Episode 10
Blood
Stepping through the door, Lumian felt as if he had entered a different world.
What appeared before his eyes was not the familiar Cordu village, but a maroon mountain peak and the layered ruins of collapsed buildings surrounding it. They formed an exceedingly bizarre wasteland.
The mist covering the high sky was so thick it permitted no light; the ground was littered with shattered fragments and stone pieces. Wielding his hatchet, Lumian carefully advanced, but during his movement, he found nowhere he could hide.
Not a single weed grew here, and trees were nowhere to be seen.
Feeling afraid, Lumian moved with a hunched back, having no choice but to comfort himself.
At least with no cover, if any danger approaches, I can spot it immediately.
Finally arriving at the ruins, he reached a half-collapsed, burnt building.
After observing for a while, Lumian could basically confirm there were no other creatures inside. Only then did he cautiously walk in, avoiding the charred wooden chunks that occasionally fell, and began searching.
Glancing around, Lumian discovered a broken jar in a corner of the building. Inside it was something glittering golden.
Approaching step by step to check, it was a gold coin.
This realistic? There’s even money in the dream ruins?
Muttering to himself, Lumian picked up the gold coin and wiped it with his clothes.
The pattern on the coin’s surface was revealed.
The obverse bore the bust of a man. His face was rather gaunt, hair parted in a 3:7 ratio, a forked mustache above his lips, and his gaze was very forceful. The reverse depicted a group of Iris lilies surrounding the number 20.
The man Lumian recognized was Revanx, the first President of the Republic of Intis.
“A gold louis…”
Lumian was quite astonished.
He hadn’t expected to find the currency of the real Republic of Intis in this bizarre dream’s ruins, nor had he thought he’d find something as valuable as a gold coin so easily.
Currently, the Republic of Intis’s legal tender was the felkin and the copper. 1 felkin equaled 100 coppers.
Among them, coppers existed in two forms: copper coins and silver coins. Copper coins came in 1, 5, and 10 copper denominations; silver coins in 20 and 50 copper.
Meanwhile, felkins came as silver coins, gold coins, and banknotes. Silver coins were divided into 1, 5, and 10 felkin; gold coins into five types: 5, 10, 20, 40, and 50 felkin.
Banknote denominations were even more diverse: 5, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 felkin.
However, in daily life, the Intis populace was still accustomed to the old monetary system. For example, they widely called the 5-copper coin a ‘lick’.
Similarly, the 20-felkin gold coin was called a gold rupee.
From what Lumian knew, even if impossible in cities, in a rural village like Cordu, 1 gold louis was enough for a poor family with fields to live comfortably for a month.
If not for Aurore’s ample income, Lumian might never have even seen what a gold rupee looked like. In all of Cordu, aside from the two siblings, only the parish priest’s family and the Administrator’s family had seen or possessed gold rupee.
For any villager, this gold rupee was an enormous windfall.
What a pity it’s only a dream.
Lumian sighed inwardly with a touch of disappointment.
The gold coin likely had no connection to transcendent elements and thus couldn’t be taken out of the dream.
But Lumian carefully stowed the coin anyway. For him, who had lived as a vagrant, even a single copper was precious.
One gold coin was 2000 coppers, equivalent to one gold pound from the rupee Kingdom. Of course, it fell slightly short. According to newspaper reports, exchanging for one gold pound required 24 felkin.
Lumian continued his search.
He wanted to find written material to confirm the specifics of the ruins. He wanted to know which real-world region this corresponded to, which Intis village had been transplanted whole into his dream. The appearance of the gold rupee led Lumian to such speculation.
As he moved step by step, Lumian discovered the edge of what was originally the hearth was stained a maroon color.
“Blood?”
His eyes widened as he quickly guessed.
Judgment followed immediately.
Not that fresh, but not old enough to have turned black either. Seems like it was stained only 2 or 3 days ago. Maybe even less!
Lumian felt his heart constrict while simultaneously noticing the surrounding light suddenly grow dimmer.
Something on the half-collapsed roof had silently approached, seemingly blocking the scant light filtering through the thick mist.
His experience of being attacked while living as a vagrant surged in Lumian’s mind like rough waves, triggering a conditioned reflex.
He flung his body forward, momentarily airborne, then rolled upon landing.
Thud!
Something heavy fell behind him.
Having rolled to the left of the destroyed hearth, Lumian placed a hand on a rock for support, then used the momentum to whirl around.
Raising his hatchet, he stared at the figure now standing where he had just been.
Due to the pervasive darkness, Lumian couldn’t be sure if it was a person or a human-shaped creature.
Its back was hunched, and it wore no clothes or shoes. Exposed red muscles and blood vessels, and yellow fascia, as if its skin had been flayed, oozed sticky drops of blood that did not fall.
A monster!
Its seemingly embedded eyes had blue pupils shrunk tight, the whites dominating. Its gaping mouth held uneven teeth, and saliva trailed long from the corners.
Despite fabricating many horror tales over the years, Lumian never expected to encounter such a terrifying entity today.
Whoosh!
A bloody-smelling wind rushed toward Lumian, accompanied by panting sounds drilling into his ears.
Lumian instinctively dodged sideways, evading the red monster’s attack.
Had he not frequently received Aurore’s guidance, had he not had years of combat training and street-fighting experience, he, greatly shocked, wouldn’t have reacted in time.
Regaining his wits, Lumian pursued the attacking monster, raised his axe, and fiercely swung it down at the creature’s back.
Thwack!
As the monster turned its body, it fell under Lumian’s blow, causing pus and blood to splatter everywhere.
Without hesitation, Lumian decisively dropped to one knee and raised his axe again.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
He struck multiple times. Each blow sank the blade deeper, creating deep, wide gashes. The monster’s occiput, neck, and back became unrecognizable.
Soon, the monster stopped resisting and lay still, stretched out.
“Huff, huff! Not as fearsome as it looks…”
Lumian muttered self-deprecatingly with a sigh of relief.
Simultaneously, he wiped the blood splattered on his face with his left hand.
“This monster’s fluids aren’t toxic, are they? Don’t feel any burning pain yet…”
He then began pondering another problem.
Just as he mustered the courage to search the monster’s body, the skinless, bloody creature began pushing off the ground with both hands, trying to rise abruptly.
Still not dead?
Even after hacking it with an axe?
Lumian was engulfed in shock and fear. He had to admit he was scared.
If the opponent were a normal person, beast, or monster, even if he couldn’t win, he wouldn’t be this terrified. But the enemy before him wouldn’t die no matter what. All his actions were useless.
Seizing the moment while the monster seemed slightly dizzy and unable to locate its foe, Lumian decisively made a bold decision. He pushed off with both feet, exerted strength in his knees, and began running like mad.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
He ran with all his might, yet still felt a faint breath on his nape and heard ragged panting near his ear.
The monster was hot on his heels.
Gritting his teeth, Lumian felt a surge of inexplicable strength rising within him from the mounting fear.
His speed increased further, surpassing his previous maximum.
Fortunately, the distance between him and the monster no longer closed.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Lumian finally returned to the front of his semi-basement two-story house.
He pulled open the unlocked main door and hastily rushed inside.
Bang!
At the same time, he pushed the door shut behind him.
Without pausing to catch his breath, Lumian charged toward the hearth and grabbed the rake leaning against that wall.
Then he stared toward the door.
The sound of the monster rushing over vanished nearby, but for over ten seconds, there was no attempt to break down the door.
“Does it know I’m lying in ambush here?”
Lumian hardly dared believe the monster’s intelligence was that high.
Slowly approaching the window near the main door, he peeked outside secretly.
Instantly, a face appeared outside the glass pane.
A face without skin, with mangled flesh, uneven teeth.
Lumian’s heart nearly stopped as he froze in place for a while.
However, instead of seizing this chance to shatter the window and attack, the monster merely met Lumian’s gaze.
Coming to his senses, Lumian hastily retreated backward, raising the rake held in both hands.
The monster then left the window.
Lumian observed the situation with extreme vigilance.
He could see the monster, wandering in the pale gray mist for a while, leave his house and slowly return to the ruins.
“…”
Lumian was utterly bewildered.
He was preparing to trap the monster and hastily leave the dream, but it just left like that…
Pondering for a moment, Lumian thought of one possibility.
“Can that monster not enter my house?
Right, there’s no trace of destruction in the house…
Is this place an absolutely safe space within the dream?”
Having thought of this speculation, he could feel considerably relieved.
The next moment, intense fatigue washed over him.
This brief chase had been far more exhausting than a half-day of combat training.
Carrying the rake and hatchet, Lumian went up to the second floor, entered his bedroom, and tried to fall asleep.
✧ ✧ ✧
Amidst haziness, Lumian’s eyes snapped open.
Outside the curtains was still very dark; the room was also shrouded in darkness.
If not for the absence of the hazy gray mist and his nightclothes, Lumian wouldn’t have been able to tell if this was reality or a dream.
“Woke up too early from fright?”
Lumian unconsciously felt his nightclothes pocket, but no gold rupee met his touch.
Quite disappointed, he reconfirmed one fact:
Money really can’t be taken out of the dream!
Coming to his senses, Lumian began contemplating a serious problem.
How to deal with that undying monster?
While bypassing that area to go deeper inside was an option, the possibility of encountering similar monsters later was sufficiently high, so corresponding preparation was necessary. He couldn’t gamble with his life.
