Eighteen
"You shouldn't be here," student-era Lucas said coldly.
"I don't want to be here either. Tell you what—let's compromise. I'll just turn around and leave, and we'll pretend this never happened. Deal?" I was about to bluff my way past them when a hand clamped onto my shoulder.
"You think I'm three years old? You know my secret. There's no way I'm letting you walk out of here alive."
"Chloe! Where are you!"
"Who's Chloe? You have backup?" Lucas snarled, looking left and right. He was clearly just a dream-possessed fragment—a nightmare memory—and didn't share consciousness with the real Lucas outside.
"Chloe, come quick! I'm going to die!"
I started screaming at the top of my lungs. In an instant, every student in the dormitory had pushed open their doors and flooded into the hallway to see what the commotion was about.
"Goddamn, whose drunk dog is howling out here?"
"I was in the middle of a pentakill! Which drunk brat is screaming outside?"
"You think your pentakill matters? I was in a raid boss fight—two weeks of strategizing, finally in the execute phase, and your screaming makes me move to the wrong spot! The boss literally carves me into a skewer! Get over here, let me have a word with you about life!"
Taking advantage of the chaos, I bolted down the stairs, three steps at a time. I didn't expect these students to hold Lucas off for long—I just needed to reunite with Chloe. Her Nibelungen had ways to counter the rules. Finding her meant we still had a fighting chance.
By the time I hit the second floor, the footsteps behind me were growing louder and more numerous. It seemed Lucas could deploy his nightmare powers within the Nibelungen too. This was a military cadet building—some of those guys had arms thicker than my thighs. If they caught me, they'd string me up and beat me senseless.
My phone finally rang: "Hey, you still alive?"
"Barely. Military cadet building. In a few seconds, maybe not. How do I summon Ama-no-Murakumo? Quick!"
"Calm down. I'm heading your way. This is a Nibelungen—everything here operates according to your beliefs. What you truly believe becomes reality. Just like the DV camera I showed you. I believed it existed, so it did. But you have to genuinely believe it—half-hearted faith won't work."
I hung up with a face full of despair. I was a freaking atheist. Hasn't the sheer volume of anti-scientific nonsense I've dealt with lately been enough?
Bursting onto the first floor, sure enough... the drooling dorm auntie had just locked the door and was turning toward me with a vicious grin.
What you believe becomes reality, huh?
I took a deep breath, centered myself, and faced the surging mob with a roar.
"SWORD, COME!!!"
Young Lucas clearly sensed something was off. He signaled everyone to stop and ducked aside.
Huh? No way. Nothing happened? I looked around. Had I just summoned a big fat nothing?
"Are you bluffing?" Lucas rose and pressed closer.
I kept trying, desperate as a drowning man clutching at straws.
"AMA-NO-MURAKUMO, COME TO ME!!!"
"Darker than twilight, redder than flowing blood..."
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!!!"
"COME FORTH, OSIRIS'S SKY DRAGON!!!"
Just as I finished invoking Osiris's true name, everyone heard something tearing through clouds and moonlight, racing toward us at impossible speed.
In the instant of their bewilderment—BOOM!—Ama-no-Murakumo smashed through the dormitory's glass doors with devastating force and hung suspended in the air before me. I grabbed it, brushing glass shards from my face.
"NOBODY MOVE!"
Wow, that was a terrible line. What was I even doing?
Young Lucas couldn't care less. He strode forward alone as black mist solidified into sixteen pitch-black daggers. He grabbed two of them; the remaining fourteen vanished into thin air as he dive-bombed me from above.
CLANG!
The impact jarred my grip, sending me skidding back several steps. This guy had terrifying brute strength.
Of course, he hadn't come away unscathed either. The two daggers in his hands had been sheared to their hilts by Ama-no-Murakumo, and a gash ran from his left shoulder to his right hip, deep enough to expose bone. After all, Ama-no-Murakumo was forged from extraterrestrial lunar meteorite—its structural integrity was clearly superior.
But what concerned me more were the fourteen daggers that had vanished into the air.
Sure enough, just as I was about to press the attack, a dagger materialized from thin air behind my left flank and slashed toward my lower back.
I tried to dodge, but there was no time. It carved a chopstick-length gash across my side.
Then the daggers came raining down. I shielded my vitals as best I could, but in moments I was covered in cuts and gashes.
Suddenly, everything seemed to freeze in midair. I looked up to see the daggers hovering helplessly, wrapped in golden threads that rapidly dissolved each one. Across from me, young Lucas still wore his arrogant, cruel smile—but it was frozen in place, like a video buffering on Xunlei Player.
"Time stop?" I instantly recognized the ability's origin.
And a high-level one at that—because while everything else was motionless, I could still move freely.
"I told you to wait for me. Such a hothead." A familiar, languid voice spoke from behind me.
Chloe had arrived just in time.
"My lady, your timely rescue! Now slice him up for me!"
"Slice nothing—I don't have attack abilities. Slicing is your job. Also, how are you fighting this badly?"
Chloe's fingers traced lightly across my body. Golden temporal inscriptions flared around me, and my wounds visibly reversed, healing back to their pre-injury state.
"I only have one sword. He's got sixteen daggers. How am I supposed to fight that?"
Chloe's eyes went wide with disbelief.
"Who told you that you only have one sword?"
In a flash, I understood.
That's right—my class was Archer!
"Osiris Osiris Osiris Osiris Osiris..."
Enkidu, Durandal, Sword of Hǫgni, Gram, Indra's Thunderbolt, Harpe, Yitian, Tulong, Sky-Piercer...
One after another, legendary swords that existed only in myth materialized in the air behind me, their blades pointing outward toward the enemy.
They say Archers are broken in Fate—turns out they weren't lying!
Though I had to admit, this move really needed Chloe's time stop to be effective. In a normal fight, who'd give you this much time to chant?
"Attack!"
At Chloe's command, the King's Treasury unleashed in full force. Let alone young Lucas—no one even had time to scream. The dormitory before us was reduced to rubble on the spot.
When time resumed flowing, for just a fraction of a moment, I thought I detected a flicker of relief on young Lucas's face.
Where Lucas had stood, hovering at roughly chest height, was a single black dagger—his last remnant in this world, and the key we were looking for.
"What do you think?" Chloe asked as she retrieved the key.
"I think there's something wrong with Lucas's nightmare. A lot of information has been tampered with. His real identity should be the impoverished village kid named Lucas, but he's mixed in details from his college roommate with the same name, and he's been brainwashing himself with this false narrative—maybe to the point where even he believes it."
Chloe nodded. "When I checked the records, I also found that Lucas was flagged for severe mental illness during a routine psychological evaluation in his sophomore year. He refused treatment, claimed he was unwell, and took a leave of absence to recover at home for half a year... His dream space is different from an ordinary person's—full of disguises and illusions. We can't just charge in like we did before. Understand?"
I nodded with a sheepish grin. "Yes, ma'am. I'll follow orders in team fights from now on."
Chloe didn't take the bait. Instead, she looked deeply worried.
"A person's psychological problems mostly stem from their childhood. If that's the case, whatever's going on in his hometown is likely far worse than what we've seen so far. It's not going to be simple."
Those words made my heart sink. She was right. A family of loving mothers and filial sons wouldn't produce a monster like this.
"I think this Nibelungen battle is more of a conspiracy—a conspiracy Lucas constructed to deceive himself. The key should be hidden at the boundary between truth and lie. If we can see through the deception, we'll find it!"
The words had barely left my mouth when the Nibelungen around us began to dissolve. In its place appeared a small mountain village ringed on all sides by peaks.
Henan Province. Luoyang. Songxian County. Liu Family Village. Where it all began.