Swimming through a deep sea with no end in sight.
How long had he been struggling in the unfathomable black darkness?
He was swimming upward in search of the surface, but he couldn’t even be sure if he was moving in the right direction.
Even so, he didn’t stop moving.
Because surely, even if only little by little, he was advancing.
As long as he didn’t stop, he would eventually reach where he wanted to be.
Even if that would only happen after a long, long time.
As long as he didn’t forget where he was trying to go.
───
Beyond the darkness of the deep sea, a faint thread of light appeared.
It was so fragile, it seemed as though the surrounding darkness would rip it apart at any moment.
And yet the light endured steadfastly, whispering to him:
You can do it. You can reach here.
That was the only exit from this abyss, the surface above.
The moment he realized that, strength surged through his body that had been about to sink.
He had not been wrong.
Because he had not stopped.
Because he had not given up.
At last, when the hand he stretched out touched the beam of light—
The darkness was washed away, and everything was dyed in white.
Ssshhhhh—
The sound of waves.
Ludger stood on a white sandy shore, staring at the endlessly spreading sea.
Looking down at his feet, he saw a sandcastle standing firm despite the waves crashing against it.
No—calling it a sandcastle no longer fit. It was a small fortress built of steel.
-You’ve done well.
A familiar voice came from behind him.
It was the voice that had cheered him on not to give up when he was about to lose himself.
Ludger took his eyes off the fortress and turned around.
Who could it have been?
Who had been cheering him all this time?
At last, when he confirmed the person, Ludger’s eyes widened slightly.
And then he nodded.
“Yes. So it was you.”
Even amidst the countless waves of memory that had tried to push his self away, he had never forgotten.
Before he was Ludger Cherish.
Before he was Gerald.
Before he was Machiavelli.
Before all the countless aliases and masks, before he was born as Heathcliff von Bretus—
There had been himself.
The self who had once lived on Earth, his original beginning.
“Thank you. I owe you a great deal.”
-You won’t forget from now on, will you?
“Never.”
Ludger turned his gaze forward again.
The waves had stilled.
Where the fortress once stood, now there was a pure white wooden door.
Ludger opened it and stepped through.
* * *
So many things happened in an instant.
Nirva appeared, the students scattered in panic, and Flora was attacked.
Then Ludger awoke, blocking Nirva’s assault to protect Flora.
All of it happened in the space of a single breath, and the silence that followed was eerily calm.
Flora looked at Ludger’s back and spoke.
“Pro... fessor?”
The face that had been hardened by unease and pressure now bore, for the first time, a smile of relief.
“You, how...?”
Nirva’s expression slackened dumbly, as if he had seen the impossible.
More than the fact that the students he had targeted were the ones with Ludger—
What was incomprehensible was Ludger himself, standing before his eyes awake and unharmed.
Though he was Apostle of Dreams, the sight before him was so unreal it made him wonder if he was the one dreaming.
“Thanks to you, I slept well. Slept damned well, in fact.”
Creak, creak.
As Ludger pressed strength into his hand, Nirva’s sand prosthetic arm was slowly forced back.
Nirva tried to resist, but before Ludger’s strength his will was nothing more than feeble resistance.
Wounded and weakened as he was now, Nirva could never defeat Ludger.
Realizing this truth, Nirva shouted.
“That’s... that’s impossible! What do you think dreams are? They are memory and experience! I made you dream them forever!”
“There’s no such thing as forever. Because right now, I am here with my eyes wide open.”
Nirva was struck speechless.
Even so, it made no sense.
Even if not forever, it must have been a dream close to eternity.
Just how long did he think that had lasted?
“Dead.”
“What?”
“In dreams, the moment you realize you are yourself, you realize it’s a dream. So I chose death.”
Because when you die in a dream, you awaken.
An unbelievable truth spilled from Ludger’s mouth.
“Five thousand three hundred ninety-six. That is the number of dreams I passed through to get here.”
Ludger had dreamed 5,396 dreams.
5,396 memories.
5,396 experiences.
5,396 lives.
─And deaths.
“Is that... possible for a human? With that many deaths, it would not be strange for your mind to have shattered countless times...!”
“Yes. It almost did. I nearly reached that point, too.”
Fsssshh.
Blue mist-like mana began to flow from around Ludger’s body.
“Thanks to you, I had quite an extraordinary experience. So let me give you something in return.”
“You...!”
Nirva’s eyes widened.
The power flowing out of Ludger—
It was stronger than what Ludger had possessed before he was dragged into the dream.
“Divine power? No. It’s not that. How can a human have this kind of power...?”
“Thanks to you.”
Nirva’s sand arm, where it touched Ludger’s hand, was swallowed up by the blue mana and began to crumble.
Like a sandcastle smashed by the waves.
“Thanks to me...?”
“Dreams. Even if you wake, fragments of them remain. Who I was, what I did, and how much I experienced.”
Nirva realized what Ludger meant.
The dreams he had given Ludger had not been a simple curse.
He had known well enough that curses of the mind would never affect someone with Ludger’s resistance.
So he had given him dreams instead.
In other words—what he had bestowed was not a curse, but a blessing.
The dreams Nirva had forced upon him had reproduced the memories of actual people.
The false had shown him the real.
Which meant—
All the countless incidents, experiences, and knowledge that those people had lived through in those dreams...
They were all real.
Even if most of those memories had vanished upon waking—
Even if he remembered only some out of 5,396 dreams—
“Thanks to you, I learned a great deal.”
Every dream he had lived through had been transmuted into experience and knowledge, aiding him in embodying a higher state.
“In other words, what you’ve done is...”
He had raised Ludger Cherish, who was already strong, to an even higher realm.
Nirva could not accept this reality.
“No, this... this is wrong! It can’t be! Humans can’t possibly do this!”
“That constant human nonsense. Don’t you think you’ve looked down on us enough already?”
Ludger narrowed his eyes sharply, but Nirva muttered to himself like a madman.
“You were designed never to progress!”
“Designed?”
At that unnatural reaction, Ludger instinctively sensed there was something more.
But Nirva had no leisure to answer.
“Was it... Lumenis’s trap? Yes, of course. That vile one could do such a thing. I wondered if his followers’ bloodlines were here, and so it was!”
“I’ve no idea what nonsense you’re spouting.”
“Silence! Then here and now, I’ll erase you!”
Ludger realized Nirva was laboring under some grand delusion.
But delusion or not, it changed nothing.
Ludger intended to kill Nirva here.
Nirva shook Ludger off and regenerated his right arm of sand.
Though hastily made and cruder than before, its power was still sufficient.
When Nirva stretched out his hand, his fingertips split into sand blades that rushed toward Ludger.
Seeing this, Ludger drew his swordstick from the shadows.
‘If I use large-scale magic, the students will be caught up.’
Because there were people he had to protect, restrictions were placed upon him.
But he did not think himself at a disadvantage.
Rather, he felt a strange confidence.
That confidence surely came from the countless new experiences he had realized.
Ludger cloaked his swordstick in mana.
The mana, interwoven with dream-threads, dyed the white blade black.
Holding the darkened swordstick, Ludger raised it vertically to his chest.
At the moment Nirva reacted to the unusually composed and formal stance—
Ludger stepped forward.
“What—?”
With every black line drawn through the air, Nirva’s sand blades exploded apart.
It was not only the weapon’s power.
The speed and precision were astonishingly sharp.
In that fleeting instant of distraction, Ludger had closed the distance.
Seeing the tip of the blade thrusting toward his brow, Nirva twisted his head aside.
Slice!
Below his ear was cut, and golden blood flowed.
Nirva was appalled at Ludger’s movements.
‘Faster and sharper.’
Ludger had always shown methods of fighting that were unbound by form, movements specialized for killing and hunting rather than swordsmanship.
But what he displayed now was the opposite.
It had form. It was structured.
Therefore, honed to the extreme, it showed a calm yet heavy power.
Now Ludger was using swordsmanship.
Not hunting—fighting.
It meant Ludger acknowledged his opponent as a worthy adversary.
And it also meant he intended to overwhelm with pure skill, without tricks.
“Don’t look down on me!”
The blade Ludger swung again clashed against Nirva’s sand arm.
With a massive boom, shockwaves swept the surroundings.
Students watching involuntarily stepped back several paces.
Only Flora, Aidan, Leo, Taishy, and Iona stood firm.
Ludger didn’t care that his attack had been blocked. Shifting his body’s axis, he redirected the force, spun with the rebound, and stamped down on Nirva’s bent thigh with his boot.
His balance broke completely.
Ludger swung his rotating swordstick.
Nirva barely steadied himself and blocked, but goosebumps rose across his body.
Ludger didn’t °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° let up.
Every time the dream-cloaked sword moved, black lines tore the air.
Nirva was barely keeping up, only able to block or evade.
“That... that’s Professor Ludger’s fighting...”
“Is he really a mage? He’s practically a knight.”
“A-a-amazing.”
Watching, their blood boiled with excitement.
“Professor! You can do it!”
“Please, defeat that demon!”
Hearing their cheers, Nirva’s face twisted.
“Shut up! You worthless humans!”
He tried to lash out at them, but Ludger would never allow it.
He pressed on, relentlessly driving Nirva back.
Grinding his teeth, Nirva opened the ceiling.
From above rained soldiers fashioned of corpses and dream-sand.
Uwoooohhh.
Like zombies, they reached for Ludger, surrounding him from all sides.
But suddenly there was a flash of light, and with a great shock, they were all blown away.
Nirva felt panic rising.
‘This won’t do. The humans pursuing me must already be near.’
Though he had shaken them off, the commotion here surely carried to their ears.
Nirva chose flight once more.
“Did you think I’d let you?”
Ludger had already seen through his attempt to flee.
The tip of his swordstick grazed Nirva’s chest.
Thinking he had barely dodged, Nirva suddenly felt his body freeze.
Looking down, he realized Ludger’s blade had pinned his hem to the ground.
Deliberately releasing the dream-thread to restrict Nirva’s movement, Ludger raised his free hand and clenched it into a fist.
“I told you. I’ll give you something in return.”
Black currents swirled around his fist.
The familiar dream-flow—this was the very dream-thread wielded by Lucid, one of Nirva’s five servants.
Bang!
Ludger’s fist struck Nirva’s cheek cleanly.
His body was smashed into the ground, leaving a deep crater.
The broken floor fragments rose with the massive tremor.
Ludger struck the sprawled Nirva again.
Bang! Boom! Boom!
With every blow, Nirva’s body sank deeper.
His nose collapsed, his teeth broke.
Though an enemy, he was beaten so wretchedly it almost stirred pity.
Ludger gripped his swordstick, ready to finish the completely subdued Nirva.
“Khuh... kuhk!”
Gasping raggedly, Nirva gave a crooked grin as he looked at Ludger.
Ludger halted mid-swing.
A bad instinctive feeling—it was as if Nirva had led him to this point.
Slowly, Ludger lowered his swordstick and stepped back.
“I won’t kill you. Not right now, anyway.”