Chapter 194: Dream Dungeon
On his first night in Tyrosh, Ian logged into the system after returning to his cabin, preparing to investigate the Dream Dungeon he had obtained through the advanced achievement.
While sailing at sea, Ian hadn't dared to open any dungeons recklessly, fearing unforeseen circumstances. Now, docked in port, with nothing else to do, it was the perfect opportunity.
Ian found the Dream Dungeon scroll in his inventory, but couldn't find any description boxes, so he asked the system assistant: "Explain what the Dream Dungeon scroll is all about."
"After using the scroll, players can choose a difficulty level and obtain a random Dream Dungeon of that difficulty.
Players can enter the dungeon by falling asleep. Upon completion, they will receive substantial rewards related to the dungeon's content. The higher the difficulty, the richer the rewards.
Different Dream Dungeons have different rules and completion conditions, which players will only discover after obtaining the scroll," Annie read out the rules one by one.
"What happens if I'm woken up midway through the dungeon?" Ian continued to ask.
"Different dream instances have different rules. Exploration instances allow players to enter multiple times, with the total time spent in the dream counted. Challenge instances, however, can only be entered once. Waking up midway results in automatic failure," Annie explained.
"Can players encounter danger in dream instances?"
"Each instance has different rules, but in principle, it depends on the difficulty level chosen by the player. Generally, only Nightmare difficulty instances can cause actual harm to players, while other difficulties at most cause psychological trauma."
"How can actual harm be caused? Isn't this just a dream?" Ian asked, somewhat puzzled.
"In the world of Ice and Fire, dreams hold a very special significance. Many ancient beings possess the power to influence dreams. The more complex the dream, the more likely it is to attract their attention and thus their interference."
Hearing this, Ian inexplicably thought of the scene in the show where Bran sees the Night King through greensight and is then grabbed and marked by the Night King.
Although 'greensight' wasn't exactly a dream, in the world of Ice and Fire, they served very similar functions, making it difficult to say whether those 'beings' could accomplish the same thing through dreams.
"However," Ian said somewhat strangely, "can't the system-constructed dreamscape also isolate those things?"
But he regretted asking as soon as the question left his mouth. Wasn't it obvious? Making those so-called gods or ancient beings part of the challenges players face in Nightmare difficulty dream instances was exactly the developers' intention!
Sure enough, the AI assistant Annie didn't answer the question.
Ian didn't say anything more, but instead opened the scroll.
[Please select dream difficulty:
Easy, Medium, Hard, Nightmare]
Ian cautiously clicked [Hard]. While the rewards for this level of dungeon certainly wouldn't be as good as Nightmare, at least it wouldn't pose a danger.
After all, it was his first time attempting this, and Ian had no intention of being reckless. Besides, his current development was good, and there was no need to take unnecessary risks.
The next moment, the information about the dream instance Ian had drawn appeared before his eyes.
[Name: Inner Demon Labyrinth Difficulty: Hard Type: Exploration Rules: #Players have 72 hours of exploration time. #Players can re-enter the dungeon each time they fall asleep. #Players can revive an unlimited number of times in the dream world. #Players can choose to revive at any point in time they have experienced, but all the time already spent will be counted. Completion Condition: Unknown]
Hmm... this looks challenging. Ian sighed.
Although this dungeon allowed players to revive an unlimited number of times, and even choose when to revive, the more this was allowed, the more difficult it was to complete.
Oh well, I chose the hard difficulty myself, so it's understandable that it's difficult.
Without further hesitation, Ian went to sleep and entered the dream world.
A sharp whistling sound reached Ian's ears. He opened his eyes abruptly and saw an arrow embedded in the bone-white weirwood pillar beside him, no more than two inches from his ear.
He didn't have time to think about what had happened. He instinctively ran toward the street corner.
In his vision, the archer who had just shot at him was nocking another arrow.
He didn't want to be killed right at the start.
Ian had only run a few steps when the whistling sound reached his ears again. Unfortunately, the usual dramatic scene of narrowly dodging didn't occur.
He felt a jolt in his shoulder, then lost his balance and fell to the ground.
But the expected intense pain didn't follow immediately. Instead, he smelled a foul stench.
He got up and looked around. He realized he was lying among a pile of corpses, one body's protruding entrails wrapped around him, and a mixture of blood, bile, and other bodily fluids smeared his face.
"This is disgusting! Christ! What the hell is this dungeon?" Ian's stomach churned, but he held back from vomiting.
He stood up and surveyed his surroundings.
He quickly recognized the place: the salt pans outside Lord Holloway's town.
The salt mine was quiet at night, save for the occasional chirping of crickets carried on the wind.
"So this is the so-called Inner Demon Labyrinth? This place doesn't even deserve to be my inner demon." Ian scoffed. He started walking forward. The ground was littered with corpses, making it impossible to determine the conditions for clearing the dungeon.
However, as soon as he lifted his leg, he tripped over something. Looking closely, he saw the face of the merchant player, Harold, on one of the corpses.
Harold's body was a bloody mess, his clothes torn to shreds, his head barely attached to his neck, but his cloudy, dilated eyes were fixed on Ian.
Ian suddenly remembered the look in Harold's eyes when he last looked at him—a look filled with rage and fear.
This irritated Ian, but he could do nothing. After all, it was just a corpse.
In a daze, Ian suddenly saw Harold's corpse move, and then, incredibly, the corpse stood up, clutching its head. A cold smile suddenly appeared on the bloodless face.
Ian returned the cold smile and immediately drew his sword, slashing down. He had no fondness for desecrating corpses, but he wouldn't hesitate to destroy such an abomination.
With a single swing, Ian cleaved Harold's torso in two.
However, the next moment, Ian's vision blurred, and he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder.
He looked down and saw that the tip of a bodkin arrow had pierced through his shoulder, and half of his body was already stained red with blood.
Ian collapsed to the ground, and the surrounding scenery returned to what it had been at the beginning. Judging from the pale stone buildings, he could roughly guess that this was the White Harbor district before its destruction.
Footsteps sounded in front of him. Ian looked up and saw the man who had just shot him with an arrow approaching. A scar running from his neck to his lower abdomen ran across his chest, looking particularly gruesome.
"So it's you," Ian smiled upon seeing his face.
"So it was the first player I killed, a nameless nobody!"
(End of Chapter)
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