Chương 362: From Nightmare To Dream

With a sudden motion, a man fell off his creaky, dingy old bed. He hit the worn-out floorboards of the singular room he called home, but instead of groaning out in pain, he coughed and inhaled strongly as though he was suffocating–The fit quickly stopped as he started looking at his hands using the dim sunlight peering through the blanket-turned-curtain. He flexed his fingers, looked at the back of his hands, and soon sat up, blinking intensely as he touched his surroundings.

"Holy shit. I'm alive?!" A small gust of wind reminded him that he was, however, drenched. The last thing he remembered was making the rather foolish decision of trusting a monster born from a Nightmare Trial, and allowing himself to be carried into the oceanic waters of the nightmarish world… Instead of being drowned and eaten alive as most would have expected, he was taken deeper and deeper.

In the embrace of the woman-looking monster, he had been able to breathe and see as though he had still been on the surface, and he saw countless abominable creatures dwelling in the ocean. Some of them had been fairly small, and others had been so unimaginably large that it seemed like the ship had only been left untouched because they had shown mercy. None of these other creatures had seemed to care about him.

In the moment, the man had thought that they were simply respecting the fact that he was already the prey of one of their fellow, but when they reached the bottom, still nothing happened to him, and she instead pulled him into a door embedded into the bottom of the ocean, which opened on its own as they approached… Now, he was back in the crumbling hole he called home. He had always been a wanderer, born a bastard to some minor noble and commoner.

He had been chased away early on in his life and had been living like a recluse in the woods and mountains for nearly two decades. His hermit-like ways led to him being wholly uninformed about quite a few things, as he would only interact with other people a select few times every month. He thus completely missed the news of the anomalous mechanical items appearing all over the place and their potential to infect people with the Nightmare Plague.

The man's ignorance led him to be curious about something he never should have even taken one willing step toward–It had been a big box with a glass front, something called a 'television', or so he had heard after the incident. He got quite unlucky since he ran into the variant that was already playing something on it. It was the sound that had lured him over in the first place, distracting him from checking his traps for catches, and he instead walked over.

The television had been displaying only what was known as 'static' at first, but when he got close enough, things changed and a 'video' started playing instead. For some reason, the man had found himself mesmerised by the piece of mechanistry before him, and he watched without questioning why such a thing was in the middle of the forest. The video was a rather violent and gruesome one.

It showed what looked like a clown girl walking through dilapidated, crumbling halls while carrying an exceptionally large meat cleaver that had been eaten away at by rust and neglect. At first, the clown girl had been walking as if she hadn't walked in years, stopping every so often to spit out black blood… However, as the video kept playing, she seemed to get better and more aware, eventually stopping to pick up a broken shard of a mirror, staring at herself in it for a full minute before throwing the shard away.

She had seemed angry, but immediately after, she started laughing. The video had then gone black for a split second before displaying a completely different scene, which was of the clown girl hitting a man with the flat side of her large cleaver, knocking him down hard enough that he was disoriented and failed to stand back up, forcing him to crawl like a worm in a meaningless attempt at getting away.

The clown then proceeded to start cleaving his legs off little bit by little bit, starting from his feet and working her way up… Even though the man had a strong stomach, he had walked away from the television upon seeing this, but it was already too late then. He had been infected by the Nightmare Plague, and from then on, his days had seemed numbered. … Yet, here he was.

His body was weakened due to the excess time he had spent asleep and the missed meals, but he was alive and could very easily recover by using his trusty traps to catch fresh food.

"I can't believe I am alive…"

"I can believe it" His entire body froze, and he slowly turned toward the source of the voice. He didn't know how he hadn't noticed earlier, but standing a few steps away from his bed was an equally drenched, tall woman. Of course, he recognised her as the monster that had carried him out of the nightmare in the first place. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

"Wha… What are you doing here? How…"

"What? Did you think I was doing this solely out of the goodness of my heart? Not at all! This 'special' escape method is special because it allows a monster to leave the nightmare as well" She laughed, and while frightening, the man couldn't help but ogle. All of the sensitive areas were covered by her unbelievably long, wet dark hair, but it nonetheless left a lot of bare skin for a man who rarely saw a woman to get a headache over.

"Are… Are you going to kill me now?" She tilted her head.

"Don't be so scared. I won't kill you under one condition""W-Which is?"

"You have to worship Goddess Nebulo from now on as a most fervent believer""I…" He hesitated. He was informed enough to know that she was asking him to worship a monster, the very monster who had unleashed the Nightmare Plague upon this world. His every instinct was telling him that the consequences of such an action would be worse than death.

"I must-""Also, if you agree, I'll be your wife""I must wholeheartedly agree to worshipping Goddess Nebulo for my entire life. I swear to praise her divinity every single day without fault, and I shall spread her gospel until my voice breaks. Praise to Goddess Nebulo!"

"That's a good boy~ Now, is this really where you live? This place is in dire need of a new coat of paint, and this bed… It definitely won't be able to endure what's to come""W-What's to come?"

"Yes, but I think you should worry more about your bones than the bed. Also, we must prepare a holy ground. It is good that you live away from other people. We'll have all the privacy we want~" The man swallowed his saliva and cleared his throat.

"Wh–What is your name? I… Huh… I am Ferg""Oh, good call. I nearly forgot that we should present ourselves… Mmh…" It seemed like she needed to think, presumably due to not having a proper name of her own to begin with.

"You can call me Charyb. I don't really fit into any proper monster category due to being a nightmare spawn of Goddess Nebulo, but I guess you could say that I am some sort of deep-sea siren or something, not that I need to be underwater to breathe""Mmh… You must still like water, right? I can… I can show you a nearby lake, if you would like…"

"You are such an adorable creature, Ferg–I am going to do things to you""I didn't catch that second part?"

"Don't worry about it… We can visit the lake later. We should focus on getting settled down first, don't you think?" … Thus, this is how Ferg, a man who thoughtlessly handed his life over to a random monster inside of a murderous nightmare dimension, suddenly found himself with a wife and newfound purpose. He started getting to work building a 'holy ground'. Since he lived away from other people, Charyb figured that this place of communion might as well be built in the mountains.

Ferg had already carved out a living space for himself in the rock of these mountains, and although he had only done the bare minimum, it showed that he knew how to do such work. Ferg had quickly gotten used to Charyb's presence. Which was a given, as her presence was impossible to miss, especially when the sun set over the horizon… … The old bed he had slept on for more than decades had been reduced to splinters on the first night of agitation, and also, he had never been so conflicted the day after.

His midsection had been left battered and bruised, but all he could think of was that it was more than worth it. He checked his traps in the morning like always, then he would work on carving out the holy ground in the mountains. It had seemed like a monumental task at first, but for some reason, the more time he spent with Charyb, the less tired he felt. The bruises started hurting less, and he could pickaxe away at rock for hours without even realising it.

At some point, it became obvious that she was having some sort of influence over him, but he wasn't feeling himself thinking any differently from before. He just felt stronger, more aware, more resilient… The only answer he got when he asked her was that it was because of 'the love' that united them. Apparently, she had the ability to empower the man she loved. He wasn't too certain whether that was the correct explanation, but he hoped that it was, because he loved Charyb dearly.

He would take a volley of arrows for her–Well, he would if he didn't know that arrows would just bounce off of her. Charyb was actually freakishly strong. The beasts that he used to have to avoid entirely, she could kill in a single hit, and that was without mentioning the fact that even the monster that ruled over the forest had begun hiding like a rat because of her presence in the area.

Ferg had no clue just how strong she truly was, but the meals had made her go from tall but skinny to a much more noticeably muscular build, something he could easily take notice of on account of the fact that she wasn't the biggest fan of wearing clothes, presumably due to being a sea monster originally. He did manage to convince her to actually get dressed when walking outside, but it took some effort to get there, and also to actually find something to her size.

Not only did Ferg not own any clothes for women, but Charyb was nearly two meters tall, and with limbs longer than normal, so he couldn't just visit a nearby village or town to buy her something. Thankfully, Charyb looked just like a human. Only her proportions were unusual, and it could easily be explained as either some randomness or by saying that she was just of another human species. Even if they are unusual, there are indeed a bunch of them around. Regardless, he was able to bring her to a weaver.

He was a bit worried about how she would react to other people, but his concerns were unwarranted. Everything went perfectly well, resulting in him having a nearly two-meter-tall priestess-looking humanoid monster at home. As he should have expected, if she was going to wear clothes, she wanted to look like a woman of the cloth. A style that suited her very well, especially since she kept creating small totems from the bones of the animals and beasts Ferg would catch with his traps. Life was looking up for him.