Reborn As The Minor Villain In A Romance Fantasy Novel - Chapter 186

Chapter 186: Dream Devourer
Lucius blinked as the endless darkness around him shifted, the air was more colder than the air from the air conditioner.

“Hm? Why are you here?” Lucius asked as he looked straight at Eric. “Or was all this a dream and will I wake up again in a hospital?”

“Not at all,” Eric replied, shaking his head as he adjusted his sleeves.

Now that Lucius looked at his face, he wasn’t as handsome as he was right now but for the old him who barely paid attention to his face… He was even hotter than most of the men in this world. “But damn… we really are handsome no matter the world we get in.”

Lucius couldn’t help but nod. “You’re not wrong there.”

“So, where am I?” he asked after a pause, his eyes scanning the black void. He spread out his space and he was in a pod? But where did all this darkness come from?

“This is a construct made from your mind,” Eric explained, folding his arms. “It’s meant to feed on your dreams. Technically, you’re supposed to be reliving one of your worst memories, but your mind was too lazy to pull any up.”

Lucius chuckled. “So my laziness finally did something good for once.”

“Seems so,” Eric said with a grin. “You’re lucky. A lot of your new friends could be trapped for hours or even days. Bad memories are really a pain in the ass to deal with.”

Lucius tilted his head. “So how do I get out?”

“Just blast it,” Eric said simply. “Why are you asking me?”

Lucius raised a brow. “You’re literally me.”

“Exactly. You already know the answer.” Eric began to fade into mist, but before he was gone completely, he passed something on to Lucius. “And Lucius… I’m proud of what we’ve become. Don’t forget about the Special Villainess’s son, though.”

“Villainess?” Lucius frowned. “What are you talking abou—”

But Eric was gone.

Lucius sighed. “Well, whatever. I’m sure I’ll remember later.”

He raised his fingers and snapped them.

The darkness shattered.

Lucius felt gravity return and his body suspended in the air for a brief moment before he opened his eyes to a blood-red sky.

The air was damp and it smelled.

The ground beneath him looked like decayed wood… it was blackened and soft, like something that had been rotting for years.

Hovering nearby was the P40 drone, its lens focusing on the massive clearing ahead.

All around them, dozens of awakeners were trapped… each one encased in fleshy pods that were like living cocoons.

Their bodies were still and he couldn’t feel their mana, it seemed the pods sealed the mana entirely.

And at the center of it all stood a tree that was massive and grotesque, its branches like skeletal hands reaching across the field.

It really looked like something straight out of a damned horror movie, like the one that he had watched recently with Esme.

The stream had gone live automatically.

[@FlareKnight: What the hell is that??]

[@SilverLily: Are those… people inside those pods?!]

[@ShadowRun: The tree’s absorbing them!]

[@SaintWatcher: Is this part of the raid??]

[@AnonMage: Bro that thing’s ALIVE.]

The P40 zoomed in on one of the pods that had cracked and burst open with Lucius just landing on the ground.

Then they finally noticed that Lucius had come out of one of the pods… and as usual, the stream’s comments went wild.

[@Nightfang: HE’S BACK.]

[@LunaSimper88: LUCIIIIIIUS OMGGG.]

[@CrimsonRay: The way he lands 😭🔥🔥🔥]

[@Drake_Hunter: That’s a Captain-level aura, easy.]

The P40 zipped to his shoulder and hovered beside him.

Lucius sighed, glancing at the pods.

“So the tree is the source, huh?” he muttered.

Another pod exploded open nearby… Luna’s.

Before she could hit the ground, Lucius snapped his fingers. Space bent, and she appeared safely in his arms.

“Lucius, Thank the goddess you’re okay.” she said with her cheeks flushed red. She had been worried that the moment she came out of the pod that she would be the only one there.

“You broke out of your illusion that quickly?” Lucius asked.

“No, dummy,” she said, crossing her arms. “I’m not awakened, remember? My suit has mana blockers. Whatever spell was keeping everyone trapped didn’t affect me. I’ve been blasting the pod open for a while now.”

Lucius smiled. “Nice.”

His eyes drifted back to the tree. “Apparently, it traps people by forcing them to relive their worst memories. A Dream Devourer, huh? Fitting name.”

As for how he got the name, it was literally hovering above its head thanks to the System.

[Dream Devourer, A-Rank]

Lucius sighed. ‘Of course. Haven’t even gotten to the Academy yet and I’m already fighting one of these overpowered things. What happened to plot progression?’

He raised his right hand, and the air distorted around his palm.

The drone focused upward to capture the shot.

‘Showtime,’ Lucius thought.

His irises glowed violet and the Eyes of Space activated.

Across the air, invisible lines of force and equations appeared before him, he had seen them enough times to be used to them but that didn’t mean he didn’t get overwhelmed each time he saw hundreds to thousands of equations in the air.

Slowly, a huge pale crimson dot appeared and he saw the weak spot of the monster.

“There.”

Mana moved through his body, and space began to ripple violently.

“Spatial Distortion.”

The words left his lips like a command.

Reality twisted.

A vortex of compressed gravity appeared around the center of the Dream Devourer, pulling everything inward.

The sound was deep like a heartbeat imploding.

The crimson tree groaned as its bark cracked and splintered with it’s roots tearing free from the ground.

Luna braced herself, clinging to him as the air bent around them.

“Lucius!”

“Relax,” he said calmly. “This’ll be over in a second.”

The swirling black hole grew, consuming the tree from within. The wood folded inward like paper being sucked into a flame.

The P40 hovered higher, capturing everything.

[@Void: Is he collapsing the tree on itself? Amazing…]

[@MageUnion: How is he generating that much output??]

[@BlueSpectre: It looks like a micro black hole… how is this possible?!]

[@SaintLover: SAINTESS WHERE ARE YOU 😭😭😭]

The distortion flickered, then collapsed with a final crack.

The monstrous tree folded in on itself then burst apart into dust.

The ground shuddered once more before finally going still.

Lucius lowered his hand, exhaling slowly.

The huge branches that had held the pods were ripped off the tree by his space so he focused on the main body.

And now, pods around the battlefield began to open, one by one making their captives awaken from their nightmares.

“Hey… you can let me down now,” Luna said softly.

Lucius looked down at her and nodded. “Alright.”

Then he dropped her.

“Not like that!” Luna yelped and she stopped falling. “You sure do like teasing me.”

Lucius chuckled. “It’s not my fault you’re so cute.”

…

Rita’s eyes fluttered open.

For a moment, she couldn’t tell what was real.

She could feel the hands roaming around her body… gripping her breasts… gripping her ass… trying to make their way into her sacred place.

“No!”

Her body trembled slightly as she reached up and touched her face… It was wet.

‘I was crying…?’ she realized, feeling the remnants of tears on her cheeks.

She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. ‘I’m the Saintess. I can’t… cry like this.’

Rita looked around.

She had emerged from something like a pod and the thing that held the pods had vanished. All she could see was Lucius hovering in the air.

‘He saved me,’ she thought, watching him descend.