MIDNIGHT PRINCE: Empire of Sin



"So, you see… It isn't that I didn't want to date her. It's just that she was batshit crazy."

"Mhm. I see, I see indeed. But could you not have held onto her a little bit more? Mayhaps she would have been less crazy if you didn't dump her like that?"

"I mean… Yeah, I could have… I guess… But I was pretty creeped out by her. Like she even placed hidden cameras in my bag. Somehow she said it was always to protect me."

"Well… Don't you think those cameras would have been handy when you were dying for the first time?"

"Hey!? Whose side are you on even?"

"I mean, I am you, after all. I am on the side of whoever you want me to be."

"Oh… True. Completely forgot about that for a second there…"

In a place surrounded by darkness, a rather intriguing scene was taking place.

A young man was lying down on a reclining chair and was speaking to another man with a very similar figure.

The only difference was that the second young man was wearing a pair of glasses as well as a white doctor's coat and was holding onto a notebook in his hand.

"Sigh… This is getting pretty boring, yeah…"

Covering his face with his hand, Adam released a heavy sigh, and the second Adam spoke as he shrugged his shoulders,

"We are lost so might as well not even move and spend our energy. It isn't like we are lacking any food."

He moved his hand and a red fruit appeared before he bit into it.

"See. I don't know. I am eating an illusion and tricking my brain into feeling satiated? Or am I really just eating an apple? Feels so weird, not gonna lie…"

"I mean. If you think you ate an apple and your body reacts as if you ate one. Does it actually matter?"

The first and principle Adam frowned before shaking his head, "This is some matrix level shit. Fuck this shit, it doesn't really matter anyway."

"Yep. Though, gotta say, don't you think you are going a little bonkers there?"

"Nah. I am just talking to myself. There is nothing strange about that, right?"

"Huh… I guess you are right."

"Of course I am."

The outlandish discussion and the back and forth banter continued on like this for quite some time.

After Adam tried to recreate 'The World' in this realm of dreams and illusions and failed spectacularly, he realized that he did not have enough power or mental capacity to actually bring forth an EX skill of such caliber into the world of dreams.

What he did then was simple.

He simply chose to not move any longer.

He stayed in the sea in this place, refusing to take a step forward or back. In the situation he was in, he didn't know exactly where was up and where was down any longer.

If by mistake he went down, he didn't want to know what would happen to his soul.

So he stayed still and inevitably, boredom started to crawl into his psyche. And humans were beings that could never cope with boredom.

"So you decided to do a play with a fake you acting as a psychiatrist…"

"Hey! Don't interrupt my inner reveries."

"We don't have time for this shit. Gotta find a way to get out of here."

"Why the hurry? Honestly, this is Eve's fault man… I don't wanna do anything. I will simply stay here and not do anything at all. Even if I do die of hunger I will just come back or perhaps I will just wake up."

"Hum… What if we just kill ourselves, wouldn't that wake us up?."

"Oh…"

Adam stopped the play and thought seriously about this solution that his other self came up with before shaking his head in denial.

"Let's not die first. I don't know what the consequences of dying could be on this plane. This place is just too weird."

"I mean. It's the place where the collective mind resides, isn't it? Humans can think of some really fucked shit."

"I know and this is why I don't wanna get down. With my luck, I will meet some horror movie monsters buffed by the power of nightmares or perhaps monsters from the myths like— Typhon or Hydra or something."

He moved his hand and a silver book with an antique aura appeared on his palms, this was the Book written by Crawling Chaos about dreams.

"In this place, reading this book became far easier than outside. So I would rather gather knowledge here first than move like a buffoon in a place that I know absolutely nothing about."

"Good idea. But then what? We will stay here until when?"

"As long as necessary."

Adam snapped his fingers and the surroundings changed, transforming into an entire room.

Still, he frowned as he felt some form of energy leave his self as he summoned this scene.

"As I thought. This is really not Prana we are using here."

"It's the so-called Dream Force?"

Adam nodded to himself. He was slowly getting a better picture as the book gave him more and more information about this place.

Currently, he was in the Sea of Subconsciousness – the road to Dreamscape – a place where the dreams of all intelligent living beings or dead creatures existed and gathered together to form a chaotic mass. It was different from the bubble dreams and the island that could be found above the sea of subconsciousness.

Those bubbles could allow Dreawalkers to jump from dream to dream while still using their Prana.

But the more you approached Dreamscape the more complicated things would become.

"We must be pretty close, right?"

"Yeah, and it isn't good for us."

In a way, Dreamscape was no different from an alternative dimension or a completely different universe with its own set of laws and rules and there was—

For one, rather than Prana itself, what the inhabitant of Dreamscape used was the power of the Soul and an energy known as Dreamforce.

The strength of the soul could be equated to that of the physical body in the real world while Dream Force would be the fuel— the energy necessary to live and affect the world of dreams.

"Well. Even though it's the world of dreams, that place seems pretty hellish to me."

Dreamscape may be different from the depths of the sea of subconsciousness but from what he had read, it was hard to say which was worse.

After all, to gather more and more dream force unto one's self, it was necessary to kill creatures who had dream force within them.

"Well. I don't believe there is no other way."

This was a book written by the Crawling Chaos itself. Adam very much doubted that this shit wasn't simply following the barbaric route.

But…

"We did get some Dreamforce, right?"

"Yep. Those hands or whatever died as we used our powers and gave us their energy."

"May their soul rest in peace."

"We used 'Death' on them. There's no soul left for them to have peace."

"Oh…Yeah, my bad. I guess we will forever be grateful for their sacrifice?"

"Heh…"

"Heheh…"

The two chuckled a little. This was honestly quite funny if he had to be honest.

———

(AN: Not gonna lie. Really had fun writing this chapter and this arc overall will be pretty fun for me. Words flowed without me having to think. This is perhaps one of the most what the fuck chapter I wrote yet.)