POV - Tobias

When I awoke, I was confused and had several questions. This confused state is for several reasons. The most relevant reason being, this isn’t where I went to sleep last night.

Sure, it’s a forest similar to the other one I was in... but I’m confident that this forest is a different one. 

After all, the other forest didn’t have blood-red leaves on all the trees, nor did it have a purple sky. 

Where am I? Actually, more importantly, where is Rin?

Despite searching around, I didn’t find any traces of her. While searching I discovered my body felt heavy and unfamiliar.

Attempting to jump up, I stumbled and fell over. 

That’s strange... my body isn’t working the way I intend. Getting up and brushing myself off.

God-hunter, do you have any idea how I got here? Or where Rin is?

...

Not receiving a response, I moved to check my bag. Only to realize it was gone.

Not only that, even my clothing had changed. Replacing it were clothes similar to what I arrived in this universe with.

The only thing that hadn’t changed was the leather wristband I acquired yesterday.

Staring down at the wristband, suspicion clouded in my eyes. 

I put this thing on and the next day this happens? I refused to believe the two events aren’t connected.

I would’ve noticed teleportation, even in my sleep. So... how did I get here?

Tapping the wristband in my suspicion, a screen appeared above it.

<Welcome the Dream Realm>

<Expedition time left: 23 hours: 54 minutes.>

<Notice: Nightmare occurs after 6 more explorations.>

Dream Realm... is this a dream? It doesn’t feel like a dream? If it is a dream that means I’m sleeping? 

Also... Nightmare? That doesn’t sound promising... 

Why can’t people ever provide a helpful explanation? Just a few sentences explaining the circumstances. It really isn’t that demanding a request.

Feeling a dull pain on my hand, I stared at my hand in disbelief. A scratch cut through my skin causing blood to drip down my arm. 

It must’ve happened when I fell earlier. More importantly, a simple fall managed to break my skin. Additionally, hasn’t healed (and is showing no sign of healing).

How is that possible? Under normal circumstances, I would’ve healed from a wound like this within seconds. 

I have lost my regenerative body and defensive scales? Did I lose my strength as well? 

Placing my hand on a nearby tree, I attempted to knock it over. The tree ended up completely unaffected by my attempt.

My body regressed to its original, weak state. That explains why it feels so heavy and unfamiliar.

Attempting to analyze myself, nothing happened. 

In that case, I can presume that my ability, the unnoticed, has disappeared... 

Frowning at the complete loss of my powers. It should be temporary measure to do with the Dream Realm, as it should be impossible for me to permanently lose them.

Sitting down, I attempted to remember if I written, or considered writing, something related to the Dream Realm.

It didn’t take long to remember that I considered creating a character with a ability to enter dreams to become more powerful. 

Specifically, I remembered the downsides. 

Dying in their dreams would cause minor injuries to their soul. Meanwhile, I remember that the dream world had a different growth method to gain power compared from the real world. Although growth in their dreams would have an effect on their strength in the real world, real world strength wouldn’t affect their strength in their dreams.

Some details seems to match up...

Realizing that the situation wasn’t entirely terrible, I began moving around. I still have that replenishing container with water that can heal the soul. If I end up dying and receiving soul injuries, the damage would be limited (presuming my information is correct).

Even without my ability, the unnoticed, I wasn’t helpless at moving stealthily through the forest. The skills I learned regarding how to move quietly and without leaving a trail had already been imprinted into my habits allowing me to move relatively unhindered through the forest.

Utilizing those skills, I searched around the quiet forest. Normally you would hear the sounds of birds, crickets, and other such small critters... it didn’t stand out before, but this forest seems devoid of such animals. 

Eventually I arrived nearby a small mountain. Normally a mountain wouldn’t catch my attention, however, I noticed black dots moving on the mountain from a distance. Thus to make further discoveries, I traveled toward it to learn from and explore it.

During this period, I checked around for mana or other such energy signatures, but found nothing. My mana pool is inaccessible and there is no mana in the surrounding atmosphere (making both collection and usage of mana impossible). Without mana in the atmosphere, I cannot use magical warding. Although this is problematic, to an extent it makes sense.

Looking closer at the mountain, I discovered what those black specs were. Gigantic ants, each the size of a bear, were climbing up and down the mountain. Two lines were of gigantic ants existed. One carried various food back into the nest. The other went into the forest, presumably to bring back food.

It seems mountain isn’t an entirely correct description for this place. The ants seemed to be entering the top of the mountain. This is more like a gigantic ant hill, although perhaps ant mountain is a better name.

Either way, ants are skills at working in groups and defeating enemies much larger than themselves. Unless that common sense has changed, I should leave this place. I don’t want to be surrounding and killed by giant ants. Without proper weapon, attempting to utilize my ordinary strength to fight them off would be almost impossible.

Backing off, I deciding to create a weapon before something dangerous noticed me. Creating the best weapon I could on short-notice, I fashioning up a spear using a nearby branch and a rock.

While I didn’t know whether it’s simply bad luck or if I made a mistake in hiding my trail, I spotted a gigantic ant following my trail toward me.

Fortunately, the gigantic ant seemed to have come alone. This provides the opportunity to test their strength level.

Although, regardless of their level of strength, if I had to escape it would be difficult. The pace the ant is traveling at is far above my regular walking pace, reaching almost a fast walk or jogging pace. Even if that is its maximum speed, with my current body, attempting to run would only incur exhaustion. Once it caught up, I wouldn’t be able to fight it in an exhausted state. 

Better to go all-out in a fight now. 

As the ant approached, I stabbed towards its face with the spear attempting to finish this without giving it the chance for it to retaliate.

The spear bounced off its skull without managing to cause much damage to the ant’s body.

The ant aggressively charged forward with its mandible pinching. 

Fortunately, while my body is in a weak condition, I learned and experienced enough combat to easily be able to dodge such a flimsy strike.

Striking its body again with the spear once again did nothing. 

This time it lunged toward me, but I easily dodged.

While this ant had a powerful body and dangerous mandibles, its combat experience was pathetic. While I couldn’t exactly hurt it, it had the same problem. 

Trouble is, if this battle is drawn out I will gradually grow weaker due to my low body strength and it might have reinforcements. 

Waiting for an opportunity, I struck the ant’s right eye. Piercing through, I managed to damage its brain and kill it.

I stabbed through the dead ant’s eye again to confirm its death. 

While I would have preferred to acquire material from its body, but sticking around would be far more... dangerous. 

Shit... Run!

While I had been busy dealing with one ant, another hundred gigantic ants had charged toward my location. 

While dealing with one ant wasn’t particularly difficult due to my experience fighting Rin, I had no experience fighting group battles. Attempting to fight in such a situation while keeping track of monsters’ attacks would have been impossible. Especially when those attacks could kill me with a single hit.

I didn’t have a place to store my spear and with the ants catching up it slowed my pace, forcing me to leave it behind. 

Despite my best efforts at escaping, they still slowly got closer and I began to get more and more exhausted.

Forced into a metaphorical corner, I climbed the nearest tree I could find.

At the time, I was hoping the arts would run by the tree and completely ignore me, unfortunately, the exact opposite happened.

The group of gigantic ants surrounded the tree and some began to climb it.

Realizing the situation had gone from bad to worse, I jumped off the tree to the ground to continue my escape.

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten a key detail. You see, after getting used to my real world body’s strength, I would regularly jump off trees without incident.

Thus, when my legs landed on the floor and ended up with a sharp pain shooting through them, I was caught unprepared. 

And let me tell you, when your surrounded by nearly a hundred gigantic killer ants, you don’t want to be caught unprepared.

Almost immediately they pounced on me, I managed to dodge the first couple strikes but eventually ended up getting torn apart and dying (which was really painful).

Still, in this stream of events, I managed to confirm that my information was correct and dying in the Dream Realm wouldn’t actually kill me. Instead, I ended up in a familiar white room. The room was similar to, but smaller than, the initial room I teleported to when I first arrived in this universe. Tapping the wristband, another panel popped up.

<Soul Injury Percentage: 3%>

<Time left in expedition: 23 hours, 2 minutes>

<Return to this expedition?>

<Abandon expedition?>

<Expeditions left till nightmare: 6>

Hmmm, so around 3% of my soul was injured from dying. 

I only spent around an hour in there before dying? It felt like longer... 

In the meantime, it is actually providing a choice to return to, or abandon, this expedition. Although I’m unsure what exactly what each would do... 

Far more frighteningly, it once again reminded me about number of dreams until a nightmare. Based on how realistic and dangerous the normal Dream Realm is, how terrifying would something called a nightmare be?

In any case, I can’t take of the wristband and place is good training to help understand what I lack. Additionally, the level of risk is lower than attempting that training in the real world. 

In the real world, nothing has had the opportunity to gang up on me because of my ability and Rin’s assistance. However, that means I am severely lacking in experience combating groups of enemies.

However, soul injuries are dangerous as they can cause lost memories and other undesirable effects. 

Although, in this case, my soul was only injured and nothing was destroyed or consumed.  That means the memories would almost certainly be recover when the injury heals.

The problem is that I will potentially be forced into another expedition tomorrow night. While I have an advantage because I have an artifact to heal the soul, if the damage manages to outpaced the healing I could ended up in a bad state.

Staring at return to expedition option, I bit my lip from nerves... 

Let’s try it. Even without the possibility of another power system to grow stronger from, the training and combat experience alone of undergoing live and death battles is valuable. If I had more experience, I wouldn’t have dying when I did. 

For now, I’ll limit myself to three times... If I end up dying three times, I’ll give up on this expedition and see what happens.

Tapping the return to expedition button, I arrived back at my starting location.

Without wasting time, I created a new spear. 

Last time I didn’t obtain mana, nor did I notice any other changes after killing that gigantic ant. From this, I can assume the Dream Realm power system doesn’t rely on killing monsters (or if does, I have to receive something from the body of the monster.)

This time, I headed in the opposite direction as last time. If I can find another monster or something similar to fight, it would be far more advantageous than attempting to fight hordes of gigantic ants.

Somehow though, despite going in the opposite direction, I ended up back at ant mountain. The scene of gigantic ants traveling back and forth is eerily similar to last time. 

Realizing something was off, once again I backed off while confirming that I was heading in a different direction from last time. 

More aware than last time, I realized that when I had walked only a short time the trees had rearranged themselves into the same formation to when the first ant had found me.

Dream Realm... the environment seems realistic at first but when but you get down into the details, the encounters are preordained. If I wasn’t specifically paying attention this time, I wouldn’t have noticed and thought I had simply traveled a distance. That explains why only an hour had pasted despite the fact I believed it was longer.

Preparing my spear, I spotted the gigantic ant heading toward me. Well, that explains why my technique to deal with trackers failed miserably. That, along with the fact ants tend to rely on scents to search for food (as far I’m aware at least).

This time the battle went much faster. I managed to stab through the ant’s eye almost immediately, killing it.

Checking to make sure, I confirmed there weren’t ants within visual range. 

Good, that gives me some time to dismantle the body. 

Spending time removing the ant’s mandibles, I used them to removing the ant’s exoskeleton. 

Periodically, I checked to confirm there were no ants coming. Strangely, no ants came to bother me. I managed to dismantle and check the anatomy of the ants. No magical crystals or strange organs appeared in my search... granted, I didn’t know much about ant anatomy and I only dismantled it in a shallow manner to figure out where it’s organs are (mainly in the far back circle).

It was only when I decided to leave the location that the group of ants appeared in the distance. 

Deciding against leaving my spear behind this time, I walked backward a small distance before I began running. 

Despite being chased, I was far calmer this time around. I search the environment for caves or other narrow environments to limit their numeral advantage. 

While I didn’t manage to find such a narrow environment, I discovered a river in the distance.

Due to the rest period after the fight and calmer pace, I didn’t have much trouble speeding up to reach it faster. 

Glancing around, it didn’t take long to realize that the ants had sped up as well. That’s strange, they had been keeping a slower pace for a long period of time now.

Hmmm, the Dream Realm seems to have different rules than reality. It’s possible that, as long as you run, they will never catch up.

With that in mind, I didn’t continue rushing and merely stayed at my current speed. 

I turned around to face the giant ant horde when I reaching the river. I was right, they didn’t catch up until I reached the river. It seems the Dream Realm is set up with predetermined rules and locations. Still that makes it far easier to survive with an ordinary level of strength. It means that, hopefully, the challenges I face are always possible.

With my back to the river, I only need to worry about ants attacking me from the front. Along with the river providing an escape route if the situation gets too dangerous.

Immediately, though, I realized I would have to use that escape route. All the ants charged forward without even slightly caring about their lives or the lives of their fellow ants.

Dodged backward, I jumped into the river. Although it felt cold, it was far safer than the shoreline. 

I could have fought the ants if they were careful, even if they fought simultaneously. 

However, when they lunge and charge forward without slightly thinking about their fellow ants... without a defense to stop their mandibles or ability to dodge such attacks, the only outcome is death... and, in my current state, I don’t have the capability to deal with those attacks.

Reaching the other side of the river, the surroundings changed. 

Suddenly, I was in a village with people arguing around me.

“What if he’s a spy from an enemy village? We cannot send people on the chance he’s telling the truth!” An angry man yelled.

A younger man countered, “The consequences are too dire if he is telling the truth! We cannot sit here letting the terror ants grow stronger with every passing day!”

“Enough, I will not consent to sending our warriors to act without proof of their existence.” Judging by his words, the elder who spoke was probably a leader of some sort.

“Then, I’ll go alone and find that proof.” The younger man arguing for action stormed off.

Immediately I realized that, in this scenario, I had shown up and warned them of the terror ants. At this point, to complete the scenario, I needed to show proof the terror ants’ existence to reinforce my argument.

Fortunately, I taken a mandible with me from the gigantic ant I killed.

Wordlessly taking the mandible out of my pocket, I handed it over. 

The elder chief seemed surprised and scolded me. “If you had such a thing, why didn’t you show it earlier.” He proceeded to call back the person who left earlier. 

A whitish light washed over the world... and, suddenly, the dream ended. 

Awakened, I found myself exactly where I’d fallen asleep with Rin still sleep comfortably on my lap.

Staring at the wristband, I shook my head. I need to go back with Rin to figure out the specifics of what’s going on with this wristband.