Medieval castles were built from massive blocks of stone for the sake of defense. Their windows were tiny, and they had very little natural light.
The hall of Sothoth Castle was especially dim. Even during the day, it needed a great many candles.
Aaron stood in a corner, watching his father, his eldest brother, and a group of knights argue heatedly about something, while his eyes rested on the white candles.
In this world of low productivity, commoners use candles or oil lamps for light, too. But castles use beeswax candles, which produce very little smoke when they burn. Commoners can only use paraffin candles or animal fat... Use those too much, and the smoke might even blind you.
As for his father and his advisers' argument, and the dispute with the neighboring territory, Aaron knew exactly what was going on.
Come to think of it, he really admired the transmigrators in the novels from his previous life. One person could spur tremendous technological progress and even industrial upgrades, as if they had an encyclopedia in their head and knew everything.
But as a humanities student, all he could recall were a few extremely limited and fragmentary bits of information.
Of course, even those few bits of information were extraordinarily valuable in this era.
But how to put it? Aaron Sothoth just couldn't bring himself to care.
After all, with Colin as the legitimate heir, Theodore, a member of an old noble family, would never let Aaron inherit the territory. And in his pursuit of centralized power, Theodore rejected anything that might divide his lands.
As the family's second son, Aaron would at most receive a paltry gift of money when he came of age, then have to make his own way in the world.
Aaron had tried once. After plenty of failures, he finally worked out how to make cheap, durable paper, and built a paper mill.
Then the man he called Father gave him a mere word of praise before ordering the steward to take the mill into public ownership.
That immediately killed Aaron's enthusiasm and made him understand his situation.
He'd been lucky with his new life, but not lucky enough.
It wasn't just the ancient Eastern rites that devoured people. The rules in the West were no different.
In the territory, the lord's word was law! Any resistance without power behind it was a joke!
He even had to be grateful that he wasn't a commoner, or worse, a lowly serf.
Once, Aaron had seen a clever young serf try to report a tax collector's embezzlement while Colin was inspecting the fields.
But before the boy could reach Colin, the guards kicked him half to death for blocking the path of his noble lord with his filthy body!
As for what the boy had been shouting, Colin didn't even deign to listen!
After that, Aaron became even more cautious—or, perhaps, more silent.
What about killing Colin and taking his place?
To be honest, he'd considered it. But after weighing the supporters each of them had and his standing in Theodore's eyes, he gave up on the rather unappealing idea.
After all, because Aaron had kept his head down, Colin might not have liked him, but he hadn't gone so far as to kill him. It still sat uneasily with Aaron to strike first.
Besides, the paper mill was a small price to pay for all those years of room and board.
The conflict between the Sothoth Family and the Davis Family had also started because of that mill.
The profits from the paper mill had attracted the Davis Family's covetous attention. They had sent a few spies before, and after several discussions between the heads of the two families, the sides had finally signed a peace treaty. The betrothal between their direct heirs was meant to seal the deal.
But now...
"The Davis Family isn't satisfied with our previous proposal. They want more..."
Theodore drew his dagger and slammed it into the wooden table. Its hilt continued to tremble. "We need to make them understand that they've made a grave mistake!"
The men in the hall roared savagely, Colin reddest of all.
Aaron shouted a few slogans along with them, but without much enthusiasm.
For some reason, Theodore glanced toward the corner. "Aaron, you're sixteen now. You're a man. It's time to go to the battlefield and earn your own achievements."
"Yes, Father." Aaron hesitated for a moment, then answered calmly.
This was a society where two lords could go to war over a wild boar. Aaron had been lucky to avoid the battlefield until now.
Night fell.
Even so, Colin gets dumped, and I'm the one who has to go to war for him. This sucks. You never know when a stray arrow or blade might get you killed... I can't bear to leave the pretty maids at home...
Aaron was shirtless. He waved a beautiful maid with flushed cheeks out of the room, then gazed at the closed door, lost in thought.
At that moment, Aaron felt devoid of desire, like a sage. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
He'd always been a good sleeper. He could practically doze off the moment his head hit the pillow.
When I close my eyes, the world ceases to exist...
His body was falling. He jolted awake.
Aaron opened his eyes and saw an expanse of deep blue ocean. "It's this place again. This dream again!"
As a transmigrator, he did have a cheat, though it was useless. Whenever he fell asleep, he entered this dream and remained conscious, as if he were lucid dreaming.
Aaron had entered this dream when he was still a baby and had seen the deep blue sea.
As for himself, he was in a very strange state. He seemed to hover above the surface of the sea, yet also seemed to have no weight at all.
He was like a ghost. Anything could pass right through him, while he couldn't muster the strength to lift even a speck of dust.
It was as if he were... a mere observer, a prisoner fixed in place.
Aaron had even wondered whether this was just an unusual dream, not a cheat at all.
Only after trying over and over and finding himself in the same dream each time did he finally have to admit that this might not be a dream, but another world.
"But... why am I stuck in the middle of an ocean?"
Aaron was utterly exasperated. He was practically sick of looking at the horizon.
But as time passed, he realized that his consciousness seemed to grow stronger bit by bit.
Or rather, entering the dream each night was strengthening his consciousness.
Until tonight!
After sixteen years of accumulation, he'd finally reached some kind of limit!
Boom!
Aaron Sothoth felt a sensation beyond words.
His consciousness expanded without limit, as if it had broken through some barrier, extending and swelling without end...
Disorder, chaos... He seemed to be at the center of a void, while distorted shadows danced to the sound of mad flutes and emerald flames...
Power surged through him. It seemed that he could change everything before his eyes with a mere wave of his hand!
He smiled, looking at the horizon that seemed unchanged for sixteen years, and the sun above it. With a hint of madness, he thought, "If I can change things, this sun is so boring to look at. It'd be better if it were red!"
The instant the thought crossed his mind, Aaron felt something like a floodgate open in his consciousness. The power that had built up over sixteen years poured out!
Across the sky, the surface of the seemingly eternal star was suddenly covered in blood-red spots. The spots joined together, staining the entire sun red!
Crimson light poured down, spreading across the land and ocean...
Something indescribably horrifying and uncanny seemed to lurk within that light.
Splash!
The sea parted, and fish surfaced. Then their scales burst open, as if countless threadworms were wriggling beneath their flesh. Sharp claws and teeth sprouted from their bodies...
The monstrous fish gathered, biting, devouring, and merging with one another...
A larger shadow appeared in the distance. A whale-like creature emerged as the final victor, then began to undergo an even more frenzied mutation of flesh...
"I... I didn't mean to..."
Feeling his consciousness sink back into the weakness of infancy, while his sanity gradually broke free of the madness, Aaron wanted to cry.
Just then, fragments of information surfaced in his mind:
[I am Dream, I am Entropy, I am everything!]
[I exist beyond all dimensions. I cannot be described or named!]
[I can do anything!]
[I am... the "Dream Creator"!]
Please support my new book.
Before you continue