Nightmare seemed completely indifferent to Greg's threat. She even tilted her head elegantly and responded in a somewhat playful tone:
"Rest assured, my other half. We currently share the same Godhood and are bound to the same fate. What good would deceiving thee do me?"
"Well, that's true."
Hearing this, Greg finally stepped up to the stone tablets:
"Speaking of which, the power I absorbed last time seemed to come from that Mother of Depravity. What about this time? Who does the power on these stone tablets belong to?"
"This time..."
Nightmare looked down at the ground and said slowly, "The Mother of Fragmentation. A... very troublesome fellow."
"The Mother of Fragmentation?"
Greg felt that this world truly lived up to its yuri game roots; even the Outer Gods were female. He just wondered if one could control Victoria to romance them in the original game.
It was all the fault of that damned development team for digging such a massive pit in the dungeon.
After finishing his internal rant, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly channeled the shadow mana within his body.
The power of Dark-Erosion Armament quietly covered his hands. On the surface of the pitch-black armguards, an ominous black mist began to slowly swirl.
The moment they made contact, the distorted patterns on the stone tablets flared to life, emitting a dark red glow as if living creatures were roaring within.
But Greg's shadow mana, like the most domineering of marauders, unceremoniously enveloped, eroded, and then... devoured it!
Unlike last time when he devoured the Mother of Depravity's power—that mental shock that felt as if his soul was forcibly shoved into freezing sludge—
this time, what Greg experienced was an even more chaotic impact.
It was as though a mirror had suddenly shattered inside his spiritual world!
Countless fragmented images, sounds, and sensory shards showered down upon him like exploding glass shrapnel!
Mixed within were soul-rending noises and a cold rhythm... as if all things were destined to dissolve into breakdown.
Amidst this chaotic surge, a relatively complete image forced its way deep into Greg's consciousness like a frozen movie frame.
It was a blood-red lake emanating the sweet, sickening stench of rust and blood.
The surface of the lake was still and rippleless, yet seemed to writhe slowly, reflecting the murky, dark red sky above.
In the middle of the blood-red lake, standing atop the water with her back turned, was a young girl.
She had dark red hair that reached down to her ankles, resembling dried blood. Even though the blood-red lake was windless, her hair fluttered unnaturally as if endowed with a life of its own.
She wore a simple yet ominously dark red dress, reminiscent of an ancient sacrificial gown. Barefoot, she stood silently on the water, appearing as one with the blood-red lake.
The instant Greg's gaze locked onto her, the red-haired girl seemed... to sense something.
Her body trembled ever so slightly.
Then, she began to... turn around, inch by inch.
Greg held his breath involuntarily in his mind, staring intently at the figure about to turn around.
However, at the very instant the side profile of the girl's face was about to emerge from her dark red hair, and the curve of her shoulders was already clearly visible—
"Why hast thou suddenly stopped moving? This bit of power should not pose too great a burden to thee as thou art now, should it?"
Nightmare's ethereal voice, carrying a trace of doubt, suddenly resounded in his mind.
Buzz—!
Greg felt a sharp shock reverberate through his spiritual world!
The uncanny, vivid vision of the blood-red lake and the red-haired girl shattered like a mirror struck by a heavy hammer. Intricate cracks instantly covered it, and with a loud shatter, it completely broke into countless specks of light, fading into the darkness.
His vision and perception were snapped back as if yanked by a heavy rubber band, returning instantly from that illusory, eerie blood-red world to reality.
The damp, cold dungeon air, the dim light, and the pile of stone tablets in front of him that had lost all their luster.
The devouring... was complete.
He subconsciously looked down at his hands, then felt the mana inside his body.
His shadow mana seemed slightly more active, and vague insights into dark-attribute magic—inclining toward erosion and disintegration—seemed to subtly increase in his mind.
His physical fatigue was very mild, far less than last time.
Sure enough, just as Nightmare had said, this reaction was far gentler than before.
"Yeah... I really didn't feel anything too special this time."
Greg flexed his wrists and confirmed, "Except... while devouring it, I seemed to suddenly see a... well, a very strange hallucination."
"A hallucination?"
Nightmare's body, originally lying languidly on the ground, straightened slightly. Her eerie green eyes turned toward Greg, the light within them solidifying for a split second:
"What kind of hallucination?"
Greg frowned, trying hard to recall that brief yet vivid image as he described it:
"A... huge blood-red lake. Standing in the middle of the lake, with her back to me, was a red-haired girl. Then... she seemed to sense me and started turning around slowly... but right as I was about to see her face, you woke me up."
He paused and added with some confusion:
"It's so weird... Last time I didn't see any concrete hallucination, I just felt uncomfortable and my mind was a mess. Why was it so... vivid this time? Is this some weird side effect from absorbing too much?"
After Greg finished, he waited for a few seconds, but heard no response from Nightmare.
He turned his head in confusion and looked at the black cat.
"Hey? Hajimi? Why'd you go quiet all of a sudden?"
Greg felt a bit creeped out and couldn't help asking:
"Is this hallucination... something really serious? It couldn't be a mark or curse from an Outer God, could it?!"
Nightmare was snapped back to reality by Greg's voice. Her eerie green eyes blinked, and the fleeting complexity and gravity within them rapidly faded, replaced once again by that languid expression.
Swishing her tail, she spoke to Greg in a playful tone:
"No, 'tis nothing. This should... merely be a meaningless hallucination."
She paused, her tone growing even more teasing:
"I believe this is likely related to the lust stirred within thee on the surface today that found no release. In other words, thou art simply craving a woman right now."
Greg: "...???"
"Y-You can even sense that?!"
Greg pointed at Nightmare, his voice raising an octave, filled with disbelief and outrage over his violated privacy:
"Do I get any right to privacy at all?! Prying into someone's physical and psychological activity—is that something a goddess should be doing?!"
Nightmare didn't care about Greg's accusation in the slightest. She even elegantly raised a front paw, licked the back of it, and replied as if it were the most natural thing in the world:
"Who told us to share the same Godhood now, our fates and souls closely intertwined? When certain thoughts of thine grow overly feverish and thy physical reactions swell, 'tis rather difficult not to notice."
Greg: "...I'm going to take a cold shower! I'm warning you, don't peek at me! Or else I'm really gonna go completely unhinged!"
With that, Greg glared fiercely at Nightmare, then turned around without looking back, striding off toward the underground river not far from the campsite.
He needed a physical cool-down, and even more so, to calm his disturbed state of mind.
Listening to Greg's fading footsteps, Nightmare slowly lowered her paw.
She remained crouched in place, but her eerie green eyes no longer held her previous playfulness or languor.
Her gaze turned deep and heavy once more, even... bearing a rare trace of apprehension and bewilderment.
Her vision seemed to penetrate the dim rock walls, gazing toward a direction that felt immensely distant, yet somehow right at hand.
"Why... did he see that fellow?"
"Is it because he absorbed too much power containing the concept of Fragmentation and is physically close to her, thus passively receiving a few fragments of information from the source?"
"Or has her seal already begun to loosen ahead of time?"
"Or perhaps..."
Nightmare's eerie green eyes narrowed slightly, light flickering unpredictably within.
"...Is there some... other reason... that even I do not know?"
Rate on N.U.
