Taming the Beast World with a Frying Pan-Chapter 40: The Dream Puff Nightmare

The world was burning. Or maybe it was drowning. Kael couldn’t tell.

He was lying on something soft, but his body felt like it was encased in lead. His head was filled with a thick, pulsating purple fog that swirled with every heavy beat of his heart. Shadows danced on the periphery of his vision—distorted shapes that looked like laughing foxes and coiling snakes, mocking him.

’Ren,’ his mind grasped at the name like a drowning man clutching driftwood. ’I have to find Ren.’

He tried to sit up, summoning the strength that usually flowed effortlessly through his massive frame. It wasn’t there. His muscles felt like water.

"Shh," a voice cooed from the shadows. "Lie down, Alpha. The fever is still high."

A cool hand pressed against his bare chest, pushing him back down. It wasn’t Ren’s hand. Ren’s hands were small, soft, and usually warm from cooking. This hand was larger, the fingers stronger, and the nails were sharp enough to scratch.

Kael blinked, trying to clear the haze from his vision. He wasn’t in the swamp. He was back in the Alpha Cave. The high stone ceiling was familiar. The smell of dry straw, old bones, and tiger musk was familiar.

But the memory of how he got there was jagged.

The Flashback: Six Hours Ago

The Black Swamp had been a frozen hell.

Kael had waded through waist-deep muck, dragging the carcass of the crocodile he had killed, his mind focused solely on the Onyx Palace looming in the distance. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

He had reached a small hummock of land—a patch of relatively dry earth rising out of the slime. He climbed onto it, needing to catch his breath before the final swim.

He took a step.

Squish.

It wasn’t the wet, sucking sound of mud. It was the dry, hollow sound of something bursting under pressure.

Kael looked down. Beneath his boot, hidden by a layer of rotting leaves, was a cluster of bulbous, glowing purple fungi.

Dream Puff Mushrooms.

Before he could hold his breath, the caps exploded. A cloud of glittering violet spores shot upward, coating his face, his chest, and filling his nose with a sickly-sweet, cloying dust.

Kael coughed, inhaling deeply in shock.

The effect was instantaneous.

The world didn’t just tilt; it melted. The trees screamed with voices. The water of the swamp turned into boiling blood. Vines detached themselves from the canopy and formed into monsters—twisted, laughing faces of lions, snakes, and foxes.

"Ren!" Kael had roared, swinging his spear at a tree that looked like a demon.

His balance failed. The neurotoxin raced through his blood, hijacking his nervous system, replacing reality with a waking nightmare. He saw Ren walking away from him, hand in hand with a shadow. He saw the White Tiger Clan burning.

He fell. The mud rose up to swallow him.

As the darkness closed in, a figure appeared above him. Not a monster. A Tiger. A silhouette he had known since childhood.

"I have you," a voice had whispered, cutting through the madness. "I have you, my love."

Vara.

The Present: The Alpha Cave

Kael groaned, the memory fading into a dull, rhythmic throb behind his eyes.

"Drink," Vara ordered gently.

She was kneeling beside him, holding a clay bowl filled with a dark, greenish liquid. She looked pristine, her blonde hair groomed into complex braids, wearing a fresh doe-skin bikini that accentuated her curves. She looked like the perfect mate—strong, beautiful, and attentive.

"No," Kael gritted out, turning his head away. "Water. Just... water."

"This is medicine," Vara insisted, her voice hardening slightly, losing the veneer of sweetness. "To clear the swamp-poison. Drink, Kael. Or you will die. Do you want to leave the tribe leaderless?"

She didn’t wait for him to agree. She pinched his nose shut.

Kael gasped for air, his mouth opening instinctively. Vara tipped the bowl.

The liquid poured down his throat. It tasted bitter, metallic, and cloying. It burned on the way down.

As soon as it hit his stomach, the heaviness in his limbs returned tenfold. The clarity he had fought for slipped away, replaced by the purple fog.

"Good boy," Vara purred, wiping his chin with her thumb.

She set the bowl down and crawled over him, straddling his legs. She was a familiar weight, a warrior’s weight, but it felt wrong.

"Where..." Kael rasped, his tongue feeling thick and swollen. "Where is... she?"

Vara sighed, a sound of exaggerated pity. She ran her hands up his chest, tracing the scars he had earned in battle.

"The hairless mammal?" Vara asked softly. "Oh, Kael. You still ask for the pet?"

She leaned down, her face inches from his, her golden eyes filled with mock sympathy.

"She is gone, Alpha. She left."

"Liar," Kael growled, though it sounded weak, more like a purr of distress than a threat. "She... was taken. Stolen."

"Was she?" Vara touched his forehead, feigning concern. "I saw her, Kael. In the swamp. She was on the snake’s boat. She wasn’t fighting. She wasn’t screaming. She was wearing his robes. She was preparing his food."

Kael closed his eyes. ’No. Ren fights. She hit me with a pan. She bit me. She wouldn’t submit.’

"She chose the cold," Vara whispered, her voice like poison dripping into his ear. "She is a weak, hairless thing. She hates the stinky cave. She hates the dirt. Syris offered her a palace. And she ran to him."

"No," Kael mumbled, fighting the drug, fighting the image Vara was painting. "The bond... I feel the bond..."

"The bond is a trick," Vara hissed, her nails digging slightly into his pectorals. "She bewitched you with her strange food. But the spell is breaking. I am here now. I saved you from the mud. I carried you home when she abandoned you to die."

She laid her head on his chest.

"Forget the pet, Kael. She is warm in another male’s bed. The tribe needs an Alpha. And the Alpha needs a real mate. A tigress."

Kael tried to push her off. He tried to summon the strength to shift, to roar, to rip her throat out for lying.

But his arms wouldn’t move. The "medicine" was a paralytic mixed with a sedative. It kept him conscious enough to hear her words, to let them fester in his mind, but too weak to act.

He stared up at the stone ceiling of the cave.

The image of Ren—laughing in the bamboo grove holding her frying pan like a shield—flickered in his mind. It was getting harder to hold onto. The purple fog was eating the edges of the memory, twisting it until he wasn’t sure if Ren was smiling at him or laughing at him.

’Ren,’ he screamed internally, the sound echoing in the void of his mind. ’Ren, where are you?’

"Rest now," Vara soothed, stroking his hair possessively. "When you wake up, the human will be just a bad dream. And we will rule the valley together."