Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 19 - Chapter 5

Chapter Five: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Meetings

Night Hunter, Gerbera

“Where am I?” After I’d been hit with those fragments of the mithril monster, everything had faded to black, and next thing I knew I was in this weird space.

I was standing on a long and thin road. Looking around, I saw lots of roads just like it going in every direction. There were no platforms or pillars anywhere—just these thin roads twisting and turning everywhere.

They also weren’t black like asphalt or white like a stone pavement. Instead, they were all really colorful and unrealistic. They actually kinda reminded me of the Rainbow Road stages from a long-running series of racing games. I’d played them with dad before, and I’d always hated that track...

“There’s...nothing down there,” I said as I looked over the side of the road. I couldn’t see anything through the dense clouds. What would have happened if I fell? “I...I’m not in the gaol again, right?”

I’d just left that place, so I was really sure it didn’t look this crazy. Had the explosion sent me flying somewhere?

I’ll just check by opening the map window and...huh?

“It’s not coming up,” I muttered to myself. I couldn’t open the map.

But never mind the map—I couldn’t even open the menu or check my stat summary. What the hell was going on?

“Hold on...how am I supposed to log out?”

Am I trapped in the game, like I’m in some 2010-era anime...? No way, right?! Someone tell me I’m wrong!

“What...? I don’t see our leader, April, or even Candy here either...” Hell, I couldn’t even see my own Alhazred.

This was actually the most confusing situation I’d gotten in since I started Dendro, which was saying a lot—I hung around our leader, after all.

“Hellooo...? Is anyone heeere?” I raised my voice, but the only response I got was an echo, spreading through the whole who-knows-how-big space.

Well...it doesn’t look like I can do anything but walk...

As I began moving, I thought about the situation.

Before it all faded to black, I’d seen both the leader and Candy get caught in the explosion. If that was the reason I was here now, those two must be here too. I didn’t know about Candy, but our leader could do anything, so I was pretty sure he’d know what to do about this situation.

I wanted to meet up with them again, but I couldn’t find them anywhere.

“What am I supposed to do by myself?” I didn’t even have Alhazred for some reason. What could a non-maxed-out girl like me even do here? If I ran into some of those “Thralls,” they’d just beat me up.

“Someone...anyone...show yourseeelves... I need a tank! C’mon, give me a meat shield...!”

Right as I mumbled all of that...

“Hm?”

...the surroundings quickly became more colorful.

A mist with an indescribable color spread around me and covered my eyes. I couldn’t see anything.

“What the heck...? This is scary!” This was like in one of my dad’s horror games! Will I be okay?! What if there’s some creepy monster somewhere in the mist?! What if it’s all wriggly and gross?!

“...Hey.”

“EEEEEEEEK!” Someone grabbed my shoulder...!

“Hey, calm down!”

“We are not your enemies.”

“Y-You’re not?” After hearing the voices, I turned around.

This was a weird place where I couldn’t know what I’d run into, but if it wasn’t an enemy, then I didn’t care.

“Yeah. I’ve been dragged in here too. My name’s Ray, and this is my Embryo, Nemesis. Well, your leader knew us...but yeah.”

It did turn out to be enemies!

◇◇◇

Sorcerer, Ray Starling

I’d touched the aura, gotten the Forced Sleep debuff, and next thing I knew I was in this place.

My trusted mount Silver was nowhere in sight, and my body felt so light it made me kinda uncomfortable. But I still had Nemesis with me and could transform her into weapons, so I’d been able to relax for the moment.

After that, I’d gotten caught up in some weird mist, and then ran into a member of the other party that’d been put to sleep. It was the girl who’d been injured and received treatment.

“I know I said ‘anyone,’ but...whyyy...?” For some reason, she took one look at me and then started to panic, grasping her head.

Is something wrong...?

“This must be caused by your apparel,” Nemesis said telepathically.

I feel like you always blame my clothes for everything, I replied in thought. There’s no way an outfit can be enough to make a stranger act like this, right?

“Have you forgotten the dismay you inflicted upon those bandits that one time?”

That must’ve been because of the other three. Yeah, that’s it.

“Nngh...this is the worst time to not have him with me...” said the girl.

“You okay...?” I asked.

“Yeah. I am. I just gotta calm down a bit...”

“That’s fine.” I didn’t know if it was my fault or just because of where we were, but she seemed pretty damn stressed. “What’s your name, though?”

“My name? It’s Gerbera...uh.” After answering Nemesis’s question, the girl once again grasped her head.

“What a fidgety young lady,” Nemesis commented.

“I get it, though. Just look at what’s happening.”

Gerbera, huh? I’d definitely heard that name before. That was the name used by the Superior that Shu and Rook had beaten. I knew that Gerbera owned a terrifying Sentinel that couldn’t be perceived in any way, but besides that I’d been told that she was an overconfident, extremely self-assertive woman.

“Nnh...I’m such a dummy. I’m a complete mess... I really am useless...”

The Gerbera they’d described was the complete opposite of this self-deprecating girl who was freaking out with her head in her hands. That other Gerbera was supposed to be in the gaol, anyway, so yeah—she obviously wasn’t the same person.

While I thought of what to say to this girl crouching on the ground, she glared at me with tears in her eyes.

“How are you so calm...? You realize you’ve been put to sleep and sent to this weird place, right...?” Why was I calm, huh?

Well, the answer to that was the simple fact that I’d actually been through something like this before.

“I was once kidnapped by a cult while I was asleep.”

“Whaaa...that sounds so scary...”

Yeah...looking back, that was actually pretty terrifying.

“So you’re calm because you’re used to dangerous situations that make no sense?” she asked.

“I guess you could say that.”

“Is that really something you should get used to?”

Silence. It’s probably better not to, but I did, so...it is what it is.

There was one other relevant thing I’d experienced before.

“Oh, another reason is that it’s not my first time in a space like this.”

“Huh...? You know what this mystery zone is?”

I nodded before saying, “We are...in a dream.”

Gerbera looked at me like I was talking nonsense, but that was the truth.

“...Weren’t we in a game? Wait, aren’t dive-type VRMMOs already basically like dreams?”

“We’re still in Dendro, but we’re in a dream inside of that—the space you’re sent to when your avatar gets Forced Sleep or Faint.”

I’d experienced this multiple times before. I’d even gotten to use my avatar in dreams thanks to Gardranda and, more recently, the axe.

“Oh. I see...” said Gerbera.

“Though, normally, there are no other people here but me—even my Embryo isn’t here sometimes. This time, though, there’s me, Nemesis, and even you. So, this is definitely a dream, but not just any dream.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone—probably Overlord Acedia—has connected our dreams.”

“What’s the point of doing that?” I knew what she actually wanted to say—why couldn’t the Overlord just put us to sleep and kill us then? There were still lots of Thralls left. They were more than enough to slaughter us while we were all unconscious.

“I know what you mean. If the Overlord just wanted to defeat us, there’s no need to connect our dreams like this. That’s why I think there’s gotta be more to it...”

Perhaps this space was related to us being put to sleep?

“There’s so many things we just don’t know... Maybe our leader understands something, but...” Gerbera said.

“Oh yeah, why are you alone? You had a party, didn’t you?”

“I’d like to know that myself.”

Regardless, all either of us could do right now was keep walking. I had no idea what this dream-road was leading to, but for now, all we could do was follow it. The silver lining here was that Nemesis and I had found someone to accompany us.

“...This took a weird turn.” For some reason, though, Gerbera followed after me with a complicated expression on her face.

◆◆◆

Inside the Dream

“So you know nothing about this Embryo, huh?”

“I do not. The only Overlord I ever fought was Overlord Gula, Dis Satisfactory.”

Sechs and Candy had already met up in the joint dream that Overlord Acedia had sent them to. They were on a road just like the one on which Ray had met Gerbera.

“All I know is that the skills and Embryos of this one are nothing like hers.”

“They’re both Overlords, but they’re not that similar, huh?”

“Indeed. Overlord Gula is someone who fights head-on instead of using such indirect methods as these. She may be classified as either a solo combatant or a wide-scale exterminator.”

Candy almost asked if Sechs had won, but decided against it. The answer was obvious when you considered that Sechs had not been sent to the gaol at that point, while Overlord Gula was still on this side. I guess it was a draw? Candy thought. It wasn’t clear when the fight had happened, but it seemed likely that, at least back then, Overlord Gula was on the same level as, if not above, Sechs himself.

In that case, one could assume that as a fellow member of the cartel and a supposed equal to Gula, Overlord Acedia was also immensely powerful.

“Anyway, back to what we know about this dreamlike place...”

“If our guesses are correct, we are at quite a disadvantage here,” Sechs said.

“My GODly powers are especially useless here.” Candy spun his Resheph and let out a sigh. The sound of something being sprayed out through the Embryo’s holes was audible, but it didn’t seem like it was spewing disease this time. “It’s all empty now...and when I try to make any more, they all just go poof.”

“I suppose bacteria cannot exist here because they have no ability to think.” This was the inside of a dream—a space in which only creatures that dreamed could exist—so Resheph’s bacteria hadn’t been drawn in. Even if new ones were made, they couldn’t stay here, and anything created in a dream did not appear in reality.

Overlord Acedia had certainly not considered this incompatibility, but his Dreamland had completely neutralized Resheph. This might’ve been the reason why the mithril-dissolving bacteria had produced no effect either.

“And Resheph has first-gen bacteria too... It’s kinda unfair how a slime like you can be here. It’s bacteria discrimination.”

“‘Differentiation’ might be the better word for it, and the only way to know the process behind it is to ask Overlord Acedia himself. Speaking of differentiation, April may not be here.”

April had the ability to think, but she was a Prism Person—not a human. The old question posed by science fiction—Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—was irrelevant here, as she was most likely not present in the dream. Even if she could exist here, the only way to enter the dreamworld was the Forced Sleep debuff, which had no effect on her whatsoever. She could enter a “sleep mode,” but it was completely separate from all this.

“But that is nothing but good for us,” Sechs continued.

“...Yeaaah,” Candy said with a nod. “If April wasn’t outside, we’d be sent back to the gaol while still asleep.”

◇◆◇

The Southernmost Edge of Altar, A Mountain Forest Near the Border

Saying not a word, April swung the wires in her hands and fought off the charging mithril Thralls.

She was facing dozens of creatures all by herself. This was because Sechs—her owner—as well as Gerbera and Candy had suddenly lost consciousness.

Thus, she now fulfilled her role as a combat-focused Prism Person and fought to protect them.

Running away from here wasn’t even an option. Unlike her sister unit, Jet Chaser, April wasn’t specialized in high-speed combat. She didn’t think she could escape while carrying all three of the others.

With strong movements, she used her Material Slider to bring the defense of the mithril as low as possible, then tore them apart with her wires.

However, even after being broken apart, the Thralls were still coming toward her. Kicking them into the distance, she kept them all away from Sechs’s group as best she could. The strong defense of the metal meant little to April, but she was having trouble with their unnaturally high life force.

While she was doing all of this, the Prism Steed in the air carried his sleeping owner on its back while evading the attacks of the winged Thralls. It was a unit April did not recognize, but the design alone was enough for her to tell that they shared a creator—the first Flagman.

They were from different series, so April didn’t have much sibling-like affinity for him, but the fact that they happened to meet here, two thousand years after their creation, had made some strange feelings flow through her circuitry.

“Support.”

Perhaps that was the reason that she’d expanded her attack radius to include the Thralls in the air and fought the Thralls that were throwing rocks at Silver.

The steed did not respond, but he created a barrier of air to prevent the scattered pieces of a Thrall from hitting Gerbera’s unconscious body on the ground.

Their circumstances may have been vastly different, but the ones who gave them orders were currently sharing the same dream.

Thus, April and Silver had decided to assist each other in protecting those they had to protect.

“...G h e.”

The large Thrall—Cardinal A—was simply standing back and watching this happen, though.

It was as though it was waiting for something.

◇◇◇

Sorcerer, Ray Starling

How long had we been walking in this dream?

The colorful mist covering everything around the roads here was making it hard to tell how far we’d gone. Also, if Gardranda’s and the axe’s dreams were anything to go by, the time inside them and the time in reality wasn’t the same. It was probably flowing faster in here.

“Hell, if that’s not how it is, my body could just die.” We couldn’t open any windows here, so I couldn’t check, but it was possible that my physical body was still being attacked by Thralls. In the worst-case scenario, I could die while I was still walking around in this dream and get the death penalty basically out of nowhere. “But I guess we got no choice but to keep moving.” Wishing myself awake and even attacking myself wasn’t enough to make me snap out of it. Well, this sleep was strong enough to overpower both an Elixir and the Reversal, so that made sense.

I had no idea if this road would lead to the root cause of this deep sleep, but if I wanted to change anything, I had to keep moving.

“Well, someone’s optimistic...” Gerbera, who was accompanying me in this dream, had a look on her face like she thought she was about to die.

The reason for this gloomy expression wasn’t just the fact that we were trapped in here. In this dream, she didn’t have her Embryo, and apparently she couldn’t even take out any of her weapons.

Why was Nemesis here, but her Embryo wasn’t? That was one of the many questions we had no answer to yet.

“Nnh...I can’t even fight...and if I get the death penalty, I’ll be sent all the way back...”

I guess she saved somewhere far away? I thought.

“Hey, don’t worry,” I said. “I can’t do anything about our bodies, but if we have a battle here in the dream, you can just leave it all to me.” I didn’t know if there were any enemies here, but I had Nemesis, so I was pretty sure I could at least fight. “Help me out by looking for enemies, though.”

“What...?”

“When I asked, you told me you had some jobs from the hunter grouping, right?”

“Ohh. Yeah...well, okay...”

“Thanks.”

This place made no sense, so I couldn’t even guess what could attack us and from where. It didn’t hurt to be extra careful.

As I resumed walking, a question came to mind.

“By the way, when I first saw you, you looked pretty beaten up. What happened there?” That was before Overlord Acedia had attacked us, so it had to have been caused by something else. But what could have damaged her that bad?

Gerbera said nothing at first and instead looked up at the sky, as though deep in thought. I figured she was thinking about how to explain what had happened, but for some reason her legs were shaking.

Still, she was eventually able to give me an answer.

“...I-I got spun by a drill.”

“That’s a thing that happens?!” What could’ve led to that?!

“D-Don’t worry, it’s no big deal... It was just an accidental scrape, I guess—with an Embryo.”

“That’s a pretty scary accident...”

And yeah, there were probably drill Embryos out there... Now that I thought about it, Hannya’s Sandalphon was kinda drill-like. Hannya was in Gideon, though, so she obviously had nothing to do with this.

“You have experienced your share of things, but never a drill,” said Nemesis.

“Yeah. Though my whole body did get broken apart multiple times recently.”

“Whaaa...?” Gerbera seemed freaked out by what I’d said.

I wasn’t lying, though. Thanks to the likes of Behemot, Jubei, and the axe, I was getting blasted to pieces fairly often these days. I was kinda worried that it would have some weird effects on Nemesis’s evolution.

“So our leader isn’t the only one who comes apart all the time.”

“Hm?” Leader? Did she mean that woman? She often came apart? Well, she did seem to have healing powers that rivaled Miss Eldritch, so I guess she could make it work. I could recall Miss Eldritch putting her arm back basically the moment after Figaro removed it.

“Ray, Gerbera...what do you think that is?” As we talked, Nemesis pointed to the right—away from the twisting roads.

Before we’d realized it, there was a rectangular cloud in that direction. The shape was clearly unnatural, and we all focused on it.

A moment later, the cloud began to shine, and then displayed something like it was an electronic billboard.

It showed...a tapir.

More specifically, a person wearing a tapir costume.

I didn’t recognize that costume in particular, but it had a familiar air to it—probably because of Shu. Well, him or Carl, maybe.

“Oh yeah, I think Shu actually told me about this.” He’d mentioned that there was a Superior in Legendaria who also wore a costume all the time. If I recalled correctly, the name was ZZZ. So, this person in a tapir costume must’ve been—

“Hello. I’m Doraemon.”

Whoops, my mistake.

Seriously, though...what the hell was that introduction? Honestly, it didn’t even work as a joke.

“You should only say that if you’re dressed as a cat. Or a tanuki, at least.”

“Are you an idiot...?”

“Even here I have heard the name ‘Doraemon’ quite often.”

We gave various responses, and the self-proclaimed Doraemon nodded.

“Yes, you’re right. I’m not Doraemon. I’m ZZZ. Overlord Acedia. Good job. Yaaay. I like dorayaki, though. It’s great that we have it here too.”

The tapir...or rather, ZZZ spoke like he was delirious, or maybe as though he was just barely awake. I felt like I was listening to someone who’d pulled a bunch of all-nighters in a row and was now in a really unstable frame of mind.

But...

“By the way, if anyone here has Truth Discernment, let me ask you: did it work?”

“...Huh?” Gerbera tilted her head, then opened her eyes in surprise.

I’d heard that the hunter grouping’s Trap Hunter was a job focused on setting up traps, but it also had a low-level Truth Discernment meant for trap finding.

Her reaction told me that it didn’t activate when ZZZ had used the obviously fake name.

“Okaaay, I’m now gonna explain that and also the other rules of Dreamland. Explanations are a pain, but it’s a condition for using a skill. If only I could let someone else do it. Too bad it’s gotta be me... What a pain, such a paiiin... I’m broadcasting to all of you at once, but it’s still a paiiin...”

ZZZ took a pillow out from somewhere and buried his face in it. He clearly wasn’t into this. But then he resumed talking like it was something he was being forced to do.

“First, in Dreamland sense-based skills don’t work right. I mean, it’s a dream, so yeah. Do your best with your own mundane senses. You’re in a dream, so you don’t have a sense of pain, taste, or smell, but you don’t have to eat anymore. It won’t have any taste anyway. But you do have the sense of touch. And sight. And hearing. But this isn’t a lewd dream. Nobuta, you peeerv.”

Where the hell did that come from?

Even if I wanted to say that out loud, he was talking too fast to give me a chance. For someone who obviously wasn’t enthusiastic about this explanation, he was talking nonstop.

Or maybe he just wanted this to be over with?

“Next, you can’t bring anything that doesn’t have a mind. Well, Embryos are fine even if they’re just things, but normal gear just looks like it’s there and doesn’t actually exist. It’s like ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ but reversed. Nobuta, you peeerv—part II: Electric Boogaloo.”

I couldn’t tell if he liked Doraemon or hated it.

“If Embryos are fine, then why isn’t mine here?”

“No idea, Miss Padding. Anyway, nextnextnext.”

“Who are you calling ‘Padding’?!”

“Oh. Sorry. The pads are gone too, aren’t they? It’s great that you look the same though, isn’t it? That your chest isn’t a sheer cliff here.”

“You’re dead!”

“Calm down! That’s just a broadcast! You’ll fall off the road!” I shouted. Gerbera had no weapons, but that didn’t stop her from trying to square up with ZZZ, so I jumped to restrain her by the upper arms and hold her back. Our stats seemed to be about the same, so it wasn’t easy. I might’ve not been able to do it if it wasn’t for the STR bonus from my Miasmaflame Bracers.

Hm? Wait...why does grabbing her arms...feel like I’m just grabbing bare skin?

“If all gear in the dream simply appears to be there, then I suppose they are like holograms over bare skin...” said Nemesis.

Deafening silence. I gently let go of Gerbera’s body, and the fist she’d raised against ZZZ went straight to my face instead.

Welp...

ZZZ gave us a “what the hell are you doing” kind of stare that I could feel through the tapir suit. “Heeey, I just warned you. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, and I think you probably realized already, but you fell asleep ’cause of my Dreamland. You fall asleep when you touch iiit. It’s the weird-colored aura. My eeeyes.” ZZZ kept on with his explanation, regardless of what we did. “Dreamland has a limited range. If my creations and I—well, Thralls these days—are gone from the surroundings, you will wake up. You gotta do some search and destroy. But you can’t ’cause you’re catching Zs.”

So the Thralls were like antennae that spread the Dreamland signal, huh? And as long as they were around, they would channel power and make it impossible for us to wake up.

Wait, doesn’t that mean that we can’t do anything but wait until our sleeping bodies are killed?

“Heh! I got some bad news for you, you sleepy trunk-face! Our April is still awake...probably! She’s a robot! A Prism Person! She’s really strong! She’s making mincemeat out of all your Thralls right now as we speak!”

Despite the situation, Gerbera aggressively pointed at ZZZ. Her depression from before seemed to have been blown away by anger over the whole “padding” thing. Also, she may have been acting confident because she was completely relying on someone else instead of saying she’d do something herself.

“That so?” ZZZ didn’t seem to think much of her words, however. His strategy was falling apart, but it wasn’t shaking him in the slightest.

Is there more to this?

“Finally, dying in the Dreamland gives your avatar the death penalty.”

“HUH?!” Gerbera exclaimed in surprise, but ZZZ ignored her and waved his hand.

“The explanation’s over. Goodbye, everyone. I’m gonna get some shut-eye. Goodnight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

The broadcast ended, and the cloud he’d used as a screen dispersed.

Left behind, we didn’t know what to say.

“...Even Candy is easier to grasp.”

“Candy?”

“Oh...u-umm...well, you know, candy’s pretty easy to drop, right?”

As she said that, she couldn’t make eye contact with me.“I understand. It is truly saddening when sand sticks to them,” said Nemesis.

“You don’t eat the candy you drop, do you?”

“...No, I do not.” She was looking away from me. Pretty suspicious. Knowing her, she’d probably think the candy was still good to eat if you just washed it off a bit.

“I gotta say, that tapir really runs his mouth... Only dumbasses reveal their...tricks...” After saying that, she crouched and grasped her head again for some reason. I strained my ears and heard a shaky, “I was such an idiooot.”

Had she messed up in the past somehow?

“Did he say that the reason he said all of that was that it was the condition for some skill, and because this is a dream?”

“Because this is...why?”

“Look around you. Everything looks clearer, doesn’t it?” The clouds surrounding us had dispersed and the bits that had been kinda unfocused were now much sharper.

And though the road was still floating, it had become completely straight.

“I guess that now that our heads have been stuffed with new info, this Dreamland has begun to take shape in our minds.”

It was said that dreams were what people saw when the brain was organizing information. I didn’t know if the dreams we saw in Dendro were the same as they were reality, but it was possible that this power that bore the name of “Dreamland” incorporated some of the principles of real-life dreams.

That would explain why he had to give an explanation to use a skill. And now that we were given info about Dreamland, it would start showing what it was actually capable of.

For now, though, I couldn’t see any changes besides the increase in clarity.

“Well, now we know that we’ll wake up as long as we just wait,” said Gerbera.

“Oh yeah, you said something about April? The Prism Person?”

I’d heard about Prism Persons from Integra. She’d said that they were stand-alone combat dolls equipped with AI and built by Flagman himself. I’d also heard that the Prism Soldiers that had shown up from Quartierlatin’s ruins were meant to be mass-produced versions of the Prism Persons—though, I had no idea what had to happen in the mass production process to go from April to those things in the ruins. April looked human at first glance, while the Prism Soldiers definitely didn’t. The difference in appearance between them was way bigger than the difference between Prism Steeds and SMPS.

“Yeah. If the tapir wasn’t lying, April’s gonna take care of the Thralls soon and we’ll wake up... I’m really leaving it all to everyone else, huh?”

“But there was a Mythical metal Thrall there.” The scarlet Thrall based on a landdragon was obviously way above the rest.

“Mythical or not, if they’ve got nothing but hardiness going for them, they’re easy marks for April.”

Gerbera didn’t seem to worry about the scarlet Thrall whatsoever. There must’ve been some compatibility at play that I didn’t know about. In that case, maybe we really would wake up if we just waited long enough.

“Hm...” But I couldn’t shake off my worries. Would waiting really be enough to get out of this situation? We were up against a Superior and an Overlord—someone who stood upon two summits at once. Could he really be beaten by just having someone around who didn’t fall asleep and could deal with Mythical metal? “Also...”

ZZZ himself had clearly said that dying in the dream would result in a death penalty. That meant that this dream had something that could kill us somewhere inside it.

“Anyway, I don’t think it’s a good idea to just wait,” I continued. “We should find out if there’s anything we can do from—”

“Ray!”

That was when it happened.

With a voice as sharp as an alarm bell, Nemesis transformed into the greatsword and flew into my hand.

I knew full well what this meant.

“We got company?!”

“Aye! Above us!”

I looked up and saw a tiny silhouette far in the distance. Now that the clouds had dispersed and my vision was unobstructed, I could clearly see it falling toward us.

“Gerbera! Stay back!”

“You don’t have to tell me that...!”

The thing falling from above grew larger as it did. Soon enough, I was able to see both its shape and its color.

I could see it very clearly.

“What...the hell...?!” As that question came over me, the thing finally landed several dozen metels ahead.

The dream’s road remained steady, but the area around the landing site was pulverized and cracked.

“...G h e.”

Through the dust raised by its landing, I saw a giant, scarlet figure. It looked like a dragon with swords growing all over it.

It was undoubtedly the Thrall made of Mythical metal.

“Why is it here...in the dream?”

Something that should’ve been outside had somehow gained an existence within the dream—and now we were its targets.