At the extre north, a wan and powerless sun hung low on the horizon, shedding a cold and ager radiance.
Norris stood upon a patch of snow that had been cleared, demonstrating to a group of werewolves in humanoid form—each wearing specially made elastic Mycelium garnts—how to more effectively control the Pujis under their command.
By now, more than forty werewolves had been… drawn up from the tenth floor, but gathered before Norris at the mont were only about half of them.
Not all werewolves were willing to expose themselves under this sunlight. That sense of weakness from their power being partly suppressed made them instinctively uncomfortable.
Karen did not actually like it either.
But she still insisted on standing in the ranks, eyes burning bright.
She had discovered that the Norris who usually dodged her had nowhere to run only when carrying out the “boss’s” teaching tasks!
She had also keenly noticed that when Norris t the gaze of her werewolf form, he would quickly look away; but when his eyes t her human form, his gaze would linger for a subtle heartbeat longer.
Karen felt it must be because her werewolf form was too tall and imposing, making this half-lizardman instinctively nervous!
So cute! She wanted to…
Feeling that searing gaze from the side—hot enough to lt ice and snow—Norris tightened his face, stiffly casting his eyes elsewhere, and chanically repeated the essentials of commanding Pujis: “Focus your intent… Right, don’t shout—use ‘thought’…”
anwhile, in his mind, the boss was chatting idly with him between remarks.
“Sigh… Why is this sun hanging there so long and still not going down…”
“Do you… have urgent business at night?” Norris asked.
“At midnight, I have a moving rendezvous with a shy, mysterious being. Counting it out, it’s been a full… hmm… a dozen hours since our last tender tryst!”
Wasn’t that every single day!
In Norris’s mind, an uncontrollable image surfaced of the Marshal Puji sitting beside a coquettish Puji veiled in violet gauze, the two perched on a mushroom in the moonlight, looking at the moon together… He shivered hard, shaking off the bizarre association.
Although Norris knew that the boss’s so-called “my very own Marshal Puji” was definitely just an ordinary Puji, because no one knew what the boss actually looked like, when he filled in the boss’s image in his head, he would unconsciously substitute the Marshal Puji.
At least that crimson cape dragging more than halfway along the ground truly matched the boss’s aura.
“By the way, Norris,” the boss’s topic hopped without warning, “do you want to beco complete?”
The abrupt question sent Norris’s brain racing.
Complete?
What was he missing?
Could it be… turning him back into a human?!
His heart suddenly hamred. Cautiously, with irrepressible hope, he probed, “Boss… the ‘complete’ you an… could it be…”
“Exactly! Just what you’re thinking!” The boss’s voice brimd with certainty.
Gulp—
Norris swallowed nervously.
“To let …”
“Grow a mighty, majestic tail and beco a complete lizardman!”
“This is absolutely not what I was thinking!!!” Norris’s emotions collapsed in an instant; he flopped face-down into the icy snow and cried out in grief and indignation, drawing puzzled looks from the ring of werewolves around him.
“Hm? Then what were you thinking?”
With the last thread of fragile hope, Norris answered, “To… to turn back into a human…”
“Oh, that! Just pluck out your nails and scales on a schedule and you’re set. Gray would be delighted to help.” The boss’s tone was as casual as discussing a manicure, while to Norris it sounded like a devil whispering in his ear.
After a while, seeing Norris give no response, Lin Jun persevered and pressed on: “Really not considering a tail? Look at Gray’s tail—so strong and powerful, sweeping through a thousand troops! And did you know so captured lizardfolk have been mocking you in private as a freak with no tail? They said so awful things. I added so wolf fur to their mushroom soup for you! Want to repeat exactly what they said?”
“Who cares what they say!” Norris buried his face in the snow and mumbled back, “I… I wasn’t a lizardman to begin with…”
Ah, this child!
He daydread about being human so much he’d developed a neurosis.
Out of kindness, Lin Jun summoned Karen and told her to take good care of the self-misrecognizing Norris.
—
Night fell, and at Lin Jun’s urging, Inanna went to sleep early.
He slipped into the dream.
Ever since shifting the main battlefield out from Inanna’s core dreamscape, her pressure had clearly lessened, and the dream scenes had recovered their forr warmth and tranquility.
But tonight was sowhat unusual: not a single Puji was to be seen in the dream.
Lin Jun soon locked onto the dream’s owner. It was a child version of Inanna, laughing carefree as she played in the splendid courtyard of the ducal mansion.
A mory-type dream, then—no wonder no Pujis were appearing.
The much younger butler, Eric, stood faithfully at her side, but even more eye-catching was a woman accompanying the young Inanna.
She sat upon a stone bench in the garden, a cascade of pink hair flowing almost to the ground. Unfortunately, her face was veiled in a soft halo of light, indistinct.
No need to ask—this was likely Inanna’s legendary mother. The blurred features were because Inanna herself couldn’t rember clearly.
Only… little Pink, why does your mother have a tail?
That slender tail with a tiny heart-shaped tip at the end looked awfully familiar!
If one were to say succubus, though, there were no horns upon this “mother’s” head.
But mory isn’t sothing entirely reliable; distortions are common. Lin Jun had no ti to delve into such details now—the midnight date with the “mystery guest” would not wait.
On the far side of the ducal-mansion dream region, he swiftly rallied the soul power he had seeped in for the night, deftly “kneading” his Puji army into being, then surged, nacing, toward the border.
Ever since switching to the offensive, the “Otherdream” had beco Lin Jun’s most anticipated daily side quest.
He could clearly feel the opposing defensive strength weakening day by day; even when there were occasional strong rebounds like a dying flare, it would quickly crash down to an even lower bottom.
It felt as if a peerless beauty stood separated from him by a single thin veil. Though the other side still coyly resisted, perhaps today—perhaps tomorrow—that irkso gauze would be torn away completely, letting him finally behold the true face beneath!
How could he not be thrilled?
Of course, that was only a taphor. Lin Jun had no actual interest in beauties.
Yet when he led the Puji army easily past the edge of Inanna’s dream and stepped into the buffer zone that usually served as the battlefield, the fierce resistance he expected did not appear.
By now, Lin Jun had figured out the structure of the “Otherdream”: in fact, it was divided into three scenes.
Inanna’s dreamscape, the middle scene where he currently was, and the opponent’s dreamscape.
As the initiator, the other side seed to have a ho-field advantage allowing early entry into the middle scene. Ordinarily, Lin Jun would be fiercely opposed here—but why had the enemy not set up defenses today?
Had they finally understood the difference in strength and given up?
Lin Jun crossed the unusually quiet central region and, for the first ti, stepped unimpeded into the core of the opponent’s dream.
The “sight” that t him left him stunned.
It was a vast, grim, Gothic vampire city. Spired buildings stabbed into a blood-red firmant, and dense fog pooled along the streets.
Nor was that all. Centered on the city, the scene kept extending outward; there was no boundary to be sensed!
Wasn’t this dream map… a bit too outrageously large?
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