#220

Fabio looked at Athanas with a hollow expression and rubbed his face with both hands.

“Are you asking if skipping is bad?”

Fabio’s voice trembled.

“Yes, it is. It’s a wicked and terrible thing. It’s no different from tearing up a letter I wrote with all my heart without even reading it.”

“…In the end, you’re just resentful that I didn’t play along with your whims, aren’t you?”

Even if he moved as the Lord of Nightmares desired, the only thing he would gain is a nightmare turned into reality. Athanas had to return to reality as quickly as possible.

“Athanas, please think about it. Why would I bring up such complex settings? If I simply wanted to create a nightmare, I could have just twisted your memories a little.”

Athanas frowned.

Trying to understand those who serve the Being Beyond the Starry Sky was meaningless.

It was a fact he had realized poignantly after facing Reyes Floren.

‘It would be better not to exchange any more words with that thing.’

Athanas glanced around.

Screens were attached to every wall, but the content changed before it could be ‘translated,’ making it impossible to read.

He barely managed to realize that the continuously rising numbers represented total production.

“…Have you ever felt like you woke up from a dream, only to find you were still dreaming? Like you woke up and even washed your face, but then opened your eyes to find yourself back in bed.”

The surrounding scenery changed.

Atop a bell tower.

Cold air brushed against his cheeks.

Beneath a night sky where stars seemed ready to pour down, something in the form of Fabio stood there.

With an expression as if he were about to cry.

“Actually, making you go mad is quite simple. I don’t even need to put in much effort. I just have to make you dream of a successful Regression. Atop the bell tower, you think to yourself: I shouldn’t go to the Pantheon this time. Fabio is safe, Order has returned, and now there is peace. The moment you think that….”

Boom.

A thunderous roar echoed as the Fabio in the dream clapped his hands.

The bell tower shattered from the inside.

Debris scattered in all directions and then suddenly stopped.

Before he knew it, Athanas was standing in mid-air.

“…You realize that all of it was a dream. You find out that while you were fast asleep, the real Fabio met a terrible death, Order is still collapsed, and there is no way to wake up from this nightmare.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Bluffing?”

“If you had the power, you would have actually shown me instead of rambling like this.”

“Ha….”

“Or perhaps there’s a reason you can’t. To utilize Regression, I mustn’t die in reality by repeatedly committing suicide. Isn’t this the only way to fully occupy my physical body?”

“…Fuck.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Athanas, you son of a bitch.

The thing spat out curses.

It felt as if his head were about to split open.

At the same time, the light was devoured and vanished, as if someone had poured ink across The ‘Stars’.

Suddenly, the world flipped, and his body fell upward.

He collided heavily with something, but the pain was not significant.

Athanas felt around to identify the terrain.

‘Stairs?’

Seeing the blood rush to his head, it seemed he had fallen upside down.

He couldn’t tell how high the stairs were or where they led.

He could only feel the touch of cold stone.

“Regression? You think I’d utilize Regression? Fuck, the reason I ended up like this is all because of Regression!”

“…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t. Because you refused to listen.”

The thing looked down at him.

A faint light illuminated the stairs.

“Did you never once wonder? Who I am? Why I did such things?”

Black ink dripped onto Athanas.

By this point, it was impossible not to know who the entity speaking to him was.

Fabio’s left eye.

The ‘madness’ that Athanas had gouged out had taken Fabio’s form and was pouring out its resentment.

“Just once…. You could have read it. What happened.”

“…You made Fabio die countless times.”

“Just a few times.”

“Just a few times?”

“Yes, just a few times. Fabio, Fabio, Fabio. That idiot who chose to forget all the truths. He told me to ignore him. Of course, he forgot that he even said those words. Cowardly bastard. I should have dragged him out and scorched his amygdala. Piece [visit our site]of unauthorized copyshit. But Athanas, you shouldn’t have done Read on Read BL Novelsthat. You should have checked what that ‘Fabio’ was ignoring. You have Regression. Since you possess great power, you should bear great responsibility. Instead of running away.”

It was shedding ink instead of tears.

Athanas wiped away the ink dripping onto him.

“How absurd. Do you not remember what you did when you controlled Fabio? You made Fabio perceive me as a fake. Fabio believed that to find the real me, he had to wake up from the dream, and to do that, he had to die. After doing such a thing, did you think I would show you mercy?”

“Ah… fuck. Thinking about it again makes me pissed.”

Crack.

The flowing ink turned into a sword and pierced into the side of Athanas’s neck.

“Athanas…. You told me back then. That if I thought you were a fake, you would just die. That it was your last resort.”

“I didn’t say that to you; I said it to Fabio.”

“…Right. You probably said it to Fabio. Because you thought Fabio would come to his senses if you said that. Fuck, you’re truly disgusting. A religious nut with an inflated ego.”

The maddened thing gripped the hilt of the sword and twisted it sideways.

As if to slice Athanas’s neck clean off.

“Do you know why I got so angry at the word ‘love’? Because you’ve never loved Fabio. ‘Fabio’ was just a piece of evidence for your own specialness. The moment you saw a serf throw himself before the Sword of Judgment, claiming you must never die, you felt a thrill, didn’t you? You were actually afraid too. Afraid that the power given to you was the Authority of the Evil God. If you were going to act like a fanatic who truly entrusted his brain to a god, you should have gone to confess again even if the Saintess erased your memories. No, you should have told the truth from the start instead of hiding your Regression. Why did you hide it? Dare you doubt the apostle of the Lord? That you’re more special than the Saintess? Don’t make me laugh. You didn’t even receive a proper Revelation. You were just scared of falling into hell. You were chosen by the Evil God, but you didn’t want to accept a meaningless end like being burned at the stake for revealing that fact, so you kept searching for excuses. Because you’re too special to meet such an end. But then Fabio called you the Savior of Order. That’s why you needed Fabio to continue being justice and order. As long as you thought you wanted to save that pitiful thing, you didn’t have to doubt yourself.”

“Think whatever you want. I have no intention of proving my love to you.”

“…When you blabbered about dying in front of me. Did you actually intend to die?”

Impossible.

If he had died there, he wouldn’t have been able to save Fabio.

“As expected.”

Squelch.

The blade dug into Athanas’s neck.

Athanas’s head rolled down the stairs.

However, while the sensation below the neck vanished, there was no pain, and his mind remained clear.

The entity picked up Athanas’s head.

“Ah, fuck. This feels gross. If it were Fabio, he would try to stop Athanas from dying no matter what. No, the one trying to prevent Athanas’s death would be the real Fabio. So that’s the thought behind the words you spat out. Truly horribly loathsome. Athanas. I really hate you. I hate even the thought that I hate you. Fuck, I just want to cleanly carve out the part of me that relates to you. So I can’t feel any emotion. Once I do that….”

“Did you want revenge against me?”

The entity fell silent.

Athanas continued.

“Or… was there something you wanted to hear from me?”

It had said that a single word would end everything.

This ridiculous farce was likely all a device to make Athanas utter those words.

However.

“I will absolutely never say those words.”

“…….”

“Because you are not Fabio.”

“…Right.”

The entity closed and opened its eyes.

Having given up on maintaining Fabio’s appearance, its form changed.

A man with long black hair stood there, shrouded in blue-gray mist.

“I am not Fabio. I never was from the start. Suddenly, everything feels foolish. Call me whatever you want. Fafabio, the maddened one, or Madness.”

Before he knew it, Athanas had returned to the unknown facility.

In the upper left, the objective [Destroy all replicas of Fabio] was floating.

Athanas felt below his neck.

It was the body of a ‘psychopath’ with a mechanical prosthetic arm embedded.

“Explain.”

“…What?”

“Why you are doing this, why you didn’t make me go mad even though you could have, and why you created such a complex and unrealistic dream. Anything.”

“Sure, I should explain. If the skip-worm desires it.”

Fafabio smiled softly.

“Athanas, I am ‘that which is not Fabio.’ Since you isolated me and locked me in the reliquary, I have been with you continuously. I possess a trait, a Blessing, called ‘Heaven Above, Earth Below, I Alone Reign Supreme.’ It blocks everything that affects the mind, but….”

The screen behind Fafabio displayed a familiar scene.

The Pantheon.

A sticky liquid was pouring from above, and Athanas stood frozen.

“…I can do nothing about ‘poisons’ that affect the physical body like this. This liquid is a drug that puts one into a state of sleep immediately upon absorption through the skin or respiratory system.”

“I fell asleep at that moment?”

Then what happened immediately after?

Was it a dream from the moment ‘Pandemonium’ suspected he had Regression?

“That is correct. But it was a dream close to reality. The Lord of Nightmares can only touch ‘nightmares.’ Simply making you sleep isn’t enough to manipulate your mind at will, so there was a need to stage a nightmare before your eyes. Do you remember the person whose upper body was attached to a lump of flesh? That person is a servant of the ‘Lord of Nightmares.’ Their head has been eaten away, and they are in a state where they are barely breathing. While the larvae of Dementor Hornets eat through their body, they are in a state similar to a cockroach, unable to resist due to paralyzed nerves. The parasite inside its belly, the unborn Insanity, used the Authority of Nightmares on you. You saw Fabio’s neck being torn off before your eyes and concluded that this moment was a nightmare.”

‘…Neck being torn off?’

The last thing Athanas had seen was clearly the sight of him desperately clawing at his neck.

“Immediately after, you used Regression. But that was not a good idea. The ‘pathway’ created in your mind follows you even if you rewind time. As long as you remember the nightmare, the nightmare can intrude upon you. Of course, I blocked it.”

“You blocked it?”

“Yes. Because a nightmare is a Curse that affects the mind. An unborn parasite cannot use such a powerful Divine Power. In fact, appearing personally in the previous cycle was a considerable risk. I did it because I was certain you had Regression and would use it.”

“How….”

“How I knew about Regression? The method is simple. The true name of an Othergod leaves an intense trace. Just by uttering or hearing that name, one attracts the attention of the Othergod. But if the number of people who ‘know’ that name increases while no one is speaking it aloud? One could deduce that someone with Regression has heard the name. That is why that true name was taught to you.”

The red-haired person who introduced himself according to the manual.

The ‘local copy’ of Nyapoleon was certainly….

“However, even if ‘Insanity’ knows you have Regression, he cannot know which cycle this is or what happened in the previous cycle. Lost time only leaves traces inside your head. To know that content, Insanity must drill a hole into your mind. To achieve that, he drew aggro. He ground down all available resources to turn the Pantheon into a birth chamber. A place so ominous that neither a player nor a follower of the God of Order could ignore it.”

Fafabio smiled, twisting the corners of his mouth.

“If left alone, it was a trap where only Mother God’s side would suffer a massive loss. No, even if you hadn’t used Regression after self-destructing, anything would have been better than this.”

“…So? How did Insanity realize Regression was used?”

“Are you asking how he knew when you broke in before the birth chamber was even created? On the contrary, I want to ask. How could he not know? visit our siteYou moved exactly as Insanity planned. He had prepared five additional contingencies unauthorized copyin case you moved more cautiously, but you made them all meaningless. The moment you fell asleep with your eyes open, Insanity revealed his very vulnerable main body. With the intention of planting a nightmare in your head and forcing you to use Regression.”

Fafabio continued his explanation.

“Once a nightmare digs into the mind, a pathway opens for the ‘Lord of Nightmares’ to intrude every time you fall asleep. This ‘Status Condition’ is very subtle, so you can’t notice anything even if you open your Status Window normally. The status condition only appears when a ‘nightmare’ directly intrudes. Of course, since you cannot open the Status Window while having a nightmare, there is ultimately no way to know. Until someone who owns your Soul looks inside.”

Athanas frowned.

“…What is a Status Window?”

“You don’t have one, so don’t worry about it.”

Before he could ask why he was explaining it in the first place, Fabio spoke again.

“However, there was one thing that even the thorough Insanity completely failed to predict…. And that is that I was by your side. To be precise, he didn’t think that a part of ‘Fabio’ that you possess would have its own ego.”

Insanity had analyzed the replicated arm and found that Fabio possessed ‘Heaven Above, Earth Below, I Alone Reign Supreme.’ And as soon as he detected ‘Regression’ and ‘traces of nightmares,’ he recognized that the Authority of Nightmares did not work.

Thus, Insanity would have naturally deduced that Athanas possessed a part of Fabio.

Right now, he is likely pondering a way to detach that ‘part of Fabio’ from Athanas.

But before that….

“…Nightmares are a more complex Divine Power than you think. Imagine you’ve set up a nightmare assuming the ‘loved one’ is a lover, but suddenly the grandfather who raised you appears, shyly brushing back his hair. In a sense, that could also be called a nightmare, but it would only elicit a hollow laugh. Therefore, the Lord of Nightmares plants a fragment of himself in the mind of the person who will dream. A replica to supervise the dream, adjust it, and report the contents to the main body.”

“Where is that fragment now?”

“It is right before your eyes.”

The thing that was not Fabio smiled brightly.

“I swallowed that fragment. Or perhaps the fragment devoured me. It doesn’t really matter.”

“…It doesn’t matter?”

“Just because that terrible pain stopped, I’ve come to be grateful to Insanity. Since I became certain that Mother God would win, I didn’t even feel the need to resist. He even gave me the chance to take revenge on you!”

Fafabio could now rummage through Athanas’s mind at will.

Since he was in a state with a proper ego rather than [unauthorized copy]being [unauthorized copy]a ‘Sacred Relic,’ he could even strip the Blessing from Athanas.

And the moment immediately after using Regression is when Athanas is unconscious.

Athanas remained silent for a long time before speaking.

“…According to what you say, you could have trapped me in an eternal nightmare and taken over my body.”

“Yes, that’s right. You finally understand!”

Athanas stared at the person before him.

A man with blue-gray eyes, not resembling Fabio in the slightest.

Behind him, flashing screens were floating in abundance.

In the upper left of his vision, the ‘objective’ was still written.

[Destroy all replicas of Fabio]

“Why go through all this trouble?”

Fafabio answered.

“…Because I wanted you to understand everything.”