"Before I start, can you answer some of my questions?"
Slowly, those words escaped Ayanokouji's lips and were heard by Dry Water. Finally, Dry Water decided to pay attention to the fact that he had not been able to hear Ayanokouji's thoughts for a while now.
He had noticed it a moment ago, but now he decided to analyze it. The connection he had always used to listen was no longer there. Once, he could hear Ayanokouji's thoughts. He could grasp intentions before they fully formed.
Dry Water used more force to delve deeper, but to no avail, and slowly he understood.
Over time, there were countless people who had such mastery over their bodies that they could think intuitively or through their senses, far faster and more efficiently than verbal thoughts ever could. But even they had no control over when it happened; it occurred only under the force of immense immersion. But...
It seemed like Ayanokouji could do it willingly.
𓁹𓁹
It is harder than expected. So far, all the words I said to Dry Water were to provoke him so I could understand his limits, but no matter what I said, not a single thing seemed to have an effect on him. My words were not easy to dismiss, allowing me to gain a better grasp of him, but there was only silence from his side.
That silence was far more deadly than any reply. He did not seize any gaps I had deliberately left open. To interfere would have meant engagement, and engagement would have narrowed the distance between us. Instead, his attention settled into the spaces between my words.
For the first time, I could not see through the one observing me. His attention carried the same distance I maintain when I allow others to expose themselves while believing they are in control.
Now, that distance was directed at me.
I was only allowed to talk because he needed me, nothing more than that. Anything I said wouldn't affect him.
There was only one way to find out.
I looked toward the skeleton and spoke again.
"Before I start, can you answer some of my questions?"
***
After a brief silence, the answer finally came.
"Go ahead."
Was it from behind me? No. While the skeleton was in front of me, I could never pinpoint the exact source of the voice.
It was as if it was already inside my mind.
I finally asked him.
"What exactly is a Nightmare?"
According to the message I received...
[Aspirant. Welcome to the Nightmare _pell. Prepare for your first trial...]
This was nothing but the first trial. I was sure I would receive information about whatever the Nightmare was once I finished it, but it would be far more beneficial to obtain that knowledge from Dry Water himself rather than from another source.
There was a silence I could not decipher. I could not even use expression reading on him. He was invisible.
Finally, he replied.
"There are two ways for me to explain it. Do you want me to explain it through the eyes of others, or from my own?"
"Am I asking for too much if I say both?"
...
When the answer finally came, it was not a continuous explanation, but merely fragments with disconnected ends. He was deliberately hiding information from me.
The Nightmare, he said, appeared on Earth only a few decades ago, unannounced.
It crept in quietly, disguised as exhaustion. People grew tired. The tiredness deepened. Within days, they fell unconscious.
Just like I did.
Those who fell asleep were not merely victims. They were called aspirants—people with intent, carrying something unresolved enough to pull them forward rather than let them fade away.
Ambition.
The first Nightmare was never random. It was shaped around the person who entered it. A single trial.
If the aspirant failed, their body in the waking world would not simply die. It would change.
The seed of the Nightmare would bloom through them, and they would transform into monsters themselves.
But now, this was where things became borderline unbearable.
If what Dry Water was saying was true, it meant the Nightmare was only a few decades old, yet he claimed to be centuries old. Furthermore, if something like this had existed for decades on Earth, I would have known. Even if the world had tried to bury it, it could not have been hidden from my father.
To my father, I was his most prized possession, and he would have loved to get his hands on this kind of power.
Which meant either the Nightmare had been concealed at a level beyond even him, or Dry Water had existed long before this system ever reached Earth.
Or perhaps my theory of entering an entirely new world was correct.
All of those possibilities were wrong in different ways.
If Dry Water predated the Nightmare, then what exactly was he doing here now? If he did not, then what was he pretending to be?
No matter how I analyzed it, I could not wrap my head around this.
Just what exactly was Dry Water?
And what did it mean for an entity like him to watch me ask these questions without stopping me?
***
"What does it mean to others and to you?"
There was silence for a moment before he replied.
"Ayanokouji. When the Nightmare first appeared, they did not know what it was. For them, it was exactly what it sounded like."
"Sadly, there was a problem. Those who fell to the Nightmare didn't disappear, as I told you. They breathed, and that was enough to keep them going. They had simply become useless."
From both a logical and an emotional standpoint, I could understand why things happened as they did. If it was entirely new, the government would not have been able to foresee the disaster it would cause. In the same way, the families of the infected would simply try their best for a miracle.
"Tell me, Ayanokouji. How does society collapse?"
I had not really lived in a proper society; my closest experience was a school called ANHS. Still, I answered.
"Most people would say violence."
As those words escaped my mouth, I remembered my team with Class D, along with my plans for Ichinose, Sakayanagi, and Ryuuen. I did not bother thinking about them for long.
"Violence can destroy or create. The words change, the framing changes, but the conclusion always circles back to it. But that is how others think. They assume violence is the cause. That everything eventually collapses into it."
"In reality, society collapses because of uncertainty. Violence does not create uncertainty. Uncertainty creates violence. When people no longer know which rules apply, which promises hold, or which actions will still be punished tomorrow, force becomes the only remaining constant."
"You're right. Society does not collapse from violence. It collapses from uncertainty. From not knowing whether the rules you followed yesterday will still protect you tomorrow."
He was probably confused right now. Just a moment ago, I had been acting dismissive toward him and arguing in the process, and all of a sudden, I was being cooperative. He was likely wondering whether I was advancing or retreating.
"It began in isolated homes. But hierarchy depends on predictability, and once that broke, panic followed. Families fled rather than confront what slept in their houses. Governments attempted to intervene. Orders were issued to eliminate anyone who had fallen into a prolonged slumber. The families could not do it. They ran instead."
He went silent for a second.
"And then some of them woke up."
There were a few gaps in his explanation.
"As those orders were issued, some returned. They survived the Nightmare. They came back with power."
It was statistically impossible for that many awakenings to align so cleanly with a political response. History had been altered, but Dry Water must have known that such a lie would never work on me...
What was he playing at?
"Soon, the heroes outnumbered the monsters. But why would the powerful submit to the government? That is the question. The government still managed to get some of them to join its ranks, but the smarter ones formed their own clans, named after the gods."
Something I had been waiting for finally arrived.
"There are six you should be aware of. The Sun God. The War God. The Storm God. The Beast God. The Heart God. The Shadow God."
That threw my thoughts off track for a second. I could not figure out how to feel about this. I had finally obtained my freedom, even if only for three years, and I had used only one... In that single year, I made friends, learned a new culture, and figured out how to hold conversations and be normal.
Just for it to be taken away in one sleep.
Should I be angry right now? Or should I be sad, even if it provoked remorse?
I would never be able to go back to my world again. I did not really have any attachment to it, but still, it was preferable.
Should I be happy that I have finally reached freedom and am truly away from the chains that once held me? Or should I confront reality and accept that I have simply moved from the chains of one Earth to another?
Those were not the gods I once knew. They might correspond with the title of gods, but I could confidently say we were thinking of different beings.
And he said there were six gods I should know of, indicating that there were more. If each god had a clan named after them, did the seventh god also have one?
What about the eighth and ninth gods?
After a long silence, Dry Water continued.
"It did not take long for the clans to overpower the government. New orders were formed, and soon after, children were taught how to survive."
He only used the word children... What about adults?
"But it didn't take long for others to realize that the Awakened were far more dangerous than the monsters they once knew. These monsters wore human skin... But again, to weaklings, everything will be a nightmare."
So this answered it. We must only care about the strong; this world was not so different from the one I once knew.
"So for others it was an blessing."
𓁹𓁹
Soon, a laugh escaped Dry Water. The skeleton began to flicker, its light going in and out of the cave, until he finally calmed down and the light stayed still again.
"In fact, I was the same as them, thinking I had finally climbed past the vast cage I mistook for freedom. How wrong I was."
The humor once again vanished from his tone.
"In reality, the Nightmare _pell is a curse," he said monotonously. "The _pell does not reward you. It extends you."
He continued.
"When you get infected by the Nightmare _pell, you begin to age more slowly as you progress to higher and higher levels."
'So it was a form of immortality. Having read a lot of books growing up, I always saw this concept come up, and in all of them, it was considered a curse to have to live until eternity. He did not go deeply into why aging slowly was a curse. He must have lived through true immortality, not just aging slowly, which was the reason he was still here.'
"Actually, it isn't just aging and its side effects. The more you progress, the more jealousy and targets you will have to endure. Betrayal will become quite common, especially from those who are close to you."
"You will eventually stop forming bonds out of fear of getting too attached and losing them, or worse, being betrayed by them. So, Ayanokouji, my advice to you is not to get attached to anyone."
Ayanokouji never interrupted him; he simply listened.
"So you can forget about a natural death. The only death for people like us is being murdered, a death that is not peaceful, but full of regret. And that is why it is a curse, Ayanokouji."
Ayanokouji just listened to everything.
'What if I struggle to die a normal death?'
***
For a while no one said anything, until one did.
"Can you see my memory if I play it back?"
Dry Water tried to reach Ayanokouji's mind.
...
..
.
He still couldn't reach his mind.
"Indeed I can. Even if it takes time, go ahead. I have forgotten the concept of time centuries ago."
Ayanokouji finally closed his eyes, and Dry Water successfully dove into them. As he tuned into the forming imagery, the cave around them began to dissolve.
The walls thinned first until they became dust, and the glow of the skeleton dimmed into floating specks of light. Every particle vibrated for a moment, then broke apart in complete silence.
Stone, shadow, and stillness crumbled away layer by layer, falling deeper than any lake or abyss could reach. Piece by piece, the entire scene vanished from existence, drawn into a vast and soundless void, until not even the memory of the cave remained.
Now, everything was a void.
***
There was nothing in this new world except darkness, until there was something... A sound.
TAP
It was a really loud sound, comparable to that of a gun, and then a gap followed that allowed the echo of the sound to cover everything.
_
TAP
The second one landed with the same precision.
TAP
_
TAP
_
TAP
_
Between each tap, there was just enough silence for the mind to begin forming a thought, and just enough time for the next tap to cut it off.
Dry Water didn't try to cover his ears; more like he couldn't. And yet, something inside him still tightened as if it wanted to.
'I have known worlds quieter than this.' He finally began to think again. 'What is the nature of this place? And where exactly has Ayanokouji taken me?'
Just then, something happened that made even him genuinely pause.
He felt a sensation, but the logic came right after.
How? He didn't possess any body to feel any sort of sensation. So what was shaking? What was responding?
The taps continued.
TAP
_
TAP
_
TAP
_
He tried to name the scenario. His mind reached for old vocabulary, and finally, he found a word he was uncertain about.
'This... is cold.'
He did not believe it.
Cold was something that belonged to flesh. Cold belonged to blood. Cold belonged to lungs tightening and fingers stiffening.
He had none of those.
Yet, the sensation just rose and rose more, as if he had skin.
Then he felt something wet on his skin.
A trail that moved downward, sliding past where his cheek should have been, dragging itself toward where his jaw should have been.
Then it fell.
And he felt it fall.
Something he had lost the right to experience.
The taps stopped, and his eyes opened.
A dark sky loomed above, heavy and endless, and rain fell all at once, violent enough to turn the world into noise.
The sound of the rain was the sound of the taps.
The rain struck the ground with such force that it sounded like gunfire. It struck his face. It struck his eyes. It struck his skin.
Skin.
Dry Water tried to turn away.
He could not.
He tried to look down.
He could not.
He tried to look anywhere else.
He could not.
For the first time in a long time, he struggled.
He struggled with the simple fact that the vision did not belong to him.
He was not watching.
He was being made to watch.
And then Dry Water heard a voice. He tried to figure out where it came from. Was it the sky? The ground? No... He couldn't pinpoint it. It was as if it was in his mind, and he was finally figuring it out.
The voice said.
'The first thing I realized was that I saw nothing.'
'It was a complete darkness so thick that it took me a moment to understand my eyes were simply closed.'
'Then the sound hit. It was a violent weight that did not just hit my ears but seemed to fill my entire skull.'
Then the voice shut down again.
When Ayanokouji asked him about memory, Dry Water had expected fragments. Glimpses. A few scenes meant to summarize the rest... But this was the beginning of everything.
There was something else he also figured out... It was not Ayanokouji's raw thoughts of that time... It was narration. Ayanokouji was narrating what he was thinking.
Dry Water just saw everything happen. He had no control over anything, yet if he could, he probably wouldn't stop it.
In that moment, he realized something.
He really was a terrible human being.
***
Author here, so basically what you all have read until now was not actually from Ayanokouji's POV (Chapters 1 to this).
It was from Dry Water's POV, who was watching Ayanokouji's memories.
Confusing, right?
Basically, what you have read until now was not a firsthand experience, but Ayanokouji narrating it, and Dry Water can be considered a reader who is reading a story... You are just reading as Dry Water.
A perfect loop, no?
Whatever you have read until now was never the first hand experience.
Lol
Century later:
Welp this chapter now has been rewritten.