CHAPTER 103: THE SLUMBER’S NIGHTMARE

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"Why is it that every time you try and say something that I actually wanna know, all I hear is meaningless gibberish?" Captain Rose, the attractive lady sitting before him, asked with a saddened tone.

"It is because of the restrictions, Master. The tower prevents many things we want to tell one another. Unless you know things that the other does, we cannot tell it to others.

Also, since this is our first time interacting with the natives of the tower, I guess there’s much more that’s getting censored."

Zyon was answering truthfully just as he was from the start of this conversation. He told her everything he could, from how they were from outside of the tower to how there existed a ’simulated’ world similar to this tower in their world.

The game was a strange concept for a tower resident like her, but she still understood it with the example that Zyon gave her.

However, every time he tried saying something that actually mattered, things like how the two of them had met, why he was her student, how they cleared this floor and moved up, to things related to the Red Moon.

The sanguine entity in the sky that had been appearing in these skies for the last few centuries was something she hadn’t been able to defeat until now.

She was strong and cursed so she was perhaps the only one who knew how each of these red moons ended, but despite having this knowledge, she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

The tower’s restrictions on the residents were even stronger than what it was with the players. Unlike the players who didn’t hear anything, to begin with, she almost got stunned when she first heard the weird gibberish that came out of his mouth.

It made her entire body shiver in a weird manner. Her body refused to experience something like that again even though she had near-perfect control over her body.

If she was like this, both of them knew what would happen with the other natives if they were exposed to this foreign information... if they could process that information, that is.

"Haaa. Then is there no way for me to know more about you or what we used to be?" She looked at Zyon with concern and uncertainty.

She still suspected whether he was an enemy or ally she should be holding close to her chest.

His behavior, the information that she could not know, to the things that were being hidden away from her were something that forced her to not trust this person before her.

But then again, her instincts were telling her to trust him.

"You were my master, my teacher, Miss Rose. Even if I cannot tell you what we used to be with words, as you have taught me, a clash of swords should be all we need to know everything that we need to know, isn’t that right?" He smiled at her warmly, showing her the sincerity he carried.

He wanted to tell her more about what they were. He wanted to tell her how this floor concludes, he wanted to tell her more about herself from the version he knew, as well as learn more about the person she was right now.

"I know about the Slimber, the nightmares, and why you cannot sleep. I know about the full arc, and I know how you like sunflowers. I know the you that we had in our world, but despite that, I know I want to know more about the ’you’ before me."

He was aware that there was something more to this version of her than any other that he had seen.

"You know about the Slumber’s nightmare?" The captain was surprised by the revelation. That was one thing that only a handful of people knew about.

"About the nightmare of a blood-covered land all around you, your fear of the night of the Red Moon, I know what happens on these nights, but I guess talking about them won’t be easy.

Instead of something depressing, how about we go and have a duel? Perhaps it will freshen up your mood." He stood up and walked up to her sword.

As she watched, Zyon picked up the sword that no one else could even touch without her will, and brought it to her.

Only someone who understood a Sword to a certain level could lift this special sword without the master’s permission, so if he was doing this daring thing, he was revealing a powerful hand.

"You just made me excited, you know? Ah... perhaps you know it very well." She had been expressionless most of the time until now as if there was nothing there to live for in her life.

The dark expression and the dark circles under her pretty eyes weren’t something that should have been there.

"Fine, let’s go clash our steel." She looked much better with this smile.

"Certainly."

Ziggy smiled as well and handed her her special sword.

In the deep corners of his heart, he had already taken the oath to not repeat the same thing that had happened with her the last time.

She was suffering alone each time this was happening. She had lived for far too long in this suffering.

The night of the Red Moon was a phenomenon that only happened once every decade, but that was not the case for her.

For this person before him, each night when she fell asleep against her will, she was greeted by the nightmare that destroyed her from the inside.

Each night, she saw the monsters and the devastation that these monsters were going to spread.

This had been happening to her for more than a decade.

Each day was a challenge and after going through that nightmare each day, she had even forgotten how the actual nightmare looked...

"Please go easy on me, master."

"No. And don’t call me master. I haven’t taught you anything."

"But you eventually will, right?" Ziggy asked with a playful smirk, but the teacher did not like that and smacked his head.

"Don’t be cheeky. I like you the way you are."

But that did not mean he was her student yet.

She didn’t want to take in any students... Each time she had done that, in her nightmares, she would see the worst kind of end for her students, an end so horrible that it would break even the most broken of souls.

The nightmare was a curse, something she did not want to experience again. She was numb, but she still had a fragment of her soul left.

And, she wasn’t giving up that fragment at least until she defended the cities of this floor and won against that damned red moon...