Chapter 4 — Sleep, until your life is over • Episode 4–4 — Runaway ②
Translated by KaiesV
Edited by KaiesV
About four hours after Succubus awakened to her new magic, the time was already around midnight, and Succubus was beginning to paddle sleepily. Succubus, a healthy child who usually goes to sleep by 9:00 P.M., anticipating that Sylph, who is the same age as her, should also be asleep by that time, tried to dive into her dream at around 9:30 P.M., but had to pause because she couldn’t find a place to dive, probably because Sylph hadn’t yet fallen asleep. The same thing was repeated every half hour after that, but no matter how long it took, Sylph didn’t fall asleep, and Succubus was reaching her limit by now.
「………Huh!? What time is it now!?」
Succubus wakes up just as her head drops with a jerk and looks at the pretty wall clock. The lights in the room were turned off so that her parents would not notice that she was up late, but the transformed Succubus had no problem reading the current time because her night vision was effective.
Checking that the short hand has passed the number 12, Succubus once again uses a new spell to make sure that no amount of quicksand will keep it from happening again.
「Open The Gate Of Destination.」
With the key words chanted in a mumbled voice, a light red gate just as big as Succubus is tall appears in the blink of an eye, and both doors open by themselves. Beyond the gate is a swirling pitch-black space, and one never knows what awaits until one enters.
However, considering that the gate didn’t open in the first place until a few moments ago, the magic must have succeeded. At the end of this disastrous black vortex, the dream that Tyrant Sylph is seeing should be spreading.
「…Let’s go.」
The gate that sits in front of Succubus is not a Diest. So, of course, the system of fear and anxiety suppression doesn’t work. The blackness beyond the gate was more terrifying to Succubus than the Diests she usually faced, but she muttered to herself and stepped fearfully into the open gate.
It wasn’t only the entrance that was pitch black, but also Succubus who went under the gate and walked straight for a while, but the area was still pitch black with nothing to see, or should she say nothing? If even Succubus, who is supposed to have good night vision, cannot see anything in the darkness that covers the entire area, then there is nothing there. There is nothing but darkness.
Since this was the first time for her to enter someone’s dream, Succubus didn’t know if this was normal or abnormal, but she just thought that if this pitch blackness was the very dream Sylph was having, it was a horrible nightmare, because when she dreams, more various objects and scenes appear. After all, even Succubus, who understands that this is a dream and not reality, is terrified of this never-ending darkness, this blackness that envelops the world.
How long had she been walking like that? Succubus, who had lost track of time, suddenly heard someone’s voice in her ear. She look in that direction and see nothing, but she can certainly hear someone speaking.
As she turn her feet in the direction of the voice, little by little the voice she heard becomes clearer and clearer, and she can even hear what they are saying.
「Liar.」
「You told me you liked me, but you also liked that girl.」
「That’s disgusting, don’t you feel ashamed?」
「I’m not so sure about that either～」
「You have been deceiving me, you pervert.」
「How could you be a Magical Girl? You’re so thick.」
「I’m sorry, I still can’t do it. I know I said it was okay, but it’s hard.」
「It’s not your fault, Sylph-chan.」
「I don’t care about that, so please be my friend!」
「I hate you, Sylph-chan.」
「I dislike you, Sylph-san.」
「I don’t approve of Magical Girls like you.」
「I don’t even feel comfortable calling you “Syl-chan”.」
「You’re not a Magical Girl! Please quit now!」
「It’s not right to like two people at the same time, Sylph-chan…」
Voices of disappointment, contempt, and disgust that make you want to cover your ears. They echoed back and forth from everywhere, making Succubus feel sick even though she knew they were not directed at her. All of those voices are ones that she had heard before, and she knew because she was Succubus, a Magical Girl from the town of Sakira. They were the voices of the Magical Girls of this town, including herself.
She knew immediately that the words, which were probably directed at Sylph, weren’t actually said. After all, they were in her own voice and included words she didn’t remember saying. The other Magical Girls, as far as Succubus knew, had no pretense of disliking Sylph, and it was clear that the voices in this nightmare were definitely auditory hallucinations, falsehoods, and not based in fact.
Then these words must be thrown at her by Sylph herself, who is no other than Sylph, borrowing the voices of other Magical Girls. And from the content of the nightmares, Succubus discerned that Sylph felt guilty for having shown favoritism to more than one person at the same time, and that this guilt was causing these nightmares of denouncing herself.
There was no way that Succubus, the one who had forced her to like her with her magical powers, couldn’t have seen through her. She had already heard from Shadow that enchantment magic is not meant to cause friend-like favors, but rather romantic ones.
In other words, Sylph who’s in love with someone is in love with Succubus… and rather, there would be no need to fool around with it here. Succubus who could hear which word was whose voice knew even that.
Succubus has created a girl who is forced to be two-timed by casting a spell to make Sylph, who has a faint crush on the Magical Girl Elephant, fall in love with her. And now the girl is so ashamed of her own sinfulness that she punishes herself by having nightmares like this.
Succubus has given her nightmares like this, where she was one-sidedly abused by a close friend, someone she’s in love with, and even someone she had fallen in love with, albeit through the power of magic.
Occasionally, just a few positive voices could be heard, which must have been another way for Sylph to punish herself. It’s an unbearable pain for Sylph to be accepted as she is, without being humiliated by being such a greedy and vile person who is two-timing people. By the Magical Girl value standard of Tyrant Sylph, that is unacceptable.
「You don’t have to dream like this!」
As if to shake off a storm of invective that is hard to hear, Succubus pays a large arm and instantly the dark world is quiet. For Succubus, a Magical Girl of Dreams, it was an easy task to repaint the content of her dreams.
「I am sorry, Sylph-san. Even if you don’t forgive me, I will surely atone for this sin.」
There was no excuse for what was really only meant to be a day. In reality, Sylph was tormented by Succubus’ magic. Succubus is not so optimistic or shameless to say that she wants to be friends with Sylph after witnessing such a thing.
「Now, open this up!」
Succubus clapped her hands three times vigorously, as if in a dream, she would be able to hear her, and the sharp, dry sound of a clap echoed through the silent world.
That should be the end of it, she thought. Succubus was so convinced that the magic was locked up because of the end condition that had been set. Because the sloth fairy didn’t tell her that Sylph’s condition was more abnormal than Succubus thought.
With a grating sound like the earth shaking and creaking, the world of darkness and the dream space cracks open. As the foothold gradually chipped away, Succubus’s body was pulled downward, like falling from the top of a crumbling cliff. This is not a gravity-bound earth, but a deeper place, a fall, even though she was supposed to be in a dream.
「Fly, fly, I can fly! I am a Magical Girl Of Dreams, I can fly!」
In dreams, Succubus is invincible. She can freely flap her wings in the sky or fly off to the edge of the universe. Imagination is creativity, dreaming is unparalleled, and there isn’t a single thing that cannot be done. It should be, but no matter how much she imagine or dream about it, she doesn’t produce wings to flap.
「How, what’s wrong!?」
——Originally, the Magical Girl named Tyrant Sylph had built-in magic to induce thoughts, and powerful suggestions were made to further superimpose them. It was clear that there was already no room in her psyche and that any further attempt to tamper with it would eventually lead to a certain collapse.
Two more chains were wrapped around the two chains that had been so carefully and meticulously wrapped that there were no gaps between them. It was so forceful, so violent, so rough, so intricately entangled with the existing chains, so distorted that it seemed ready to burst, that it overloaded Sylph’s mind. So much so that it affected her body as headaches and nausea.
「It, doesn’t hurt…? This place, isn’t a dream?」
Because Succubus is a Magical Girl who controls dreams, she knew immediately that this place wasn’t a dream. The vibrations, similar to those of an earthquake that had just occurred, meant that the dream world had been broken. That’s why Succubus couldn’t use her full strength. This was a place even deeper than the dream world, a place where the soul resides, the depths of the mind, the spiritual world, and so on.
「Who, is it…?」
At the tip of Succubus’ vision, there was a small, unfamiliar figure at some point.
Four chains of various sizes were extending from the air, and the figure’s whole body was locked in a tight knot, with its legs suspended in mid-air, unable to see its entire figure. However, through a gap in the chain, she could see short black hair and rough boyish clothes, and from the fragmentary information she couldn’t connect him to Tyrant Sylph.
「Agh, argh, ahh, aaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh———!!!」
One of the chains entangled around the boy is coiled at the base in the air with a loud clattering sound. However, the chains are intricately intertwined with other chains and remain wrapped around the boy’s body, which naturally makes them even tighter, and the other chains tighten up on him in tandem.
And so the boy screams like a beast, or like the end of the world, a desperate cry of a dying person at the end of despair, a mixture of suffering, hatred, anguish, grief, and various negative emotions.
——And now, as if the entangled cords were being forcibly pulled out, all the chains were about to pop, chained together in a single chain. The aftermath of the raging souls easily destroyed the dream world. The repressed mind, the overburdened spirit, was beginning to run amok in response to the greatest weapon Sylph possessed.
「A–Ah… aaa…」
Little by little, cracks appear in the chains as if in response to the fearless boy’s cries. The chains must be broken to save the boy. However, he must not break that chain. Despite this contradictory premonition, Succubus was cowering in fear and could not move an inch.
The boy hanging in front of her is not a Diest. So her fear will not go away.
「Iiyaahh!! Agh! Argh! Aaaaggh! Argh! Aghh! Aaggh! Aaarrggh——!!!」
At last, the four chains that had entangled the boy burst without a trace.
But Succubus couldn’t see the scene beyond that point. Because she was obliterated before she even felt the pain by the black storm released by the freed boy.
RECENTLY UPDATES
