Episode 36. The Monster of Dreams (1)
A new sequence began with a whoosh sound.
This stage was a desolate desert. The heat and dryness were so intense that anything living seemed to be dying out, making it hard to breathe.
“Is there no one here?”
I still haven’t confirmed who’s fear it is. I looked around, but I couldn’t find anything that could be called a dream monster.
“Whose fear is this?”
“Ugh, I’m thirsty.”
“Maybe it’s not a dream monster… but it means to somehow survive here?”
Blane bent down and grabbed the sand with one hand. He tried to scatter it in the air, but there was no wind. The sand fell to the ground, adding to the fluffy feeling.
“Something is coming.”
As he said that, Rubin looked into the distance. Although later than Rubin, Kun also noticed that something was approaching them, surrounding them.
Above the horizon where the clouds are rippling. Tiny dots densely fill the horizon.
No matter which direction I looked, I could see them. They were slowly approaching, surrounding me on all sides.
“We’re completely surrounded.”
“There must be a thousand.”
Blaine and Hamil each spoke. Kun added. He looked confident.
“Just kill whatever it is and that’s it.”
The unknown force that had been approaching in a surrounding manner began to run all at once as if they had been waiting for it to come within a certain range.
In an instant, a huge cloud of dust rose in all directions.
and.
Before the dust behind them had even settled, the enemies in the distance approached the participants and revealed their identities.
“Huh? Could that be… … .”
The first to react upon seeing the identity of the dream monster was Hamil.
“ha ha ha!”
Hamil burst into laughter, bending his upper body. Kun, standing next to Hamil, trembled.
“Kun! Do you know what this is called?”
“…Shut up.”
“When you see something like this, you immediately call it a dark history! Dark, dark, history.”
“f*ck, I told you to shut up!”
It was truly a dark history for Kun. A thousand hostile dream monsters.
The body was that of a child of about eight years old, but the problem was in the head. Where the head should have been, it was a pure white ostrich egg.
Moreover, they were all wearing the same mask, and no matter how I looked at it, it was a mask with a familiar face.
“It must be my face.”
Rubin spoke indifferently. His indifferent attitude humiliated Kuhn even more.
“Looking at my small body, I don’t think I’m the same as I am now. Maybe when I was eight years old?”
“under…….”
In such a humiliating situation, Kun sighed and avoided Rubin’s gaze.
The fear that had settled inside Kun. It was a memory from when he was eight years old, when he first met Rubin. The day he first visited the Roinen mansion. While the heads of the household were talking, Kun and Rubin walked around the mansion.
It was Kun who had revealed her true colors to Rubin in a narrow pit behind the maids’ quarters, where the guards were the loosest.
But he quickly realized that he had chosen the wrong opponent. Not only was he completely overpowered by Rubin, but he was also trapped in the pit, suffocated by Rubin’s darkness.
For the first time, I felt the fear that I might actually die.
“Kun, are you okay?”
Hamilton asked mischievously.
Blane decided it was wiser to keep his mouth shut for now, but a smile was still visible beyond his pursed lips.
“They all have the same body, and the atmosphere they give off is uniform. Should I say they’re copies?”
Rubin could have crushed the arrogant Kun’s self-esteem to the core, but he didn’t.
“Those scarecrows. Even so, I was only eight years old. I’m dozens of times stronger now than I was back then!”
Rubin nodded at those words.
Kuhn was right. There was a time gap between when I was eight and now. If the growth I had achieved in that time was as Kuhn said, then even a thousand people would not be scary.
“Kun.”
“why!”
“How about we take care of these first and then decide on a separate battle?”
A thousand masked Rubins who had been surrounding us took a step closer. The pressure increased in an instant.
“Are you sure you won’t get eaten by those ostrich egg chicks?”
Kun asked, pulling out his dagger.
“Isn’t that the same for you? After we’re all done with, we can see who killed more.”
“How cheeky. Now that it’s come to this, I’m going to blow up all those Roinen ostrich eggs!”
Kun shouted repeatedly, the veins in his neck rising.
“I’ll blow your brains out!”
The first to move was Kun. Kun ran forward and stabbed the dagger into the head of the masked Rubin who was at the very front.
Then the masked ostrich egg shattered with a crunching sound and a splash of yellow liquid.
Rubin, who had been watching, also pulled out his dagger. He thought that compared to the strong opponents he had faced so far, this was nothing.
“As expected, their level doesn’t seem to be dangerous. There are a lot of them, but I think they’ll all survive, right?”
Blane and Hamil had already drawn their weapons. The two headed south. They charged toward the masked Rubins, maintaining their formation so that they could help each other if necessary.
‘Then this is my share.’
Rubin walked out leisurely, opening the second ring to let out his dark energy.
My body felt much lighter, and the enemies’ movements became more clearly visible.
Pavabak!
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Pavabababak!
Rubin immediately stabbed the masked Rubin in the head with his sword. Then he leaped into the air and kneeled the heads of the two men next to him.
‘It would have been impossible if it had been before the regression.’
Now, he is tossing away the mask made of his own face without any hesitation, but before the regression, he would have felt repulsed.
Pavabak!
puck!
Pfft!
Here and there, the yellow liquid of ostrich eggs burst out refreshingly. The various bursting sounds resonated like cheerful music.
‘This will be solid training for everyone.’
Although it would have been humiliating enough to make Kun’s eyes turn red, the number one thousand was enough to make everyone grow by one level.
Rubin recalled his past when he swept through the Imperial Army like a murderer during the war against the Emperor, and began to blow apart the heads of the Masked Rubins.
‘I can’t believe that my eight-year-old memories are this weak.’
Trauma is such a scary thing. Even now, after growing up, Kun is still afraid of the Rubin of that time.
‘It was a good thing I scolded him then.’
Thanks to that, I was able to pass the test so easily.
Rubin practiced the swordsmanship of the Assassin’s Sword, while occasionally incorporating the Brion swordsmanship.
The movements, perfectly mastered up to the 11th form of Brion’s swordsmanship, were like a magic spell of mass destruction cast by a wizard, killing dozens of Masked Rubins at once.
Although they couldn’t match Rubin’s performance, the other contestants also did their best.
Hamil and Kun were testing their physical limits by dousing themselves in the yellow liquid poured out by the ostrich egg head.
Blane, who had made up his mind, also matched Hamil’s assistant with confidence.
‘What is this feeling?’
After a while, Rubin, who had been piercing Rubin’s head, suddenly felt a strange feeling.
When the Brion sword technique was used.
A unique energy emanated from the sword he was holding. A unique energy from a pure sword, unrelated to Rubin’s darkness.
At the same time, the area around my heart started to feel tight. Soon, I felt an overwhelming sense of heaviness, as if a heavy stone had been placed on my heart.
It’s very heavy. And yet it feels very hot and fierce. It feels alive and breathing.
Maybe this is… … .
‘Is this what they call coming?’
This new feeling was mysterious, and Rubin couldn’t stop his movements of destroying his enemies. It felt like he would disappear at any moment if he stopped.
Rubin called out to Haneke, who was watching his movements from within.
‘Haneke, are you watching?’
-Yes. Your guess was right. It’s faster than I thought. You even developed Aura before you could learn the 12th form.
Although rare, there have been such cases. The relationship between inspection and aura is entirely a human regulation. Standards can be broken at any time.
Haneke looked satisfied. His face seemed to say that there was nothing more satisfying than seeing his student grow so quickly.
Rubin took a moment to feel the flow within his body.
The third ring, which had been empty, was filled with a new power. It was Aura.
‘It’s definitely different… … .’
A newly acquired aura ring.
Centered around the heart, it was rotating quickly, blending in with the two dark circles. The aura circle felt much heavier than the dark circle.
Perhaps it is because of the ‘cohesion of power’ which is a characteristic of Aura.
-Now is not the time to enjoy yourself. For now, let’s move as hard as we can in this battlefield-like situation. Let’s postpone the explanation of Aura until later.
Although he described it as a battlefield, it seemed that Haneke wanted to observe more of the murderous movements that Rubin was showing now.
‘The manifestation of the aura, I must remember this feeling now.’
In an instant, dozens of masked Rubins surrounded this side. However, that was a situation that had been deliberately induced.
Rubin held the sword that held a subtle aura tightly, and drew a circle while kneeling on one knee.
Papapapabat!
The thighs of the masked Rubins surrounding them split open and yellow blood poured out. Then, they lost their balance and fell down, struggling.
The masks of Rubins were piled up in a heap. Rubin climbed up on top of them and looked at the other participants.
‘Everyone is doing it with ease so far.’
Hamil and Blaine were showing off their good chemistry and various attacking moves using each other’s bodies. Both of them, who had opened their dark side, were continuing their quick movements using ‘shadow rhythm’.
On the other hand, Kun was destroying the Masked Rubins with his impulsive personality. He was so impulsive that even the Masked Rubins, who had no personality, seemed to shrink back from Kun’s merciless aggression.
Kun’s dark movement was a ‘shadow roar’ that went beyond ‘shadow rhythm’. It was a way of reducing softness but increasing destructive power.
Rubin shouted at Kun.
“Kun! I don’t have much time left!”
Rubin had already dealt with most of the enemies in his area. He quickly reduced the remaining numbers by lightly killing those who came up to the corpse pile.
I think I killed about 400 of them like that.
Pavabababak!
The battle in Rubin’s area ended with a dagger thrust into the head of the last remaining one, causing a yellow liquid to burst out.
Rubin wiped the dagger on Rubin’s corpse and then approached Kun.
“Die! Die! You little punk! You die too! You die too!”
Kun was destroying all the guys assigned to him without showing any signs of fatigue. The number of people he had destroyed was around 300, and Hamil and Blanet were also in the process of destroying the same number together.
“Hey, f*cking ostrich eggs!”
Kun brought the last monster to its knees, then stabbed the dagger he had set at a right angle into its skull. It was a blow so full of emotion that it felt as if the entire ground was shaking.
“Phew… … .”
Kun shook his body and took a deep breath. Then, he glared at Rubin, who was standing across from him. Not the masked Rubin, but the real Rubin.
“I’ve waited for two years! You little bastard, Roinen!”
“Kun, now the insult to my family is becoming very blatant.”
“Can you go?”
“It will happen someday. Even if you die and come back to life, you will never be able to become the head of the main family.”
“Huh. Even if I become the head of a household, I’d still be a weakling.”
Rubin readjusted his dagger.
I had no intention of taking this showdown lightly. It would have been disrespectful to Kun, who had waited for me for two years.
‘And I still remember the contempt I received from you before I returned.’
Rubin deliberately recalled those memories so that he could be more active in this fight.
Since it was a fight in a dream world anyway, there would be no real damage. If I lost to Kun, I would be eliminated, but I had no confidence that I could lose. Rather, it would be good training for both of us.
‘For Kun’s sake.’
And for all the assassins who stand against the Emperor.
‘You may feel wronged, but I have two dark sides.’
Rubin slowly opened the first ring he had brought from his previous life. His heart began to vibrate slowly, releasing dark smoke.
It was a dark aura from a previous life that was still not completely under control even after two years of growth. A dark aura that had a depth of 30 years and was at the level of a five-star realm. It was of a different quality in every way.
The field of vision was amplified at a rapid pace.
The feeling in my body has also completely changed.
Thump thump thump.
I felt my heartbeat speed up, but my senses were sharper than ever.
“Get out of here, you little punk!”
Kun started to run. It was a full-power charge with all the darkness in his body. It was obvious at a glance that he had the power to break down even a solid wall.
But to Rubin, it just looks slow.
‘It’s still impossible to completely control the first dark smoke. I can’t even utilize 50% of it. I have to hurry and finish it.’
A pounding sensation came over him. Rubin steeled himself and ran towards Kun.
At that time, Hamil and Blane, who were killing the dream monsters on the other side, felt a tremendous amount of darkness. A considerable amount of darkness that they had only felt from the heads of the households.
“This can’t be happening!”
But that feeling was short-lived.
A fleeting encounter. A momentary collision.
That was it. Rubin dodged all of Kun’s consecutive attacks and launched a counterattack.
Strong wind. Storm.
A short, thick, and fast sweeping trajectory of the sword struck Kun.
“… … !”
Kun only managed to defend himself once from an attack he had never seen before, before allowing Rubin’s sword to hit him all over his body.
Skin that is pierced, cut, and torn away.
After passing Kun, Rubin took a deep breath and looked down at his sword. His hands trembled at the subtle aura on the sword.
“This is Brion’s 11th sword technique, Kun.”
The fact that he had mastered the Brion sword was a secret only Rubin and Haneke knew, but it didn’t matter. Kun’s life was already over.
Kun’s body, reduced to nothing but flesh, collapsed before he could even close his mouth due to the pouring pain.
Whoosh.
There were still a lot of dream monsters left in front of Blane and Hamil, but since Kun, the master of fear, was eliminated, this turn ended automatically.
The remaining three returned to the black pond.
Finally it was Rubin’s turn.
