Ophelia's breathing was far away, yet very close.
The softness of the bed and the lavender scent were the last anchors before his consciousness sank into darkness.
Klein's body gave up its final struggle, surrendering completely to exhaustion.
It was a grand, irresistible fall.
His soul detached from its heavy shell, drifting toward a warm and peaceful void.
This was the sleep he craved.
It was a total emptying.
However, the expected peace did not last.
The sensation of falling did not stop.
The warmth was fading, replaced by a pure, emotionless cold.
It was not a bone-chilling frost, but a sense of void where existence itself was stripped of temperature.
Klein opened his eyes.
He was not in that familiar room with the warm light of the fireplace.
This was the deep sea.
An endless, murky deep sea.
There was no sensation of flowing water, no suffocation of drowning.
Around his body was a thick, invisible pressure, squeezing his existence from all sides.
He was suspended in this darkness without up, down, left, or right, like a forgotten speck of dust.
‘Here again.’
Klein's mind cleared instantly.
He realized he had made a mistake.
The incense.
He had forgotten to light the special incense that could block the prying eyes of evil gods.
High-intensity combat and mental overexertion had made him overlook this pre-sleep step that had almost become instinct.
That tiny oversight was now being infinitely magnified in his mind, turning into a rift leading to the abyss.
Or perhaps this sudden drowsiness was not as simple as an oversight?
None of that mattered now.
What truly mattered was that he had become a defenseless lighthouse, recklessly broadcasting his coordinates to those unspeakable entities in this dangerous spiritual sea.
Alarm bells exploded in the depths of his soul.
He began to survey his surroundings.
This deep sea was both similar to and distinctly different from his previous dreams.
While the past dreams were eerie, they carried an ancient and neutral tranquility, as if he were merely observing an eternal painting.
But this time, the darkness was alive.
It was filled with a hungry, greedy will.
Klein could feel countless gazes projected from the deepest part of the darkness, each one carrying a tangible stickiness that scraped against his mental form.
Something was waking up from the darkness.
Or rather, they had been awake all along, just waiting for an intruder.
Klein saw them.
At first, they were just shadows deeper than the surrounding darkness, wriggling at the edge of his vision.
Then, those shadows stretched and extended, taking on concrete forms.
One.
Ten.
Hundreds, thousands.
Dense tentacles reached out from the bottomless abyss.
They danced silently, each one covered in a slimy skin that seemed to breathe.
Their movements defied all physical laws, sometimes stretching softly, sometimes twitching violently at angles that tore through space.
They were approaching.
From all directions, from above, from below.
A massive cage woven from countless tentacles was slowly and steadily closing in.
Klein could clearly feel the oncoming malice.
It was not hatred or anger in the human sense, but a purer, more primitive intent—predation.
He was the prey.
‘He had to leave!’
This thought became the sole command for action.
Klein's lips moved silently, and mental power condensed within him as he attempted to construct a spell that could forcibly tear the link between dream and reality.
Archaic syllables representing ‘Severance’ and ‘Return’ echoed in his consciousness.
Mana began to respond to his call.
However, the fluctuation of this power also completely alerted the lurking monsters.
Their previous approach had been a probe, a surrounding maneuver.
Now, it was a kill strike.
All the tentacles stopped their elegant wriggling in an instant.
They tensed.
In the next moment, countless black shadows tore through the viscous darkness, shooting toward Klein from all directions with a sharp whistling sound.
Klein's casting was not interrupted.
He channeled his remaining mental power to construct an invisible barrier in front of him.
The first tentacle slammed into it.
The mental barrier vibrated violently, letting out a sharp spiritual wail as a crack spread across it.
The tip of that tentacle split open into a circular mouth.
Inside the mouth was not flesh, but layers of fine, pale teeth as sharp as sand.
They rotated and shifted at a hair-raising frequency, cruelly grinding against Klein's mental barrier.
Energy was devoured, and spirit was dissolved.
Under the gnawing of the mouth, the invisible bulwark burst with a blinding, ominous white light, and the escaping energy fragments fell into the dark sea, where they were instantly assimilated.
Then came the second impact.
The third.
The fourth.
The sounds of impact were not physical, but a roar that reached straight to the soul. Every strike made Klein's mental form tremble violently, his consciousness feeling as if it were about to be torn from its core by this brutal force.
From all directions, the entire cage of tentacles was tightening, and the tip of every tentacle opened the same hungry mouth.
They were no longer probing.
The predatory feast had begun.
Klein's figure was becoming transparent.
The archaic syllables representing ‘Severance’ and ‘Return’ had finished their final weaving in the depths of his soul. The anchor to the real world was taking effect, pulling him back from this abyss with an irresistible force.
This process made his link with this dream dimension extremely unstable.
It also caused his mental barrier to lose its steady supply of energy.
The monster lurking in the deepest darkness keenly captured this.
Its prey was escaping.
An indescribable wave of furious will instantly swept through the entire deep sea. It was no longer the calm lock of a predator, but a hysterical, desperate madness.
It wanted to tear something away from Klein.
A mark, a fragment of his soul, or just an unhealable wound.
Whatever it was, it had to leave something behind.
Suddenly, the movements of all the tentacles changed. They were no longer simply shooting or striking, but became black whips that tore through space, madly lashing at the crumbling barrier with a more frantic and reckless posture.
“Crack...”
A clearer sound of fracturing, originating from the mental level, rang out.
On the barrier, a crack instantly pierced through and spread silently, completely dismantling the bulwark forged by the last of Klein's mental power.
The defensive line collapsed.
Just as the barrier dissipated into points of light, the tentacle closest to Klein pierced through the final defense.
Without a moment's pause, it turned into a bolt of black lightning, precisely locking onto Klein's right arm, which was becoming illusory.
The mouth, filled with circular sharp teeth, had already opened to its widest.
A cold, fishy malice had already touched the surface of his mental form, bringing a needle-like pain.
Shadows swallowed all of Klein's thoughts.
He could even foresee the tragic sight of his arm being bitten by that mouth and a piece of his soul being forcibly torn away.
However.
Just then.
A scent that did not belong to this deep sea at all appeared out of thin air.
It did not enter through the sense of smell but directly permeated Klein's core consciousness.
The scent was crisp, carrying a strange, peaceful power that could soothe the soul. It was an invisible sharp sword, instantly slicing through the surrounding malice that was as thick as substance, dispersing that bone-deep cold.
This exotic fragrance became a coordinate.
An incredibly clear coordinate pointing to the real world.
It was a warm hand that grabbed Klein's falling soul and then yanked it upward.
Under the catalysis of this scent, the pulling force of the return suddenly increased tenfold, a hundredfold.
Klein was about to break free completely.
The tentacle that was already within reach fell into a final frenzy. It let out a silent roar, erupted with all its power, and made its final pounce.
It was too late.
Klein's figure turned completely into a bubble the moment before it could touch him.
That destructive bite missed.
But the tip of the tentacle still brushed past the position where he had disappeared, and though that brutal force failed to tear away his flesh, it caught a corner of his clothing that was also becoming illusory.
Rip—
A faint sound of fabric tearing was the last thing Klein heard as he left that nightmare.
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