Passing through a barrier like a thin membrane, Lorne felt as though he had completed a deep dive and burst suddenly upward through the surface of the ocean.
The scenery before his eyes transformed completely.
The clear sky was high and bright with sun.
A salty sea breeze drifted gently.
The fine sand beneath his feet conveyed a soft sensation.
In the distance, the seawater built up into snow-white waves...
Everything.
Sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing.
All of it was virtually indistinguishable from the real world.
'This dreamscape is far too realistic.'
Standing before the beach,
Lorne scooped up seawater mixed with fine sand from beneath his feet, looked at it again and again, and seeing that he still could not tell it from the real thing, his heart filled with a sense of disbelief.
'But what is the point of going to such lengths to create all of this?'
Just as Lorne was puzzling over this in his heart, the previously clear sky over the sea was instantly blanketed in dark clouds.
"ROOOAR!!!"
Accompanied by a roar that shook the very heavens, the seawater churned violently.
Heads resembling lions, leopards, bulls, and wild boars emerged within the dense dark clouds, whipping up fierce gales and waves.
Lorne looked toward the terrifying shadow blotting out the sky over the sea, his heart hammering.
'Typhon?'
'What is this thing doing here too!'
Within the surging dark clouds, a hundred beasts gathered in every conceivable form.
As the roars intensified, tens of thousands of vipers formed from ether coiled around each snarling beast head, blotting out the entire sky.
At the same time, the serpentine lower body came swimming from the sea toward land.
Everywhere it passed, massive waves churned and the ground sank into chasms.
Poison drool that dripped down snapped trees and melted through solid rock.
Several mountain peaks on the islands were splattered into filth, and as the mountain bodies collapsed and shattered, billowing clouds of thick smoke and firelight erupted from them.
A divine pressure like a physical thing sent an oppressive suffocation pressing down to the extreme.
Lorne's heartbeat couldn't help slowing by half a beat, cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.
'This seems... real?'
"Young man, a typhoon is coming. What are you standing there staring at the beach for? Come back to the city with me to take shelter!"
Just as Lorne's thoughts were in chaos, an old man dressed as a fisherman walked up and patted him on the shoulder, offering a kind warning.
"Typhoon?"
Lorne blinked, raised his hand and pointed at the terrifying Demon Ancestor in the sea with its hundred-meter serpentine body and hundred-plus monster heads, and asked with a face full of bewilderment.
"You mean that thing?"
"Yes. You've grown this big and you've never even seen a typhoon?"
The old man glanced at Lorne before him in equal surprise, then noticed the churning seawater had almost reached his own knees.
Not bothering to say more, he grabbed the other party's arm and made straight for a city in the distance.
"Stop saying so much. Come into the city and take shelter first!"
Lorne was dragged along in a muddle and ran the whole way, finally making it inside the city together with streams of people coming from all directions just before the city gates closed.
With the high walls for protection, the fierce winds blowing in from the sea were effortlessly kept at bay.
"The weather these past few days has been so strange. First thunder then rain."
"There have been a lot more typhoons too. We can't even go out to sea to fish."
"The mountains aren't peaceful either. Either volcanic eruptions or landslides."
"And even stranger things. Walking along and suddenly the ground just cracks open. No one knows what's going on..."
Noisy complaints drifted in from all around.
The people who had flooded into the city to take shelter from the typhoon couldn't help grumbling one after another.
A grayish-black kind of energy dispersed from their bodies and gathered in the sky above the city.
But immediately, golden-black butterflies came drifting down from the clouds, beating their wings as they swept across the sky above the city, scattering brilliant, shimmering wing-dust in sheets.
In an instant, the people who had been somewhat emotionally agitated and uneasy became calm once more, their faces brimming with optimistic, easygoing smiles.
"The fields were just lacking water anyway. Rain is a good thing!"
"A typhoon is no big deal."
"Volcanic eruptions happen all the time. Once the eruption stops, the volcanic ash is perfect for composting."
Amid this atmosphere of positivity and cheer, Lorne looked at those bright, smiling faces and couldn't help thinking of the residents in Elysium.
Now he had a rough idea where the smiles on those residents' faces had come from.
'But what exactly is the purpose of maintaining their positive and uplifted emotions here in a dreamscape at all times?'
"ROOOAAR..."
At this moment, a discontented roar came from the sea. Great swathes of dark clouds gradually dispersed. Typhon, concealed within them, was exposed to the sunlight and dissolved and scattered like foam, becoming invisible.
Watching what had unfolded before him, Lorne fell into thought. His gaze was then drawn to the mountains and plains outside the city.
These areas were strange. Like giants grown over with wild grass, buried in the earth, and sunk into slumber.
Lorne swept his gaze over those mountain ranges that had the shape of giants, and put on a casual, unconcerned manner as he asked the people beside him.
"Why does that mountain look like a person? That's so strange."
"You mean Mount Iapetus? It's always looked like that."
The dreamscape residents answered casually, their faces showing it was a matter of course.
Hearing this, Lorne's eyes flickered quietly.
'Iapetus. The Titan of the Soul and Prophecy among the twelve Titans. A loser from the last divine war. A prison cellmate of second-generation divine king Kronos in Tartarus.'
Lorne then gazed into the distance at several other humanoid-shaped areas and continued asking.
"What's that place over there?"
"The Hill of Kronos is great for growing crops."
"And ahead of that?"
"The Coeus Wasteland."
Listening to the dreamscape residents' unhesitating answers, Lorne muttered to himself.
'Right then. Looks like the other two Titans doing time have also been located.'
Following this, through continued roundabout questioning, Lorne also drew from the mouths of the dreamscape residents around him terms such as the Coeus Star Domain, the Plain of Rhea, and the Sea of Tethys.
The idle conversation came to an end. Watching the dreamscape residents, every face full of smiles, filing out of the city walls and going back to enjoying their various lives,
Lorne stood in the middle of the street, his eyes flickering.
Everything he had seen and heard upon entering this dreamscape reminded him of a story called [The Dream of a Thousand Cats].
The story told of a purebred Siamese cat that gathered many cats from all around to give speeches.
It had bred many kittens with a stray cat, and these mixed-breed kittens were put into a bag by its male owner and drowned in a lake.
The Siamese cat felt confused and afraid, and then fell into slumber.
In its dream, the Siamese cat entered the cave of Morpheus, master of dreams.
Morpheus told it that the world had originally been ruled by giant cats.
Humans would serve cats, and many cats also hunted humans as food.
But one day, the lower-status humans had rebelled against the cats.
They knew that if all humans dreamed the same dream it could change reality.
So all humans dreamed the same dream, one in which humans held dominance.
And so the world became one where humans held dominance and cats became human pets.
The purpose of the Siamese cat's lectures everywhere was to make all cats dream of a world ruled by cats, and reclaim the reality that had been changed by humans.
The "thousand cats" in the story represented rich, varied, and diverse cats of all forms.
Each cat had its own unique traits and personality, symbolizing how every individual in the world is one of a kind, full of limitless possibility.
And "dream" represented people's curiosity and exploration of the unknown world, as well as their boundless imagining of the future.
If a thousand cats all dreamed the same dream, their shared consciousness could give shape to their own deity, and even change reality, making cats rule over humans.
In this story, the collective belief and consciousness of all sentient life in the universe created "existence."
I think therefore I am.
'So then. What if a group of pure and untainted demigods, nymphs, and humans with stronger spiritual power were made to collectively dream a dream in which certain divine beings did not exist?'
The answer was that those divine beings would be [Forgotten] and [Erased].
It was true that God kings and chief gods possessed immortality and could not be easily killed.
Imprisoning them in Tartarus could only confine them.
But if at this moment a [Dream of Truth] woven collectively by a group were used to deny their existence, their own self-consciousness would gradually be worn away to nothing by the new concepts shaped by the group consciousness, until in the end only the [immortal] body remained, to be absorbed into the laws of the world.
This was the [Eternal Slumber] of the gods.
In the Titanomachy of old, the Olympian gods relied on the power of faith to gain new divine domains and defeat the ancient old gods.
Now, this [Reality] collectively constructed through dreams in the Elysian Fields could equally become the guillotine for those old gods.
(End of Chapter)