41. Mysteries abound (Part 3)

Jaune closed the door to his room with a soft click, then exhaled through his nose.

The suitcase hit the bed with a dull thump. He unzipped it and began unpacking, moving with quiet efficiency. His makeshift armor came out first—knee pads, forearm guards and the reinforced jacket. Each piece had enough padding to dull a fall and even stop a claw. Truly, a great investment. He shrugged on the layers, then strapped the half-helmet over his head. His reflection in the small mirror above the dresser looked… absurd. But also kind of cool.

Next came the bat and then the sword.

Crocea Mors, now sheathed in dark leather, felt heavier than it had in the garden. But that weight didn't bother him too much. In his left hand, the steel bat. In his right, the sword.

"It's technically dual wielding, right?" he muttered under his breath, rolling his shoulders experimentally.

It felt awkward. He didn't have the training for it. Not yet, anyway. But it was worth testing. If he was lucky, he would be able to have two weapons. The sword was going to be his main weapon and the bat could function as a viable backup.

He set it near the edge of the bed. For now, both weapons would be laid out and ready to grab. A bottle of water, still capped, was secured inside the inner pocket of his jacket. Next to it—a snack bar. Something oat-based, rich in nutrients, and dense enough to last. He didn't know if food worked in the Nightmare Realm. He hadn't felt hunger or thirst yet… but he'd bled and he'd sweated. Even his muscles ached after fights. It stood to reason that he'd probably need sustenance at some point.

Better to prepare for the wrong outcome than assume the rules made sense.

Jaune sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall for a moment. Tomorrow, he and his dad would drive back to Vale and Jade would be joining them. Her orientation started on Monday, and her first class was on Wednesday.

They'd have to help her move into the university dorms. There'd be boxes and even a tour. Hopefully, Jaune wouldn't be roped into carrying everything. But that was Monday's problem.

Tonight… he had an entirely different world to focus on.

He glanced at the time on his phone. No alarm set and no school tomorrow. Just sleep. 

Jaune paused for a moment, then flicked open his camera app and propped his phone up against the lamp on the nightstand. He set it to record. It was a small test. A question that had been bothering him quietly.

'What did I look like, sleeping through all that? And does anything happen to my body when I enter the dream? Do I get physically transported there, or is it some soul or astral version of me?'

He doubted he'd catch much—probably just himself twitching or muttering in his sleep. But if anything weird happened, at least he'd have the footage.

Satisfied, he laid back on the bed and grabbed his weapons to make sure he was holding them.

Armor in place. Sword and bat ready. Water and food packed. Phone recording quietly by the lamp.

The air in the room felt a little cooler than usual. Or maybe that was just his anticipation. His eyes slid shut.

And then, darkness.

When Jaune opened his eyes once again, the first thing he noticed wasn't the world around him, but himself.

His body felt alive—in a way that felt almost unreal. Every fiber of his muscles hummed with potential, like a coiled spring waiting to be unleashed. When he breathed in, the air felt cooler, crisper, and every scent—rot and dust—registered with precise clarity. His ears caught the subtle creak of decaying wood in another room, the shifting of air through broken vents.

'Body stat three,' he thought, lifting his hands and flexing his fingers.

His joints responded without resistance. His balance was perfect even on the uneven, crumbling floorboards beneath him. It was like being sculpted out of potential—every movement sharp, clean, optimized. If the previous level had made him feel like a world-class athlete, this felt like being carved from the idea of human perfection. Not superhuman—but the absolute best a human could possibly be.

He took a breath, adjusted the sword at his hip, and rose to his feet in a single, fluid motion.

That's when he noticed the room.

"…Hmm?"

This wasn't his house in Vale.

The walls were still cracked. The ceiling bowed under a non-existent weight it could no longer bear. But the layout—the shape of the doorframe, the chipped paint along the molding, the tilt of the window beside the bed—this was Ansel.

His house in Ansel.

His suspicions were finally confirmed.

"So it does change depending on where I fall asleep," he muttered, scanning the room again. "It's not just tied to Vale."

This was a revelation. He'd half-expected to keep waking up in the same corrupted version of the his new home in Vale. But this confirmed it: the Nightmare Realm was tethered not to one fixed location, but to wherever his body had entered sleep.

Which meant that the dream realm was probably spanning around the entire world...

He turned to check his gear.

The bat was no longer scratched and dented as it was the night before. It was as perfectly intact as it was in the waking world. The sword was now sheathed and secured to his back, the weight balancing nicely. His makeshift armor was all in place.

So far, so good. Next, he checked his jacket's inner pocket. The water bottle was there. But it felt suspiciously light. He unscrewed the cap and tilted it slightly toward his hand.

Nothing. No liquid or even condensation. The bottle looked fine, but it was empty—dry as bone.

Jaune frowned and checked the snack bar next.

Still wrapped, but it felt too soft. Too… hollow. He peeled it open.

It was hollow.

An empty wrapper, sealed and perfect, but containing absolutely nothing. As if someone at the factory had wrapped up a mistake and sold it anyway.

Jaune let the empty package fall through his fingers.

"…So I can't bring food or water," he muttered.

That… wasn't great. He hadn't felt hunger in the dream before. But that didn't mean it wouldn't happen. The rules of the Nightmare Realm were unclear, inconsistent, and this discovery only added to the strangeness.

Still—he was glad most of his stuff came through.

If his gear hadn't carried over and kept resetting every time he entered, he'd have gone bankrupt just trying to replace it all.

He gave one last glance over everything, checked his pockets, adjusted the grip on the bat, and stepped carefully out of his ruined room.

The hallway of his family home was dark as the one in Vale. Paint peeled like shedding skin from the walls. Plaster had caved in on one side, revealing warped insulation and snapped beams. The whole house groaned with age and pressure, as if it resented being remembered.

He descended the stairs—testing the wood with each step—and made his way through the living room toward the back patio.

The sliding glass door was broken off its frame. Beyond it lay the once-familiar garden and pool.

He stepped out. The air felt stale. Thick with the scent of rotting wood. The garden was dead.

No grass. Just cracked black earth, like the surface of a burned planet. Dead shrubs clung to what used to be flower beds, their roots curled up in defeat.

The pool was worse.

It had no water. Just a shallow basin streaked with dark brown stains and patches of some type of black rot. Mold, maybe. But this didn't look like ordinary decay. The markings curled and twisted like veins, like something living had died there and left a scar behind.

Jaune stared at it for a long moment then tilted his chin up to look at the sky.

The broken moon still hung high above, suspended in the heavens like a bleeding eye. It bled red, blood light—a pulsing, sickly hue that painted the world in shades of dread.

Jaune looked away. Even after all his time here, the moon still made him uneasy.

"I really hate that thing," he muttered.

He tightened the grip on his bat and turned back toward the house. He then paused and looked at his weapon.

Why was he still using the bat? Perhaps he was still subconsciously attached to it?

He quickly switched the bat to his back and the sword into his hand, replacing the straps which held it.

In any case, the dream had changed again and the monsters surely weren't t far behind.