I Got A Title: Lord Of The Time!-Chapter 98: Is this really a dream?

Complete darkness.

The surrounding space was entirely black, without a single patch of light.

Inside this space there was a consciousness.

And it awoke abruptly.

...

Inside a surreal room with stairs and bridges, near one of the ledges lay a group of six people, sleeping so soundly it seemed they were dead.

Suddenly, Lin sharply opened his eyes and jumped up, not understanding where he was or what was happening.

"Who am I?" he asked himself and began to look around to understand where he was.

Like a future sea, his memories slowly began returning to his mind — who he was, what his name was, what was happening, and much more. Lin grabbed his head and for some time tried to accept it all, then structure it to make it easier to navigate.

When all the memories returned, Lin looked at the surroundings with a new gaze; his eyes quickly scanned every surface to understand faster, until he noticed that the blue door was now closed.

"Blue door?.." Lin looked around and saw that his groupmates were sleeping deeply, as if they were never going to wake up.

Because Lin was very capable of quick thinking and coming to various decisions, he immediately understood what had happened to them and where he had been wandering all this time.

"So it was a dream after all?" Lin looked at the surroundings and the closed blue door and continued: "All this time, I was in a dream? And the blue door was closed?"

Lin shook his head and called up the status window: 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

[Status:

— Physical health: 80%

— Mental health: 73%

— Distortion: 0%]

"0%... And the regular indicators are at a decent level... So it really was a dream, and all that Distortion that reached 99% — was that a deception?"

Lin pondered and recalled all his sensations during the time he was Distorted.

"At first I forgot everything... even how to speak and think. Then I visited strange places — deep underwater, some red space. And then... a completely white space where I had the chance to say and think something..."

"But then I began to feel growing pain in my stomach until I completely lost myself and disappeared, turning into a Distorted creature..."

"How interesting..." Lin sat down on the floor and began to reflect, trying to somehow connect everything together and make a final conclusion about what had happened to them.

"Blue door... Dark forest... Distortion... Everything points to the fact that we really were asleep, but then why did the skills work and the status window appear? Or was the illusion of the dark forest so real that it even deceived the perception of the Title System? And the terrain itself resembled some forest from the Magic World, and also the mention of Sisyphus... Were we really in the Magic World when active infection by Distortion was occurring there, and that forest and its inhabitants were merely victims?"

Lin looked at the lying figures and noticed that Aran’s body was closest to the blue door.

Exactly as it had been when they were suggesting he close the door.

Lin frowned.

"Did someone close the door? Although I don’t really remember what happened after we were knocked out, it seems Aran didn’t close the door... Then who did it? Or did they close themselves?" Even more questions flared up in Lin’s head, but there was no answer.

He sighed and looked at his groupmates, who were sleeping deeply like cats. He decided that they needed to be woken up to discuss the local oddities.

He crouched down and began shaking several bodies at once to speed up the effect.

"Wake up!"

But there was no response from the people.

"Looks like they fell into the same dream as I did... But why then didn’t they wake up with me? Could it be that their exploration of the dark forest was much safer than mine?"

Lin sighed and continued shaking the bodies harder to wake them up. But unfortunately, he didn’t succeed.

"In any case, they’ll wake up someday, so I’ll just wait for their awakening," Lin decided and sat down to meditate.

Since he hadn’t succeeded, there was no point in wasting more energy on it. Better to meditate and get more benefit from that than from futile attempts.

Lin slowly closed his eyes and began to meditate.

...

After an unknown amount of time, five people slowly began to open their eyes and look around. Their eyes were innocent and uncomprehending until they slowly started to recall memories of recent events.

Yulan suddenly cried and smiled.

"I’m alive... I thought I was dead... But I’m alive..."

Another girl, Silia, approached her, tried to comfort Yulan, and looked at everyone, asking:

"Were you also inside the dark forest?"

Everyone nodded.

Lin slowly opened his eyes and looked at the five people who had successfully gotten up from a long sleep.

"I heard that everyone here saw the dark forest? Did you see a strange black creature that left behind a black substance?"

Egro and Royal felt goosebumps when Lin asked about the creature. Aran laughed.

"Ha-ha-ha! Of course! A Distorted creature of level: Demon... Lin, you woke up first? Maybe you can tell us what you figured out during this time? As you understand, our current state is quite specific, and it will be hard for us to think clearly about anything."

Lin calmly nodded and shared his assumptions:

"In short — it was a dream. We all saw the same dreams in the same place: the dark forest. I don’t know what places you saw there, but I visited an abandoned campfire and three houses where all the inhabitants decided to commit suicide."

Many nodded, but Aran and Silia remained puzzled.

"Three houses where everyone decided to commit suicide? I saw a campfire without an owner, but then I found a small cave where it said that everything was cursed and Distortion would reach them..." Silia slowly recounted what she herself had encountered.

"Oh?" Aran looked at Silia and smiled.

"So you also found a cave? I wandered completely alone until I found a cave with records... But I didn’t see any campfire or three houses."

"That area was huge. And it’s definitely located in the Magic World," Royal stated, then suggested: "When I was inside the forest, I felt that the species there reminded me of something, until I realized that it was the Jade Forest."

Aran and Silia nodded, agreeing with Royal.

"The dark forest really resembled the Jade Forest. But it was obviously gloomy with an endless night."

Lin decided to ask:

"I’m most curious about one thing: who closed the door after everyone was knocked out? Aran was standing closest to the door and didn’t respond to our words," Lin looked at Aran and asked: "Do you have an explanation? Why didn’t you close the door when we asked you to?"

Aran smiled awkwardly and asked:

"What are you talking about? Didn’t we all fall asleep at the same time after I opened the door?"