Chapter 860: Funny Dreams
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‘Yup. I’m also going to be gaslighting the ever-loving shit out of them.’
‘Let it be known, if you try to come after me or my family with ill intent, you will be leaving with significantly less sanity or body parts, depending on the day and…why do I sound more violent than usual?’
[Whoops! My bad.]
‘Hmmm. Gonna need to explore your abilities later, Blazejudicator…’
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*Bing-Bong*
We interrupt this chapter to do a a very quick reminder that Pathos employed the usage of weird array that allowed them to connect the dreams of several different entities together in one unified manner.
To be more precise, they made it so that Victor, Simos and Graff had dreamt up a whole second, almost sitcom-like, life with their respective GalEm.
Popular examples of this trope leading to weird consequences include Inc3ption and My nam3 is Earl.
If you wish to know the actual titles involved, please learn what l33t sp3ak is, thank you.
We now return to your irregularly scheduled chapter.
…
Aight, we real talk, do you honestly believe anyone will understand those references? They’re both a dozen years old!
|Classic is classic, and I’m old as shit. People still understand Hello, Dolly references.|
I…I don’t think that counts…
*Bing-Bong*
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“How do you know about the dream?! Wait a minute! You guys too?!,’ Victor, Simos and Graff shouted, all at the same time.
Once they realized that they had essentially made the exact same statements, the trio began to look at each other in absolute disbelief.
How and why did they also have dreams about living a whole other life with women that were originally statues?!
“Hahaha! Looks like I can mark this experiment as a success!”
“You…”
It wasn’t until they heard the laughter of their captor, that they realized that he had something to do with their current state of mind.
Evidently, this entire situation had somehow transformed from being an interrogation to something else entirely. Granted, the end result was going to be what Zhen Liu wanted anyways.
Regardless, now that Simos, Victor and Graff had been thoroughly enraged and we’re not fairly certain that the Fourth Young Master of the Zhen Clan had done something to manipulate them, they were just about ready to yell his ears off. However, they were interrupted by their captor, once more.
“Before you guys think I had something uncouth towards you while you slept and proceed to cuss the ever-living hell out of me, don’t,” Zhen Liu instructed the trio. “What I actually did was something significantly simpler and more…straightforward. Tell me something. Have you ever seen an aether array like this?”
Snap!
With a snap of his fingers, Zhen Liu summoned forth a display of an incredibly elaborate aether array that gave off this weird dreamy feeling to anyone who looked at it. That is, if they ever saw the real array in person.
In regards to Simos and Graff, since the two of them got kicked out of their sect, they never really had an opportunity to read up on anything more than gossip rags, the occasional newspaper and “Help Wanted” signs.
In regards to Victor though…he was also drawing a blank.
Something about this peculiar array looked incredibly familiar to the Spatial Beaver bloodliner, but he couldn’t exactly make sure. To be more precise, he felt that he recognized the array after seeing it once or twice before…but he just couldn’t remember where.
Thankfully(?), Zhen Liu was still ready and willing to provide answers for the thoroughly confused trio.
Of course, they weren’t going to be the answers there were hoping for…or expecting.
…
[Wait, are you actually going to tell them about that array Pathos used on them? I thought it didn’t do anything other than connect dreams of people who had a connection in real life?,] Blazejudicator asked. [Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say corporeal space, but still.]
‘I am, but I am going to add in some details to make it sound as if this was an entirely adhoc idea, and not some social manipulation ala Logos and Pathos.’
[Ah…by the way, why do you do this whole song and dance when you could just have Logos and Pathos read their minds, scramble their memories and send them on their way without doing anything?]
‘Cartharsis, practice for the possibility of them not being here and the fact that I actually want them to work for me instead. Information is easy to acquire, loyalty ain’t.’
[Ah…fair enough]
…
[So…I’m not the only one a little jealous that the maestro has new kaijin brain buddy who’s a lot more intimate than the rest of us?]
[Yup.]
[Kinda.]
[Sorta…]
[To be fair, the rest of us have physical bodies that allow us to exist out here perpetually,] Nepherage interjected.[They don’t.]
[Hmmm.]
…
“To put it bluntly, after you three got apprehended for intruding in my sanctuary, I decided to simply let you guys sleep off whatever injuries you had sustained or substances you indulged in, inside of a specially built prison cell of my design,” Zhen Liu began to monologue and gloat.
It got under Victor’s skin…which might’ve been the point.
“However, something unexpected occur when I did,” Zhen Liu stated with an annoyed expression as he gestured towards the statue women. “These three, for some cockamamie reason, ended up attempting to rescue you guys for you fates. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Wait, what?”
“They…they tried to rescue us?”
“But…they’re puppets!”
“Living puppets, but yes.”
In the entirety of the life of Victor, Simos and Graff, none of them had ever had anybody willing to risk their lives or livelihood to try and rescue them from a shitty situation. So, even if these girls were living puppets, it felt kind of nice to be thought of in that way. It was…weird to say the least, but nice.
“Anyways, after that little rescue attempt, I had to subdue them and lock them away too,” Zhen Liu continued as if he was regaling a simple work story. “But while they were subdued, I had a thought about something that’s been on my mind for quite some time.”
Zhen Liu paused for a moment, causing the room to grow silent as he hoped this would prompt Victor, Simos or Graff to ask, “what thought?”.
But alas, they were too busy being either enraged at him or worried about the “living puppets”.
Good.
“I wondered, was there some honest to goodness connections between you three and them, or was it just a fleeting notion? A passing fancy, an intrusive thought.”
After sharing this, Zhen Liu proceeded to grab the display showing the array he had shown them earlier and hold it on his hands like a sheet of paper.
“Which is when I remembered having this on hand.”
Zhen Liu deliberately chose the word, “remember” over “discovered” here, in order to convey the idea that he was the type of person who had learned far more about the universe than how others perceived.
On a certain blue planet, this would be considered arrogant and annoying.
On a world where there are warriors that have lived for several centuries at minimum, it was an incredibly logical statement to make and implied aged wisdom.
In this situation, Victor, Simos and Graff thought it was both.
“This array allows beings with a shared connection to share a dream together. The nature of the dream can vary from person to person, connection to connection, but I was just so damned curious about what was going on in the heads of you lot. So as you slept under drug induced circumstances, I used the array to see what would happen. You wanna know what I saw?”
At the posing of this question, all three of them began to pale.
They didn’t need to ask, they already knew the answer.
“I saw…good lives. I saw three, happy little families, living the simple kind of life that the poor hungered for, and the rich disdained but secretly craved,” Zhen Liu explained. “Isn’t that interesting?”
To be more precise, Victor, Simos and Graff each had independently dreamed of a life where they had spent an entire romantic lifetime each with the Wooden Gal-em, the Marble Gal-em and the Copper Gal-em, where in some impossible timeline, they had kids, a home and a life where they didn’t have to commit crime or do dangerous shit to make ends meet.
It was quiet.
It was peaceful.
It was safe.
And felt oh so real that they couldn’t help but believe that their previous life, their waking life was actually a nightmare and that this was their “true” life.
But alas, that dream ended with a bucket of water, and the sadistic smile of a young man who looked far too innocent for his crimes to make sense.
“But all that said and done, it’s time for the next part of this experiment. Don’t you think?”
“What next part?,” Simos asked, finally breaking the trio’s silence.
“Why, the part where you reunite here, silly.”
