However, his hand was still intact, showing no signs of injury.
It was as if he hadn't been hurt at all.
And his stomach, which had been cut open, was now perfectly fine.
"Wait, this is... my room?"
Kyle finally had the chance to notice his surroundings.
He realized he had returned to his own villa.
He had been in this villa when he set out to explore the abandoned manor.
"What's going on?"
Kyle wasn't unintelligent. He had been anxious and terrified before, leading to a panicked escape, only to be killed in the end.
Now that he had regained his composure and realized he was in a "safe" place, a familiar environment free from danger,
his mind began to slowly recover.
His suppressed intelligence also returned.
Therefore, he quickly realized a possibility.
"Was everything that happened before... a dream?"
"Was it not real?"
"Could it be that I've been dreaming all along, from then until now? That I've been in a dream?"
Kyle breathed a sigh of relief upon realizing this possibility.
That nightmare, that yellow skeleton, was too real.
That cut through flesh was too sharp.
The dim ancient tower, the endless stairwell – recalling them now, every detail flooded his mind, undiminished.
This dream was too real, and too bloody.
In the first half of his life, Kyle had experienced nightmares several times at night while watching horror movies, being chased by ghosts and spirits, and even being swallowed by a ghost.
Those were nightmares.
But after waking up from those nightmares, although he remembered the general outline, the specific details were forgotten.
Never had a nightmare been as vivid as this one!
And never had a nightmare been as real as this one!
"Is this really just a dream?"
"And... when did I fall asleep? I have no memory of it."
Kyle's mind raced, trying to recall when he had gone to bed.
But no matter how hard he thought, he couldn't remember when he had gone to sleep.
He had no recollection.
Instead of the memory of going to bed, his vivid recollection was of going to the abandoned manor for an adventure late at night.
Going to the abandoned manor late at night, discovering the endless stairwell, then spending over six hours in the endless stairwell, coming up to find the world changed, then seeing an ancient tower, and then encountering monsters in the ancient tower...
This sequence of events was clear, but what was unclear was when he had fallen asleep.
He frowned, looking at the bright sunlight outside his window, devoid of any chill, and felt something was amiss.
"Something's not right..."
"This dream is not right..."
"In a normal dream, as time passes, people gradually lose their memory of the dream. I've been awake for over ten minutes now, and I shouldn't remember too many details."
"Now all the details are crystal clear, even the names of the dozen bodyguards I brought with me... This is very strange, not like a dream, but like a personal experience."
"Perhaps I should ask them..."
After some thought, Kyle came up with a way to verify his experience: call the dozen or so bodyguards he remembered accompanying him.
In Kyle's opinion, this was the only way to confirm the truth.
As a result, after gathering more than a dozen bodyguards and questioning them,
Kyle immediately learned a startling piece of information.
In the dream, he had taken these bodyguards with him. And in reality, these bodyguards also stated that they had had the same dream last night.
The same endless stairwell.
And that ancient tower—the details were very similar!
A dream is, naturally, something an individual experiences.
Could any nightmare be shared by over a dozen people with the same content?
They didn't have telepathic minds, nor had they watched the same horror movie before. The saying "what you think about during the day, you dream about at night" was nonsense when applied to over a dozen people who hadn't shared the same experience.
Over a dozen people dreaming the same nightmare clearly indicated that there was something wrong with that dream.
Or rather, the dream was more than just a dream!
Thinking this, Kyle's face grew even paler. He had already harbored doubts about that dream, but seeing that his body was unharmed and that he had indeed woken up in bed, he had reluctantly accepted it as a dream.
Subconsciously, he didn't want to confirm that the dream was problematic.
However, now that the truth was revealed, the thing he had been avoiding was exposed.
He then discovered in terror that the nightmare was indeed not an ordinary nightmare!
Moreover, among these bodyguards, one person was missing.
This was the bodyguard who had been forgotten in the endless stairwell.
The bodyguard who had gone down first.
This person seemed to have vanished; he wasn't found at his residence, and his phone calls went unanswered.
Although Kyle hadn't truly investigated the person's fate,
he now had a premonition that he would probably never see that person again.
That person had likely—permanently disappeared from this world.
...
Kyle and his bodyguards were not the only ones to wake up from the nightmare; Kyle's younger brother, Hol, also woke up from the nightmare.
Hol initially thought it was just a dream.
However, looking at the lifeless green slime, several bottles of red potion, and blue potion placed in his room,
and that notebook.
The notebook that had guided him out of the nightmare.
Hol knew one thing.
What he had experienced before was not an ordinary nightmare.
Even if it was a dream space, it was a dream space that could affect the real world.
Otherwise, it would be impossible for even the remains of the slime from his dream to appear directly in reality.
"Slime mucus... what can this treasure do?"
Hol observed the slime mucus and these potions, his mind solely focused on finding the biologists in his biological laboratory to research them, with no intention of trying them himself.
These potions were clearly not all the potions from that room, but it was good enough to have these few bottles as samples—Hol alone couldn't have brought back so many bottles of potions.
Since he couldn't bring them all back, Hol felt no regret that not all the potions had appeared.
Other treasures had been brought back, but they were clearly not usable yet.
Hol picked up the notebook again.
The notebook was written in English, which he could understand.