Bitter Fruit (Thirty-Five)
Whether that nameless "it" actually existed was indeed an interesting question.
After all, in theory, everything that had happened along the way in Cold Mountain Town was more than enough to make the people invent such a threat out of thin air.
And after all those nights I'd spent wandering around, I hadn't so much as brushed against a hair of it. What's more, Dorian's methods in the first Healing Dreamscape had been full of attempts to lead me on.
Basically, he'd pulled out every trick in the book to make the outsider at the heart of the dream believe that this "it" existed, and then push it into actually appearing.
That blatant deception certainly made the possibility that "it" really existed seem even less likely.
It was just that I hadn't played along at the time.
And as it turned out, there could be no progress without pressure.
After failing to lead me on last time, Dorian had clearly given up hope of using that approach.
But under the threat I posed, he also knew all too well that this treatment was one he had to win.
In the end, faced with such a predicament, Dorian had decisively brought out something new: a pure, summoned Tool Person.
Compared to the others, the unfamiliar fourth person clearly had no special gift of power. At the same time, though, his fear of the night was top-tier.
So it didn't matter that he'd just been killed instantly by the swarm of insects. His sole purpose in appearing here was to make that "it" spring from the darkness, without needing me to play along.
But why was he the one who could do that?
Considering how utterly ordinary he was compared to the others, Fu Qian naturally thought again of