Back in the original world, Ludger walked over to Hans, who was standing around blankly, and shook him awake.
“Get up, sleepyhead.”
“Ugh! Ack! Huff! Wh-what?! Don’t tell me, again?!”
Hans darted his eyes around, then let out a sigh of relief when he saw Ludger.
“Damn it. To wake up from such a nice dream only to see your face, Boss.”
“Is that a compliment or an insult?”
“Think of it as me reminding you of cruel reality. Your face is so unreal it actually snaps me awake.”
It was a compliment, yet for some reason it felt unpleasant.
Shaking his head, Ludger woke Sedina and Seridan as well.
Whatever dream they had been seeing, they looked fairly pleased at first, but the moment they saw Ludger’s face they snapped back to reality.
Seridan grumbled.
“I was about to make the world’s greatest explosive.”
“What the hell were you trying to make...”
Hans shook his head.
“Boss, we’re safe now, right? From the looks of it, there’s no danger here as long as we don’t fall for those hallucinations.”
“Those hallucinations are the real danger.”
“But you’re fine.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten who you owe that to.”
“T-that’s... of course I trusted you, Boss!”
The truth was, without Ludger, none of them could have escaped the illusions.
No—could they even dismiss it as mere illusion?
Once inside Dreamland, the scenes it revealed were, in a sense, a new reality.
That was why no one felt anything wrong, and why they got lured in.
It wasn’t just a fake flower crafted with skill—it was a seed that could become real.
“As long as Boss is here, this white world can’t threaten us anymore.”
Hans said so, but then flinched despite himself.
Because a building had risen out of the white world.
It was one Hans recognized instantly.
A shabby wooden structure, worn and tattered, with large letters on the entrance reading Orphanage.
“B-Boss.”
Hans instinctively turned to Ludger.
It was a desperate plea, hoping his boss would erase the hallucination quickly.
“Boss?”
“This is...”
Hans looked toward Ludger.
To his relief, Ludger was still there.
So had they woken again from the illusion?
But when Hans looked forward, cold sweat dripped down his face.
The shabby orphanage still stood.
Then came the creak of its doors opening.
Why?
If Boss was here, why wasn’t the illusion vanishing?
And just now, didn’t Boss see it too?
“Hans. If my eyes aren’t deceiving me, that’s definitely an orphanage.”
“...Oh shit. Boss, you can see it too? Then the others...?”
At that, Seridan and Sedina both nodded.
This wasn’t just Hans’s vision.
Everyone was seeing it.
And just as Hans reeled, other things began to emerge in the white world.
Rrrumble.
The ground shook violently, and then trees burst upward through a blue surface.
A massive forest formed in an instant.
And it kept spreading at a terrifying pace.
Trees sprouted like waves rolling across the earth.
Sedina screamed when she saw it.
“E-everyone, we need to back away!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the group dashed to escape the flood of trees.
Seridan, her twin white pigtails bouncing, shouted.
“W-what the hell is that?! Why is the illusion becoming real?!”
“Strictly speaking, this is still a dream world!”
“That’s not the point! What is this?! Weren’t we just supposed to wake up from illusions?! Boss?!”
“This is my first time here as well.”
While running, Ludger glanced back.
The trees grew with a monstrous force.
Vines and branches surged like a living tide, rushing to swallow them.
That must have come from Sedina’s illusion.
Boom.
Suddenly, buildings rose ahead of them.
Gothic-style structures, exuding gloom.
A faint mist seeped around them, glowing with bluish moonlight.
Stone pillars and iron bars formed walls and pavement, and between the buildings came the growls of beasts.
Not just sound—eyes glowed red in the shadows.
“Wh-what the hell!”
“Jévaudan!”
Hans answered Seridan’s cry.
“Jévaudan? Wait—that’s where you and Boss first met, isn’t it?”
“Exactly. Looks like this time, it’s reacting to my illusion.”
“Damn it all!”
Grrrr! Arf! Arf!
Beasts that had been waiting their chance pounced.
Black-furred wolves burst from the shadows and attacked.
“Don’t stop running!”
Ludger invoked mobile spellcasting.
A blue barrier enveloped the group, repelling all the black beasts outside.
Behind them surged the wave of trees.
From the sides, the black wolves.
“Nothing else is going to pop out, right?”
At Seridan’s question, Hans turned pale.
“If you say that now...!”
The two phenomena so far had come from Hans and Sedina.
But nothing had yet emerged from Seridan’s memories.
“Ah.”
Realizing that, Seridan’s mouth fell open.
Fwip!
At the same time, red flares shot skyward in the distance.
Like military signal flares, they trailed long streams of smoke across the air.
Not just one—dozens.
“Wait, don’t tell me...”
“Damn. Those unfinished mortars I was working on outside.”
Hans and Sedina gawked at Seridan.
Seridan stuck out her tongue and winked one eye.
“I forgot!”
“This is not the time to say that!”
“This is not the time to say that!”
Hans and Sedina shouted in unison.
Meanwhile, the red flares arced through the sky toward them.
Against the white sky, the glowing red stars grew brighter and larger.
“They’re coming! Each shell has the power to wipe out a 15-meter radius!”
“You didn’t have to be so specific about it!”
“If you’ve got the energy to flap your mouths, put it into running harder.”
At the front, Ludger reached out toward the incoming shells.
Seridan’s illusion couldn’t be blocked by simply casting [Silence of Fire].
They were still beset by wolves on the sides and the flood of trees behind.
Ludger finely tuned his mana, weaving blue threads.
Like when he read the library’s books in the Mansion of Secrets, the threads stretched out like spines of a sea urchin and touched the falling shells.
“Synchronization, begin.”
Mana flowed through the threads, seeping into the shells’ surface.
Ludger triggered a new spell through them.
Telekinesis.
The shells hurtling toward them twisted in midair.
As if striking an invisible wall, they veered off, scattering.
And fell precisely onto the wolves and the advancing forest behind.
Kwooooom!
Crimson flowers bloomed everywhere.
Scarlet flames ripped apart the Gothic buildings and beasts, and swept over the tidal wave of trees.
The shockwave thundered, but Ludger’s barrier shielded them from direct impact.
Seridan laughed giddily at the sight.
“As expected of my bombs!”
“How can you shamelessly brag! Everyone can see it was Boss who did everything!”
“I made them, so I get a share! If they’d been weak, would the situation have been cleaned up like this?!”
Faced with her audacious indignation, Hans found himself at a loss for words.
C-could that be true?
As Hans faltered, Sedina muttered in exasperation.
“Why are you even trying to agree with her?”
“Ah! I didn’t mean to!”
“You two—are you doing comedy skits right now?”
Ludger shook his head, glancing between Hans and Seridan.
Hans wanted to protest at being lumped together with Seridan, but he bit his tongue—arguing would only make him look more pathetic.
Though truthfully, there was another decisive reason.
‘The others didn’t see it, but...’
When Ludger swept the area with Seridan’s explosive illusion—
For the briefest moment, Hans had seen something.
A vision born from Ludger’s own illusion.
It had appeared so quickly it barely took shape, then was instantly consumed by the blast.
But one thing was certain.
Even Hans, who prided himself on knowing the continent’s hidden information, couldn’t make sense of it.
‘Boss. Just what is it you’re wishing for?’
* * *
Crash! Boom!
Brilliant magic carved across space.
They were not cast for magic’s original purpose—superior destructive power and killing force—but swelled up exaggeratedly, dazzling more than damaging.
The result filled the entire space, like a festival of fireworks erupting in a confined place.
Bloated but hollow magic.
Naturally, its power was greatly reduced.
The fact that Deja Vu stood unscathed after being hit by it said as much.
And yet, Deja Vu’s expression was far from pleased.
[You’re deliberately stalling for time.]
Even without foreseeing the future, it was clear what the opponent was aiming for.
They were obscuring his vision to resist his dream.
But it wasn’t just about blinding him.
Amidst the multicolored elemental flashes, a single pink bolt of mana shot sharply for a vital point, all the more chilling.
A dagger slipping through the gaps while dazzling the eyes.
Deja Vu saw it and avoided, but the feeling of sinking deeper into a mire was impossible to shake.
The enemy had grasped the weakness of his ability, forcing him to fixate solely on clouding his sight—while at the same time buying time to prepare a trump card.
Deja Vu knew he had to end this dragging war of attrition quickly.
‘The most dangerous one is that plump man with the faint impression.’
He looked like he couldn’t kill an ant, but to Deja Vu he was the greatest threat.
Deja Vu was specialized for mage battles; facing a steel golem mixed with science instead of pure magic was beyond his expectations.
[Before Lord Nirva awoke, such things didn’t even exist in the human world.]
In truth, in terms of magic, humans had declined compared to the past.
Yes, they had made it more calculated, more accessible to the masses.
But the pure miracle-working power born from imagination and mystery had almost vanished.
Even then, humans hadn’t been worth much attention; now, they had even forgotten their old purity.
Deja Vu had held quiet disappointment toward the entire human race.
But now, seeing a change in the human world he had never known...
He had to revise his view.
[A new power, not magic—science. And magitech that fuses it with magic.]
Fragments of knowledge drifting from Dreamland assembled into a record.
Slamming into his brain, it revealed what had changed outside.
In seconds, Deja Vu absorbed what had taken humans hundreds of years.
And he changed his target.
The teacher Brino.
If he wasn’t killed here, it would be dangerous.
Deja Vu’s gaze fixed on Brino’s direction.
Countless spells barred his sight in between.
Each time, Deja Vu’s retinas turned transparent, erasing them like an eraser wiping a page.
So be it.
He pierced through the veil of spells blocking his way.
Elisa Willow’s flashes of mana came stabbing at his vitals through the gaps, but Deja Vu twisted his body and let them graze.
One beam pierced his shoulder.
A clean hit, the first.
Yet Elisa’s expression soured.
‘He let it hit him on purpose.’
Deja ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ Vu’s eyes had never left Brino, who had been preparing something for a while.
He realized what Brino was aiming for.
He intended to take some injury, but eliminate Brino first.
Wounded or not, he wouldn’t die. But if Brino was gone, there would be no one left who could bring him down. After that, he could finish the rest.
“Protect him!”
At Elisa’s command, the other instructors clenched their teeth and cast spells.
But stopping a resolved Deja Vu was not easy.
Compared to other dream-servants he was lesser, but Deja Vu’s physical ability was still superior.
Each leap, like a rabbit’s, carried him across space swiftly, and in an instant he reached Brino.
Deja Vu leaped high, looking down at Brino.
[This ends here.]
His dream power activated.
His retinas turned transparent, and Brino’s figure vanished from his sight.
It meant only one thing.
The real Brino, too, would vanish from reality like the image passing across his eyes.
Brino’s troubled figure was neatly erased from view.
Deja Vu rejoiced.
But the next moment, his face stiffened.
A few seconds into the future—
His own death awaited.
Where? How? He had already removed the greatest danger.
Too late, he noticed the pale purple currents swirling around his eyes.
[What is this? Since when...?]
His startled gaze snapped to a female teacher gripping her staff, sweat beading her brow.
Merilda.
When she met his eyes, she curved her lips into a sly smile.
“Kid. You finally noticed me?”
[You... what are you?]
“My specialty is curses and hexes, you see? And among curses, there’s charm—bewitchment that clouds the mind. Didn’t know that, did you?”
Flinch.
Deja Vu finally understood the unease gnawing at him.
Curse and charm—if those had been what blinded his eyes...
They hadn’t inflicted direct harm, so he hadn’t reacted to the danger, and naturally hadn’t thought to avoid them.
[Even so, there’s no way I wouldn’t have realized...]
Then a thought struck his mind like a hammer.
The spells the other teachers had been casting until now—
What if they weren’t meant to hide Brino’s figure at all?
[From the beginning, they were aiming for this...]
He realized the truth, but far too late.
He had the power to see the future, but had failed to discern that the future he saw was false.
He could not tell if it was reality or an elaborate set.
The cost of blind faith in his ability struck him like lightning from a clear sky.
Boom!
The ground shook violently, splitting apart.
From within, a massive steel arm shot out, seizing Deja Vu’s body.
It had been a decoy.
The real Brino had burrowed underground with earth magic, preparing his hidden card.
What emerged was a colossal steam golem.
No—calling it a golem would be an insult to the creation towering there.
“It’s not completely finished.”
Brino revealed himself, fixing a clear gaze on Deja Vu.
The giant golem he had managed to construct was incomplete in its right arm, shoulder, chest, and head.
But that single arm was enough.
“But this will finish it.”
[I see.]
In his last moment, Deja Vu gave a faint smile, accepting calmly.
[So this is the future I could not see.]
The massive hand hissed with steam, clenching tightly around him.
Crushing him in its grip.
[Not bad.]
Crunch!
