Nightmare

"Out of the way!"

"Move!"

Lenny heard numerous voices around him. In his blurred vision, he could only discern the uniformed individuals beside him and the rapidly retreating ceiling with bright white lights placed in succession.

'...What the… what's happening…?' he muttered, trying to recall, but his brain was in a haze. 

"We're sending the patient to the ER, immediately," said the doctor with half his face covered by a white surgical mask to his colleagues.

"Doctor… what's… what's happening?" Lenny tiredly asked as he was rolled into a special medical room. An assistant doctor quickly placed an oxygen mask on his nose and mouth.

The doctor raised a surgical knife and squinted his eyes, as though smiling under the mask, and said, "I told you kiddo, you're so fucked."

A sense of dread washed over Lenny. That voice, that dreaded voice, he could recognize it anywhere in the world. He writhed and wanted to scream, but his voice didn't leave his throat.

'...No! No! Please, I don't want to die!'

He looked down at his hands and feet as he writhed, but they were strapped to the bed, rendering all his struggle futile. The doctor, Boss Falcone, gradually sent his hand down, aiming to cut open Lenny's abdomen.

Lenny writhed some more and attempted to scream for help, however, it was as though his voice was non-existent. He looked to the side, seeking help from the assistant doctors but their eyes and faces were contorted to express their genuine joy. Those that were meant to save him, were happy to see him die.

Lenny's dread deepened even further as the anesthetic gas put his mind in a daze, a deep sleep rapidly encroaching his mind!

"No!!!"

Lenny quickly sat up from his bed and screamed, frantically scanning his surroundings and panting heavily.

"Ha… Ha… Ha…" 

Lenny gradually calmed himself and massaged his temples. 

"Thank goodness, it was just a dream."

Alert yet groggy, Lenny grabbed his phone. With zero missed calls or texts, he saw the time read 11:24 AM.

'…I must've slept off. Dammit, what was that nightmare…?' Lenny thought to himself as he sluggishly got off the bed and headed for the bathroom.

He acknowledged that he was genuinely paranoid and scared for his life. 

Who wouldn't be when facing a formidable figure like Boss Faclone who had connections, money, and power? Such a prominent individual targeted his dear life. 

It was almost a given he would have such a nightmare, and he doubted they would end if he still lived in this perpetual cycle of fear and paranoia. Boss Falcone was his biggest trauma in every sense.

Raising the toilet seat lid, he pulled down his pants, sat down, and emptied his bowels. 

Letting out a deep sigh, he chuckled and self-deprecatingly said, "Boss Falcone is now haunting my dreams. Now, only when I'm on the toilet seat can I experience some peace of mind."

Buzzz~ Tap…

The sound of an insect buzzing and landing drilled into Leny's ear as though he had been struck by lightning. With the speed of light, he dashed out of the bathroom.

"Fuck!" He frustratingly cursed, standing outside his bathroom with his briefs down. 

He spotted the cockroach moving about in his bathtub and cried out, "Can't a man have some peace for just a few seconds?"

Annoyed, sad, and paranoid, Lenny picked up his slipper. After six minutes of battle with the airborne demon and constant retreats and restrategizing, he managed to snatch victory by sheer luck.

With the corpse of the unlucky opponent at the corner of the bathroom, Lenny finished his business and washed up when his stomach suddenly grumbled.

Grrr~

'...Damn. I'm hungry… b-but if I leave the apartment, Boss Falcone's goons might ambush me…'

Just then, suddenly, a flurry of information streamed into his mind and was imprinted at the forefront of his memory. 

Lenny's face gradually contorted to match the horror and dread he experienced at the moment.

[Task #2: Eat the cockroach.]

Difficulty: Easy.

Reward: 5 VP.

Ending In: 4 mins 59 secs.

Staring at the ceiling of the bathroom for an extended period of time, Lenny finally got up from the toilet seat and lifted his briefs, nonchalantly leaving part of his yellowed vest tucked in.

He walked up to the dead cockroach at the corner and squatted. Glaring at it, he nearly cried. 

"My life is literal shit now, isn't it?"

Employing his humor to calm his emotions, he chuckled and mocked, "The real question should be, when hasn't it?"

Steeling his mind, he stretched out his hand to the cockroach, his face expressing his disgust.

'...You can do this, Lenny. You need those bloody v-points…' He encouraged himself. 

Using his index and thumb, he picked the cockroach up by its wing. Just then, its wing ripped out and the body fell back to the toilet floor. 

Pa…

Utterly disheartened, Lenny still reached for it. And this time, he grabbed it properly.

'...You can do this, Lenny. You can. If you don't, you most likely get your organs harvested. See it like this: Eat a cockroach or have your organs harvested. Not so dumb anymore, right…?'

Convincing himself, he swallowed the cockroach in one giant gulp, held his mouth shut, and stopped himself from breathing.

After about five seconds, he remembered a message…

[Task completed.]

As soon as Lenny confirmed he had completed the task, he ran to the toilet and hurled out everything in his stomach.

"Bleeeuurgh… Bleeeuurgh…"

…

[Rule #7: Failure of four (4) consecutive tasks shall warrant a warning.]

…

After scrubbing his mouth clean with his toothbrush and disposing of it, Lenny was lying on his bed with his limbs spread wide, staring at the ceiling with tears already formed at the corner of his eyes.

"I just ate a roach…" he cried. "Why was it to eat a cockroach? Can't they give me a better task? Is it because I was hungry? Can they also hear my thoughts…?'

He sunk in thought, '...The nature of tasks. That wouldn't be in the Marketplace if it didn't hold a greater meaning everyone should want to know. The first task was aimed at making me suffer deep humiliation, the next with Boss Falcone's goons was aimed at getting me to challenge an impossible situation, and this third one was outright diabolical!

'It's like… increasing levels of absurdity. If I was told to eat the cockroach as my first task, there was no way in hell I would do that. But now that I've seen the app's true use and its legitimacy, could the tasks be getting worse? It's like whoever assigns the tasks was cautious with my first task to not completely deter me from the app…'

Lenny sought to reverse-engineer the secret of the nature of tasks to better understand the app. But as of the moment, he was still a greenhorn when it came to the number of tasks he had completed, so he couldn't properly deduce or be sure.

With how expensive the nature of tasks secret was in the Marketplace, Lenny figured it might mean a lot if he came to know it. Who knew? Maybe he could learn to orchestrate tasks tailored to his capabilities.

Remembering he had just earned some v-points, he muttered, "What should I invest in now? My endurance attribute is fairly alright…"

Grabbing his phone, he entered Top Idol and invested the 5 v-points he just earned in the first special attribute.

Strength — 7 >> 12.

Believing the investment to not be as substantial, and also still feeling downtrodden from eating a cockroach, Lenny didn't bother to inspect the changes in his body and simply went over to the TinkTonk app to check up on the [Go Viral!] experiment.