One might expect the Dreamlands to appear just as the stories described them, enchanted woods divided into western, eastern, northern, and southern regions, along with an underworld that glowed faintly without any visible source of light.
But the author of 'Path of the Unmentioned' had imagined them quite differently, entirely reshaping their very essence based on his own perception and inner logic.
To him, the Dreamlands were not a physical realm bound by space or distance, but a vast mental plane, a reflection of thought, emotion, and memory shaped and molded by the mind itself.
Its appearance varied endlessly from person to person.
Some might see it as an extended version of their own home, warm and nostalgic, while others perceived it as a ruinous reflection of their world, and the list went on without end.
"Damn, it feels kinda silent," I muttered to myself, letting the door drift slowly back into its original position, its soft creak fading into the still air.
The scenery before me was nothing short of breathtaking.
A plain field stretched infinitely into the horizon, its grass neatly trimmed and gleaming a soft green hue under the faint light.
The sky above felt pale, almost drained of color, with a binoura-colored shimmer occasionally flickering in and out of existence.
It looked gloomy, like one of those ordinary days that always threaten to rain but never quite do.
Across that vast expanse, a narrow path cut through the grass, bordered neatly by white fences on both sides.
It led to a modest-looking house, simple in design, almost geometric, with a laminar roof and a single square room, its plain wooden door tightly shut.
The stillness of it all felt unsettling, eerily familiar, like waking up in the middle of the night when the world falls utterly silent and the only sounds left are the slow ticking of a clock and the distant honking of cars, a melody both comforting and inexplicably strange.
I walked forward for a while, but the distance from the house did not seem to decrease.
No, it was like everything along with me was moving forward together, yet I couldn't traverse any real distance.
"Strange…" I thought to myself, baffled by such an odd behavior.
But that feeling didn't remain for long, as a tired sigh escaped my lips.
"On second thought, I shouldn't have done it, right?"
The law I had formed carried two major disadvantages.
The first was my complete nonexistence to our world's dreamer and everyone else.
Since every living being in our world is, in one way or another, a part of the dreamer itself, that meant our dreamer was everything within it.
So not just Kranthall, but everyone else wouldn't be able to perceive me.
Then came the second reason, the very reason I performed that hazardous stunt of Awareness Hiking and originally planned to come to the Dreamlands for.
Superpower.
Yeah, superpower, but not literally that.
So here's the theory, and obviously, I won't go into much detail. Not like I could anyway.
The materialistic reality beyond dreams, beyond their dreamers, and even beyond the dreamers themselves, was composed of three fundamental energies.
The first being The Will, followed by The Good, and lastly The Horrendous.
There was never any mention in the novel about how these energies came to be or what their true source was.
And even though the dream was composed of them, these energies did not float freely, or rather, did not exist at all as something feasible in our physical worlds.
But they did exist in the Dreamlands, the domain where our dreamer reigned.
There were even some wild fan theories suggesting that the Dreamlands were the place of their origination since their location was a mystery itself.
Because these energies existed in abundance within the Dreamlands, they were easily accessible to our dreamer.
All we humans had to do was to enter the Dreamlands consciously so that it became aware of its creation's presence.
Once it did, it could then act as our other half, the part that remained within the Dreamlands while we continued to live in the real world.
That way, we could draw those energies into our world since technically, we would still be within the Dreamlands.
But given how intelligent I was, I had knowingly cut off the only link that allowed me to draw those energies into our world by hiding my presence.
Naturally, tremendous embarrassment, discrimination, and things like my family abandoning me and everyone hating me were bound to trail along once I returned.
However, despite all the disadvantages that had stacked against me like an immovable, indestructible wall, a faint, knowing smirk tugged at my lips.
This was definitely not going to cut it, not when I knew the future, knew everything that had occurred and everything that was going to happen.
I had been given a chance to win over limiphobia once again, and that was enough.
Everything in this world, from the whispering powers to the hollowed mysteries, screamed one thing: limitless.
I had already had a fair share of experience with them and survived.
I might need to rule over the world or destroy it. I might need to tear apart realities and fight dreamers themselves.
I might have to survive erasure, unmaking, and the slow gnaw of oblivion.
I might be spat at, humiliated, branded an outcast, watch family turn their backs, feel the grind of loneliness like sand in my teeth.
I might have to bleed and bargain and bargain again.
Fine. Do it.
Let the cosmos throw its worst.
Because even after all that, after monarchs fell and foundations burned and every convenient truth collapsed, I would come out alive.
Not unbroken, not untouched, but unfazed.
The fear that once owned me would be a memory I could hold in my palm and crush.
And that certainty, more than hope or power or law, was what made the smirk stay.
"Oh, the flute-playing fools... the only thing standing between annihilation, the ones keeping the blind idiot god insane~"