Son of the Hero King

Chapter 775: Worst Nightmare

Inside the void of the Dream World, Sol ambled in a leisurely gait as if he were walking in his own backyard and only stopped once he was in front of Echidna, his back covering her completely.

He was wearing his black wedding suit with traces of nascent divinity pulsing rhythmically throughout its flowing form. The clothes were clearly on the verge of transforming into true divine weapons, lacking only sufficient energy and a more distinct concept to be infused into them.

His golden hair was neatly combed, while his eyes – primarily blue – flickered with residual hues of iridescence: crimson, silver, and gold like a pulsing rainbow of multiple colors before those swiftly vanished and settled once again on the simple blue of his Blessed disguise.

Hypnos’s own golden eyes twitched as he observed the young prince appear in what should have been his domain.

His domain – Elysium, the Land of Dreams – was not meant to be trespassed by anyone, not even by the gods. It was built from his will, shaped by his thoughts, and reinforced by the veil separating dream from reality.

And yet, the impossibility had just occurred right before him with such ease that he began questioning the reality of it.

“How?” He asked with gritted teeth, his fist tightening as hundreds of possibilities flowed in his mind. At first, he wondered if this was nothing more than a projection or an avatar of the nuisance of a boy.

This possibility, while low, would have been at least slightly more logical. It would have simply meant that he had used a loophole by using Echidna as a medium.

However, that did not seem to be the case here. He could feel that the body standing here was undoubtedly a true body made of flesh and blood, and while he had never met Sol himself, the divine power of Luxuria could be felt from him cascading in droves, enveloping his very existence. However, it was far weaker than Hypnos expected from a Blessed of unprecedented caliber like Sol.

“How did you enter this place without my permission?” He asked once again. But Sol simply gave him a cocky smirk that made Hypnose grit his teeth harder.

“So you really don’t remember? It seems I really managed to stop your previous avatar from transmitting information when I destroyed it.” Sol mulled, a finger scratching his chin, as he observed the god with mockery in his eyes.

“Answer me!” Hypnos shouted, and with his voice, the realm started to wrap. The scenery changed, reflecting—

Crack! Crack! Crack!

— Pure nothingness.

“I heard your discussion earlier, and I am sorry to say that while I am not as insane as Echidna here, your Elysium realm could never reproduce my dream. Your realm cannot even fathom it so stop trying, please.”

The space exploded like a broken mirror, and they were once again back in the void.

Echidna stepped back and bowed her head toward Sol— if only by the barest of margins for it to actually qualify as a bow. She had played her part. Stalled the dream god just long enough for the impossible to become inevitable. The moment Hypnos had focused too much on interpreting her motives, she had already fulfilled her role.

The threads had been severed. The gate had been opened. Sol had entered the realm of dreams and Hypnos’ domain. Broken through a realm without its owner’s permission and threw the notion of impossibility of such an event out the window.

“Did you really have to insult me while explaining?” Echidna asked after a moment, her face and tone bemused, to which Sol could only shrug helplessly.

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“Sorry, that was the best analogy I could conceive at the moment.” He did not sound sorry at all, realized Echidna, and so she decided to drop the particular topic lest she might feel like banging her head and dying from frustration.

“Never mind. How is the situation outside?”

“Stable. The ceremony concluded beautifully. Ambrosia and Lilith are fighting Euphoria. The witches went to recover the fallen fragments of Asmodeus. I sent Wukong to Wratharis just in case anyone attacked there, and the others stayed to defend Lustburg and keep some of the important guests occupied.”

It was a simple and concise summary of the situation, but it only served to heighten Hypnos’ intrigue further about the whole debacle.

The rising anger gave way to a cold, calculating calm as he analyzed and rationalized all the information he had gathered regarding the insufferable prince standing cockily before him.

Slowly but surely, realization dawned upon Hypnos as he began making sense of the situation. Once he cleared that first hurdle, it did not take long for him to understand why Sol had sent Echidna despite all the possible dangers involved with her inclusion.

She had been bait, a distraction, and he fell for it line, hook, and sinker. Once inside his domain, she had waited for Sol to trace her anchor – her soul – and enter through it.

The prince had not just found a loophole; no, he was more devious and cunning than that. He had created a whole new loophole of his own design to enter Hypnos’ realm.

And now he stood in Hypnos’s throne room— neither asleep, nor dreaming.

Sol could see the dawning understanding in Hypnos’s eyes, but said nothing to supplement it or throw him off.

There was no need for him to do anything of the sort.

His presence alone declared the turning of the tide.

And for the first time in countless millennia, Hypnos – the god of everlasting dreams – began to question if he was, perhaps, still dreaming himself. Because what stood before him... should not have been possible.

Yet it was all too real now.

And that was the problem.

He promptly discarded all the information and knowledge he thought he knew about Sol. He realized that they were all severely wrong or outdated. Trying to understand him with such flawed pieces of information would only result in an even more humiliating defeat further down.

The more he observed him, the more layers of secrets were being unraveled, revealing a depth that brought him, a fallen god, to trepidation.

He is still in the King's realm, right? Hypnos paled as he remembered one important fact about the prince. A reminder that made his very soul shudder and crawl in fear.

This was different from Lilith's situation. She already had both feet planted firmly on the demigod realm, hovering on its edges, and only the lack of a territory had barred her from bounding further and advancing within the realm. Sol, meanwhile, had only become a King just a few weeks ago.

At this distance, he realized once again how absurd some things could be. His heart refused to accept that such an absurd irregularity could exist, but his mind forced him to face the undisputable reality.

“What are you?” Hypnos whispered loud enough for Sol to catch on.

The surrounding dreamscape fractured again. Creeping veins of golden light and thin threads of possibility, of endings and beginning, bled into the fabric of dreams, fighting and wrestling control from the very owner of the realm, from Hypnos himself. And he blanched in horror to realize that he was losing control of his own realm to the fledgling King before him. The absurdity of it all almost made him lose his mind.

“That is a very interesting question, yes. I am many things. A handsome boy envied by many. A prince about to be crowned King of all of humanity. A man about to be married. A dragon, or even a god, for some. But for you?”

From beneath Sol’s feet, a darkness deeper than void began to spill outward. It moved against the logic of the Dream World, not flowing but crawling, like a living ink stain that bled through the seams of reality itself and devoured it with unquenchable hunger.

“I am the crawling monster that hides beneath the stairs.”

The golden hair framing Sol’s handsome face was replaced by a beautiful, incandescent silver, and his blue eyes changed into a pulse of rainbow, intermingling to show all hues and colors. A maniacal grin splattered on his face as he watched Hypnos shudder.

The shadow parted. It was not merely the absence of light but rather an entity that moved with a specific purpose.

Endless Hunger.

“The shadow that lurks in the darkness.”

One, dozens, hundreds, then thousands of pale, vertical-slit eyes opened within the inky mass, blinking silently across every axis of perception.

Each one tracked Hypnos, indifferent to time, untethered from causality. The eyes were all of different colors in observable and unobservable manifestations of the concept of Color. However, the unquestionable, irrevocable aspect that tied all of them was absolute— Hunger.

As if on cue, mouths formed and stretched to obscene proportions. Fanged, twisted, grinning maws filled with serrated teeth, smiling inhumanly wide, tethering the edges of the Eldritch.

“And I will become your worst nightmare.”

Some chattered soundlessly. Others laughed in impossible frequencies— mocking the concept of Sanity itself.

“So tell me, oh esteemed God of Dreams.”

A few began to whisper words that could barely be understood, and Hypnos felt those whispers directly inside of his very being, like parasites threading through the marrow of his very bones and mocking at him from the inside out.

"How do you think this story will end?"

(AN: Sol faced Hypnos in CH 626. Lol, ngl. Sol is becoming less and less like a human whenever he fights.)