I have nightmare everyday (3)
Editor: Aaghna
<Looking up at Protagonist Yekaterina’s Museum of the Nightmare skill.>
<The activation conditions are falling asleep.>
<As soon as she falls asleep, she will be summoned into this world.>
However, the condition of ‘sleep’ was a problem itself.
<Assuming death is also part of ‘sleep’.>
<What if her body does its part and falls into eternal sleep?>
‘Will she never wake up again’
<That’s right. She’ll be stuck here forever.>
But, that wasn’t the end.
<Also, this world time axis has been distorted due to excessive probability caused by the witch’s unique ability.>
<The future and the past are mixed together.>
<That is why the witch of the future, who lost her body and fell into eternal sleep, and the witch of the past, who did not lose her body, can coexist in this place.>
<Perhaps, this world, if left alone, will not collapse.>
<Because that’s the epilogue of this story.>
The witch of the past will eventually die and become the witch of the future. Then she’ll seek for the witch of the past to regain her body. And the witch of the past will become the witch of the future in due time after she dies while running away all her life.
It will be repeated countless times.
That is the never-ending end of this world.
Death is not a way out.
There was no way for the Yekaterina to get out of here.
“…..is that true?”
Yekaterina asked me with trembling eyes. She was frightened, She couldn’t believe that that terrible and frightening monster would be her future. Her body was shaking like a leaf blown by the wind, she looked very pitiful.
I haven’t hunted the protagonist for a long time, but she was the most unusual character among them.
She doesn’t have to be hunted.
“W-What should I do now?”
It was her fate to wander around this museum for eternity.
It was impossible to even die in this dream world. I couldn’t physically kill Yekaterina either. Even if I shot her in the head a hundred times with my gun, she would eventually wake up and go back to this place once she fell asleep.
“Ummm…”
In fact, there was no need to think hard to help Yekaterina here. She was the protagonist of this world in the first place, nothing could go wrong if I decided to kill her here. But was there any merit in hunting a level 6 protagonist? It would be better to hunt the level 500 Yekaterina from the future. But it was impossible to catch that monstrous future witch.
In the end, my only choice was to spend some of my lifespan and run away from the Nightmare Art Museum.
‘…..by the way… it’s a shame that Yekaterina is the only prophet on Earth.’
The prophet, Yekaterina, belonged to the ‘Morian’ guild. It was such a huge guild that everyone in the world knew about it. It was natural for them to have the only prophet of earth.
If he stopped the cycle of nightmare here and saved Yekaterina, wouldn’t the Morian guild give him something in exchange?
“How high are you in the Morian Guild? An executive? a senior officer? Or a VIP?”
She was a prophet, so I thought she must be treated very well.
“….No. I’m just being treated as a vending machine in the guild.”
“What?”
“Since I awakened the power of prophecy at the age of fourteen, I have never taken a step outside. The amulets they set around me are a prison in the name of protective shields, and there are countless female hunters watching me.”
“Seriously? They treat a prophet like that?”
“…..Yes.”
She clenched her fist in frustration.
“If I could use ‘magic’ just like her……”
“Magic?”
It was a word that I didn’t expect to hear from someone from earth.
And then, a message from the system popped up.
<We’ve figured out how we got into this dimension.>
<Your skill ‘Library of the White Witch’ and the ‘Art Museum of the Nightmare’ are linked to the same type of world that’s the reason why we could flow into this place.>
‘….So that’s why.’
The White Witch’s Library is also one of the witches’ mental worlds. This Nightmare Art Museum, too, would have been the mental world created by the witch. So we are stuck here because of the condition of the ‘closest’ dimension.
Oh, wait.
‘Both dimensions are linked?’
<That’s right.>
“You brought me here because I have a 90% chance of hunting the protagonist, right?”
<Based on the ‘Fate’ you can indeed hunt the protagonist of this world with a 99% success chance.>
I swallowed my saliva and looked up.
“Calling the Library of White Witch.”
Then, as usual, the gate of the library of the White Witch appeared in front of me. It was just like usual, but it was usually only a part of my mental world, while invisible to others.
“Huh…. Huh?”
As if she could see the White Witch’s library I opened, Yekaterina was surprised.
“What the hell is this door?”
“It’s our escape.”
“Yes?”
However, the gate was the manifestation of my own mental world.
Could Yekaterina enter this place? I asked her a question because I was not sure.
“Touch the door.”
“Hmm. It’s soft.”
Yekaterina can touch my white witch’s library. As soon as I confirmed that, I opened the door and exposed the inside.
“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!”
Seeing the mysterious space, Yekaterina walked towards it while exclaming.
“Yekaterina. That’s the way out.”
“What? Here?”
She entered the library and smelled the scent of the book. It seemed to feel darker today. Yekaterina looked around the library with her mouth wide open, and she seemed to rush somewhere right away, but there was something she had to deal with before that.
“Yekaterina. If you close this door, you won’t be able to go back to this Museum.”
“…….Ah!”
“And, perhaps, you will lose your prophetic ability. Your ability to do everything.”
That’s right.
Even now, I could tell because my client was constantly sending messages.
<That’s a great way.>
<This world has an infinite repetition of time. However, if you send the object of the repetition into another world, the loop will stop and the epilogue will be stopped as well.>
<This would also count as the death of the protagonist.>
<The moment the protagonist went into another world, they’ll lose their ability as a protagonist.>
The ability to see a clear future In exchange for being trapped inside a never-ending Nightmare in the Art Museum. However, if she ran away from the museum, she would lose all her ability as a protagonist, or in her case, her ‘prophetic’ ability. Was Yekaterina okay with that? That’s why I asked her another question.
“I-I…It’s what I’ve been hoping for all my life.”
Since her first awakening at the age of fourteen, she had been a prophecy vending machine. She lived a life that was only good to draw out just predictions.
“But I don’t want to live that kind of life anymore.”
She said as she looked straight at me with eyes as clear as glass beads.
“I’ve been unhappy ever since I got this prophetic ability and got to see the past and the future. But if I could open my eyes and see the present, I’m confident I’d even dedicate my soul to it.”
“Yes, yes, yes… but.”
“Anything wrong?”
Perhaps the reason she said, ‘I’m confident I’ll even dedicate my soul,’ was to express her will.
“You really have to offer your soul.”
“……Yes?”
I explained again when Yekaterina was visibly embarrassed.
“The art museum was your imaginary world, and I was in your imaginary world. But this place is my imaginary world. In other words, you’ve come into my mind.”
“Yes, yes.”
“If you run away from the gallery and get stuck in my library, it means your soul will forever be trapped inside my mind.”
Yes, she doesn’t even know who I am. Can she leave herself to it? I said with my palm slightly on the door of the library.
“From the moment I close this door, you will definitely enter my world if you fall asleep. If I want, I can lock the door of the library tightly so you won’t wake up, or I can torture you in my space. In other words, it means that you are bound to me. But are you confident that you will give up the power of prophecy and devote your soul to me?”
However, Yekaterina seems like she didn’t have such worry in the first place.
“I don’t care if you’re the devil and this world is hell. I was already in hell every single day here. Is there anything worse than that?”
Step, Step.
Yekaterina approached the door and closed it herself.
She turned her head, looked up at me and smiled brightly.
“Now, I won’t have nightmare anymore.”
—
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