Chapter 68 – 68. Into a Broken Nightmare

Tiriririk.

Tiriririk.

“Hmm…”

I sighed at the familiar sound of the alarm and barely opened my eyes.

“Uh..?”

But why do I feel something out of place when I look at the ceiling of my room?

Strangely, the house was unfamiliar. It must have been a house I’ve lived in for years…

‘It’s my usual house.. Why is it like this?’

He shook his head and stretched once.

Then, I went straight to the bathroom, washed my face, and drank a cup of coffee.

Daily routine before going to work. Even though it was something I always did, it felt strangely out of place.

“Slurp..”

I don’t know the English language.

Why are you so relaxed? Have you ever been this relaxed?

You don’t have to worry about being late for work… Why don’t you worry about being late?

“It’s strange.. It’s strange.. I don’t know why.”

Drinking coffee, I thought about the memories. The original me, not the strange me…

“Yeah.. I must hate going to work. That’s a normal long aim…”

As soon as I thought that, lethargy, deep-rooted irritation with the company, and hatred for my boss and co-workers welled up.

As I recall the emotions I had forgotten, I finally feel that the sense of incongruity that I had been feeling since a while ago has disappeared. It was as if a displaced painting had slightly regained its original form, a sense of stability.

“I can’t win the lottery…”

I’ve been buying lottery tickets every week for 10 years now, and strangely, it’s not easy to win 5th place.

I don’t know how lucky I am. Well, it would be wrong to wish for good luck in my damn life.

“Ehh… A pitiful life…”

I lamented my situation and started preparing for work.

Even today, if you want to get along well without fighting with the damned dog-like humans, you shouldn’t be discouraged already.

You have to be strong even if you are forced to.

If I didn’t, it was obvious that I would be run over by humans and spend most of the day in irritation and anger.

Rattle.

I opened the front door and went out, determined to brighten up my shitty life even a little bit.

Just then, the timing overlapped and I ran into the woman next door.

‘The girl next door… Eunji?’

Wait, how do I know the name of the girl next door…

And what? This deep feeling.

I want to hug her even right now. It looks like it will work though. I feel like she’s my woman.

‘Am I really crazy? Why do I keep doing this today?’

I guess the holidays were too long. I feel like I’m not used to today that I was used to.

As I stared at it, the woman next door awkwardly greeted me.

“Uh, hello..”

I didn’t know what to answer for a moment.

Should I say I’m happy? Or it’s been a while…

No, we don’t really have much to do in the first place…

I couldn’t answer because I was deep in thought, so the woman next door looked at me strangely, and she immediately kissed my lips.

“Uh! Eh, what is this..!?”

“Good morning. I don’t know? Is that what we always do?”

“Uh.. Yes?”

“I will be late. I’ll go first, brother.”

She stroked my lower back once, then melted into the shadow and climbed down the railing.

“What is this.. Keugh..”

As I watch her go down to her first floor, I feel a sense of strangeness to the point where her reality is warped. And she felt a headache piercing her brain.

‘Something just went awry. What is this feeling?’

I don’t know. As soon as I focused on the idea that the girl next door was really pretty, the strangeness and distortion disappeared. At the same time, the thought of wanting that woman filled the place where the distortion disappeared.

‘Can I date a girl like that… And even get married?’

It was a life without a relationship with a woman. No dating experience.

In the first place, there was no woman who approached me favorably. But the girl next door seems to have made a pretty aggressive dash towards me…

I went out with the girl next door, got married, and even had a baby, imagining that I was busy walking to catch the subway.

‘Hell season…’

As expected, it was morning, so the subway was full of people. But they are all women.

A woman with an axe, a woman with piercings, and a tall woman who could have reached 190, the subway was full of familiar women.

“Uh…”

I thought I was going to be late for work, so I slipped into their gap and got on board.

Hearts fly here and there and hit my face.

“Whoa…”

Buried in the chest Their strange body odor penetrated deep into my nose every time I breathed in.

Something keeps trying to get bigger in the lower leg… But if you even touch the butt of the woman standing in front of you, there is no answer.

I forcibly held back my erection.

At that time, the woman standing in front of her kept pushing her butt against my lower abdomen.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stand it. The more her soft ass was rubbed, the more her breath grew and her cock grew.

‘This crazy!! What’s wrong with this woman!’

Before getting off, I had to sing the national anthem in my mind for a long time.

·
·
·

Time passed in an instant.

It seems that the middle process was omitted for some reason, but I returned home after working overtime.

“Haa.. Tired..”

As soon as I got home, I collapsed on my stomach and took a deep breath.

“Under. Deputy Kim, that damn bitch… You’re only going to fuck me. I want to make an offering…”

How long will I have to live like this?

Repetitive daily life is so boring.

Tired of repeated irritation now.

“Should I hit you…”

No matter how fucked up and annoying I was, I had no place to go other than here, so I kept holding on, but is this right?

If I beat him in anger, I would have to go back and forth between human sacrifice and slave hunting…

“Maybe, maybe that would be better…”

Maybe.

Hourly wages are good these days, but wouldn’t it be okay to just resign and become a cultist?

Whether it’s a small salary or a cultist’s hourly wages…

I want to quit the company and even give a fuck to that assistant manager Kim.

I have to smash the face of that bitch who barks at me like a fucking dog…

As I was thinking about that, a scene from a movie suddenly came to my mind.

The movie with McAvoy and Angelina.

There, the main character gets an opportunity to beat the company, and then there is a scene where he yells at his boss and punches his colleague in the face with a keyboard.

‘It’s a famous scene filled with the remorse of all office workers who have bosses or coworkers who suck..’

If I followed the scene with a keyboard, I would go to prison right away, but I think I could get a tentacle in the face of that bitch…

It was when I was thinking such useless thoughts.

– Ding-dong.

“Huh..?”

Is there anyone who will come to me?

Even this late at night?

I have no family. And to my shame, I have no friends.

Relatives are worse than enemies.

Who the hell came to me?

I checked the outside through the telescope.

“Huh…?”

Outside the ophthalmoscope stood an unusually pretty woman with white hair and red eyes.

With fangs exposed.

“What is it.. That woman. In the middle of the night.”

It’s not some kind of horror movie.

What business did you come to my house in the middle of the night?

“Fuck…”

I was a little appalled and didn’t answer.

Then he quickly turned on the lights all over the house.

“Haa.. Maybe it’s because I played too many games…”

If you have a mental problem, there is no answer for a person without an ointment like me.

No family to take care of, no property to take care of.

‘It’s better to just search around than to suffer from mental illness.’

I don’t want to be dragged into a psychiatric hospital, given sedatives all day, and chasing bluebirds among crazy people.

“Fuck.. There’s nothing going on..”

What a terrible life. It seems I’m the only one who keeps crashing. I think I’m the only one getting twisted.

If it’s going to be twisted. I wish the whole world would be twisted and ruined.

Yes, it’s fair to say that everyone is ruined together.

Gradually negative thoughts deepen.

Before I knew it, I was about to make a knot and hang myself there.

– Ding-dong.

Then the doorbell rang again.

“What the fuck!!”

What the hell are you doing, you keep yelling at my house doorbell?

I can’t stand it any longer. It’s scary and nabal.

I took out a baseball bat from home and slammed open the front door.

“Uuuuu…”

In front of the front door stood the man from the upper house.

Sometimes, when I’m drunk, the guy from upstairs thinks my house downstairs is his and visits it by mistake…

But something.. This.. Why does it feel like a scene I’ve only seen once?

What is this feeling of deja vu?

Why did the man upstairs become a zombie?

Zombie?

‘Deja vu…?’

I… What did I do next…

I don’t know. Blurry

“Uuuuu!!!”

I just swung the bat without hesitation.

Kang!!

A baseball bat hit the man’s head directly.

As it was, it continued to strike the unbalanced zombie’s head.

Then he trampled on the nape of the dying man who fell down.

“Ha ha.. Ha ha.. Ha.. C.. Ba..”

Hands full of blood.

The dead Han Taeyang.

Han Tae-yang…?

“What. This is..”

Before I knew it, I was standing alone in an unknown house.

Gradually, the feeling of incongruity reached its peak.

“Ah…”

At that time, in the main room of the house, through the slightly open door, someone looked at me and made a strange noise.

“Hey, fuck!!! Who is this!!”

“Ooh… Ooh…”

It was an unknown man who had lost his wife.

He knew the name… But now I don’t remember.

He was looking at me with hateful eyes.

And that’s not all. All over the house, the people I killed were glaring at me.

As if you resent me like you want to kill me

“For a moment. The humans I… Killed…? To say I killed it… What kind of bullshit is that…”

Slowly, gradually, memories awaken one by one.

Only then did I realize that this was a dream.

“Dream… Yes. The blue pill to turn away. Fuck.. It must have been a dream.”

Then, one by one, the sense of incongruity that had been holding me down disappeared.

Somehow, I felt something strange all day today, but it was all a dream.

‘The blue pill that turns away.. What is it? Let’s say you have a special event. It makes me have boring dreams like this…’

I feel cheated somehow. How could you spend thousands of coins just to have a silly nightmare like this?

Did he want the people he killed to feel guilty?

Or did he want to be terrified?

I don’t feel any guilt for those I killed with my own hands. Because I thought I only killed people who deserved to die.

And there’s no reason to be afraid of those you’ve already killed once.

There is nothing to be afraid of as long as you realize that this is a dream.

As I thought so, the space began to shudder and a notification window appeared in front of me.

[You have entered the stage of full lucid dreaming.]

[We move from ‘The Nightmare of Everyday Life’ to ‘The Tragedy of Shared Dreams’.]

“Share what? Ugh…!”

Before I could ask anything, I fell asleep again.

*****

“Ugh… It’s the head..”

I stood up from my seat holding my slightly dizzy head.

“This is…”

The place where I opened my eyes was a reddish sky and a land where unknown things grew.

It was like a place made by cutting out one side of hell. It’s an ominous and worrisome sky.

As if stained with blood.. Red.. And red again.

It’s just… Red… Beautiful…

That’s… What the hell…

“Hey. Keep your head down.”

When I was distracted by the red sky, someone called me.

I hear a mechanical sound mixed with my voice, who is it?

I don’t know.

I’ll have to look down and see who it is.

That red sky, those red eyes.

It’s so beautiful.. I can’t take my eyes off it..

Paji Jiji!!!

“Quaaaaa!!!”

A dizzying shock felt in the nape of the neck.

Intense stimulation from an unknown object, such as an electric shock.

I had a seizure and collapsed on the floor with crab foam.

Thanks to that, I was barely able to take my eyes off the red sky.

“Keuuuuugh…!!!”

When I looked up at the guy who attacked me while lying on the floor, I saw an old man wearing sunglasses who looked like a heavily armed soldier looking down at me.

‘Robot..?’

When I opened my eyes and looked closely, I saw that he was not a normal human being.

It’s more like an android that mimics a human.

Seams are visible at the joints. Also, mechanical parts were exposed on the torn skin.

‘A robot or a cyborg?’

I don’t know exactly. Are you a modified human or just an android?

It was only through the visible appearance that most of his body was made of mechanical parts.

“Sorry for the sudden attack. But I couldn’t help it. Because this is the most effective way.”

He reached out his hand to me, who barely wiped the foam off my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt.

I stood up holding his cold hand.

If you tried to kill me, you could have killed me several times already.

Judging by the fact that he’s still alive, he either has something to do for me or he’s a very kind robot.

I wish it was the latter.

“Turn it off…”

“Hey, don’t look up at the sky. Nothing good happens by looking at the sky.”

“Ah yes.”

He took out a baseball cap and sunglasses from his bag and put them on me.

It is now possible not to look up at the sky unless one is conscious of the sky being slightly covered by the brim of the hat.

Also, thanks to the sunglasses, my vision was blocked a bit more.

“You must never see anything floating in the sky. If you don’t want to become the manure of this land.”

To become the manure of this land Wasn’t this just a dream?

Is it a kind of dream that cannot return to reality after death?

You may have been taken to a strange place while you were asleep.

I asked the robot.

“Is it true that you are dreaming here?”

“What? Dream? Are you dreaming? Wait a minute, it’s a dream… Yes, it’s a dream. It’s a dream It was a dream. Hmm… It must have been a dream.”

In an instant, Android repeated the same words over and over again like a broken machine.

I found it a bit bizarre and creepy.

Maybe he went crazy and attacked me, so I tried to use the skill to suppress it with his tentacles.

‘I can’t use the skill. I don’t even have anything.’

As in the ground floor, which could be accessed through the black market, where fatal errors such as possessors, returnees, and reincarnations gather, skills could not be used here either.

Moreover, the clothes you are wearing are all your belongings. At least in the other side of the world, I had firecrackers and other things, but I came here empty-handed.

‘It’s a dream, so it’s only natural that I’m empty-handed…’

I didn’t even feel the presence of Carshinax and Indicron.

Being in a dream, it seems to be completely separated from them.

‘Uh..?’

But for some reason, I felt Botamilli’s presence.

Rather, it is a stronger presence than reality.

I spoke to Botamilli. Please, I hope she answers.

[Hmm.. Hmm.. This place…]

[Boundary. It’s a boundary line… What’s the boundary?]

[I don’t know. I don’t know, but it can’t come out in a normal way.]

[Never let go of your mind there.]

[If you get involved, you become part of the ‘Nightmare’.]

[Seek help from the being in front of you.]

[Then to you…]

There was a lot of noise in Botamilli’s voice.

I think I added a few words, but I didn’t hear them well.

‘To seek help from the person next to me?’

I took one look at the android, who was still muttering something.

I don’t feel any malice or murderous intent towards me, but before that, he was already a broken being somewhere. Can I trust this guy…

“Obviously.. To prevent the increase in entropy.. I passed.. Through a wormhole.. This is.. A dream.. Who am I? I am a scientist.. For research.. What research was it..? Ah, obviously to prevent the increase in entropy… I… Passed through a wormhole… Here…”

Like a machine in error, I repeated the same question and answer over and over again.

I decided to wake him up, thinking that if I left him like this, he would be muttering the same thing to himself endlessly.

“Excuse me! Hey!”

“Huh…!”

When I tapped him on the shoulder and called him, he immediately came to his senses with a startle.

Then he bowed his head towards me.

“Thanks. I also… I guess I’ve been here too long. My mind keeps going back and forth.”

“No, where the hell are you? I know it’s a dream, but…”

First of all, since I don’t know anything, I’ll have to borrow some of his knowledge, who seems to know more than I do.

“This is… Purgatory. A place like hell from which there is no escape…”

“Purgatory?”

“Okay. Like you just said, this is a dream. The problem is, no one knows whose dream it is. Thanks to that, I can’t go to the next level.”

Apparently, before I fell here, the system notification said something about the tragedy of a shared dream…

“Do you know about the tragedy of shared dreams?”

“The Tragedy of Shared Dreams…? I know the tragedy of the commons… But the tragedy of the commons dream… I don’t know.”

“The tragedy of the commons?”

I think I heard it somewhere…

As I was puzzled, the man briefly explained the tragedy of the commons.

“The tragedy of the commons is, quite simply, the concept that if you leave a common resource in front of individuals without any rules or laws, everyone will use it recklessly, depleting and destroying it all… But the tragedy of the commons dream… That’s a meaningful keyword.”

The man caressed his chin and was troubled.

Then, suddenly, I came to my senses and started walking somewhere in a hurry.

“Now, wait a minute! Where are you going?”

“First of all, we have to go to base camp quickly before the sun goes down. You seem to be at the beginning here, but if you have nowhere else to go, follow me.”

I had no other choice but to follow him.

Wherever you are, night is more fearful than day.