Chapter 87: Return, the Nonexistent Nightmare Collective?

When Li Nanke regained consciousness, he was once more upon the far shore, where the lake lay like a mirror beneath a blue sky.

There was no danger here, no slaughter, nothing but peace, far removed from all clamor. Even the system prompts themselves glowed in a soothing blue.

At last, he had brought this forbidden dream to its end. By rights, it should have felt like finishing a marathon, something that left the heart light and relieved. Yet what he felt was, strangely, a touch of regret.

If nothing had gone wrong, Reno and Aniya should already have escaped safely. As for completing the final hidden node, it had merely severed the Grace of Pain for the time being, and that "for the time being" was far too brief.

The Spirit of the Three Saints was only the manifestation of a great deity's will, perhaps akin to an incarnate projection. Unless the "Holy Lord" could be killed utterly, the Grace of Pain could never truly be broken.

Li Nanke even suspected that even if that supreme god were slain, so long as the people within the dream still believed in suffering, the Grace of Pain would never come to an end.

For him, at present, it was an unsolvable problem.

[Nightmare, you have completed the forbidden dream: Grace of Pain!]

[Settling dream results...]

[Your settlement rating for this dream is: A Rank]

[Because you completed the hidden node: Rescue Aniya, the Maiden of Endless Pain.]

[Your dream settlement rating has risen to: S Rank]

[Because you completed the hidden node: Sever all Grace of Pain.]

[Your dream settlement rating has risen to: SS Rank]

[According to this rating, your current standard exchange cost is 500 points, and you may exchange for two items from the special catalog.]

"So A Rank is probably the peak of the base rating. Higher ratings require completing corresponding hidden nodes."

"It's improved from the previous two S-plus results... I just wonder what it would take to reach SSS Rank."

Li Nanke was not a perfectionist, but when he scored 85 or 90 every time and stood only a step away from a perfect score, he could not help wondering what reward would await him at the top.

[Nightmare, you have unlocked new far-shore privileges: the Recovery and Trade functions!]

[Recovery: You may entrust useless items to the far shore for recovery and receive a certain amount of exchange points in return.]

[Trade: This function provides only the most basic trading privileges. After each forbidden dream ends, you will receive three opportunities to trade. The item you offer will be evaluated by the far shore, and a corresponding item from another Nightmare will be randomly matched to it. You cannot choose it yourself. This trade privilege will gradually improve as you participate in more forbidden dreams.]

Li Nanke froze.

What made him stop cold was the description of the trade option. Trade could be matched with exchange goods from other Nightmares!

Apart from the first guidance dream, where there had been other dreamers, neither of the two forbidden dreams that followed had contained any other Nightmares.

And in the real world, after joining the Crisis Control Bureau and obtaining a wealth of intelligence, he had likewise found no evidence at all that other Nightmares existed.

For a time, Li Nanke had believed that he was the only one who had risen from "dreamer" to "Nightmare."

Now the far shore had shattered that fixed belief once again, plainly telling him that other Nightmares did exist.

"What in the world is going on?"

Countless possibilities surfaced in Li Nanke's mind.

Frowning, he did not even bother looking at the exchange catalog. Instead, he immediately activated the trade function.

He did not actually have many spare items on him. They were all either node rewards or things he had exchanged for; there was, in truth, little worth trading.

Li Nanke tried putting up the dog collar he had obtained in the previous forbidden dream for trade.

The prompt "Matching..." flashed for less than half a second before a trade option appeared.

[Flashknife Dagger]
[Type: Weapon / Blade]

[Quality: Inferior +]

[Rating: 12/100]

[Details: A small cold weapon. Aside from being sharper than an ordinary dagger and striking more quickly, there is nothing particularly special about it.]

[Confirm exchange for this item?]

Whether he confirmed the trade or not, initiating a match would consume one trade opportunity.

After Li Nanke chose to confirm, a sharp dagger appeared in his hand.

Strangely, this item did not display any "remarks" at all.

Everything he had seen since entering the far shore, regardless of quality, had basically come with absurdly silly remark text. Yet this dagger obtained through trade had none.

Li Nanke then tried the recovery function on both the Flashknife Dagger and the dog collar. The offers returned were only 6 points and 8 points respectively.

"That's fucking ruthless."

He still remembered that the dog collar had cost 20 exchange points. Now, using the recovery function, the far shore had cut the price by more than half.

Something stirred in his mind, and he put up the most valuable thing on him: the Bloodied Warhammer.

This time, the words "Matching..." also flickered for only half a second before a traded item appeared.

[Hika Tribe Remote Bomb Generator]

[Type: Item / Permanent]

[Quality: Rare +]

[Rating: 22/100]

[Details: A strange technological relic belonging to the Hika Tribe, a device that can continuously produce remote bombs by consuming source energy. However, before the previous bomb has detonated, it cannot produce a second one. Remote bombs come in two forms, square and spherical. Ten seconds after being thrown, they will explode with terrifying destructive force. They may also be detonated manually in advance by remote control.]

[Confirm exchange for this item?]

Li Nanke canceled the trade, his expression grave.

"The number of Nightmares on the far shore... is probably far beyond anything I imagined."

If a low-value item like the dog collar could quickly be matched with something of similar worth, that alone meant little. But the Bloodied Warhammer was already a rare weapon, and with the embedded Grace Thorn, its power had risen dramatically, sending its value soaring.

And yet even in such circumstances, the far shore still managed to rapidly match it with something of equivalent value.

That could only mean one thing: the number of items being traded online was enormous, and by the same token, the number of Nightmares on the far shore should also be extremely large!

This was completely at odds with the intelligence Li Nanke currently possessed.

If there truly existed a Nightmare faction of such staggering size in the real world, surely someone would have come into contact with the Crisis Control Bureau, perhaps even cooperated with it.

And the Bureau would certainly have gathered plenty of intelligence about Nightmares. It would never have made the absurd mistake of misdiagnosing Li Nanke as a "Many-Faced System" user.

The intelligence he had obtained from reality showed that there were not many Nightmares in the real world. Even if he was not the only one, their numbers should be so small that the Bureau had not discovered them.

When two pieces of intelligence were wholly contradictory, and both needed to be made reasonable... Li Nanke could not help but form another suspicion.

The end.