Chapter 23: A Dreamy Experience

"I see… Alright, thank you, I'll be heading out now.", I said, leaving the room, excited.

"See ya tomorrow!", she said, turning back to her desk.

As I headed out, I remembered the fact that Maria's picture was with a red border. Should I ask Maria about it? 

'Maybe later…', I thought to myself, feeling lazy.

I headed back into my room, to freshen up. I was pretty sweaty after all that sparring and 'training'. Plus I really needed a change of clothes.

A quick bath later, I was alone in my room.

Maria wasn't there in the room, she was probably out attending classes or something. It might have been a holiday for me, but it sure wasn't for Maria. Seeing as how Maria described it as a 'school', it was safe to assume she was probably attending classes out there.

I was getting bored before I remembered. The dream realms.

I summoned the sensation of using nihilism. I could feel my skin tingle with the clear aura. This time, it felt cooler, like icy gel was put over my arm. Summoning nihilism now felt second nature to me, even though I didn't use it much. 'That was one less thing to worry about.', I thought to myself.

How do I open a dream realm again? Oh right, Daphne told me the rough instructions.

I sat straight on my bed, and asked myself the question, "Do you believe in gods?"

My mind said yes, but my body said no. It seemed like I still hadn't fully adapted to this reality. You would think a person's beliefs would change after encountering multiple things unexplainable, but my body begged to differ.

The dream realm needed a response, not necessarily an affirmative one, and so I was now in a white void, floating in the middle of nowhere.

I tried looking around. I had no body, but at the same time, I was naked, floating in the middle of nowhere.

'Where the hell was I? Why was I floating here with no body? Did I mess up somehow? I want to go back… home…', I thought to myself.

Then I saw something that truly puzzled me. It was my room, from before the plane crash. It had my bed, my study, my wardrobe, in all its messy glory. 

I stayed there in shock. Why was this here? Wait… was this part of the dream realm?

The room itself didn't exist… yet. It seemed to be blurry like it wasn't in existence yet, but I instinctively knew I could bring it to existence.

Then I realized. This is the experience Daphne mentioned. I could make anything I wanted here. It really did feel like a canvas. I instinctively knew how to set up the rules of this place. No matter how ludicrous the rules, the dream realm adjusted itself as best as it could. It felt like it was alive.

This place really was a place of my dreams. I could change anything, make anything, do anything here. I was basically a god of this small world. It was truly a euphoric feeling. 

It was all fun and games until I ran out of nihilism. I guess I didn't heed Daphne's advice too well, seeing as how I opened a dream realm much bigger than I could handle.

'Well it wasn't the end of the world', I thought to myself, crashing onto the bed, feeling more exhausted than I should.

Exploring this was going to be very fun.

…

2 weeks passed by in a flash. My two-day 'break' was now long over and it was training for me, every day. 

I feel like training was just an excuse for Daphne to kill me, in different ways. Every day was basically the same.

I wake up, go to the infirmary, go into a dream realm, and get my ass beat, whether it was through hand-to-hand combat or a nihilism based beatdown.

Over the course of these days, I was convinced of one thing. Daphne definitely had something wrong with her. She figured out my talent was related to the eyes, so her new type of training involved gouging my eyeballs out and regenerating them by killing me.

It of course, didn't work. We just ended up with her beating me up while I was "training" my nihilism. On the bright side, I could control it better, so all that pain wasn't for nothing. On the not so bright side, I had a feeling there was a much easier method to do the same.

In my free time, I tested out the dream realm thing. it was more than just convenient. It was life-changing. I experimented around with it, for as long as I could. I found out a lot about the dream realm, especially loopholes on how to abuse its rules, but now isn't the right time to discuss the nuances of the dream realm.

While I was getting tortured in the infirmary, Maria went out for her own classes. We would interact a bit during lunch, but that too was pretty rare. Our schedules were different, so the only time I could consistently meet her was during bedtime.

There was one thing I did without fail. Before going for voluntary torture at the hands of Daphne, I always went to the wooden sword room, to practice. There I found the same Gabriel dude.

We sparred as a form of training, and it was pretty fun. That is what I would like to say. But the more I sparred with him, the more I realized. 

He was just on another level. I couldn't even hope to beat him. My side slashes were still parried very easily. No matter what I tried, I couldn't beat him. Every time I got defeated, I felt like pulling my hair out.

That aside, there was something more important that I found out. according to Maria, they ramped up the training for some reason, which meant most of the day would be spent there. They said the training regiment would go back to normal in a few weeks.

Was this related to the meeting? That was the only correlation I could think of…

Was the meeting that important? Where even was this meeting? It was coming up in 2 days and I still didn't know anything about it.

Whatever it was, I had unbridled confidence in my new ability. While Daphne was just giving me glorified torture, it helped my ability grow if anything. I could turn on the time slowing thing at will, and it lasted longer too. 

But that confidence wouldn't do much for me. I went into the infirmary, determined to get answers this time.

"Are you ready for another dream realm session?", I heard Daphne say, as I was entering the infirmary. We didn't really need a training room as such, so my classes were being done in the infirmary through the use of the dream realm. I don't know how exactly it translated to getting stronger in the real world, but I didn't question it. There were a lot more intriguing things about the dream realm anyway

"You still haven't told me what exactly I am training for.", I said.

"It's for the meeting-"

"At least tell me what this meeting is about.", I said, acting as seriously as I could.

"It's a meeting between directors. What more is there to elaborate upon?", she said.

"Alright then, who am I supposed to spy on? How will I spy on them? How will I spy in the first place?", I asked all at once. In my defense, I had a lot of questions when I came here, and I still do. What was the 'investigation' I was sent on? Why did we need to spy on someone in the first place? Shouldn't there be a briefing or something? This didn't seem professional in the least.

I wasn't asking them these questions out of courtesy (In reality, I was just shy about when to ask about it). Getting an answer from Maria also didn't work, as she wouldn't give me a straight answer no matter how hard I tried, instead giving me a roundabout answer like, "If Daphne hasn't said anything, I can't either.". I could tell she was just too lazy to explain things to me, but I let it slide.

"Spying is a glorified way of saying you will be guarding the director's office, to see if anything suspicious is going on.", she said. Did she just change the objective on a whim? I was supposed to spy on someone 2 weeks ago…

"Why? Isn't there someone more capable…?"

"You will find that out soon enough.", she said, clearly dodging my question. "While the meeting will take place, you will be monitoring the director's office, from the infirmary. You will also report anything suspicious to me. Like someone entering the director's office. That's all. Do you need more of an explanation?"

"No… but why did it take so long for you to tell me that?", I asked. Monitor the director's office? That seemed stupidly unimportant…

"You didn't ask. The first time you asked, I just wanted to play around with you.", she said, smiling.

"I see…", I said, ignoring her half taunt. "Oh yeah, are mobile phones allowed?", I asked. Some part of me knew they weren't, seeing as Maria didn't have one.

"Nope. Using mobile phones here would allow us to use a multitude of barriers to prevent gods from sniffing us out. Since we are a brand new branch, there is still a lot of work to be done. We will probably be able to use gadgets by the end of this month.", she said. 

A bummer. A phone would have made my life so much easier, both for this spying thing and for day to day usage.

"So I just have to observe the director's door from a distance?", I asked.

"Yup. You just have to stay here in the infirmary and look pretty, while occasion taking a peek outside. If you do see anything suspicious, then don't do anything. Just tell me later.", she said. She wasn't taking this seriously in the slightest. "It's really that simple."