CH 103

I skipped dinner and headed back to my dorm as soon as my busy day at school ended.

All I did was sleep these days. My body felt heavy and I had no energy. The magic circle kept pushing magic into me, but it only boosted my energy for a short while.

Whenever I fell asleep, the strange, realistic dreams continued on.

I wanted to just sleep and get some decent rest without any dreams. But after that unknown black magic spell, I kept dreaming the same dream.

As soon as I lay down on my bed, darkness overtook me. When I moved towards the light, I was always faced with the familiar yet different Cory.

The Cory in my dreams lived an incredibly boring life. He barely had any contact with other people. And it seemed like he enjoyed that. He sometimes even glared at anyone who approached him to scare them away.

The Cory in my dreams, unlike the real Cory who liked to take walks and bathe in the sun, always went back to his dorm to lay down on his bed to sleep or read books.

Even today, dream Cory finished school and headed back to his dorm to lay down on his bed. Cory stretched his arm to get ahold of a book nearby.

“Boring…..”

Dream Cory, who had just begun to read through a book on attack magic, threw his book and the glasses he wore onto the floor.

Cory was alone in the dorm room. Dream Cory didn’t have a roommate. In reality, Cory and Hylli seemed friendly towards each other as roommates but he was alone in my dreams.

Cory grabbed a stick-shaped snack that had been out in the open from last night and put it in his mouth. He munched on his snack with his blanket on as he stared blankly at the work he had to do laid on his desk.

“I definitely signed myself up for too much by Yves….”

Cory seemed like he didn’t even have the will to finish munching on his snack as he slowly stopped eating. The end of his stick snack fell onto the floor.

“Why did I say that I’d help him with his Lunaasha guild work that time?”

Oh, right. It was for father’s work. Cory muttered to himself, rubbing his face into his hands.

“Ugh, I don’t want to wooooooork…..”

Cory basically crawled to his desk and picked up his glasses on the way before he sat on his chair and rested his chin on his hand. He referenced the thick magic books on his desk as he scribbled down something on a document. After skimming through it, it seemed like it was talking about the black dragon that symbolized our empire and the royal family. There was also another paper that assessed our academy. His hard to read scribbles seemed to be a common factor for both real and dream Cory.

After working a bit, he seemed to lose concentration. He shook his chair and twirled his pen before falling backwards.

With a loud thud, Cory fell onto the floor, back first. He didn’t show any pain or shock about it and just stared at the ceiling.

When Cory closed his eyes, still on the floor, he immediately fell asleep. It was surprising and also extremely like Cory.

I felt a bit anxious for Cory, who had fallen asleep after working so hard, so I dragged a blanket from the bed and put it on him.

In my dream, I could float and touch objects but the other person couldn’t see me at all.

In the original story, I remembered that Cory helped Yves often with his work. There was barely any information about it, but Cory also seemed to have helped Yves with his revenge. It seemed that this was also the reason why he got caught by slimy Yves and was suffering like this right now, too.

Now I was almost positive that this dream was focusing on the original story of the novel.

It seemed like the black magic that I had gotten in contact with was making me dream like this. Whenever I dreamed, the circle on my hand was always glowing brightly.

Now all that I had to figure out was the short note that said [Save him], but was I supposed to save ‘him’ in here? Or was I supposed to take note of ‘him’ based on these dreams and save him in real life?

I didn’t really get it, but whoever it was, I wanted to hurry up and save them and get some decent sleep. Sleeping didn’t feel like sleeping these days.

I left Cory to sleep on the floor and walked around the boys’ dorm. I decided to wander around to get some more hints about this place.

In my dreams, I could move however I wanted to. I flew up into the air and looked down at the school.

I could see the entire campus at once.

The view of the academy from the sky was mostly wine-colored because of the Augran flowers that had been planted around all of the school gardens.

Because the Augran flower bloomed for all four seasons, the academy was always bathed in the color of wine.

Then, I suddenly remembered what real-life Cory had said–about how monsters seemed to react to the ‘wine-colored’ subjugation uniforms.

Suddenly, a scary thought entered my mind as chills ran down my spine but I shook my head. The more important thing for me right now was figuring out who ‘he’ was.

I wondered if ‘he’ was supposed to be Swanhaden.

I didn’t really mean to do so, but I had ended up changing the male characters’ personalities from how they should’ve been in the book.

In the original story, all of the male characters’ personalities were absolutely disgusting. But now they weren’t as bad. We jumped over a lot of hurdles and hardships together and their personalities didn’t get twisted.

Compared to the original novel and right now, Hylli should’ve become twisted after the death of Caradil, and Yves should’ve become twisted because of his situation with the guild.

Then, that meant that Cory and Swanhaden were suspects now but I wasn’t sure who ‘he’ was. Oh, or was I meant to save both of them?

For the original novel to be accurate, Swanhaden’s personality should’ve been messed up from the beginning of school. But Swanhaden did have a bad personality, yes, but he didn’t seem like non-recyclable trash.

Moreover, he entered school a year earlier than the original novel, and from the first time that I had seen him, he was different from the original novel.

When I tried to use magic to look for Swanhaden as I floated in the air, he wasn’t in the academy.

I drew the magic circle to search for people and poured in my magic. But strangely, my orange magic seemed to have bits of black magic in it. The bits of black amidst my orange magic felt strange.

It was suspicious, but I knew I was in a dream right now. I decided to ignore it for now.

Swanhaden seemed to have left school for the day–he wasn’t at the academy. I decided to head back to Cory.

It seemed like the [him] from the note was Cory. I mean, the moment I began dreaming, he was the first person I saw. I always started out in the academy when I dreamed, and it wouldn’t make sense for me to save Swanhaden if he wasn’t even on campus to begin with.

I glanced back at the wine-colored academy and headed down towards Cory, who was leaving the boys dorm towards somewhere else.

I flew too fast and almost bumped into him. Cory seemed surprised at the sudden gust of wind that blew towards him because of me.

“…..I feel like someone keeps watching me these days.”

This was a dream, so I needed to stay confident. But I couldn’t help but feel guilty because it felt like this was just an alternate reality.

Cory looked bothered as he continued walking. I didn’t know where he was going, but he was trudging so slowly that it was obvious that he didn’t want to go there.

Cory walked towards a bench. He always sunbathed on this bench in real life.

I had assumed that dream Cory liked being in his room all the time, but it seemed like he also enjoyed sunbathing from time to time. I had watched him for the past few days now, but this was the first time I saw him lazing about like this outside during his free time. He really looked like real life Cory right now. If I ignored the expression on his face that said he wanted to go back.

“I wish someone kidnapped me to a place where I got three meals a day and people didn’t bother me…..”

Cory leaned on the bench as he sighed and muttered to himself. Aaaah. I want to do nothing. Nothing at all. Cory said to himself.

“Should I just go to prison? I think I could do it if Hestia just put some false charges on me.”

Dream Cory just said something incredibly dangerous.

“Never mind, I don’t like beans*.”

I don’t like emotional pain, either. Cory said to himself, bitter. Cory took out another stick-shaped snack and munched on it.

The Cory from here seemed to have zero interests. I thought he was a magic nerd, but he looked like he was sick of that too. It looked like his favorite thing to do was to just sleep. If he didn’t sleep, he just liked to lay down and do nothing.

Real life Cory didn’t move a lot, but he still had things that he enjoyed. But dream Cory didn’t seem to have anything at all.

He patiently ate his snack as he stared at the sky until he heard footsteps. He frowned.

Even when someone approached him, Cory didn’t seem to care at all.

As if he already knew who it was without even seeing them, he shifted his position so he was resting his back on the bench with his head looking towards the sky.

“Sir DuBois, thank you so much for coming out today.”

Cory turned to look at the person next to him when they finally began speaking. Cory always looked at the person he was speaking to straight in their eyes when they spoke. Even if he didn’t want to speak with them at all.

Dream Cory was the same. Cory blankly stared at the guy next to him with fierce green eyes before nodding.

The guy who had approached Cory was none other than Yvnes.

Dream Cory didn’t seem too different from real life Cory, but Yves had a stark difference.

He was smiling brightly, but he exuded a dangerous aura. It wasn’t the ‘Oh, I should probably be careful around this person’ kind of aura that I got when I first met Yves.

His aura right now felt like a ‘My life is going to fall apart if I get wrapped up in his business’ aura. When Yves smiled, his silver eyes curved into a half moon. It felt incredibly cold and dangerous.

My entire body seemed to scream at me to run away, but Yves couldn’t see me so I stayed put.

Yvnes looked at Cory with a relaxed smile. The corners of his mouth seemed like they were never going to go down. It looked like a smooth smile, but his eyes were dangerous.

Cory stood up straight as he looked at Yves.

“Just get down to business, Yves.”

“Do you know that I’ve become school president recently?”

“Mhm.”

“I had a conversation with the principal recently. He told me everything about the Augran mountain and his relation to it. I learned about his plans, and my assumptions were correct.”

I sat next to Cory and quietly listened to the two of them talk. My eyes grew wide. Yves became the school president? Wow, that was unexpected.

I found out a shocking fact.

There had been a time when I wondered why the academy, meant for kids, was built so close next to the mountains when it was filled with monsters. I had assumed it was because of adult circumstances and moved on.

I wondered if what Yves said about the principal’s plans were related to this particular topic.

Now, I no longer just thought of these dreams as just normal dreams. My hand was glowing a dark black, and all of the information I learned from here could be used in real life. I poured my attention into my ears and listened to the conversation.

—

T/N: In Korea, there’s a running joke that prisoners are fed a lot of bean-related food. Beans are incredibly nutritious while being relatively cheap, so it’s been said that prisoners are given rice with beans mixed in.

I skipped dinner and headed back to my dorm as soon as my busy day at school ended.

All I did was sleep these days. My body felt heavy and I had no energy. The magic circle kept pushing magic into me, but it only boosted my energy for a short while.

Whenever I fell asleep, the strange, realistic dreams continued on.

I wanted to just sleep and get some decent rest without any dreams. But after that unknown black magic spell, I kept dreaming the same dream.

As soon as I lay down on my bed, darkness overtook me. When I moved towards the light, I was always faced with the familiar yet different Cory.

The Cory in my dreams lived an incredibly boring life. He barely had any contact with other people. And it seemed like he enjoyed that. He sometimes even glared at anyone who approached him to scare them away.

The Cory in my dreams, unlike the real Cory who liked to take walks and bathe in the sun, always went back to his dorm to lay down on his bed to sleep or read books.

Even today, dream Cory finished school and headed back to his dorm to lay down on his bed. Cory stretched his arm to get ahold of a book nearby.

“Boring…..”

Dream Cory, who had just begun to read through a book on attack magic, threw his book and the glasses he wore onto the floor.

Cory was alone in the dorm room. Dream Cory didn’t have a roommate. In reality, Cory and Hylli seemed friendly towards each other as roommates but he was alone in my dreams.

Cory grabbed a stick-shaped snack that had been out in the open from last night and put it in his mouth. He munched on his snack with his blanket on as he stared blankly at the work he had to do laid on his desk.

“I definitely signed myself up for too much by Yves….”

Cory seemed like he didn’t even have the will to finish munching on his snack as he slowly stopped eating. The end of his stick snack fell onto the floor.

“Why did I say that I’d help him with his Lunaasha guild work that time?”

Oh, right. It was for father’s work. Cory muttered to himself, rubbing his face into his hands.

“Ugh, I don’t want to wooooooork…..”

Cory basically crawled to his desk and picked up his glasses on the way before he sat on his chair and rested his chin on his hand. He referenced the thick magic books on his desk as he scribbled down something on a document. After skimming through it, it seemed like it was talking about the black dragon that symbolized our empire and the royal family. There was also another paper that assessed our academy. His hard to read scribbles seemed to be a common factor for both real and dream Cory.

After working a bit, he seemed to lose concentration. He shook his chair and twirled his pen before falling backwards.

With a loud thud, Cory fell onto the floor, back first. He didn’t show any pain or shock about it and just stared at the ceiling.

When Cory closed his eyes, still on the floor, he immediately fell asleep. It was surprising and also extremely like Cory.

I felt a bit anxious for Cory, who had fallen asleep after working so hard, so I dragged a blanket from the bed and put it on him.

In my dream, I could float and touch objects but the other person couldn’t see me at all.

In the original story, I remembered that Cory helped Yves often with his work. There was barely any information about it, but Cory also seemed to have helped Yves with his revenge. It seemed that this was also the reason why he got caught by slimy Yves and was suffering like this right now, too.

Now I was almost positive that this dream was focusing on the original story of the novel.

It seemed like the black magic that I had gotten in contact with was making me dream like this. Whenever I dreamed, the circle on my hand was always glowing brightly.

Now all that I had to figure out was the short note that said [Save him], but was I supposed to save ‘him’ in here? Or was I supposed to take note of ‘him’ based on these dreams and save him in real life?

I didn’t really get it, but whoever it was, I wanted to hurry up and save them and get some decent sleep. Sleeping didn’t feel like sleeping these days.

I left Cory to sleep on the floor and walked around the boys’ dorm. I decided to wander around to get some more hints about this place.

In my dreams, I could move however I wanted to. I flew up into the air and looked down at the school.

I could see the entire campus at once.

The view of the academy from the sky was mostly wine-colored because of the Augran flowers that had been planted around all of the school gardens.

Because the Augran flower bloomed for all four seasons, the academy was always bathed in the color of wine.

Then, I suddenly remembered what real-life Cory had said–about how monsters seemed to react to the ‘wine-colored’ subjugation uniforms.

Suddenly, a scary thought entered my mind as chills ran down my spine but I shook my head. The more important thing for me right now was figuring out who ‘he’ was.

I wondered if ‘he’ was supposed to be Swanhaden.

I didn’t really mean to do so, but I had ended up changing the male characters’ personalities from how they should’ve been in the book.

In the original story, all of the male characters’ personalities were absolutely disgusting. But now they weren’t as bad. We jumped over a lot of hurdles and hardships together and their personalities didn’t get twisted.

Compared to the original novel and right now, Hylli should’ve become twisted after the death of Caradil, and Yves should’ve become twisted because of his situation with the guild.

Then, that meant that Cory and Swanhaden were suspects now but I wasn’t sure who ‘he’ was. Oh, or was I meant to save both of them?

For the original novel to be accurate, Swanhaden’s personality should’ve been messed up from the beginning of school. But Swanhaden did have a bad personality, yes, but he didn’t seem like non-recyclable trash.

Moreover, he entered school a year earlier than the original novel, and from the first time that I had seen him, he was different from the original novel.

When I tried to use magic to look for Swanhaden as I floated in the air, he wasn’t in the academy.

I drew the magic circle to search for people and poured in my magic. But strangely, my orange magic seemed to have bits of black magic in it. The bits of black amidst my orange magic felt strange.

It was suspicious, but I knew I was in a dream right now. I decided to ignore it for now.

Swanhaden seemed to have left school for the day–he wasn’t at the academy. I decided to head back to Cory.

It seemed like the [him] from the note was Cory. I mean, the moment I began dreaming, he was the first person I saw. I always started out in the academy when I dreamed, and it wouldn’t make sense for me to save Swanhaden if he wasn’t even on campus to begin with.

I glanced back at the wine-colored academy and headed down towards Cory, who was leaving the boys dorm towards somewhere else.

I flew too fast and almost bumped into him. Cory seemed surprised at the sudden gust of wind that blew towards him because of me.

“…..I feel like someone keeps watching me these days.”

This was a dream, so I needed to stay confident. But I couldn’t help but feel guilty because it felt like this was just an alternate reality.

Cory looked bothered as he continued walking. I didn’t know where he was going, but he was trudging so slowly that it was obvious that he didn’t want to go there.

Cory walked towards a bench. He always sunbathed on this bench in real life.

I had assumed that dream Cory liked being in his room all the time, but it seemed like he also enjoyed sunbathing from time to time. I had watched him for the past few days now, but this was the first time I saw him lazing about like this outside during his free time. He really looked like real life Cory right now. If I ignored the expression on his face that said he wanted to go back.

“I wish someone kidnapped me to a place where I got three meals a day and people didn’t bother me…..”

Cory leaned on the bench as he sighed and muttered to himself. Aaaah. I want to do nothing. Nothing at all. Cory said to himself.

“Should I just go to prison? I think I could do it if Hestia just put some false charges on me.”

Dream Cory just said something incredibly dangerous.

“Never mind, I don’t like beans*.”

I don’t like emotional pain, either. Cory said to himself, bitter. Cory took out another stick-shaped snack and munched on it.

The Cory from here seemed to have zero interests. I thought he was a magic nerd, but he looked like he was sick of that too. It looked like his favorite thing to do was to just sleep. If he didn’t sleep, he just liked to lay down and do nothing.

Real life Cory didn’t move a lot, but he still had things that he enjoyed. But dream Cory didn’t seem to have anything at all.

He patiently ate his snack as he stared at the sky until he heard footsteps. He frowned.

Even when someone approached him, Cory didn’t seem to care at all.

As if he already knew who it was without even seeing them, he shifted his position so he was resting his back on the bench with his head looking towards the sky.

“Sir DuBois, thank you so much for coming out today.”

Cory turned to look at the person next to him when they finally began speaking. Cory always looked at the person he was speaking to straight in their eyes when they spoke. Even if he didn’t want to speak with them at all.

Dream Cory was the same. Cory blankly stared at the guy next to him with fierce green eyes before nodding.

The guy who had approached Cory was none other than Yvnes.

Dream Cory didn’t seem too different from real life Cory, but Yves had a stark difference.

He was smiling brightly, but he exuded a dangerous aura. It wasn’t the ‘Oh, I should probably be careful around this person’ kind of aura that I got when I first met Yves.

His aura right now felt like a ‘My life is going to fall apart if I get wrapped up in his business’ aura. When Yves smiled, his silver eyes curved into a half moon. It felt incredibly cold and dangerous.

My entire body seemed to scream at me to run away, but Yves couldn’t see me so I stayed put.

Yvnes looked at Cory with a relaxed smile. The corners of his mouth seemed like they were never going to go down. It looked like a smooth smile, but his eyes were dangerous.

Cory stood up straight as he looked at Yves.

“Just get down to business, Yves.”

“Do you know that I’ve become school president recently?”

“Mhm.”

I sat next to Cory and quietly listened to the two of them talk. My eyes grew wide. Yves became the school president? Wow, that was unexpected.

I found out a shocking fact.

There had been a time when I wondered why the academy, meant for kids, was built so close next to the mountains when it was filled with monsters. I had assumed it was because of adult circumstances and moved on.

I wondered if what Yves said about the principal’s plans were related to this particular topic.

Now, I no longer just thought of these dreams as just normal dreams. My hand was glowing a dark black, and all of the information I learned from here could be used in real life. I poured my attention into my ears and listened to the conversation.

—

T/N: In Korea, there’s a running joke that prisoners are fed a lot of bean-related food. Beans are incredibly nutritious while being relatively cheap, so it’s been said that prisoners are given rice with beans mixed in.