The black and blue sea was filled with ice fragnts.
In that place where there was nothing that could properly be called land, it seed difficult for even the most persistent life to survive.
In this extre zone where only wind and bitter cold coexisted, nothing ca to visit,
And nothing paid it any attention.
But there were always exceptions.
A white hand that surged up from the quiet sea scratched at a wide ice floe that hadn't yet broken apart and barely climbed up.
"Huff, gasp, cough, cough."
A young man soaked from head to toe crawled disgracefully across the ice floe.
Nearly pressed against the ground, he spat out salt water and shivered all over while breathing white puffs.
The wet cape and clothes clinging to his body were rapidly freezing.
"Ch, ch, chattering,"
His teeth kept chattering against each other, making his pronunciation slurred. The young man pushed back his bangs that had already frozen solid and desperately looked around.
Sea, sea, ice, and more sea.
He staggered to his feet. His back, bent from the cold, wouldn't even straighten.
The ice floe he had climbed onto wasn't small, but it wasn't as large as the young man had hoped either.
There was nowhere around to move to.
The man, sniffling and looking around with a face turned blue from cold, knelt down in that spot.
He tried to open the red-covered book he had been clutching tightly since underwater,
But the frozen pages were stuck together and couldn't be separated.
He struggled with fingers that barely moved from the cold, but it was ultimately in vain.
His empty gaze turned toward the horizon again, but there was no chance of a miracle occurring in such a place to help him.
The young man, who had been rubbing his arms vigorously, suddenly looked up at the sky.
The sky, which had beco more gray than what he had seen from the boat, was an ominous sign.
He lowered his head and, as if resolved, took a deep breath and bit his right index and middle fingers.
A few drops of red blood fell onto the white ground.
Kneeling on the ice floe, he wrote an incantation with blood that served as both sacrifice and summoner.
In the language of the stars that it had taught him long ago, he recited the glorious na that only he possessed.
This was hope to invoke a contract that had been maintained across countless tilines,
And it was the devout and desperate begging and pleading that the sole believer offered to the sole god.
At the end of the long, long na, a dark mark remained.
The mont his finger lifted,
With a sharp sound, raging white flas tore through the gray sky and swept down from beyond the universe.
*
He had only blinked once, but the world was unfamiliar.
He looked down at his hand and clenched and opened his fist. The traces where he had bitten with his teeth had disappeared as if washed away.
Only by looking at the sky could he understand the reason.
In the purple sky, two thin, tilted moons were half-overlapping.
Surely the last ti he had entered Dreamland was when he had obtained the Pnakotic at the high temple.
Now he was standing not in a temple, but in the middle of a white desert.
Sand ford hills and mounds, but it wasn't hot. Rather, he could even feel a slight chill.
The reason was probably what was in front of him...
"What's a glacier doing in a place like this?"
A large chunk of ice embedded in the white sand stood tall.
Co to think of it, Dreamland was said to appear mixed with his unconscious mind.
Crashing his boat into the glacier must have been quite a shock.
He slowly approached the glacier and placed his hand on its surface.
A cool energy was transmitted from the glacier that sparkled and was cold but would never lt.
[Stand back.]
"Ah shit, you scared !"
[How long can you continue to act so composed?]
"Aphoom-Zhah?"
He brought his face close, but only blue ice was visible.
Through the thick ice, sothing like shadows or light slowly undulated.
[How long do you intend to consu yourself? Just how long? The stench from you paralyzes . It reeks of vile heresy. You have paid too much. You have not repaid with devotion.]
"I'm sorry."
[You from the distant universe and you now are no different from this being's perspective. The fact that your existence serves is an unchanging truth in the vast chaos, so why do you waste yourself in such distant places?]
"Aphoom-Zhah..."
[Look at the desert, betrayer. Look at the sand that covers this fragile space. I have waited for my believer since I existed in this universe. Each second of waiting beca a grain of sand. The sand has covered Ultar's high temple for over tens of millions of years.]
The voice was gloomy. According to what Aphoom-Zhah said, there was essentially a 175-story tower buried beneath his feet.
[Do you still intend to offer yourself to that disgusting king?]
"This is really the last ti."
[Even apostles are deceived by your tongue, so how could you not deceive a god?]
"I promise. This is the last ti. I haven't completely fallen under the influence of Has- the King in Yellow yet. If I fail this ti too."
If he failed this ti too, he no longer wanted to regress.
Even after doing this much, he didn't have the courage to respond to Hastur's request to complete an even better 'story.'
And by then, he would probably be half-ruined too.
Both ntally and physically.
"...If I fail, in the next tiline, I'll serve you for life in the north no matter what happens to the world. Becoming your minion wouldn't be bad either."
[Are you sincere?]
"I'm sincere. Instead, I'll try this ti. I can try hard enough to surprise you. If I think this is the last ti, I have to."
[My returned prodigal has no fear. Perhaps you've already lost your wits in another universe.]
"Help . This story will take a long ti until the grand finale. There's a lot to do accordingly."
[You regard a great god as rely a useful tool.]
The voice sounded displeased, but it was still fortunate.
It was no longer gloomy or seed to want to die.
"You're a god who buried a tower in sand while waiting for , but you can't do that much for your believer?"
[My endlessly arrogant and impudent believer. I will accept your proposal. But since this being has graciously accepted you, what can you offer to the god you worship?]
Huh?
His thoughts stopped at the sudden demand for a sacrifice.
Blood seed too common and likely to be rejected. Hair or nails were the sa.
But offering another human also seed strange.
What did Aphoom-Zhah like? New believers? Ice? Vast lands?
While he was earnestly going through a list of sacrifices in his head, he suddenly realized that the giant glacier in front of him had disappeared.
Instead, the person in that place was.
"...Leandros."
[Believer, you seem to be terribly fond of this being's apostle. How about changing your preferred appearance?]
"What? You didn't deliberately take that form?"
[What benefit would that bring to this being? The strongest concept dominating the believer's Dreamland is this face. For this being, it's unavoidable.]
The face that had been gradually becoming blurry in the flowing ti beca clear again.
Aphoom-Zhah, wearing Leandros's appearance, looked at him as if pathetic.
[There are other concepts. Shall I show you?]
"What?"
[The other one is... ah, this one.]
White-haired Yurik!
Seeing Yurik's appearance with a cold expression, his stomach suddenly began to twist subtly.
Having grown accustod to the filial son Yurik who smiled brightly, he felt PTSD was about to surface, so he hurriedly waved his hand.
"No, Leandros is better. Make it Leandros."
[Finicky believer. If this being weren't , your limbs would have been torn apart for the cri of troubling a god.]
Aphoom-Zhah returned to Leandros's appearance.
Though his hair was white and his eyes were bright silver-gray, that seed more stable to him.
He smirked with Leandros's face.
[It seems I gave my believer too heavy a task from our first eting. I will receive my sacrifice when I want it. Right now, you are freezing to death in that other world.]
"What! Why didn't you tell that earlier!"
[Even if you die there, you're alive here. This being has nothing to lose...]
"I have to go now. Aphoom-Zhah, you'll co in snowman form over there, right? No, anyway, let's talk about that later and quickly send back sohow!"
Aphoom-Zhah's face suddenly turned mischievous.
[If my believer is in such a hurry, it can't be helped. I'll wake you with the fastest thod, so be grateful and serve devotedly for life.]
"I'm grateful, but how are you going to wake ?"
[Like this.]
Aphoom-Zhah snapped his elegant, pleasant-looking finger with a snap.
At the sa ti, his breath was cut off.
He opened his mouth, but only bubbling water poured out. Salt water entered through his nose, and he flailed about spitting bubbles even underwater.
Then the force pressing on his head suddenly changed and pulled him upward.
The world that had spread completely white finally ca into view.
His cheeks, dipped in cold water and pulled out, were burning hot as if he had been slapped on both sides.
"Cough, cough!"
[How is it, believer? Does it really clear your head?]
Leandros, no.
Aphoom-Zhah, who had borrowed Leandros's face and was personally dunking him while holding his hair, smiled brightly and threw him away.
Hypothermic and soaking wet, he collapsed powerlessly onto the blood incantation he had drawn.
Looking at Aphoom-Zhah blooming with laughter in the distance,
He could feel that he still hadn't completely resolved his sulking heart.
This fucking... He'd let it slide just once.
"Well, that's quite effective..."
[Isn't it amazing? Over there, I would have killed you to wake you, but here I can wake you just by dunking your face in water.]
"rciful salvation, truly grateful."
[Of course it should be.]
While he was wiping his face with his frozen hard sleeves, Aphoom-Zhah looked around.
[You ca to such a place with that wretched body to summon . It feels truly good to be on a planet where others' traces haven't touched much.]
"I almost died getting here."
[Believer, what is the reason you ca to Dreamland? Naturally, you need this being's power. Dare to request it. Right now this being is in a very good mood, so I'll grant most prayers.]
Looking at the good-humored Aphoom-Zhah, he stood up.
"Idra."
[Hmm?]
"There's a human who has received and drunk part of Idra. I'd like you to protect them under your sphere of influence."
Aphoom-Zhah's facial muscles began to twitch.
[Idra? Idra? That disgusting Idra? The Dream Witch? Idra who devours everything? Idra who takes grotesque forms pretending to digest things and gives birth to offspring that deserve the word excrent?]
"Probably right."
[......]
After a brief silence,
Aphoom-Zhah burst out shouting.
[My believer sees this being and imdiately tells to fight the disgusting Idra! This is an unfair contract!]
"No, you don't have to talk about Idra that way!"
[Ignorant believer, instead of showing reverence to the god you've finally co to serve, you roll this being into a filthy and terrible field of excrent without a mont's hesitation! I hate it, I hate it! How can there be such an ungrateful believer!]
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!
In front of Aphoom-Zhah, who was throwing a tantrum like a 5-year-old and showing rejection,
He felt his body and mind growing coldly numb.
It seed there was still a long way to go...
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