Chapter 122 - The Dreamer II

4

It had been so long that I no longer remembered, but before changing careers to become an awakened, the first-run me had probably been a fairly wholesome young man.

Smoking? Never. Drinking? Not much.

Naturally, I had never fallen into gambling, either. Unless you counted rerolling my life more than 1,000 times to get the best ending.

-Big brother. I'm curious. I want to go inside.

"Hold on."

That was why, even though Hayul tugged insistently at my sleeve the moment she spotted the casino, I—a wholesome, upstanding young man—was not easily swayed.

Instead, I drew my sword first.

One flashing slash.

A sword strike unleashed without warning. Doha, my personal sword cane, split the world in two along a long diagonal.

RRRUMBLE

Dust rose everywhere. One corner of the casino building, which had opened for business illegally in the void, collapsed helplessly.

"...! ...!"

Hayul bounced around beside me, but her protests were entirely silent.

However curious you might be, testing whether physical force worked on your opponent, as I had just done, was extremely important.

And not simply because I was the sort of tabletop RPG player who, before entering some ominous mansion, offered the coolheaded, scientific suggestion, "GM, couldn't we get some gasoline and burn the house down from outside?"

Just finding out whether physical force worked gave you some measure of a void's danger level, of an anomaly's strength.

I leisurely watched how that "casino anomaly" responded.

"Eeeeeek!"

Then I witnessed an astonishing sight.

A swarm of tiny creatures poured out of the casino's main entrance, shrieking and practically having seizures.

"H-headquarters has collapsed!"

"Eeeeek! An earthquake? Is it an earthquake?"

"That's impossible...! Our revolutionary frontline base was built in the safest region of the Korean Peninsula, with every possible natural disaster taken into account!"

"But an earthquake happened!"

"Comrade No. 107! A disaster has happened right in front of us! A wicked, petty-bourgeois Party fairy who denies reality must be executed! Executed!"

"I simply cannot resist a self-criticism session."

"Eek! Comrades! Please, anything but a purge!"

They were none other than the tutorial fairies.

Avatars of the Fairy Monarch, who was itself an avatar of Gapless, the God of Alienation. In short, anomalies that were merely copies of a copy swarmed out and began repairing the building.

'... Why are these guys here now?'

The run-205 me was dumbfounded. I sheathed my sword cane for the moment and walked toward the fairies.

I tapped the nearest fairy on the shoulder.

"Hey."

"Huh? A human customer? Sorry, but due to a sudden earthquake disaster, we have temporarily suspended busineeeeek? Undertakeeeer!"

The fairy toppled onto its back. The other fairies, standing on ladders with hammers and assorted tools, all turned to look at us.

"U-Undertaker? Why? Why the Undertaker?"

"The nightmare of Busan Station!"

"The tyrant of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School!"

"Comrade No. 107! W-what is going on here?! Didn't you guarantee that this was the one place he'd never discover?!"

"Aaaaaah! Run! Run away! If that bastard catches us again, our entire kind will be wiped out!"

The fairies scattered in every direction, but that was not a particularly wise response. Sometimes, in an RPG battle, the "Flee" command simply did not work. This was one of those times.

"Hayul."

-Okay.

Webbing shot out from her fingertips.

A little later, all 27 fairies were brought before me, tightly wrapped in webs.

"Eek, eeeeeek..."

"Hey. Weren't you all wiped out along with the Fairy Monarch when Gapless was sealed? What are you doing hiding in this backwater?"

The fairies trembled.

"Th-the Fairy Monarch was nothing but our oppressor...! Not once have we ever truly submitted to that creature!"

"Oh. What was it again, royalists and revolutionaries? That's just your little role-playing setup anyway. You're still going on about revolution?"

"A role-playing setup?! How dare you! We are deadly serious!"

What the fairy said next was rather shocking.

"We were perfectly fine without the Fairy Monarch to begin with! But that terrifying being created the Fairy Monarch and oppressed us!"

"... Huh?"

"Now that the Fairy Monarch has perished, we fairies have at last achieved the liberation we dreamed of! But our long oppression has left our people with precious little capital...! And so, swallowing our tears, we have entered the gambling business to raise revolutionary funds...!"

"Revolution is no crime!"

After collecting testimony and information from the suspects, I arrived at a startling truth.

"Uh, so. You were actually anomalies with absolutely no connection to Gapless, the God of Alienation, but Gapless created the Fairy Monarch and simply forced you under its rule?"

"Exactly!"

"Then when you said you were divided between those who obeyed the Fairy Monarch and those who refused... You really did have royalists and republicans?"

"Have you been listening to everything we said through a toilet bowl instead of your ears, human?!"

Good heavens.

Yes. In fact, the anomalies called "tutorial fairies" had no connection to Gapless. Gapless had created a puppet dictator called the Fairy Monarch to oppress them.

A sort of colonial rule, you might say.

But once Cheon Yohwa and I defeated Gapless, everything changed. The fairies were abruptly liberated. Vowing never again to be at the mercy of a mighty anomaly, they scattered across the land and became guerrillas.

The gambling establishment built here... the casino known as the "Sleepwalking Amusement Hall," was a business run by guerrilla fairies.

Why did they run it? To establish, once again, an anomaly community of the fairies, for the fairies, by the fairies!

'Come to think of it, all the anomalies at Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School were ghosts. The tutorial fairies did feel a little out of place.'

Who would have thought there was a secret like this behind it?

While I marveled at how much there still was in the world that I did not know, Lee Hayul hopped up and down beside me.

-Big brother. Big brother.

"Hm?"

-Over there. I want to look around.

Apparently, Hayul had been deeply interested in the casino all this time. Well, we had established that it posed almost no danger.

"Hey, tiny folks. Show us around and explain how you're running this casino."

"Eeeek. Preposterous! We cannot reveal the inner workings of our revolutionary base to a bourgeois oppressor..."

"Should I call Cheon Yohwa and ask her to put you in the hourglass where Gapless is sealed?"

"Our proletarian comrades will surely understand taking two steps back to take one step forward...!"

We entered the casino.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—we found the missing Corps members from the caravan inside. More precisely, all three were sleeping like logs not in the casino, but in the hotel built above it.

"What? Why are they all asleep? Is this your doing?"

"Eeeek...! Th-this was entirely legitimate and mutually agreed upon! At our casino, we exchange the chips our customers win for dreams, not money!"

"For dreams?"

"Yes! Here, take a look at our menu...!"

The fairy slipped something out from inside its clothes. It was a sizable menu. There was absolutely no way something that large could have fit on the fairy's body, but rather than quibble, I read it first.

――――――――――

♪♫♪~Like walking through a dream~♪♫♪

To everyone visiting our 『DREAM』 Casino ٩(♡ε♡ )۶ a heartfelt welcome! ◕‿◕)丿

――――――――――

RIIIP

I reflexively tore the menu apart.

"Eeeeek? What are you doing?!"

"No, sorry. My instincts..."

"Your instinct is to walk into a business and tear up its menu?! You're frightening! We put a lot of work into this, using good paper, so don't waste it recklessly!"

Hmm.

With a calm mind, I accepted another menu and read it. For the sake of my mental health, however, this time I will exclude every emoticon and plainly recount only its contents.

――――――――――

[Dream Casino Guide]

*Welcome!

*Here at the 'Sleepwalking Amusement Hall,' customers can enjoy a variety of games using Fairy Coins. Fairy Coins are purchased with your 'time.'

*Exchange rate: 1 hour = 1 Fairy Coin.

*You must wager at least 1 Fairy Coin to use this casino's gaming facilities.

*Fairy Coins can be exchanged for the following rewards.

-10 Fairy Coins: Enjoy a night of peaceful dreaming. Restful sleep guaranteed. Dream contents unspecified. Duration can be freely set between a minimum of 2 hours and a maximum of 24 hours.

-50 Fairy Coins: Enhance a specific sense within your dream. Sight, smell, taste, etc. Memories involving that sense are likely to remain relatively vivid even after the dream ends.

-100 Fairy Coins: Choose the location of your dream. Any space of up to 100 square meters is possible (example: a top-tier restaurant from before the apocalypse).

However, you cannot move beyond that area. Scenery visible through windows, etc., can be added as decoration for 10 Fairy Coins. Please consult a representative for detailed settings!

-1,000 Fairy Coins: Choose one person to appear in your dream. People who have already vanished from reality are also available.

-2,000 Fairy Coins: Set your relationship with a person in your dream. Please consult a representative for detailed settings!

-3,000 Fairy Coins: Customize yourself as you appear in your dream. Appearance changes, social status alterations, résumé falsification, gender changes, and age changes are available. Please consult a representative for detailed settings!

·

·

·

-10,000,000,000 Fairy Coins: A flawless lucid dream, guaranteed. We promise sensations and intellect exactly as in reality!

This item is a membership. Customers who redeem it will immediately be promoted to 'VVIP' status, and 'lucid dreaming' will remain guaranteed when using other products.

-100,000,000,000 Fairy Coins: Freely set the perceived flow of time within your dream. Do you desire eternal life? Try living 100 years in a dream during 1 second of reality! If you tire of life in the dream, you can also wake immediately.

This item is a membership. Customers who redeem it will immediately be promoted to 'VVVIP' status, and 'time speed adjustment' will remain guaranteed when using other products.

*Caution: Customers may exchange no more than 9,000 Fairy Coins at our establishment at any one time.

*Caution: At precisely 24:00, midnight, each day, our establishment may demand repayment of your principal. If you cannot repay the principal, your time will be seized in an amount corresponding to the number of coins you owe.

How the seized time is used is entirely at our establishment's discretion. We hope you enjoy gambling safely and responsibly.

――――――――――

"..."

For a moment, I was speechless.

There were so many things to take issue with that I did not know where to begin. First, however, I decided to ask the question that I, as a regressor, naturally needed answered.

"Hey, you guys... Have you had the ability to control dreams all along?"

"Huh? Of course."

"We're dream fairies, after all."

"The Fairy Monarch's oppression kept us from doing our real work, but our true name is actually dream demon."

Shocking! A truth revealed only after a full 205 runs!

The tutorial fairies were actually dream demons. In other words, succubi and incubi!

-Fairy Coins. Want to exchange 9,000 coins. Exciting.

Beside me, Hayul was firing up her pachinko spirit, just as you might expect from a child who had spent time in Japan. I flicked her forehead and looked at the fairies.

"What happens to human customers whose time you seize?"

"Huh. This happens."

One of the Corps members lying in a hotel bed suddenly sprang to his feet. Hayul recoiled in surprise.

He was a middle-aged man. However many days he had already spent trapped in the void, his beard had grown thick and straggly.

He murmured vacantly, his eyes so dull that there was scarcely a trace of awareness in them.

"Hoooe..."

"..."

"Hoe, hoe, Fairy No. 5000... Reporting my rank and name..."

"..."

Silence.

Hayul and I both turned to the fairy, our eyes demanding an immediate explanation.

The tutorial fairy—no, dream demon—tilted its head, wearing a dimwitted expression as though it had no idea what it had done wrong.

"Huh? That customer took out the full 9,000-coin loan and lost it all at baccarat in just one day. Now he has no choice but to work for 10 years as a comrade of our Fairy Revolution Club!"

"That's right!"

"Hoe! We march forward without stopping until the day of revolution!"

What the fuck.

This was an anomaly factory.