Chapter 113 - 113 Curtains

113 Curtains

Before long, all the cages in the dungeon were filled.

The torturers were stuffed into cages, and every cage burned with emerald-green Soul Fire.

Wails and screams of torture rose and fell. Compared to the previous scene, the Prison of Pain looked more like hell.

After doing all of this, William turned around and sent the rescued phantoms back to Currere.

These phantoms were the mental projections of some unlucky souls in Currere. They accidentally wandered here in their dreams before being imprisoned, causing them to have nightmares every night of being tortured by a group of sadists.

They were considered lucky. If this was the Lord of Nightmare’s year, they might even have their souls pulled here.

“Um… Lord William, didn’t you say that you were here to negotiate?” the crow messenger looked at the ignited torturers in the surrounding cages and asked worriedly.

William had used this Soul Fire when interrogating it. It knew very well what extreme pain it was.

Now, the person in front of him had ignited all the Lunar Monsters here at once. Wasn’t this a little…

“Ah, you can rest assured about that. This cage is called the Cage of Torture. As long as the intellectual being imprisoned suffers painful torture, it will constantly provide Zamara with strength. The key is to suffer extreme torture. As for what’s placed inside, it’s not important.”

William said as he walked up the spiral staircase.

“In fact, most Void Sovereigns don’t care so much about such details… Alright, you can lead the way.”

Even in the Moon Realm, changes were constantly happening.

Perhaps a second ago, this door led to a hall, but in the next second, it led to a poisonous pool. Other than the Void Sovereign being able to completely control the changes in the entire Moon Realm domain and the demon generals under Her command being able to control their domains, only an existence like a messenger could see through the Moon Realm’s changes and guide people to specific places.

Of course, there was also a simpler and crude method—to storm his way over. After killing most of the Lunar Monsters in a domain, a portal to the next area would automatically open here.

William originally thought that this design of covering up the map loading would be less jarring after transmigrating, but he realized that it hadn’t been changed the last time he came to the Moon Realm. Or rather, was this a reasonable Moon Realm mechanism?

Fortunately, he had a messenger who had once seen the Lord of Nightmare’s main body. Otherwise, he might have had to storm his way to the throne of the Lord of Nightmare and tell the other party that he was here to cooperate.

If he did this, it might even be a problem for him to escape the Nightmare Swamp, let alone cooperate.

After all, back then, he hadn’t been able to make the Void Sovereigns show their health bars when he led the entire Judgment team to Their thrones. Now that more than a thousand years had passed, the other party’s strength was much stronger than before, but he was the only one left.

Outside the dungeon’s door was a withered rice field that stretched as far as the eye could see, and there were strange scarecrows with ferocious smiling faces placed at regular intervals in the rice fields. The lanterns in their hands moved without any wind, emitting creaking sounds.

The crow messenger looked at the scarecrows and shuddered. Then, it composed itself and turned into a crow feather storm before flying in a direction. A pair of wings made of pure light spread out from William’s shoulder blades. He flapped his wings and followed behind the crow feather storm.

…

The bedroom of the Lord of Nightmare was divided into seven areas by seven curtains. They symbolized the basic forms of the seven kinds of nightmares—shame, loss, pursuit, weakness, falling, imprisonment, and death.

Generally speaking, other than the Nightmare Maid in charge of delivering the Lord of Nightmare’s orders and the seven Demon Generals who corresponded to the seven nightmares, no other spawn were allowed to approach this place.

To the Lord of Nightmare, the unknown and vagueness were Her most important sources of strength. Not only for mortals, but even for the Lunar Monsters under Her command, She still needed them to maintain their fear of Her at all times.

Therefore, any Lunar Monster who dared to challenge this rule and tried to enter the bedroom would end up in an extremely miserable state. Their essence would be personally dismantled by the Lord of Nightmare and embroidered into the curtains of the bedroom to be tortured by an eternal nightmare.

To maintain her sense of mystery, other than not allowing other Lunar Monsters to approach her bedroom, Zamara had never left it. Even in the war with Currere a thousand years ago, She only created an incarnation and personally sent it to the door of the bedroom. Then, She returned to the deepest depths of the bedroom.

Therefore, in the Nightmare Swamp, many highly intelligent Lunar Monsters often opened a few layers of curtains in their bedroom to determine how important something was to Ms. Zamara.

Typically, when a demon under Her met the Lord of Nightmare, a layer of the curtains in the bedroom would be pulled open, and Ms. Zamara would allow them to report from the outermost layer.

Every 13 years, when it was the Lord of Nightmare’s turn to be on duty for the disaster year, two levels of the curtains in the bedroom would open because the Lord of Nightmare wanted to let Her strength be better projected onto the Vic Continent. Of course, if a demon reported something at this time, it could only stay in the outermost layer.

When other Void Sovereigns’ messengers arrived, Zamara would open one to four layers of curtains according to the relationship between the sovereign behind the visiting messenger and Her.

To date, the only time she opened all the curtains was in the middle of the war against Currere more than a thousand years ago. Ms. Zamara created her incarnation and opened seven layers of curtains to send Her out.

Although there were such strict rules, the high-level Lunar Monsters still instinctively set their domains as close to the bedroom as possible so that they could be closer to their master who created them.

This day seemed to be an extremely ordinary day for the high-level Lunar Monsters near the bedroom. Of course, the concept of time in the Moon Realm was very vague, so calling it ‘this day’ might not be a very accurate term.

Regardless, the bedroom of the Lord of Nightmare was still tightly sealed as usual, and the surroundings of the bedroom were at peace. Of course, it might not be accurate to call it peace. After all, such a thing might not exist in the Void Sovereign’s domain.

In short, the high-level Lunar Monsters began to make attempts to communicate with the mortals in Currere through dreams as usual—either to spark nightmare-like inspiration for those strange artists, or to control mortals to commit sins while sleepwalking, or to guide out-of-control dreams into the Moon Realm.

However, at this moment, two tearing sounds suddenly sounded from the distant horizon.

All the nearby Lunar Monsters’ attention was instantly attracted by the undisguised voice.

In the sickly sky that looked like it had been smeared by a lunatic, a storm of crow feathers and a person flapping holy wings behind him were flying towards the bedroom of the Lord of Nightmare.

The Lunar Monsters present had some impression of the former. It was a messenger sent by a Moon Realm Overlord not long ago.

A messenger of a Moon Realm Overlord wasn’t even qualified to meet the Lord of Nightmare, but Ms. Zamara opened two layers of curtains for it.

This attracted widespread discussion among the high-level Lunar Monsters nearby.

As for the one flapping his holy wings, although the Lunar Monsters present didn’t know who it was, his appearance shocked them even more.

This was because he was a mortal.

How did a mortal come to the Nightmare Swamp? How dare he fly in the direction of the Lord of Nightmare’s bedroom?

Calling it a suicide was an understatement.

This had never happened in centuries.

All the nearby Lunar Monsters held their breaths and waited for the punishment from the bedroom.

As expected, the bedroom moved.

However, it wasn’t the action they imagined.

Five levels of the curtains outside the bedroom opened in one go, and mist spread out, forming a huge female phantom.

An extremely sweet voice that stirred fear in the hearts of everyone present sounded.

“Calamity, you’re not welcome here!”