Lighting the Fireplace

Zhou Kai staggered out of the study and slammed into the hallway wall, his back pressed against its icy surface as his heart hammered wildly.

He stared fixedly at the little square window behind the bookshelf. It was empty, as though nothing had happened.

Yet the corner of his eye still twitched uncontrollably, and every hair on the back of his neck stood on end. It felt as if that pale, swollen face was still pressed against the glass, staring at him with lifeless eyes.

That had definitely not been an illusion.

The numbness in his body had not fully faded. Remembering the daze he had just fallen into, a chill shot straight from his tailbone to the top of his skull.

If [Comprehensive Combat] had not risen to Level 2, dramatically increasing his strength and bringing his control over his body to a new level, allowing him to break free of that strange restraint...

He would probably have walked to the window like a puppet on strings and opened the Gate for that monster to enter Home with his own hands...

"It... probably can't get in, right?"

Zhou Kai's heart sank as that so-called residence permit notification appeared before him again.

[An authenticated residence permit will force other residents not to easily invade your territory.]

Looking at it now, that short sentence was full of traps.

Zhou Kai sneered inwardly.

[Easily]?

In other words, it only needed a little effort.

[Residents]?

Did that thing outside the window count as a "resident"?

It seemed the protection Home could provide in a Nightmare was nothing special after all.

He picked up the door panel he had smashed through. Despite the splinters stabbing into him, he barely managed to wedge it across the study doorway. Then he went to the Oil Lamp and turned its flame down to the lowest setting.

In an instant, the shadows in the house grew thicker and deeper, as if they could swallow every trace of light.

Danger was everywhere here...

This house was far less safe than he had imagined.

Unless he searched every inch of it, he would never know which corner might still hide a window that had not been properly sealed.

And outside those windows, perhaps a pale, vacant face like a lump of fermented dough was constantly Peeping at him from the darkness.

"I hope it didn't get in."

Zhou Kai moved swiftly along the walls on the first floor, his footsteps almost soundless.

Every time he checked a corner, he would whip around, terrified that the moment he turned his back, he would come face-to-face with that face.

The results of his search were nothing.

There was no information about fuel anywhere.

Zhou Kai had already spent more than half an hour in the dream. The cold pierced into his body through every pore like steel needles.

His joints had frozen stiff. Every step he took seemed to make his bones scrape together with a dry, grating sound.

He had no choice but to abandon the idea of exploring the dark corridor ahead.

The other end of the corridor should have led to the basement.

He retreated to the Fireplace. This was the most likely place on the entire first floor to contain clues.

[Brave souls who actively enter a Nightmare may leave at any time...]

[Cowards who passively enter a Nightmare must erect a tombstone... or possess a flame sufficient to keep watch through the night...]

Characters slowly emerged across the cold stone of the Fireplace, as if urging him to leave.

"Erect a tombstone means I have to die once before I can leave..."

"A flame to keep watch through the night?"

Zhou Kai had no idea, but the good news was that he had entered voluntarily.

But his eyes soon narrowed. "No... I can't leave yet!"

In a Nightmare, despair fermented.

The longer he dragged things out, the more unimaginable the horror he would ultimately face.

Before he was forced into the dream a few days later, he had to solve the urgent problem of keeping warm.

"But... what exactly is fuel?"

Irritation flared in his heart like a flame.

Just then, his gaze crossed the cold firebox and drifted toward the... monster's corpse in the corner, its outline terrifying under the Oil Lamp's faint glow.

He remembered the stark white bones amid the ashes, apart from the broken wood.

He remembered that baffling word on the Letter Paper: "confession."

A mad yet utterly logical idea exploded in his mind.

Zhou Kai did not hesitate for another moment. He sprang up, and his axe cleaved viciously into the corpse's shoulder blade with a dull rush of wind.

After the muffled sound of steel sinking into flesh, he dragged the thing toward the Fireplace like a heavy bag of trash, leaving a wide, sticky dark-red smear across the floor.

A home should look like a home.

[A warm Fireplace will accompany you through the long night.]

A chat box appeared amid the flickering firelight.

The Fireplace was finally lit.

The flames reflected brightly in Zhou Kai's eyes.

Inside the firebox, crackling alongside the wood, were one of the monster's legs and one arm.

"Confession? Was it because he and Lan Ze burned the Outlander?"

Remembering the Letter Paper's contents, Zhou Kai finally understood.

The Fireplace here actually used the flesh and blood of [monsters], even [humans], as its base fuel.

Without real [fuel], this fire could not even be lit!

Zhou Kai let out a long breath of White Mist and sat down wearily beside the Fireplace.

Long-lost warmth slowly spread from his side, driving away the cold that had seeped into his bones and gradually easing the exhaustion that had nearly crushed him.

A few minutes later.

Lines of text drifted through Zhou Kai's vision.

[Fatigued status has disappeared]

[Weakened status has disappeared]

[The Erosion affecting you is being dispelled]

The newly acquired Fatigued status and the Weakened status that had plagued him for days vanished completely, while the four-ninths Erosion status flickered unsteadily in the firelight.

Perhaps if he warmed himself for another hour or two, the number in the denominator would decrease by one.

Wouldn't that mean one more chance to revive?

After weighing his options, it was far more worthwhile to let the corpse burn slowly than to burn it all at once.

And the benefits brought by the burning Fireplace went far beyond that.

After Zhou Kai had regained some energy and tossed the rest of the remains into the Fireplace, trying to maximize its burn time—

Another chat box suddenly appeared above the Fireplace.

[Filthy flesh and a blasphemous soul have dissolved in the flames... You have received Lan Ze Soraka's gift.]

[You have gained Spearmanship Experience *3, Horsemanship Experience *1, Soraka Family Swordplay Experience *1]

[You know nothing, so you have ultimately gained: Universal Experience *1]

"This corpse wasn't that bald guy with the big beard. It was the younger brother, Lan Ze?"

The fact that burning a corpse could grant experience surprised Zhou Kai quite a bit.

But the conversion ratio from all those different specialized experience points into universal experience made him feel like he had been brutally ripped off.

Five to one!

That was more ruthless than the capitalists!

Still, there was nothing he could do. He did not know any of those skills, and there was nowhere to learn them...

Being able to convert them into universal experience was already a blessing in disguise. It was better than coming away empty-handed.

In the end, Zhou Kai gradually squeezed four points of universal experience from a complete corpse.

And Erosion progress -1, which meant revival chances +1.

The Fireplace's remaining burn time displayed one hour and forty minutes.

That meant if Zhou Kai left now, he would have a "spring" that could last for over an hour when he entered next time.

"So, should I keep exploring, or return to reality and rest up?"

Zhou Kai thought for a moment and decisively chose the latter. The longer he stayed in a Nightmare, the more variables there would be.

He gathered this trip's gains and silently said before the Fireplace, "Leave."

"Xiao Kai, did you have another nightmare?"

Back in reality, the little night-light beside the bed was on.

Zhou Qing sat by the bed, looking tenderly at her younger brother.

Zhou Kai's expression stiffened. His throat was dry as he gave a slight shake of his head.

Zhou Qing explained, "My workplace is changing dormitories, so I have to come home and stay for the next few days."

"You sleep in your bed." Her voice was soft, yet it sounded as though it came from very far away. "I'll just sleep on the floor."

Zhou Kai felt the temperature in the room being drained away bit by bit. There was not the slightest warmth in his sister's smile; it was like a human face painted onto ice.

Her shadow stretched and twisted across the wall, standing like a baby who had just learned to walk.

The two fell silent.

About two minutes later, Zhou Kai suddenly shivered. His body jolted violently as he instinctively opened his eyes.

All he saw was darkness.

"That... was a dream too?"

He tried hard to erase his sister's sinister face from his mind, but a chill ran through him.

He struggled to push himself up from the bed and reached out to turn on the light.

He found himself drenched in cold sweat, with a human-shaped wet mark left on the bedsheet.

His life was sliding uncontrollably into a bizarre abyss.

Suppressing a sigh, Zhou Kai silently got up and splashed his face with cold water. Then he sat at his desk and took a laptop from the drawer.

The Red Star Republic's technological style pursued a retro sense of futurism.

For example, this laptop had to be designed to look like an old-fashioned craft item.

The screen was only a finger thick, but its bezel was sharp enough to prick his fingers.

The body was two fingers thick, and when he typed on its keyboard, it clicked crisply like a typewriter from an old movie.

Zhou Kai had bought this during his junior year. Its performance had been top-tier at the time, and it was not too outdated even now.

He opened a browser and typed several keywords into the search bar.

[Soraka - Soraka Town - family - The Church]