Chapter 795: Beetle

"Tch, violent woman!"

Looking up at the night sky blanketed with fragments of dream-world creatures, the Scorpion Director couldn't help but sneer, then gestured with a finger toward the doll crawling out of the box.

"Your turn… take a look at every dream-world creature she missed."

Upon hearing the tall, thin man's words, the pale doll, who had been staring at Li Ang, nodded. Its slender body straightened with unnatural stiffness, then mimicked the Scorpion Director's motion, tilting its head upward toward the blood-red sky.

"Roar!!!"

At the very moment the pale doll raised its head, countless tiny black dots suddenly appeared across the sky, thickly carpeted with sharp crimson hairs.

Even though the Red-Haired Director's killing efficiency was astonishing—tens of thousands of dream-world creatures were sliced to shreds every second as they passed through the crimson hair-net—the River of Nightmares seemed endless, continuously spewing forth new nightmares.

Under the relentless, fearless onslaught of the infinite dream-world creatures, the crimson sky barrier stretched by the Red-Haired Director finally developed gaps. Some elite nightmares, denser in form and more grotesque in appearance, battered and bleeding, broke through the barrier of 【Blood-Slaying Crimson Hairs】 and squeezed into reality.

A snarling ghost wrapped in gray mist, a headless knight wielding a whip made of spinal bones, a colossal skeletal statue built from fragile bones, a beautiful woman in thin robes walking through snow and wind… one after another, figures from tales and nightmares appeared before Li Ang's eyes, real and undeniable.

…

These things… I feel like I've heard of them before…

Watching the dream-world creatures that had breached reality and were now rushing desperately toward the Capital, Li Ang's eyes darkened with thought.

The snarling ghost wrapped in gray mist… seemed to be the monster from folk tales of the Black Forest Duchy, said to wander wildlands and prey on lost travelers; the headless knight with the long whip… appeared to be the emissary who harvested the spines of evildoers and offered them to Death;

The skeletal colossus also seemed tied to some legend—likely formed from the corpses of those who starved to death during famine and war, devouring anything edible; and the beautiful woman with translucent pale skin, arriving with blizzards, was an ancient tale known for countless generations in the Northern Kingdom.

Compared to the dream-world creatures easily shredded by the Director, these nightmares that had successfully breached reality seemed vastly more famous.

So for these dream-world creatures, the more people knew of them—or believed in their existence—the easier it was for them to appear in nightmares, and the stronger the dream-world entities they spawned became?

"Squeak."

As Li Ang pondered the origins of these dream-world creatures, the pale doll covered in thorns shook its head. Its ball-joints creaked as they turned stiffly, and its unsettling hollow gaze locked onto the snarling ghost at the forefront.

"Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!"

The sound of joint twisting echoed again—but this time, it did not come from beside Li Ang. It came from the night sky above the Capital.

To Li Ang's astonishment, the ghost wrapped in hazy gray mist—the one said to prey on lost travelers—suddenly solidified into a physical form, then slumped lifelessly like a doll.

Next, the headless knight riding the skeletal horse also fell, his armor scattering into pieces, revealing arms and legs as pale as the doll's, limp and lifeless amid the broken plates.

Even the skeletal colossus, taller than the Capital's bell tower, had somehow transformed into a towering pale doll, utterly motionless. Any slight movement caused thorns to pierce its body, spurting blood and forcing it to roar in agony. "Fewer slipped through than I thought… Kill the first batch!"

After glancing at the nightmares now turned into dolls in the sky, the tall, thin man muttered, pulled a slender stiletto from his box, and stabbed the silent doll beside him—clean, swift, straight through the heart!

Immediately, as if triggering a chain reaction, the elite nightmares "captured" by the pale doll's gaze all shuddered simultaneously. A diamond-shaped wound burst open in their chests, gushing thick streams of crimson blood.

Whether the gray-mist ghost, sized like an ordinary human, or the hundred-meter-tall skeletal colossus—all of them screamed in despair the instant the tiny wound appeared, dying instantly, their bodies crumbling into dust and collapsing into floating ruins suspended in the night sky.

"Keep watching. Don't miss any!"

After instructing the doll still gazing skyward, the Scorpion Director yanked out the stiletto with a wet sound, then lifted the dripping blade and rummaged through his box, still not turning back:

"You're Li Ang, right? The nightmare that approached you before I arrived—though its words were nonsense, one thing it said wasn't wrong."

Pulling a bottle the size of a human head from the bottom of the box, he uncorked it and poured out its contents: black-gold beetles. Then, holding out his hand with a cold expression, he said:

"Give me Olivia's hair. Then go wherever you please. This isn't a place for a Level Three Cleaner like you!"

"…"

After glancing at the steady, statue-like hand before him, Li Ang couldn't help but look up at the sky.

The corpses of the headless knight and the skeletal colossus still floated in the Capital's night sky. This Scorpion Director demanding hair couldn't be a nightmare in disguise… but still…

"Sorry. My mission is to follow you and notify the Director the moment I find the Nightmare King."

"Tch… So why not just hand over the hair? What use is a burden like you staying?"

"It's none of my business—but I trust the Director's judgment. She told me to stay for a reason."

"Heh. Suit yourself."

Glancing at the crimson hairs curled around Li Ang's shoulder, the Scorpion Director's division chief sneered, then quickly emptied all the beetles from the bottle. He picked out the palm-sized mother beetle and pressed it against his chest.

"Ssshh! Ssshh! Ssshh!"

After completing this sequence, the scattered black-gold beetles on the ground let out piercing cries. Once they had cried for a while, he pinched the antennae of the mother beetle on his chest—and the palm-sized pure-gold mother beetle joined in.

Instantly, the scattered black-gold beetles, as if given orders, surged like a tide across the dock, each one latching onto a sleeping human—even one crawled onto Li Ang himself.

(End of Chapter)