Attempt

Night had fallen, and all were quiet. Lumian woke once more in the dream, and the first thing to meet his eyes was a faint gray fog. He instinctively raised his hand and slipped it into the pocket of his clothes. The cold, hard metallic sensation immediately entered his mind. He took out the object he had touched, and a glint of gold lit up his eyes. It was a gold coin. A gold louis. “It’s still here…” Lumian sat up and examined himself. He still wore the cotton shirt, cotton trousers, and leather jacket from his last exploration, and a nearly two-meter-long steel fork and a sharp iron-black axe lay within easy reach. It was exactly the same as when he had left the dream. “In other words, this dream is progressing; I won’t have to start over every time I enter…” Lumian toyed with the gold louis, then put it into the pocket of his cotton shirt. Although it couldn’t be brought into reality, just looking at it was pleasant. Lumian got out of bed, looked out the window for a while, and confirmed that the red peak among the ruins showed no obvious change. He picked up his axe and steel fork, left his room, and entered the dim corridor. Aurore’s bedroom and study remained open. Lumian glanced at them and suddenly had a thought: “In the dream, my room basically corresponds to reality, and everything that should be there is there. Aurore’s seems to be the same at first glance. “Then, can I find her sorcery notes, secret potion formulas, or how to become a sorcerer in this bedroom?” This thought was like a devil’s whisper, making Lumian’s heart race and tempting him to try it. Compared to exploring that unknown, dangerous, mysterious, strange ruin, rummaging through Aurore’s room was an easier and safer choice. No, no! Lumian shook his head violently, casting the thought aside. He would rather take risks than pry into Aurore’s privacy; before getting Aurore’s permission, he would not search her bedroom. This was respect for Aurore. Without Aurore, he would have died five years ago as a street urchin. Lumian reluctantly withdrew his gaze and walked toward the stairs. If the owner of that bedroom were anyone other than Aurore, he would have gone in to search for useful information by now. After going downstairs, Lumian didn’t rush out but checked the kitchen stores. The olive oil, corn oil, and animal fat Aurore had stockpiled were neatly arranged in barrels and jars, just as in reality. Almost instinctively, Lumian first took out that barrel of corn oil and placed it beside the stove. The only reason for his choice was that animal fat and olive oil were more expensive. Then, he skillfully used coal and wood to start a fire in the stove and made several torches ready to be lit. This was preparation for burning that monster. Of course, if it could be solved by other means, that would be better; this was a last resort. After finishing these things, he picked up his axe and went out the door. Lumian immediately noticed a difference: The faint gray fog pervading this dream was a bit more damp than last time, and the ground under his feet was slightly muddy. “Did it rain? When I’m not here, when I’m not dreaming, does this place still exist and evolve naturally according to certain rules?” Lumian was both surprised and inexplicably felt it should be so. Thinking of the strange stories Aurore made up, he suddenly had a guess: “This can’t be the real world, can it?” “My dream connects to a real world, and the purpose of that tarot card in making me lucid is to cross the barrier between dream and ruins.” Lumian quickly looked left and right and found that on both sides of the ruins, at the “edge” of the dream, was gray fog stretching endlessly. “I can verify this later: not go to the ruins, but walk outside the gray fog, and see whether beyond the gray fog is a strange, illogical dream, or real land, sky, villages, and towns…” If the former, then this place still belongs to the dream; if not, Lumian would have to confirm which world this actually was. He thought that, judging from the use of the gold louis, this place still seemed to be in the Republic of Intis, but not necessarily the current era; perhaps it was some lost, disappeared place from decades or hundreds of years ago. However, Lumian felt he had a very high probability of being unable to walk out of this surrounding gray fog. Collecting his thoughts, he continued toward the ruins. He hadn’t forgotten that the purpose of entering this dream was to try to deal with that monster. After walking a hundred or two hundred meters on a muddy wasteland full of rubble and cracks, Lumian suddenly stopped. He thought of a question. His earlier preparation had an omission! Earlier, his two-story house had no firelight and was very safe in this world shrouded in gray fog, but now it had stove fire leaking light; would it attract a large number of monsters, making the safe zone unsafe? Lumian subconsciously looked back toward where he came from, and saw in the faint gray fog that at the bottom of that semi-subterranean two-story building, a crimson light was cast on different glass panes. It was like a lighthouse in a dark world. Considering that a fair amount of time had passed, trying to put out the stove fire now was obviously too late; Lumian simply quickened his pace, entered the ruins, and hid in the building at the edge that had collapsed from burning. He hung his axe on the belt behind his back, nimbly climbed a wall, and hid in a dark corner partitioned off by brick, stone, and wood. Lumian gazed into the distance at his house on the other side of the wilderness. Second by second passed, and he didn’t see any monster attracted by the stove fire approach that side. “It seems the stove fire won’t bring any changes, at least it won’t have my house surrounded by monsters…” Lumian quietly sighed in relief. This meant that even if he really encountered danger, as long as he could escape back home in time and fall asleep as soon as possible, he could successfully get away. He began to consider how to lure out and deal with that previous monster: “From the brief fight last time, its strength, speed, reaction, and agility were all about the same as mine, but it was obvious that it fought purely by instinct, without enough experience and skill, and without corresponding intelligence, so I was able to counter-kill it even when ambushed… “It can also be stunned, dazed, no different from a human… “Except for fighting techniques, I have two advantages over it: first, I crush it in intelligence; second, I know how to use weapons and tools—that is humanity’s greatest advantage over such a monster… “As long as I’m careful, defeating it again isn’t difficult; the key is how to completely deal with it…” Just as Lumian was thinking of deliberately making some noise to see if he could attract certain monsters, he saw a silhouette silently approaching beside the completely collapsed house to the side. That figure was blood-red all over, without skin, directly exposing muscles, blood vessels, and fascia—it was clearly that monster from last time. And unlike last time, this monster was holding a manure fork in its hand. A manure fork! “It can use weapons too…” Lumian’s face stiffened for a moment, and his expression turned bitter. His confidence unknowingly dropped a bit. As the monster approached and turned around, Lumian saw exaggerated wounds on its back, neck, and back of the head, but those cracks no longer oozed pus, showing a state of being mostly healed. “Indeed, it’s the one I encountered before… “Its self-healing ability is who knows how many times stronger than mine—stronger than a normal human’s…” Lumian silently sucked in a breath of cold air. He forced himself to calm down and quickly analyzed the current situation. In the blink of an eye, Lumian made a decision: Now is a good opportunity, and when you encounter an opportunity, you must seize it; you can’t miss it! He quietly pulled a stone brick from beside him, waiting for the monster to walk to the intended position. In just a step or two, the monster entered Lumian’s “ambush circle.” Lumian suddenly threw the stone brick, tossing it at the ground behind the monster. Thud! The stone brick landed, causing the monster to turn around quickly, looking toward the thing attacking it. Seeing this, Lumian gripped his axe with both hands and leaped ferociously from the wall toward the monster from the side. Thud! The axe, carrying the weight of the falling blow, ruthlessly chopped into the monster’s neck, splitting it more than halfway open. Two thuds sounded in succession, and Lumian and the monster fell to the ground at the same time. Lumian quickly leaped up, grabbed his axe, ran over, and heavily hacked at the monster’s neck again. One, two, three strikes—the monster didn’t even have time to resist before its head was chopped off. As that head rolled to one side, the skinless body twitched twice and stopped moving. Lumian didn’t stop there; he stepped sideways, turned the axe around, and used the thick back of the blade to smash that hideous head with all his might, smashing it into pulp. Immediately after, he turned back and hacked at the body with its exposed muscles, blood vessels, and fascia several more times with the axe, smashing the heart and other vital organs. After doing all this, Lumian retreated two steps, looked at his handiwork, panted heavily, and chuckled softly: “I really thought you were unkillable, who knew you only had this much skill!” In his controlled laughter, the headless corpse suddenly twitched. Lumian’s eyes narrowed, and he subconsciously wanted to turn and flee. He forcibly suppressed this impulse, stepped forward again, and raised his axe. The corpse twitched twice and then returned to stillness, seeming to have made only one unsuccessful death struggle. Lumian observed for a while longer and finally confirmed that the monster was completely dead. “What tenacious vitality…” Lumian sighed inwardly, then approached, squatted down, and used the axe to pry open muscles and fascia, examining the corpse. The monster’s body structure was no different from a human’s, but its physical vitality was obviously stronger; even though it was already dead, some cuts still twitched slightly. “No treasure, and no supernatural power transferred into my body…” Lumian assessed his current state and felt a bit disappointed for a moment. The idea that every monster killed made him stronger by a point naturally only existed in Aurore’s stories. He then moved the monster’s corpse and head into the collapsed building and did some burial with bricks, stones, and chunks of wood. Then he searched this burned-down, collapsed house, hoping to find something.