Complete darkness.
The surrounding space was entirely black, without a single patch of light.
Inside this space there was a consciousness.
And it awoke abruptly.
...
Inside a surreal room with stairs and bridges, near one of the ledges lay a group of six people, sleeping so soundly it seed they were dead.
Suddenly, Lin sharply opened his eyes and jumped up, not understanding where he was or what was happening.
"Who am I?" he asked himself and began to look around to understand where he was.
Like a future sea, his mories slowly began returning to his mind — who he was, what his na was, what was happening, and much more. Lin grabbed his head and for so ti tried to accept it all, then structure it to make it easier to navigate.
When all the mories returned, Lin looked at the surroundings with a new gaze; his eyes quickly scanned every surface to understand faster, until he noticed that the blue door was now closed.
"Blue door?.." Lin looked around and saw that his groupmates were sleeping deeply, as if they were never going to wake up.
Because Lin was very capable of quick thinking and coming to various decisions, he imdiately understood what had happened to them and where he had been wandering all this ti.
"So it was a dream after all?" Lin looked at the surroundings and the closed blue door and continued: "All this ti, I was in a dream? And the blue door was closed?"
Lin shook his head and called up the status window:
[Status:
— Physical health: 80%
— ntal health: 73%
— Distortion: 0%]
"0%... And the regular indicators are at a decent level... So it really was a dream, and all that Distortion that reached 99% — was that a deception?"
Lin pondered and recalled all his sensations during the ti he was Distorted.
"At first I forgot everything... even how to speak and think. Then I visited strange places — deep underwater, so red space. And then... a completely white space where I had the chance to say and think sothing..."
"But then I began to feel growing pain in my stomach until I completely lost myself and disappeared, turning into a Distorted creature..."
"How interesting..." Lin sat down on the floor and began to reflect, trying to sohow connect everything together and make a final conclusion about what had happened to them.
"Blue door... Dark forest... Distortion... Everything points to the fact that we really were asleep, but then why did the skills work and the status window appear? Or was the illusion of the dark forest so real that it even deceived the perception of the Title System? And the terrain itself resembled so forest from the Magic World, and also the ntion of Sisyphus... Were we really in the Magic World when active infection by Distortion was occurring there, and that forest and its inhabitants were rely victims?"
Lin looked at the lying figures and noticed that Aran’s body was closest to the blue door.
Exactly as it had been when they were suggesting he close the door.
Lin frowned.
"Did soone close the door? Although I don’t really rember what happened after we were knocked out, it seems Aran didn’t close the door... Then who did it? Or did they close themselves?" Even more questions flared up in Lin’s head, but there was no answer.
He sighed and looked at his groupmates, who were sleeping deeply like cats. He decided that they needed to be woken up to discuss the local oddities.
He crouched down and began shaking several bodies at once to speed up the effect.
"Wake up!"
But there was no response from the people.
"Looks like they fell into the sa dream as I did... But why then didn’t they wake up with ? Could it be that their exploration of the dark forest was much safer than mine?"
Lin sighed and continued shaking the bodies harder to wake them up. But unfortunately, he didn’t succeed.
"In any case, they’ll wake up soday, so I’ll just wait for their awakening," Lin decided and sat down to ditate.
Since he hadn’t succeeded, there was no point in wasting more energy on it. Better to ditate and get more benefit from that than from futile attempts.
Lin slowly closed his eyes and began to ditate.
...
After an unknown amount of ti, five people slowly began to open their eyes and look around. Their eyes were innocent and uncomprehending until they slowly started to recall mories of recent events.
Yulan suddenly cried and smiled.
"I’m alive... I thought I was dead... But I’m alive..."
Another girl, Silia, approached her, tried to comfort Yulan, and looked at everyone, asking:
"Were you also inside the dark forest?"
Everyone nodded.
Lin slowly opened his eyes and looked at the five people who had successfully gotten up from a long sleep.
"I heard that everyone here saw the dark forest? Did you see a strange black creature that left behind a black substance?"
Egro and Royal felt goosebumps when Lin asked about the creature. Aran laughed.
"Ha-ha-ha! Of course! A Distorted creature of level: Demon... Lin, you woke up first? Maybe you can tell us what you figured out during this ti? As you understand, our current state is quite specific, and it will be hard for us to think clearly about anything."
Lin calmly nodded and shared his assumptions:
"In short — it was a dream. We all saw the sa dreams in the sa place: the dark forest. I don’t know what places you saw there, but I visited an abandoned campfire and three houses where all the inhabitants decided to commit suicide."
Many nodded, but Aran and Silia remained puzzled.
"Three houses where everyone decided to commit suicide? I saw a campfire without an owner, but then I found a small cave where it said that everything was cursed and Distortion would reach them..." Silia slowly recounted what she herself had encountered.
"Oh?" Aran looked at Silia and smiled.
"So you also found a cave? I wandered completely alone until I found a cave with records... But I didn’t see any campfire or three houses."
"That area was huge. And it’s definitely located in the Magic World," Royal stated, then suggested: "When I was inside the forest, I felt that the species there reminded of sothing, until I realized that it was the Jade Forest."
Aran and Silia nodded, agreeing with Royal.
"The dark forest really resembled the Jade Forest. But it was obviously gloomy with an endless night."
Lin decided to ask:
"I’m most curious about one thing: who closed the door after everyone was knocked out? Aran was standing closest to the door and didn’t respond to our words," Lin looked at Aran and asked: "Do you have an explanation? Why didn’t you close the door when we asked you to?"
Aran smiled awkwardly and asked:
"What are you talking about? Didn’t we all fall asleep at the sa ti after I opened the door?"
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