"Children, it's time for service after you finish eating..."
The nun's voice echoed through the empty dining hall but received no response.
She shook her head helplessly, passed through the dormitory, and pushed open the heavy wooden door of the chapel.
Inside, the light was dim. The setting sun shone through the stained glass, its rays fragmented into pieces, casting mottled patches of color across the floor.
Zhou Kai stood with a cold expression behind the nun, an observer from another dimension, sweeping his gaze indifferently across the scene.
He raised his head. His line of sight traced the images of saints on the stained glass all the way forward, finally landing on the altar where a divine statue should have been enshrined.
It was completely empty, as if the gods had long since abandoned this place.
"Evelyn, what are you doing?"
"Where did everyone go?"
In the frontmost row of the chapel, a little girl in a bright red dress was bent over, scribbling with crayons.
In the dimness, she shone like a streak of blood.
Watching this bizarre scene, Zhou Kai felt a tightness in his chest.
Here it comes again, a dream within a dream...
What is the meaning of this?
That girl—is she the Evelyn repeatedly mentioned by the paper puppet?
Unable to break free, with nowhere to escape, Zhou Kai could only patiently continue playing the spectator.
"Evelyn!"
The nun who had been speaking softly a second ago suddenly let out a scream, swung her fist, and viciously smashed it into the back of the girl's head.
Then, the girl was pressed firmly against the table, letting out miserable cries of struggle.
"Fuck!"
Zhou Kai's eyelids twitched. Perhaps it was this overly localized Chinese curse that broke the logic of the dream.
The nun and girl who had been violently harming one another stopped dead in their tracks. Two pairs of eyes swiveled uniformly toward Zhou Kai.
Their pupils had contracted into clumps of bizarre blackness, roiling with venomous resentment that looked ready to devour him alive.
"Piss off! What the hell are you staring at?"
Zhou Kai snorted coldly, meeting those two gazes head-on without dodging.
Crack...
The surrounding scenery shattered at the sound, like a mirror smashed by a heavy hammer.
A momentary sensation of weightlessness, as if falling into an abyss.
Huff!
Zhou Kai gasped for breath and snapped his eyes open.
A bedroom without a single ray of light. Beneath him, the bedsheet was soaked and ice-cold.
Exactly the same as last night.
...
Zhou Kai twisted the bedside lamp knob. A dim yellow halo of light lit up. Expressionless, he sat down at his desk.
He turned on the computer and skillfully logged into a virtual machine. After several redirects, he erased his original traces.
Some special tricks a roommate had taught him back in university—he never thought they'd come in handy now.
【Evelyn Soraka】
He typed out the name.
He had stumbled across it once before on a Nightmare forum and had thought it was utter nonsense at the time.
Could a name that repeatedly appeared in dreams really be connected to a real-life foreign actress?
The same name, the same surname.
It was hard not to read too much into such a coincidence.
Zhou Kai's intuition told him that the Nightmare was gradually lifting the veil of its mystery.
Cracking these puzzles might just be the key to his survival.
"Born in 1994... debuted in high school by releasing a record... influenced by parents from a young age..."
He swept through the information on the screen word by word, reading it back and forth several times, but still found nothing of value.
Zhou Kai found it rather absurd when he thought about it.
Not sleeping in the middle of the night, searching in reality for a woman from a dream—in the past, that would have been pure lunacy.
But now that even something like the Nightmare had materialized, what was still impossible?
"It would be nice if I could find childhood photos of her."
After a round of searching yielded no results, Zhou Kai made a mental note of the matter, preparing to dig deeper when he found an opportunity later.
For now, he had to cherish every second of [Mental Clarity], converting time into capital for survival.
It was still early until dawn. Having received the baptism of the forge, he was full of energy.
Zhou Kai simultaneously began practicing [Mixed Martial Arts] and [Lightfoot].
Lightfoot was an extremely versatile skill that could be practiced in parallel with almost any other skill.
Highly concentrated attention not only wouldn't cause conflict but instead complemented them.
For those combat techniques requiring evasion and maneuvering, practicing Lightfoot simultaneously could achieve an effect where one plus one was greater than two.
[An efficient night of synergistic practice]
[Lightfoot EXP +7]
[Mixed Martial Arts EXP +2]
A full nine experience points—quite a harvest.
He threw the sweat-soaked bedsheet into the washing machine and lay down on the bare mattress, regulating his breathing and entering meditation.
"The efficiency is high. If I can maintain Mental Clarity, my strength will skyrocket in an extremely short time!"
He quickly estimated that under the state of Mental Clarity, Lightfoot's practice efficiency had more than tripled, while Mixed Martial Arts was nearly doubled.
There were still over forty hours until the next forced conscription into the Nightmare.
He was absolutely confident that he could allow one of the skills to level up on its own.
As for the other, it could directly break through its bottleneck through allocating points.
"Power!"
Zhou Kai clenched his fist. A moment later, a flash of resolve crossed his eyes, and he embarked on a new course of action.
Under the state of Mental Clarity, his memory and hands-on ability were both enhanced.
Spending roughly twenty minutes, Zhou Kai used tape, a broom, and several water-filled plastic bottles to craft a crude yet effective substitute for a two-handed sword.
The key lay in controlling the weight and center of gravity.
He switched to training in [Soraka Swordsmanship].
"Practice of any single skill sees its effectiveness plummet after a period of stable growth."
"For me, that growth window is roughly three to five hours."
"The moment efficiency starts to decline, immediately switch to training another skill... that is the optimal solution."
Zhou Kai stood on the mattress and began to swing the broom slowly and with proper form, feeling the opposition and tension between the lever arm and muscle groups.
...
"Zhou Kai, come downstairs."
At eight in the morning, his phone screen lit up.
It was a message from his older sister, Zhou Qing.
[Soraka Swordsmanship EXP +3]
Glancing at the experience panel, Zhou Kai swiftly disassembled the practice sword, returned the miscellaneous items to their places, then dressed and went downstairs.
At the alley entrance of the tenement building, Zhou Qing was chatting with a tall woman, beaming with smiles.
The moment she saw Zhou Kai arrive, she eagerly took his hand and pulled him in front of her.
"Sui Die, this is my younger brother. Handsome, right?"
Zhou Qing's voice was filled with uncontainable pride.
Zhou Kai extended his hand, concise and to the point: "Zhou Kai."
The woman named Sui Die's expression flickered with an imperceptible change, but she still shook his hand perfunctorily. Her touch was ice-cold.
"Let's go, let's go. Sui Die is treating us to breakfast."
Zhou Qing seemed to be in an excellent mood.
Watching his sister's heartfelt joy, the corner of Zhou Kai's mouth couldn't help but rise slightly.
He wasn't actually very good at dealing with such situations, so as usual, he fell back half a step, following not far behind his sister.
His gaze rapidly swept over the two women.
Zhou Qing was roughly 1.65 meters tall. Her features bore some resemblance to Zhou Kai's, but with softer lines and larger eyes—the kind of beauty with an elegant temperament.
A head of sleek, short black hair made her look dashing and capable.
As for the woman called Sui Die, she was almost Zhou Kai's height. Even subtracting her heels, she was at least 1.82 meters tall.
She appeared very lean, with a cold, austere bearing that exuded an indescribable noble air.
Zhou Kai guessed she was a model, or perhaps...
'A soldier.'
'Calluses on her hands—could they be from holding a gun...'
Under the state of Mental Clarity, Zhou Kai's observational skills were as keen as some great detective in a movie, his thoughts racing like lightning.
Zhou Kai decided to pretend he knew nothing.
No matter what her identity was, as long as she didn't harm his sister, it was fine.
As for whether she was here for him...
Unlikely.
From the appearance of his Nightmare Syndrome symptoms until now, it had barely been a full week.
And judging by how intimate they were, they should be old acquaintances.