearing, the steady drip of his blood striking the stone floor, until eventually… she stopped. She said nothing…

and simply turned away. He felt all his gear, swords, and backpack being torn from him and dragged somewhere else, while what remained of his body drifted deeper into another chamber of the cave until it stopped once more. His arms lifted on their own as something like thick vines or roots coiled around him, binding him in place before silence settled in. Everything was dark, with only a very faint glow from the lantern in the other chamber, barely reaching him through the gloom.

It took him a while to recognise what stood ahead of him, clinging to the wall. When he did… His fist clenched as he ground his teeth. Kids. Several children hung there. He could not tell if they were alive or dead. Their bodies were torn open, flesh and organs spilling out, yet their eyes remained open, a hazy white film over them as if they were lost somewhere inside their own minds. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He barely recognised one of the faces. It was one of the kids he had seen in his illusion… He stood there until everything vanished, and he found himself back on the wooden chair in Houston's tower. For a moment he said nothing, his gaze unfocused. He could not, for the life of him, understand why this was happening. Why had it come to this? Why was such a monster so close to their starting point? It made no sense. And the sheer horror of it. Eaten alive while trapped in a dream. Just… why?

He leaned forward, dragging a hand over his face. Neither he nor Houston spoke for several minutes, and he appreciated the silence. Minutes passed, or what he assumed were minutes, before he finally accepted the reality.

"Ok…" he said, facing Houston again as he exhaled.

"The fact I'm here means we're, of course, alive. So about this illusion… how did you bring me out?"

"Well… bringing you out of it wasn't really hard," Houston began.

"The problem is… if I had pulled you out earlier… we would be dead by now." Alonso blinked.

"Dead… why?"

"Alonso… prompt aside… this hag is out of our league," Houston said.

"I'm not talking about some cheap mental trick like Chiara's. I'm talking about an existence that could erase us with a single thought. Not just us. I have a feeling even Gregor himself could be wiped from existence the same way. This is a creature that took EM mental manipulation to a realm I can only call magic… or something godlike. She can do whatever the hell she wants with your brain… and there is nothing we can do to stop it." Alonso leaned back.

The weight of it all hit him, but this wasn't the time to panic. It was the time to find answers… and hopefully solutions.

"So… what did you do? Why am I here and not in the dream anymore?"

"Luckily, Darius and I weren't affected," Houston explained.

"That meant we were spectators. I tried to analyse what was happening, but when I sensed the scale of it… I chose not to interfere. If that creature had felt my intervention, it would've been over for us. Alonso's jaw flexed, his fingers curling slowly in his palm.

"You were in a dream because she wanted you there," Houston continued.

"Whatever sadistic urge she has to eat people like that… it's not out of necessity. The moment her waves touched you, she could've fried your brain without any extra steps."

"So she's like what… the equivalent of a damn six-tail Xok'al dropped in the first week?"

"Perhaps," Houston said.

"So, back to your question. Since I couldn't intervene, I had to wait for her control over you to loosen. In the meantime, I linked to your main consciousness and created a sort of replica… a fake consciousness that might fool her enough not to dig deeper. When that worked, I pulled your real one out, leaving the fake one behind to keep your mind on autopilot inside the dream."

"Ok, let me get this straight," Alonso began.

"I am currently being held prisoner in an underground cavern, without my swords or any gear, parts of my guts and flesh sticking out, while my consciousness has a false duplicate inside a dream induced by an omnipotent hag that can kill me with a thought, but prefers to enjoy eating me alive like some occasional snack?" Houston nodded. Alonso shook his head. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Like… what the fuck. Was this for going against the script or some shit?

Was he supposed to stay on Riviera and suck his thumb there? Or maybe follow that stupid recruitment campaign? Or the mid-tier Dungeon Gregor suggested? Was this punishment for doing what he wanted? Was that it? The Tower wanted to fuckin' erase him in the cruelest way it could come up with because he simply didn't play along? His fist clenched. This was just… stupid. All he had done, all the fuckin' hell he had gone through… he had killed the damn seven-tail, for crying out loud. Wasn't that enough?

Or maybe that was the why. Was he too strong? Was he messing with its plans? Was he a variable it didn't fucking like? Thoughts raced through his mind as fury and anger crept inside him, his fist clenched… and yet… He exhaled. He was just a pawn in their game. It had always been that way.

"…" Alonso closed his eyes as he leaned back in the chair. Long minutes passed in silence. Fragments of his life flashed before his eyes. Flashes from Earth. The accident. When he lost his father. When his mother fell into an indefinite coma. When he lost his leg. When he felt his life was over. And then from The Tower. When he was forced to kill. When he fought Siddharth. When the ground broke under his feet and he was forced to fly with Ayu in his arms.

When he was attacked by the three-tails and buried alive hundreds of meters underground. When the seven-tail appeared. It was always the same. Life hitting him over and over. But he had long known life was like that. And that was not what pressed on him now. It was the realization that at the end of it all… someone wouldn't come out of nowhere and solve all your problems. No one would save you. Hope? Hope was something you carved with your own hands. Hope was not believing in miracles or in a better future. Hope…

was believing in himself. The Tower might want to kill him, torture him, make him bow. But he would not bow. Give me your best shot… I'll be there to take it. … When he opened his eyes again, a new light shone in them, a resolve that made even Houston flinch for a moment.

"You and Darius… you managed to counter Chiara's attempt back then… can you do it with the hag?"

"That… well, we can, but…"

"But?" Alonso pressed.

"For starters, what we do is not a mental attack," Houston explained.

"We ride the transmission the attacking entity creates and use it as a path to its mind. While I set the connection and output, Darius handles the strike himself, using… whatever mystic power his sword realm reached. I then shape that through the link into EM form." Alonso nodded, not pressing for details on how that was even possible, not that he could care less right now.

"Ok. So… for this dream to still be active, it means her waves are connected to our brain, right? This is not a passive effect, but she is tampering with it continuously?"

"Yes. There is a connection as we speak. However, distance still matters."

"I understand. So, if we were like last time… point-blank before each other… can this mental strike of yours damage her? Or at least stun her for some time?"

"It should have some effect if she's caught completely off guard, but given the level difference, even our best shot would stun her for… maybe a fraction of a millisecond. Probably less," Houston admitted. Alonso's eyes narrowed. That was much lower than he had expected…

"Of course, after that fraction of a millisecond is over… we will instantly die," Houston added.

"And that's the best case. Maybe that way we make that trip back to Earth like Leonie said. Worst case, Darius, you, and I get trapped in a forever nightmare where we're eaten alive and not allowed to die. Other possibilities include becoming her mental slaves or—""I get it, Houston," Alonso interrupted. A fraction of a millisecond… That was all he had. A fraction of a millisecond while his body would be torn, weak, and with no weapon in sight. Even punching it in the face would take more time than that.

Even igniting his Will Manifest took at least a couple of milliseconds to build up. And even if he found some way to accelerate it, what could he even do without his swords? Minutes passed as ideas raced through his mind, and yet… it all felt pointless. The only way he could think of would be… but… that's just… He held onto the idea. It felt ridiculous… And yet… When everything else was lost… what was left? Wait for some rescue? No one even knew he was here.

The only thing he could think of was those so-called holy knights Gregor mentioned passing by chance to take on the daemon. But that… was just blind hope. He could not rely on uncertainties. He could only rely on… the one thing he believed in.

"Alright, Houston. Prepare with Darius," he said as he stood and faced the window that opened toward the sea beyond.

"I have a plan… it's a gamble with terrible odds, but… I will make it happen… somehow."

"A plan? Alonso… this hag is a literal EM god."

"An EM god is a glass-cannon god. All I need is one good hit and it's over."

"And how will you land that hit in a fraction of a millisecond when you don't even have your swords in sight? Even Will Manifest needs buildup. It's just…" Alonso smiled.

"Nothing is impossible, Houston," he said, staring at him.

"If you take the sword from the swordsman… is he no longer a swordsman?"

"What does… what does that even mean!?"

"One opportunity… one strike… that is all I need," Alonso said.

"Next time she takes my body out for a snack… we fight." Houston stood there, stunned.

"Prepare with Darius… show them what you've got. I'll prepare on my side," Alonso said, then grinned.

"Remember, Houston… the hag may be a god… but it wouldn't be the first time we take one down. What is a god… to a non-believer." And with that… he vanished, leaving Houston's eyes wide, his jaw slightly lowered. In the corner, however, amid the darkness… Darius smiled.