Chapter Summaries

Yi Chen and Jin spent the night making a powerful Cancerous Tumor, after noticing strange behavior from two children in the apartment building. The children’s monitored heads appeared outside Jin’s door, dead and separated from their missing bodies, while Jin sensed no one else nearby.

• After dinner, Jin took Yi Chen to her apartment, where he felt watched by smiling strangers until Little Grape’s vision dispelled the eerie impression.
• Jin caught an Iron Ball thrown by two strange children, then implanted benign tumors in their heads to monitor them; she and Yi Chen later found nothing unusual when she kicked open a noisy tenant’s door.
• Jin and Yi Chen worked together for five hours to make an almost-finished Cancerous Tumor that weighed nearly a hundred pounds despite its small size.
• Exhausted, Yi Chen fell asleep on Jin’s mattress, but Jin sensed the children’s tumors nearby and found their severed heads hanging outside her door.
• Jin spread her red threads throughout the apartment building but sensed no one responsible for the children’s deaths.

Yi Chen disguised himself to investigate Zion’s meat supply and the inspector responsible for its quality. After showing her a special card, he discovered that Director Masin Bangula was a nightmare entity who recognized him and had watched him with Jin.

• Yi Chen woke alone, confirmed his connection with the yellow skin was intact, and disguised his appearance before leaving.
• At the raw-material factory on 83 Rotka Street, Yi Chen learned that Director Masin Bangula oversaw meat inspections and persuaded an employee to take him to her.
• Yi Chen entered Masin Bangula’s office and displayed the special card from the Nightmare Room.
• Masin Bangula’s head shattered and reconstructed as a nightmare creature with black-and-white hair and a face made of many women’s voices.
• Masin Bangula told Yi Chen she had watched him making meat and sleeping with Jin the previous night.

Yi Chen met Catherine in a Nightmare-infiltrated factory, where she offered to withdraw from Zion if he played her game and won. He left with the invitation unresolved and decided to gather more information before the game began.

• Yi Chen questioned Catherine about the infection spreading through Zion, and she explained that the Nightmare was implanting ideas in people through food.
• Catherine revealed that she wanted to meet Yi Chen because his abilities resembled theirs and challenged him to a game, promising to withdraw from Zion if she lost.
• Catherine warned that if Yi Chen lost, he would join them in destroying the city and killing his friends, and she gave him a card so they could contact him when the game was ready.
• Catherine asked Yi Chen to stay away from the woman who had held him, but he refused and left the factory.
• Little Grape called Catherine's offer a trap, while Yi Chen judged it a mixture of truth and lies and chose to gather more information.

Yi Chen and Jin prepared to train against the Nightmare Event’s mental influence by testing whether they could alter the minds of Yuri’s maids. Yuri sent them to his meditation room and secretly arranged for his strongest maids to face them.

• Yi Chen decided to conduct targeted mental training and asked Jin to help him resist the Nightmare Event’s influence.
• Jin warned Yi Chen that Zion’s residents might already be affected and agreed to stay with him rather than flee.
• Yi Chen and Jin visited Yuri at Prophet’s Abode and asked to use his maids as subjects for mental training.
• Yuri agreed that they could keep any maid they successfully enslaved, then directed them to his meditation room.
• After they left, Yuri released his restraints and ordered his personal maid to select the most powerful maids for the training.

Yi Chen trained to implant thoughts in Yuri’s newly manufactured humanoid maids, while Jin strengthened their brains against mental invasion. After spending twenty minutes alone with Irina, Yi Chen emerged with her showing a strange mark in her eyes, leaving Yuri and Jin uncertain about what had happened.

• Seven maids stationed around Zion returned to the Prophet’s Abode after receiving a message canceling their outdoor activities.
• Yuri introduced the newly manufactured maids and asked Yi Chen to practice implanting thoughts in them, warning him about the danger of their killing intent.
• Yi Chen asked Jin to implant protective brain tumors in the maids, and she strengthened each of their brains before he chose Irina for private training.
• Yi Chen sent Jin outside and spent twenty minutes alone with Irina while Yuri listened from the neighboring room.
• Yi Chen emerged with his clothes somewhat tattered, and Irina’s eyes held a strange wisp of matter that formed the ancient character dian.

Yi Chen explained Enlightenment to Yuri and continued training the maids while keeping the ability’s details secret. Three days later, Yuri discovered that nearly every maid in the Prophet's Abode had gathered underground to learn from Yi Chen.

• Yi Chen told Yuri that Enlightenment created teacher-student relationships and made the pursuit of knowledge instinctive, but he refused to reveal the process until the Nightmare Event was resolved.
• Yuri agreed to let Yi Chen use the arena and promised to remove the Slaughter Bond from the enlightened maids, while Yi Chen said he would eventually dissolve their teacher-student relationships.
• The research institute prepared a Dream Entry Master Brain and selected William, Jin, and Regan, while the tribunal recruited Hogney Zede to join the mission.
• After three days of designing new maids, Yuri went downstairs and found nearly all the maids gathered in orderly rows, listening to Yi Chen teach about the pursuit of knowledge.

Yi Chen learned that the organization was preparing a team to enter the Nightmare, then received Catherine’s message about their game. Catherine arranged for them to meet the next afternoon, while the Boss’s Wife noticed Yi Chen leaving the restaurant in disguise.

• Yuri told Yi Chen that the organization planned to send a high-level team, including the prophet Martin and Marco, into the Nightmare to eliminate its source, and warned him not to interfere.
• After Yi Chen left Yuri’s abode, his Nightmare Card changed, so he disguised himself and went to a private restaurant to meet its contact.
• The rabbit-costumed server revealed herself as Catherine and brought Yi Chen into the In-Between between reality and the Nightmare.
• Catherine said she had finished arranging their game and asked Yi Chen to meet her the next afternoon at a place where no one could interfere.
• The Boss’s Wife saw Yi Chen leave the restaurant in disguise while she worked at a late-night pancake shop.

Yi Chen learned that the organization’s six-team Main Brain Plan to enter the Nightmare would begin the next day, then left Zion City to avoid taking part. At the foot of the mountain, he spotted a silver-haired youth with an uncovered Full Moon Eye.

• Yi Chen met Principal Deslin at the train platform and learned that the organization had formed six dream-entry teams using the Main Brain Plan.
• Deslin told Yi Chen that the plan would begin the next day and that Zede, Mark, and Martin would join the teams.
• Yi Chen connected the plan’s timing to the game and asked Deslin for permission to leave the city.
• Deslin let Yi Chen go, then used a strand of his hair to divine that the Nightmare might have targeted him.
• Yi Chen left Zion City alone and walked down the mountain until moonlight revealed a silver-haired youth leaning against a tree.

Yi Chen met with Lorien’s moonlight projection and explained the Nightmare Event, then followed Lorien’s advice to use a Moon Crystal core to locate nearby first-generation Moonfolk. He raced toward two targets, hoping to absorb their Moonification Disease and find a way to escape becoming a Nightmare puppet before his deadline.

• Lorien examined Yi Chen’s black Mad Brain and listened as Yi Chen recounted the Nightmare Event and his encounter with Catherine.
• Lorien offered to help Yi Chen if he would kill Doctor Maco’s consciousness projection in the nightmare while Moonified.
• Lorien told Yi Chen to swallow the Moon Crystal core from Slaughter Moon so he could sense nearby first-generation Moonfolk.
• Yi Chen sensed two Moonfolk within reach, and Lorien’s projection vanished.
• Yi Chen transformed into a quadrupedal running form and raced through the forest toward the Moonfolk while Little Grape warned that Lorien might eventually assimilate him.

As the Nightmare Plan began, Hogney Zede arrived at the power station and learned from Regan that William was supposedly missing. Meanwhile, Yi Chen killed a false priest outside Zion, took his moon-shaped core, and left a young man to protect the abandoned town.

• Martin and Marco tried on the Dream Attire when Hogney Zede announced his arrival.
• Zede passed through the power station’s security without being stopped, and the captain warned the officers not to interfere.
• Regan guided Zede toward the Nightmare Plan assembly point and told him that William was supposedly participating, but Zede said Deslin had claimed William fled the city.
• Yi Chen arrived at a town eighty-six kilometers outside Zion and killed the Silver-haired Priest after the priest’s light revealed Yi Chen’s human form.
• Yi Chen took the priest’s moon-shaped core, chose a resistant young servant to look after the town, and left.

Yi Chen defeated the silver-haired Moonfolk Kormi and removed his lunar pathogen without killing him, then used two Moon Crystals to reach the Moon Surface. There, a lunar passage tried to draw him into the moon’s depths as his Star Magic resonated, while Lorien watched from a distant ship and complained about William.

• Yi Chen met Philoimea Kormi, a silver-haired savage who had killed no villagers, and Kormi transformed to resist after learning Yi Chen had killed Father Edson.
• Yi Chen subdued Kormi with iron chains and used a mental influence to reconstruct his brain, removing the moon crystal and sending Kormi away to pursue learning and travel.
• With his meeting with Catherine approaching, Yi Chen ate two Pathogen Moon Crystals and arrived on the Moon Surface, where he sensed that the moon was alive and conscious.
• A spiral opening in a lunar crater tried to pull Yi Chen into the moon’s depths, but he remained focused on the stars as his Star Magic resonated.
• On a silver ship far beyond Quechua, Lorien watched Yi Chen from afar and complained that William never acted conventionally.

As the Nightmare Plan prepared six squads to enter a dream, Jin was diverted from searching for William by Instructor Baili, who conveyed a coded message. Yi Chen followed his Nightmare Card to a hidden bedroom, where a girl invited him to sleep beside her.

• The organization prepared six Death Row Inmates' brains for the Nightmare Plan and designated the powerful Vanguard Squad, led through Doctor Maco's brain, to reach and destroy the nightmare's source.
• Jin learned that William Berens had left the city and decided to search for him, but a strange employee suggested he might be entering the dream alone.
• Instructor Baili arrived with a supposed emergency mission and secretly delivered Jin a message in high-level code before leading her away.
• Yi Chen followed the changing directions on his Nightmare Card to a shabby apartment building on Grumi Street.
• Yi Chen found a passage inside a wardrobe and reached a cozy bedroom, where a black-and-white-clad girl invited him to sleep beside her.

Yi Chen discovered Catherine’s connection to a sinister circus and entered the deepest part of her nightmare. There, he faced the women who made up Catherine, and she invited him inside their body as the game began.

• Yi Chen found a circus recruitment poster and saw Catherine briefly distort when he asked whether she had visited the circus.
• Yi Chen fell asleep and was drawn directly into the nightmare’s deepest level, where he checked his abilities and found countless women suspended by wires.
• Yi Chen walked to a gigantic mirror, and the suspended women broke free and crawled toward him.
• The women fused into Catherine, who embraced Yi Chen and revealed that the assembled women had voted on him.
• Yi Chen asked Catherine to find him clothes and start the game before the gentlemen arrived.

Yi Chen and Catherine prepared to compete in a game of Idea Implantation against squads infiltrating the Nightmare, with Nightmare Town reserved for the strongest team. Yi Chen signed a soul contract and swallowed Catherine’s concentrated Nightmare Substance, beginning his transformation into a Nightmare Master.

• Yi Chen made himself a black trench coat while Catherine explained that she had allowed the Gentlemen to enter the Nightmare and had infiltrated the Power Station through low-ranking employees.
• Catherine proposed an Idea Implantation game in which they would eliminate five ordinary squads before facing the strongest Gentleman Squad in Nightmare Town.
• Catherine offered Yi Chen Nightmare authority through a cube of concentrated Nightmare Substance and presented a soul contract promising to remove it without harm if he won.
• Yi Chen questioned the rules, and Catherine added that either player would lose five points and face longer revival times after each death in the Nightmare.
• Yi Chen signed the contract, and Catherine fed him the cube, causing the chains inside his body to tremble as his transformation began.

Yi Chen resisted Catherine’s attempt to overwhelm him with Nightmare Substance and transformed it into his own Nightmare Power. After his memories of a past massacre triggered his transformation, he gained six deadly chain tentacles and concealed his identity behind a Faceless Mask.

• Yi Chen restrained the giant octopus of Nightmare Substance with his Thorned Iron Chains and Death Aura, then used Central Taste to absorb and convert it into Nightmare Power.
• Catherine watched Yi Chen’s transformation and revealed that she had wagered with the women within her that he would survive and control the nightmare.
• Yi Chen’s Nightmare Transformation unlocked memories of killing companions and civilians during a past anomaly incident, followed by two years of imprisonment in a Mental Hospital.
• Black Liquid and Nightmare Substance combined as six iron chains erupted from Yi Chen’s back and became powerful tentacles that could support his body.
• Yi Chen created a Faceless Mask, and his tentacles lunged at Catherine before stopping just short; he told her the transformation felt “Not bad.”

Catherine explained the Nightmare Game and gave Yi Chen her ID card before he entered a team’s dream space to practice controlling its terrain. He built a maze and identified Branklin, the dangerous Death Row Inmate known as the Farmer, as his first target.

• Catherine questioned Yi Chen about his nightmare experiences and explained that the circus had given her the ability to infect people with nightmares.
• Catherine warned Yi Chen not to reveal his identity or help the dream entrants, then gave him her ID card.
• Catherine drew five doors, but Yi Chen used his own tentacles to create a door into one team’s dream space.
• Yi Chen reshaped the empty space into a maze and hid in its walls while waiting for the team to arrive.
• A five-person team descended the Nightmare Stairway, and Yi Chen recognized Branklin, the Farmer, as a particularly dangerous Death Row Inmate.

Yi Chen manipulated Squad Four through the Orphanage maze, separating its members and driving three to wake up after seeing false companions and killing themselves. On the sixth layer, Branklin exposed the disguised nightmare entity, broke free of his restraints, and joined Butch to fight it and pursue their mission.

• Yi Chen disrupted the team’s attempts to create Nightmare Stairways and used mirrors to split its members apart, leaving Butch and Branklin connected by a collar and rope.
• Three Squad Four members woke at the Power Station and reported meeting different versions of their teammates before feeling compelled to commit suicide; technicians later detected signs that Butch and Branklin were under attack.
• On the sixth layer, a disguised Captain Ross found Butch and Branklin and urged them to follow him, but Branklin recognized the impostor by its corpse-like, unsalty sweat.
• Branklin summoned pig-men to attack the impostor, but it destroyed them with black tentacles and revealed itself as a nightmare entity.
• Branklin strengthened himself, burst his collar, and asked Butch to help capture information from the nightmare entity; Butch agreed.

Tamer Butch escaped the dream and described Yi Chen as a Nightmare, but persuaded the technicians to let Branklin keep fighting. In the dream, Yi Chen defeated Branklin long enough to begin Enlightenment, uncovering the tragic events that led Branklin to become a killer.

• Tamer Butch awoke vomiting and told the technicians that a powerful Nightmare had killed his squad, but urged them not to disconnect Branklin because he was still fighting.
• The technicians detected Branklin's strong brain activity and allowed him to remain in the dream, while Butch resolved to investigate his past crimes after the Nightmare Event.
• Yi Chen opened a larger arena and fought Branklin, who used his pig-man strength, executioner skills, and sense of smell to attack.
• Yi Chen struck Branklin along a Slaughter Line, incapacitated him, and began Enlightenment by writing Mad Characters on his brain.
• Yi Chen read Branklin's memories and learned that his father hid him in a pigpen because the townspeople feared his unusual size, then encouraged him to become a gentleman after he saved pigs from a Sick One.
• Branklin returned from training to find his home burned and his father missing; after townspeople blamed them for a Sickness Event, he saw them as beasts and began killing with his father's butcher's knife.

Yi Chen recruited Branklin as his assistant in the Dream Arena and sent him to help clear the remaining ordinary squad. When Yi Chen encountered Slona, her deception enraged him, and he transformed her into a Mind Tribute, killing her in the waking world.

• Yi Chen accepted Branklin as a student and promised him Nightmare Clues and a cyborg body in exchange for helping in the dream.
• Catherine outfitted Branklin with grease-collecting tanks, protective clothes, and a breathing mask before Yi Chen took him to face the last ordinary squad.
• On the Nightmare’s Eighth Floor, Yi Chen and Branklin separated Slona’s squad members and drove them to flee or commit suicide.
• Slona tried to deceive Yi Chen with her hidden mental threads, but his black liquid swallowed them and he identified himself as a gentleman.
• Yi Chen split Slona’s head, branded her with madness, and made her a Mind Tribute; her brain tissue was drained in the Power Station, killing her ahead of time.

Yi Chen consumed Slona’s memories, rejected her fraudulent profession, and learned that the Gentleman Squad included Zion’s prophet, Marko and Martin, and Hogney Zede. Catherine led Yi Chen and Branklin into Nightmare Town to prepare for the approaching Vanguard Squad, and Yi Chen spotted the town’s amusement park and circus.

• Yi Chen absorbed Slona’s memories, became furious at her cruelty, and cut off the brain addiction her thoughts had triggered.
• Yi Chen explained that Slona’s deception had exposed her and identified Marko and Martin and Hogney Zede as members of the Gentleman Squad.
• Yi Chen told Branklin that he was playing a game with the Nightmare’s source to make her leave Zion and end the Nightmare crisis.
• Catherine announced that the score was 3:2 and that the Vanguard Squad would reach Nightmare Town within an hour.
• Catherine opened a door into Nightmare Town, where Yi Chen climbed onto a streetlamp and used the Nightmare’s authority to survey the town.
• Yi Chen spotted a distant amusement park and circus, and Catherine said the area would be used against more difficult opponents.