Fantasy Clock～Dream Ruler～

Reality is a never-ending train, and our hearts that seek external things to put in are always wandering in nothingness.

Whether it's dominating the war, or the ground beneath your feet—

All our wishful thinking will eventually betray us.

"But even if reality has betrayed you countless times, you should never betray your decision."

To be at the end of the day, believe what I believe.

And this is what I believe in reality.

＊＊＊

At this time, the crimson flaming sky was thundering and roaring, and the black clouds were gloomy, covering the starlight that was calling for help from time to time.

Under the relentless pursuit of Luo Lei, the two figures straddled the distance between the buildings and shuttled back and forth between the terraces of different buildings, but tended to approach the same destination.

I hugged the increasingly heavy scepter in my hand, and crossed to the next building with great difficulty. The gravity that pulls down is ten times and a hundred times up, increasing the burden of each step.

"Honestly...you just hit too hard, right? That magic—" As if trying to get rid of the exhaustion in the body, Lin Yu asked me while enduring dizziness, and his steps were heavy to the naked eye, "Or are you actually Thinking, if I fail to understand your intentions, I will kill me without stopping, win this battle and find another way out?"

Although he brought up such a topic for the purpose of staying awake, Lin Yu really hit my thoughts perfectly at the time, so that I couldn't find the words to respond to him for a while. If Lin Yu's expression didn't change much, I even wondered if he had read my heart before asking me.

Can't deny it. I bet that Lin Yu would use "One Person, Thousand Faces" to read my thoughts, and bet that he would discover my battle plan. But the facts are exactly as he said-I don't think the possibility of him understanding my thoughts is 100%, and the probability of mutual distrust between the two parties is far greater than the former.

"I'm sorry...just think of it as revenge for stabbing a dagger into my chest with the same thought last time?"

"I didn't expect Su Ruoyang to be a cruel man."

"...Your heart is not so soft, let's be each other."

Lin Yu was obviously not upset by my answer. For we are all desperate, and we all gamble like desperate gamblers, and this is our fateful battle.

Even if we are connected, we don't know what each other really thinks. If he failed to understand my intention, or if he judged that I did not understand his meaning, then the development of the matter would be completely different, as Lin Yu said, it would turn into a duel between us.

This is a gamble with no chance of winning. Looking at it now, we are so similar that we are even in the same degree of ignorance.

No wonder we have to meet again with a similar fate, attracting and colliding with each other like different magnetic poles.

Luo Lei besieged our way forward with an increasingly intensive offensive, making it difficult to move an inch like being filled with lead. An arrogant smile flickered in Qianyan's eyes, completely treating our last stand as a game. But a strange thought was stirring deep in my heart, and I always felt that there was another reason for her not exerting her full strength.

For example - it was my vanished dreamer who secretly helped us.

"How is it now? Have you read "One Man with Thousand Faces"?"

"Not yet...! Compared with ordinary people, her heart is fortified everywhere, and there are many obstacles and checks everywhere." Lin Yu frowned and showed a horoscope, bent down and shoveled her legs to dodge the lightning strikes flying in front of her, and said, "Unless She sold us the vulnerability herself, and we are bound to fight her for a long time... In short, I need more time to enter her world."

"But you're almost at your limit..."

My voice became softer and softer, and I suddenly lost my confidence. Because I know that saying such things at this time will only dampen our morale, and Lin Yu is even more straining his body than me. Now that he is ready to face a longer stalemate, he must know how far he is from the limit, and it is not my turn to worry about him.

"However, she hasn't used all her strength...you should have noticed it, right?"

As soon as I finished speaking, my hands trembled uncontrollably, and I suddenly raised my gaze to glance at him. Lin Yu was like sinking into the slow motion of a movie, and slowly showed a reassuring smile.

"Although I was blocked from entering her world, thanks to this, I discovered the gates to different "personality palaces". In other words, I can conclude that the Creator is the consciousness of multiple personalities, and the one who fights us It is her subject personality, but the other object personalities seem to be hindering her, that is to say in our favor."

As if aware of my inconceivable gaze, Lin Yu stepped off the ground at the edge of the roof and jumped up. Although the force of gravity was pulling his body dozens of times, his steps seemed to be light.

"——Because of Lulu's relationship, I specifically checked the information on this aspect, and I didn't expect it to work in this kind of place."

no doubt.

Lin Yu's words inadvertently solved my long-standing doubts, which I have been unwilling to face directly and plan to save until I get out of prison to consider.

Before I went to prison, I thought about this question—whether the creator occupied Qianyan’s body or Xia Yinci’s body—but I still didn’t have a definite answer.

Or maybe it's just that I can't believe the answers I'm getting.

Just thinking about if there is no such thing as "occupying the body" from the beginning to the end, I tremble all over, and I am full of resistance to myself who thinks deeply.

Because once this happens, the person who will kill my fate is the person I least hope——

"Hey! Why do you have to put on such a dejected expression? It's your decision to fight the unreasonable reality and challenge the Creator who created all things, right?"

The awe-inspiring voice was full of sickly and distorted love, resounding above us, Lin Yu turned around and locked the opponent's position. And I just ran with my head depressed, the thunder behind me seemed to be the truth that I didn't want to face, pressing on step by step - obviously I was step by step to reach the truth that I was eager to know, but now I was escaping from the truth.

"I can't figure it out - since the reality is not satisfactory and betrays your cognition everywhere, as lucid dreamers, you obviously have another world waiting for you at your disposal!"

The world in which we spend the longest time, besides reality, is the dream world - the habitat of the mind.

"There is obviously your best destination, why are you dissatisfied with the arrangement I gave you? Obviously, as long as you have infinite imagination, you will have a world of everything in the world. Ignore all paradoxes, ignore all laws, and chaos is The order of this world. Absolute freedom whenever you want.”

Compared with the world who cannot have lucid dreams, we may be very lucky people who are not surrounded by our subconscious mind, but we choose to fight each other.

For this train that wanders in reality, we who are clearly dreamers are much freer than others. We can reach out the window to touch the distant sea, let our thoughts escape from the body imprisoned on the train, and go to ourselves. Expected Gensokyo.

"But you don't want to dominate reality? Knowing that you are not the only resident of that world, thousands of people live with you in the world called "reality", but you still want to expect yourself to be the only god who is one in a million ? If you have the supreme right, then others should also have it, right? Ordinary people, why?”

Yes, why?

Just because we have been betrayed by reality again and again—I thought that the eternal earth would lead us to wander among the stars—so you want to use this way to fight against the uneasiness of being betrayed?

"Even if you have suffered so much? What I have given to you ordinary humans is the same cruelty, without any selfishness! You said that you don't want anyone to hinder you anymore? Are you kidding? Crying about your own difficulties, begging for the sympathy of others I'm so sorry, who has a more relaxed life than anyone else?"

Everyone wants the whole world to surrender to themselves in the end, but their initial wish is so small that it is not worth mentioning——

Seek a sense of fulfillment in life and redeem yourself.

Turn back time and save your loved ones.

Fulfill the long-cherished wish of the dead and let go of the obsession of the living.

"I admit that in real life you are very painful. You say a lot of things and no one will understand you. You are lonely until you die. Even if you occasionally meet warm people, the world itself is cold. It's just that people in this world and You suffer as much, if you want everything to be your wish—why not go to a world where you can do whatever you want?"

——Anyone's wishes are insignificant in the eyes of others, so everyone is trampling on other people's wishes and dominating others.

But it was us who fought endlessly like this and redeemed each other.

"Hey... can you answer me?"

She seemed to be suppressing the anger that was about to break out of her shell, and the questions she blurted out were followed by Luo Lei step by step, but she always held the pride of being superior to ordinary people, and she was unwilling to admit that she had feelings for us "ordinary human beings". guilty of anger.

"We just fight to believe what we believe."

The sudden answer made Qianyan raise her eyebrows slightly, but her expression soon became blatantly disgusting, as if she was staring down at a few inexhaustible bedbugs on the ground.

"To you, we may be like a few bedbugs to us. But even when bedbugs are cornered by humans, they will fight to scare humans away. If bedbugs gather in thousands, then It will force us to do everything we can to deal with them. We are like bedbugs, even if we are in a desperate situation, we must fight hard."

I held onto the sweat-stained clothes on my chest, summoned up the courage to look sideways, and met Qianyan's cold gaze.

For an instant, her contemptuous eyes retreated a step, but then a terrifying light flashed across her pupils, striking with a deadly sense of oppression.

"Oh? According to what you said, do you think you can pose any threat to me?"

The lightning hidden in the black cloud suddenly roared, emitting a disturbing strange light, followed by a few seconds of silence, during which no lightning fell, and we were able to break through and enter the border area of ​​the town, one step closer to the Xinghai Tavern . But such silence is really like a precursor to a change in the sky, as if the heartbeat rushing to the ear is agitating in the throat.

When we jumped to the roof of the next building, Lin Yu pulled me to stop, turned around and faced the direction behind me. I followed his gaze and raised my head, making the back of my neck a little sore.

"If your goal was to irritate her, I think you've already done it..."

As soon as the words fell, the black clouds had condensed to the point that the sky was completely black, and the thunder that swept down several times was like a beam of light connecting the sky and the earth, instantly setting off the rubble of the town.

I took a step back and raised my staff, and cast defensive magic to block it. When I looked sideways at Lin Yu, he had already put on the mask of the black knight, spread his hands quickly, and aimed at the entire row of thunderbolts to summon the wall, and the lightning was approaching in sight Nearby, it was invisible and blocked several meters away, causing ripple-like ripples.

Time seemed to have stood still for half a second, the impact bluntly blasted away the invisible wall, and the moment it fell, it was blocked by the shield formed by the defensive magic I fired, and deviated from the direction to attack the building on our side, killing it in just an instant. The face was devastated, and the building was reduced to ruins.

The black clouds spread out again, and the pitch-black sky showed a little crimson——

Just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, a strange roar from behind struck me at my back with a premonition of danger.

I turned around suddenly, and the turquoise arms approached my neck in a straight line.

——It was the "evil spirit" that once flooded the world.

I pushed Lin Yu away and hurriedly raised the scepter, but the magic power didn't even have time to condense. The distance between that evil spirit and me was really too close, it rushed to my close distance with just one step, and touched my body with its fangs and claws.

But almost at the moment he touched me, a black mist suddenly filled my whole body, wrapping me tightly, and the evil spirits rushing towards me were immediately swallowed up by the thin layer of black mist, and sucked into the On the edge of the roof a few meters away, he stepped into the sky and fell down.

It wasn't until this moment that I could see clearly that the evil spirits were constantly emerging from the beam of light hitting the building in the distance, and the red light of resentment shot out from the empty eye sockets, chasing us in our direction.

"Don't stand there in a daze! Behind!"

Perhaps it was because of the irresistible magic in the urgent tone, Lin Yu and I turned to the back at the same time, only to see green-skinned arms climbing up to the roof, densely covering almost the entire wall of the building, the two of us dodged at the same time On both sides, the evil spirits immediately rushed into the black mist that appeared in front of them, and fell into the sky in the same way.

Lin Yu and I looked at each other, and ran to the edge of the top floor. There were countless claws reaching out to us. We leaped high and crossed the narrow but life-and-death distance to another building. Lin Yu raised his hand Just block the barrier and keep the evil spirits out. The price is trapping ourselves under four walls.

At this time, a black mist suddenly appeared above, and the black cat suddenly poked its head out, revealing her agile eyes.

"You two... really made it easy for me to find!" The black cat's tone was obviously complaining, and it frowned and stared at us, but it was more worried, "Is it a tacit understanding to leave me? If I hadn’t found the world gate leading to the gap between dreams at the end of the track, what are you going to do now? Are you going to be bitten to death by a few screaming evil spirits?”

I have to say that hearing such words from the mouth of the black cat, coupled with her unhappy face, makes people feel a kind of indescribable cuteness. But now is not the time for me to make excuses. Looking at the evil spirits gathered, I immediately patted the back of Lin Yu's stubborn head, and without even thinking about it, I lowered my head and apologized to the black cat.

"I'm sorry...it was an emergency and I didn't consider your feelings."

Although Lin Yu tried her best to resist the force in my hand and said something unclear like "don't apologize for me casually", but the apology was unexpectedly effective for the black cat, and she immediately pursed her mouth. It turned into a cat-like triangular mouth, and opened one eye to peek at us.

"Okay, it's good to know you're wrong. This time, I'll forgive you both with difficulty."

The black cat "reluctantly" stretched its eyebrows. Before the number of evil spirits gathered to the four walls, she grabbed our collars and carried us into the black mist, and the exit was tens of meters above the ground.

The evil spirits were lured to the vicinity of those two buildings due to the attraction of me and Lin Yu just now, so I was able to see hundreds of people under the town.

Not the townspeople in the cracks of dreams, not even the rulers who rule the war——but all the people wearing prison uniforms.

"...How did you bring them here?"

Lin Yu couldn't help but ask the black cat. The cracks in the dream were extremely lively at this time, and Lin Yu's voice was drowned out by the discussion below and the distant roar.

"Since it can lead to the gap in the dream, then the Xinghai Tavern is a place that can be reached by walking."

I inadvertently mentioned the previously changed plan, and the black cat immediately showed a bright smile and nodded to me.

"That's right, now is the perfect opportunity. We haven't been able to enter the gap between dreams for so many years, maybe this opportunity will never appear again if we miss this opportunity. Bringing everyone back to reality.”

"Although the feasibility is not high compared to Xinghai Tavern, but your evaluation will hurt my heart..."

The black cat deliberately avoided talking about it, and just smiled at me with an unknown meaning. The provocation in its eyes was beyond words, but it was not annoying.

"Hey! Who can tell me where this is? "Hogwarts College"?"

Shouts of fear came from below, followed by the only-heard roars of the evil spirits. At this time, the gap between the dreams has changed from the desertedness of these days, and it has become extraordinarily lively.

"Who knows!? This world is really getting more and more crazy... I am really dreaming, right?"

"But if it is a dream, can it still be in the same dream? I don't believe it, unless you are not real people, but just NPCs I imagined."

"Then how do you explain this world?"

"But if it's a dream, we just commit suicide——wouldn't we be able to wake up from the dream?"

While the criminals were walking towards the place that the black cat said, there was a lot of discussion. Suddenly, this extremely inflammatory remark made many people stop and echoed.

Some people fell into extreme panic, raised their hands and put them down again. Some people don't know what to do, just avoid their eyes. Some people were in fear and covered their heads in fright at the cries of the evil spirit. Only the man in the lead didn't speak for a long time. When everyone was arguing, he turned around suddenly, his eyes sunken into the round eyes.

"Extremely ridiculous! You may more or less not have to suffer the punishment of eternal life, but that doesn't mean you haven't committed any crimes, it's just that your crimes don't end there! Think of the wrong things you've done together with the punishment of depriving your sense of time as a dream, Are you stupid? To what extent do you have to be intoxicated before you give up! "

The unbearable words were thrown in front of the criminals along with the saliva, and the men's eyes swept over the people around them one after another, and the abnormal atmosphere gradually permeated everyone.

There were all kinds of reactions, panic and fear, but in such emotions - some people chose to firmly believe in Lin Yu's existence.

"I, agree...we should fight for unfair punishment, not to avoid guilt and to get rid of crime."

"Yeah, and - if death can wake us up, how many people have tried to commit suicide before, why did they return to prison for various reasons in the end?"

"It's true...but if it's a dream, why can't we wake up? Are we really... in a dream?"

"Since Lin Yu's followers are saying that, then we are most likely in a dream, right?"

The air fell into silence, and everyone's eyes fell on the leading man. But this time he didn't know how to respond, he hesitated to speak.

It is impossible to say no to fear. I understand the wavering.

No one wants to be trapped in a dream forever, not to mention that this dream is an eternal imprisonment without dominance. No one can bear the consequences of fighting desperately but returning to the cage that will never see the sun.

"But... If we don't act at this time, we will give up because of fear, then we will only miss the only chance to leave here!"

The one who spoke was the implementer of that rebellion. He looked around at the criminals with different thoughts, and expressed his thoughts loudly, just like the speech at the beginning. Everyone's eyes turned to him, but his eyes turned to the sky, looking at Lin Yu who was walking through the black mist.

At that second, Lin Yu's eyes met. Lin Yu couldn't help clenching his fists, took a deep breath and puffed up his chest, and finally spoke as a riser——

"I understand all your doubts. But our struggle is a dream that cannot be woken up. Our enemy is the senses that are both false and real - we are fighting against the consciousness that we do not want to wake up! This is after forty years. Even longer precipitation, the final battle...so, please declare war on your past self!"

Lin Yuyan let it go. An imperceptible smile flashed across the corner of the follower's mouth, and he slapped his chest hard with his clenched fist.

"Declare war on my past self!"

Like a ringing arrow in the forest, piercing everyone's beating heart. The leading man responded by hammering his chest as hard as he did. He closed his eyes as if repenting, but also as if he had made up his mind. He yelled out the slogan of declaring war, which spread to everyone like a plague, and turned around to face Xinghai Tavern again— —Starting from the brutal and unreasonable reality.

Lin Yu's previous rebellious actions were indeed not meaningless, and indeed planted the seeds of longing for freedom in their hearts.

We are bugs, more or less wrong.

And reality has betrayed us countless times.

Not being able to do what we want, not being able to go anywhere, suffering as a human being, reality is undoubtedly a train that has no end and no meaning for us.

But even so, as long as we can do what we can on the train, and occasionally reach out the window to reach Gensokyo on the other side, freedom is just around the corner.

Once the arrow of rebellion is shot, it cannot be taken back,

I think,

That's it!