Chapter 79: Nightmare Castle
Space slashed open as Sara and the rest of the group appeared in front of a grand house.
After Night finally exited his soul space, they had immediately left for their new estate.
Sara had informed Zora before they teleported over to the residential sector.
Standing beside Sara was a girl with white hair, pale skin and black eyes with yellow irises.
It was Blade, disguised as a normal human.
She had altered her form before coming to the Dream City. Her identity was a secret, after all. Previously, in the Desert City, she could roam free purely because of Sara.
Here, they would have to play it safe, because this city was fundamentally different from their own.
There were simply far more powerful Awakeners residing in this city. In fact, compared to the others, the Desert City was easily the weakest among all twelve major cities in terms of overall combat strength.
The Dream City was undeniably one of the strongest human strongholds, if not the strongest. The Sea City and the Hidden Dragon City were the only ones that came close to it in terms of military might.
The main reason Sara didn’t firmly declare the Dream City as the strongest was solely because of the Hidden Dragon City. The Awakeners in that city had this weird cultural habit of constantly hiding their true strength.
"Playing the pig to eat the tiger" seemed to be an favorite quote among them.
And apparently, they seemed to enjoy slapping each other’s faces metaphorically in public; they even had a special term for it... what was it... ah yes, they called it ’face-slapping’.
At least, that was what Jingyi had proudly told her anyway.
Night looked up at the structure and said, "What a beautiful house..."
It was indeed beautiful.
Unlike the bland sandy yellow color practically every building had back in the Desert City, this one was a majestic dark gray. It appeared to have been meticulously crafted using solid mountain rocks.
It looked like a small fortress, sporting five watchtowers, one on each of the four outer corners, and a main watchtower directly in the center. It looked absolutely huge.
The small private garden surrounding the house had exotic plants, a few trees and some well-crafted wooden furniture.
It made him wonder exactly how they were going to manage staying in a house this big.
Eve said nervously, her robotic eyes scanning the square footage, "Master, this house will be an disaster to clean."
Sara waved her hand dismissively. "It’s not that big..."
Lilith nodded firmly beside her, her eyes flashing nervously. "Master, how about we just resell it and buy a smaller house instead?" She completely ignored the defeated look that crossed Sara’s face.
Death gripped her scepter. "Master, I think we should keep it. This house is perfect for storing a large number of skeletons," she said, eyeing each of the others with a dark gleam in her eye.
Sage, standing proudly on Night’s shoulder, looked excited.
Eke eke keke eeke!
(It’s like a huge mountain! I like it!)
@( ≧▽≦ )@
Lucy chuckled softly, carrying the divine chessboard strapped to her back.
"I think it’s perfectly fine. We will need huge space for training." It was obvious exactly what kind of ’training’ she meant.
Blade was quiet. She didn’t understand human aesthetics much anyway. She was okay with it as long as there was a quiet place to sleep without something constantly trying to kill her.
Night smiled. "Let’s check out the inside of the house first."
The others nodded in agreement.
Lucy pulled out the ownership token from her pocket and disabled the outer array shield, allowing them to enter safely, before closing it again once they were all inside the perimeter.
The first thing they noticed was the mana density. It was exponentially higher inside the garden perimeter than out on the street.
Night inhaled the fresh air and carefully observed the different magical plants and glowing grass in the garden.
He instinctively realized several of their alchemical properties and the methods to purify them.
I see. This is because of the passive wisdom I received from my new Profession as a Refiner, Night mused happily.
The front door was huge, built as if it was meant not for humans, but for giants.
Sara pushed the heavy double doors open. When they looked inside, it was....
Empty....
No carpet or exotic furniture neither some sparkling chandelier hanging from the high ceiling could be seen.
It looked completely barren, as if some meticulous thief had carefully licked the entire place clean before selling it.
Hearing the nervous chuckle Sara gave as she looked around the empty hall, it was incredibly obvious that even she hadn’t been expecting something as wonderfully barren as this.
Sara coughed awkwardly. "Haha... well, at least we don’t have to worry about not liking the previous owner’s interior design... We can now decorate it exactly as we want!"
Lucy frowned. "Well, since it came so cheap, we can’t exactly expect the sellers to leave us their spare luxury furniture." Her statement made Sara reel backward internally.
Curious, Night asked, "Really? How much was it?"
Lucy shook her head casually. "Just a measly 100 Million."
Night then smiled brightly at Sara and said, "Wow, this house was so cheap! Nice find, Sara!"
Hearing this, Sara almost had a stroke. 100 Million SC was ’cheap’?!
Holding her warm cheeks, Sara thought dreamily, Aah, what a wonderful sugar baby.... It seems I really can retire early after all...
Blade stated with a blank face, "100 Million is not cheap."
It was still weird for Night to get used to seeing her in a human form, especially since she did not show any micro-expressions on her face when she spoke.
"Really?" Night asked. He was not exactly familiar with the real estate prices in the Dream City.
Blade nodded. "You can get so much more value out of 100 Million SC. Honestly, it is simply not worth spending so much purely on an empty house."
Night quickly caught her underlying meaning.
It was not that the house itself was overpriced for the market; rather, she believed that buying such a lavish house in the apocalypse was a waste of tactical resources.
Night shook his head with a warm smile. "Actually, it is good that we have a huge house."
His words made Sara beam happily.
(^▽^)
Night continued, "We can just use a small space for our actual stay and daily needs." Looking directly at Eve and Lilith, he added, "So that there is not too much place to constantly clean," making the twin robots nod their heads in understanding and relief.
"While we can use the vast majority of the rest of the space for other important things, like combat training or for storing raw materials related to our Professions."
Sara nodded enthusiastically. "Yes! I need a private, reinforced space for my magic circle training and experiments."
Night nodded. "And I will definitely need some space for my Refiner profession."
"Also..." Night paused.
"After I reach Level 50, you guys will unlock Professions as well... so having this space now is kind of a good, forward-thinking investment."
"Also, in the near future, we may have more people staying here with us."
Lucy raised an eyebrow. "You mean when your [Summon] skill upgrades?"
Night nodded. "Yes. Also, I might make more friends using my [Nightmare Domain] in the near future."
Sara frowned in worry. "But won’t acquiring more summons make your personal leveling far harder?"
Night smirked confidently. "I realized something very important just a little while ago..."
Looking at their curious expressions, he explained, "The thing is, I will not be leveling alone... Meaning, the more people we have in our party hunting monsters, the higher the total volume of experience I will actively siphon, which will balance out the increasing multiplier in experience I actually require!"
Sara was still worried. "I really don’t think the math is that simple..."
But Eve spoke up worriedly, missing the point, "Are we not enough, Master?"
Lilith added, looking at their already huge lineup, "There are too many of us here already."
For the first time, Death fiercely agreed with the twins, nodding her skull with intense passion.
Looking at them, Night was suddenly unsure whether he should gather more friends or not...
Actually, his desire for more friends was less about purely wanting to grow stronger and more about needing more people around him to make him feel as completely safe and comfortable as he was before his whole ’existential crisis’ dream...
Well, it’s a decision for much later anyways, Night thought, shaking his head and starting to explore the massive house.
Seeing him not immediately agree that adding more people was a fundamentally bad idea made Eve, Lilith, Death, and Lucy highly worried.
Death was undeniably the one most negatively affected by this realization, as adding any more bodies would significantly affect her grand, long-term plans of methodically getting rid of the ones already present.
The house was incredibly huge. The main entrance hall was easily four times larger than their previous hall and because the stone ceiling was a lot higher, it looked even larger.
The house had ten massive rooms on the ground floor and a huge industrial kitchen with enough counter space for three or four people to cook simultaneously while having plenty of room to move around.
It also featured a deep storage room which was easily half the total size of the kitchen.
Taking the stone stairs to the second floor, they found the master bedroom. It was obnoxiously large, with ten normal-sized beds pushed against the sides and one huge luxurious bed situated dead in the center, with a wide balcony facing the front of the estate. Directly behind the bedroom was another massive empty hall.
This must be the dedicated training room, Night thought.
As for the big main watchtower located between the master bedroom and the training hall...
The main watchtower had winding spiral steps. At the very top was a mechanical clock, and plenty of tactical space for securely watching the outside streets.
Looking out the windows, he could clearly see several other houses similar to theirs located around their sector.
Sara guessed, "They must have all been built by the same company." Unlike the four small outer watchtowers, the main central one was spacious, easily allowing all of them to stand together without being squished against each other like a sandwich.
Straining his sharp eyes, Night could clearly see armed guards standing vigilantly on the towers of the neighboring houses, paying constant attention so that no one tried anything funny.
Lucy asked, "Should we hire some guards as well?" Despite having the magical arrays, it would still be better to get some actual people to pay constant attention to the surrounding activities.
Night chuckled. "We already have guards." He turned around as they walked back down into the master bedroom.
Eve asked curiously, "Where are the guards, then?" as she calculated exactly how much daily cleaning they would still have to do.
Night smiled wisely. "Doesn’t Death still have those four skeletal wolves?"
Death waved her scepter. The four skeleton wolves materialized in the room, with bright blue Fire burning in their eye sockets.
Looking at the beasts, the others nodded in understanding.
Lilith raised her hand. "Master, what about the main watchtower?" Since there were only four wolves and exactly five towers to cover.
Sage puffed out her tiny chest.
Eke ekeke ekeke ekeke!
(Don’t worry, I will stand guard on the main watchtower!)
ᕙ( @ ˘▽˘ @ )ᕗ
Her tiny declaration made them all laugh.
Sara smiled, looking at them being so happy with the empty house. She sighed in relief. "Should we officially name the house, then?"
Night rubbed his chin. After some thought, he said with a bright smile, "How about... Nightmare Castle?"