Chapter 50: Stuck between the Lords of Nightmare…

Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

The operation and promotion of “Dark Souls” were controlled by the Central Research Institute.

With the joint promotions by several Dream Media Companies under the Central Research Institute, the popularity of Dark Souls overseas… rose at a speed that even made the Central Research Institute and the advertising companies a bit confused.

Unfortunately, since a Level S Nightmare Dungeon posed a considerable threat, it was difficult for them to open Dark Souls to the public in the country.

Instead, the Central Research Institute… sent a few teams of elite Dream Explorers to Dark Souls for the country.

From Qiu Ren’s perspective, the Central Research Institute regarded Dark Souls as a weapon. Whether it was the Lord of Nightmare or its children, or even the players in the game, they were all “bullets.”

The only difference was that the Lord of Nightmare was a level-one nuclear bomb. Right now, the fuel of the nuclear bomb was being filled gradually. So it was time for Qiu Ren to discuss with the Lord of Nightmare about who to attack and how.

The meeting was set in Qiu Ren’s core Dream Dungeon.

“There’s really nothing at all…”

Qiu Ren returned to his core dream after a long time.

The entire core dream looked dilapidated. In the space that was only ten square meters large, there were piles of shattered tables, chairs, and walls.

Someone, whom Qiu Ren didn’t want to see in his own core dream, was standing in front of a quite intact wall.

Tapir.

This Lord of Nightmare had entered into a contract with Qiu Ren. The one shown here was only the projection of her consciousness, but it was a concrete body.

If Tapir’s original body was really here in Qiu Ren’s core dream, the pollution brought by the nightmare would be enough to make Qiu Ren crazy, even if she didn’t do anything.

“You… did it anyway?”

Tapir’s eyes under the black gauze stared at Qiu Ren, who was tidying up his core dream. Her voice and tone carried a hint of reproach.

She was probably a bit dissatisfied about Qiu Ren constructing a Dream Dungeon for a new Lord of Nightmare.

“I only did that to protect myself. If my situation wasn’t so dangerous after leaving Fengdu Prison, I wouldn’t have taken the risk to make a deal with one of your kind again.”

Qiu Ren put the broken pieces of the wooden chairs and table back together like playing Lego.

Before the core dream of the original owner of this body was destroyed, the setting here should have been a living room.

After Qiu Ren restored all the chairs back to their original state, he pointed at an empty chair.

“Protect yourself… Dangerous… Did it… threaten you?”

It seemed that Tapir didn’t like her own kind. After learning that another Lord of Nightmare might have threatened Qiu Ren to construct a Nightmare Dungeon for it, there was a trace of coldness in Tapir’s voice.

The Lords of Nightmare weren’t nice. Tapir knew that too. The biggest reason was that humans were truly too fragile in front of the Lords of Nightmare.

To make an analogy, if Qiu Ren was a breeder and that Lord of Nightmare was an enormous dragon, the dragon could kill the human breeder by just sneezing or rolling its body over.

So, Tapir was truly worried that the more Lords of Nightmare Qiu Ren had contact with, the higher the chance he would die accidentally.

“I didn’t threaten him. You’ve always cared about yourself only. When did you start worrying about the life of a Dream Maker?”

The clanging voice of an armor came from the other side. The Lord of Nightmare of Dark Souls had made an appearance in Qiu Ren’s core dream in the form of a projected body.

“I didn’t have any power before. Lian… right now… I can warn the other Lords of Nightmare… not to try to go near him… starting from you.”

Tapir tapped the silver cigarette in her hand gently as her eyes focused on the Lord of Nightmare, whom she called Lian.

“I happen to have the same thought as well.”

That Lord of Nightmare wasn’t afraid at all. Blood started to gather in her hand again, gradually forming a spear.

They had actually made it very clear; they wanted this breeder, Qiu Ren, to themselves. At the same time, they were warning the other Lords of Nightmare not to fight over him with them.

“If you want to fight, can you go somewhere else? In fact, please sit down to discuss how we should deal with our mutual enemies! If not, you’ll both lose me!”

Qiu Ren immediately stopped the impending one-on-one battle between the two Lords of Nightmare. Although these were only the projections of their consciousness, Qiu Ren would be in trouble if they truly started fighting in his core dream.

Qiu Ren’s persuasion had an immediate effect. Tapir looked away in disappointment and sat on the chair Qiu Ren gave her.

The Lord of Nightmare called Lian didn’t seem to have the intention to sit with Tapir. It just stood far away and asked Qiu Ren to start this meeting.

However, Qiu Ren still made a chair next to it and asked it to sit down.

“…”

Its eyes under the armor looked at Qiu Ren, hinting to him that it wouldn’t sit with the hateful Tapir. It was pretty stubborn.

“If you don’t sit down today, I won’t make any downloadable content for you in the future,” said Qiu Ren.

There were a lot of incomplete places in the Nightmare Dungeon of Dark Souls. Although some levels of Bloodborne and Sekiro were built-in, Qiu Ren still hadn’t finished the downloadable content outside the main storyline of the game. This Lord of Nightmare also had no power to create it.

“…”

Qiu Ren’s threat worked like a charm. The Lord of Nightmare sat on the wooden chair Qiu Ren had made for it obediently. Then, Qiu Ren exerted himself to push it to the table where Tapir was sitting.

Seeing this scene, Tapir puffed on the silver cigarette in her hand a bit comfortably. On the other hand, Lian in armor crossed its arms. It seemed like it didn’t want to say anything to Tapir.

Fuck… I feel like I really have two pandas, the kind that eats a lot of people! 

I hope that there won’t be more of them—no, I should hope that there won’t be more with a personality that’s so difficult to deal with, or that these Lords of Nightmare can get along a bit better? 

But why did Qiu Ren feel like this was just wishful thinking?

No matter what, Qiu Ren sat down at the wooden table with these strange thoughts.

Next, Qiu Ren used his Creation Points to build a giant world map.

With the scholarship and the fundings from the Central Research Institute, there wasn’t any problem for Qiu Ren to squander his Creation Points every day anymore. However, if he wanted to create a huge production by himself… he still had to look for investors.

But now, this wasn’t the main point…

“The organizations that are onto us and are invading us right now include the Dream Eaters, the Cherry Blossoms, the Gray Snake, and the Purifier. There are other scattered intruders, but these four organizations have invested the most. They are also enemies that are openly supported by high-level Dream Seeds.”

Qiu Ren marked the locations of these four invasion organizations and the Dream Dungeons that supported them on the world map.

“The latter three are all making tentative invasions. Rather than eliminating us right now, they’re more like here to join in the fun. The crucial one is the Dream Eaters…”

Qiu Ren pointed at Northern California in the United States, which was also the place where the famous Silicon Valley was located.

In this world, Silicon Valley and Hollywood were the two largest Dream Factories in the United States. Most of the super powerful Dream Dungeons in America were produced in these two places, including the Level S Dream Dungeon that supported the Dream Eaters, Dark Side.

“‘Dark Side’ is a superhero-themed Dream Game. It has been operating for thirteen years now. Even though there’s a decreasing trend in the number of people online every day, they still have an average of a hundred seventy thousand active people. It’s a tough enemy to deal with.”

Qiu Ren had only found the detailed data of the game, Dark Side, through the intelligence channel of the Central Research Institute.

This game wasn’t a regular online game. Even though it was carried by a Level S Dream Seed from the Superhero World, this Level S Dream Seed would cause some special harm to the human body.

Besides, it was used as an invasion weapon for an official terrorist organization, the Dream Eaters. Therefore, “Dark Side” was a Dream Dungeon for the professional army to train and hunt at the beginning of its production.

It was just that the operator of “Dark Side” was no longer satisfied with this in recent years. So they started opening this Dream Dungeon to the public gradually.

“…A hundred seventy thousand.”

The two Lords of Nightmare looked at the report on the number of people online, and both entered… a state of shock of different degrees.

This was a number that even they dared not to think about right now.

The daily number of people online in Battle Royale operated by Tapir had reached 12,300, and the figure was still soaring quickly. If Tapir wasn’t so busy dealing with her enemy, another Lord of Nightmare, Battle Royale would have been even more popular.

The number of people online in Dark Souls was also rising steadily. Right now, there were more than 5700 Ashen Ones on the firelink journey.

This was after the help of the Warriors of Sunlight from the Dream Exploration Bureau. With their guidance, more and more new players successfully killed Gundyr and met the first Fire Keeper in their lives.

“This is indeed a powerful enemy. However, the war between dreams isn’t just about the supply of people but also the generals and soldiers on the frontlines…”

Lian turned to Qiu Ren and asked, “You want me… and my children… to take that Dream Dungeon?”

“Take? You can steal and bring the Level S Dream Seed that contains ‘Dark Side’ to me?”

Qiu Ren was stunned. At first, he thought the Lords of Nightmare would only devour each other. It was either you died, or I died.

But it turned out they could tie up the others and throw them in front of him, letting him deal with them?

This… sounded pretty amazing?

“This will be a bit more risky. If you can let me get a little more power… I may be able to do so when I go it all out. Besides, this is the best thing I can think of to pay you back.”

After Qiu Ren built Dark Souls for it, it had never given him any rewards. The increasing popularity of Dark Souls had brought a lot of benefits for it.

So, this Lord of Nightmare thought it should give Qiu Ren a surprise of equal value.

“Don’t get too excited… Mr. Qiu Ren.” Tapir reminded Qiu Ren. “That Level S Dream Seed… isn’t so easy to deal with… Its requirements may be much trickier than ours.”

Why not? I’ve already tamed you both successfully, so why not one more?

“So, what exactly are the requirements?”

Qiu Ren asked Tapir a question that he already had the answer to.

“Who knows… Every Lord of Nightmare… has different needs. It’s just that…” Tapir put her hand gently under her chin and looked at Qiu Ren. “Once we taste… a more delicious and novel… nightmare, it’ll be very difficult for us to accept… the bad performances from before… The consciousness of that Level S dream is the same. Before I found you… I didn’t know fights between humans could be so interesting.”

“Well, actually, everyone’s like this.”

Qiu Ren understood Tapir’s meaning. Simply put, “cider on beer, never fear; beer upon cider, makes a bad rider.”

Tapir and that Lian in armor… When Qiu Ren met them, it wasn’t too exaggerated to say that they were both Cinderellas imprisoned in a castle.

Even though these Cinderellas could swallow the people who guarded the castle, they could only eat a little every day. Although the food matched their picky palate, the portion was too small.

The Level S Dream Seed containing “Dark Side” was a noble from the Level SS Superhero World. It had seen everything in the big cities. Furthermore, the Dream Dungeon its Dream Maker created for it was also quite popular.

Meanwhile, Qiu Ren and these two Cinderellas were discussing kidnapping this noble. They even had to make it satisfied with the life here.

This was something impossible from Tapir’s perspective. Hence, killing it and giving each of them a piece of the dead body to eat was the best option!

“We have to bring it back and try. What if I really tame that Level S Dream Seed?”

Qiu Ren had quite a lot of thoughts about Dream Dungeon Movies related to superheroes.

If they could really steal it and let Qiu Ren train it for a bit, Qiu Ren’s core dream would be completely safe.

Level S Nightmare Seeds were quite common. After all, Nightmare Seeds were too difficult to tame, and nobody dared to keep them for a long time. The Level S ones even had to be sealed in a safe building that could withstand the explosion of a nuclear bomb.

However, Level S Dream Seeds weren’t rare. There was none at all!

All the Level S Dream Seeds and Level SS Dream Seeds in the world were owned. There weren’t any of them that were wild…

There might be some spare Level A Dream Seeds. Once Qiu Ren got the qualification of a National Dream Maker, he would be able to request the country to allocate some of them to him.

But if he wanted to use a Level S Dream Seed, he could only start a war to steal it!

His enemy had already declared war on him right now. So, Qiu Ren should also take something good back?

Qiu Ren might be able to rely on these two Lords of Nightmare to resist the invasion of the intruders at the moment.

But Tapir’s worry was actually right. What if other Lords of Nightmare came and asked Qiu Ren to “feed” them?

After all, Qiu Ren couldn’t use a Level S Nightmare Seed as the raw material for his core dream. A Level B Dream Seed was a bit too weak in front of the Lords of Nightmare.

“This may put you… in a more dangerous situation, Mr. Qiu Ren.”

Tapir didn’t want to have a new member sitting at this table again, especially a “consciousness of a Dream Seed” that was flawless to Qiu Ren.

“Your target is a… child of a powerful dream consciousness. They won’t just remain silent… and watch their children being kidnapped… to another country.’

She said as she looked at the Lord of Nightmare sitting opposite to her with ridicule in her eyes.

“If you just destroy them completely, that dream consciousness… would only put the target of revenge on Lian. But Mr. Qiu Ren… if you detain their children, they won’t let you get away with it.”

The powerful dream consciousness Tapir mentioned must be the aggregation of the Level SS Superhero World, the dream that guarded the United States.

“I’m not bringing them back to detain them. What if… the Dream Dungeon I build for them can give them a better life than that in the United States?” asked Qiu Ren.

So good that they wouldn’t want to go home!