"Still, thinking about all that now is getting way too far ahead of myself.
"Staying hidden long-term around powerful figures—especially while they suffer through a hundred days of relentless nightmares without getting caught—is no easy feat.
"Unless... I kidnap them! Lock them up!"
Don Quixote shook his head, throwing out the overly ambitious thoughts spinning in his mind.
Gathering his focus, he turned his attention to the first function of the Nightmare Bone:
—Dream Weaving!
"Now this is something I can actually use right away. A convenient, highly efficient way to test the loyalty of the people around me."
With that in mind, Don Quixote grabbed a piece of rough parchment.
He started sketching and scribbling, mapping out the underlying logic for weaving dreams.
Time flew by.
After settling on a few simple methods to gauge loyalty, Don Quixote sent Alden to fetch Tom and the other two.
The crew gathered in the courtyard for a feast—eating and drinking heavily to celebrate the completion of the Bloody Hand Mercenary Company's first contract.
At the end of the night, Don Quixote pulled out the 2 Gold Dragons he had promised as a bonus and divided them up based on everyone's performance during the mission.
Tom took forty percent, while Shane and Warren each got thirty.
————
Deep into the night.
Don Quixote suddenly snapped his eyes open and silently chanted a few words in a bizarre, twisted tongue.
In an instant.
He realized the table, chairs, lamplight, and night wind around him were tearing apart and fading away.
It was like sinking into an endless sea of gray mist.
And within that eerie, unnatural fog stood three black Dream Doors.
One black door was right next to him.
The other two hovered below, off to his left.
"So these are the entrances to the dreams of Cole and the others?"
Don Quixote muttered to himself before lightly extending his consciousness to touch the entrance to Adele's dream.
The next second, the dreamscape fully materialized.
It was the docks of White Harbor. The morning mist hadn't lifted, the sea breeze carried the smell of salt and fish, and the distant tolling of the Sept of the Snows' bells drifted through the air.
Adele was leaning intimately against 'Don Quixote'.
The two of them were strolling through White Harbor, chatting and laughing.
Don Quixote stood hidden in the mist, watching quietly.
The Nightmare Bone reinforced the target's dreamscape, giving the user enough time to subtly alter the world based on the target's original subconscious.
People put on masks in reality.
But in a dream, they rarely hid or disguised themselves—their first reactions were pure, unmasked instinct.
"Time to start weaving."
After silently observing Adele's dreamscape for a moment, Don Quixote pulled back his focus.
He began to gradually accelerate the flow of time within the dream.
And step by step, he guided the fate of the dream-world 'Don Quixote' onto a different path.
Truth be told, even without weaving, you could catch glimpses of a person's true nature just from their raw, initial dream.
But most people had zero control over the storylines in their dreams.
All sorts of bizarre, random crap could happen.
So, to avoid wasting time, Don Quixote needed to steer the target's dream narrative exactly where he wanted it to go.
His logic for weaving the story was brutally simple.
The peak gives birth to hypocritical followers; the dusk bears witness to true believers.
And the freezing night tests vows.
He would push the dream-world 'Don Quixote' to the absolute pinnacle of power, and then drag him down into the darkest abyss.
The world always swarmed around you at your height, only to scatter when the sun went down.
True loyalty didn't perform in the daylight—it held the line in the twilight.
He needed to use the dreamscape as a filter to find those worthy of trust, so he could confidently put them to use in the real world.
As for the opportunists? As long as they didn't stab him in the back or cross his bottom line while he climbed to the top...
He would still employ them, selectively.
No matter the world, true fanatics were always a rare breed.
If he only ever worked with absolute die-hards.
He'd spend a long time with nobody to command, forced to handle every petty detail himself!
If he did that, even a body forged of iron would eventually break down.
So, for those with shaky faith—the ones who would bolt the second his luck turned sour.
As long as they didn't cross the line, he would judge them solely on results, not the process.
Get the job done? Get rewarded.
Screw up the job? Get punished.
Don't like how he runs things? Part ways peacefully.
While he clawed his way to the top, he only required two things from these people:
Shut up and do the work!
But if, during his rise, he found people who lacked even basic loyalty—people born with a knife ready for his back.
Those, he would avoid entirely. Or put down.
Beyond that.
He would also plunge the target into extreme, desperate scenarios and watch how they handled it, observing their final choices.
A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.
He would pay special attention to those who, even in absolute despair, survived on sheer faith and purpose.
Even if he couldn't control those people, they would make damn good partners to collaborate with.
In short, his plan was to categorize his targets based on their raw, unmasked nature in the dreamscape:
People to trust and use boldly!
People to use selectively!
People who couldn't be trusted!
And partners with ironclad convictions!
Of course, a person's dream was just a messenger of reality.
Dreams were never isolated islands cut off from the waking world.
They were projections, extensions, and sometimes prophecies of reality.
Once the gears of reality shifted, the map of the dreamscape would be redrawn.
So he wouldn't blindly trust the answers a dream gave him.
Especially not long-term.
He would only use their choices in the dreamscape as a critical, short-term reference point.
While Don Quixote's thoughts raced.
The first storyline in Adele's dreamscape wrapped up.
Since the narrative had to align with Adele's actual understanding of the world.
He couldn't make it too absurd. He built it off the assets he already had in reality, progressing step-by-step to a slightly exaggerated conclusion.
A life path where he didn't have the system.
In that storyline.
'Don Quixote' started with nothing, fighting his way up from a lowly hedge knight in White Harbor, grinding through countless setbacks in a constant upward climb, until he eventually became a legendary knight and a legendary great lord in Westeros!
And Adele supported his choices every step of the way, never abandoning him.
Not long after.
In her bed, Adele frowned slightly and rolled over, still sleeping soundly.
But in her dreamscape, the second storyline had already ended.
In the second storyline.
'Don Quixote' went from nothing to less than nothing. Starting as a lowly hedge knight in White Harbor, he suffered endless disasters, taking one step forward and three steps back, until he eventually became the most pathetic, despised knight in all of Westeros.
A useless knight without even a horse.
Adele quietly supported and encouraged 'Don Quixote' early on. Later, she left him, but still occasionally used her meager earnings to keep the utterly broken, despairing 'Don Quixote' alive.
Don Quixote watched the end of the second storyline with a complex expression.
Then, he launched the third.
This time, 'Don Quixote' wasn't the protagonist. In fact, he barely appeared at all.
It was purely a test of Adele's personal breaking point and an interrogation of her human nature.
She was too broken to resist, only daring to pray to the Old Gods in dark, ignored corners, letting life drag her along like dead weight.
In the end, with a rusted blade pressed against her throat, she didn't even think to fight back.
Like the vast majority of commoners in this world, she had gone completely numb to life, entirely stripped of the courage to break the mold and climb higher.
The third storyline ended quickly.
Standing in the shadows of the dream, Don Quixote gave a helpless smile:
"Looks like I can let Adele handle some things on her own now. When the chance comes, I should have her kill a few nobles herself to build some nerve."
...