Alice's Nightmare (8)
The Black Queen.
One of the worst calamities the game world had ever seen. A boss in a category all its own.
And the final awakening stage of ■■■.
To be precise: the state of being completely devoured by one's own nightmare.
Endless waves of monsters rising like tides. Undying dreams bleeding out into the world.
[Title: How the hell are you even supposed to clear this??]
[Author: OppOfUrgentIsShortUrgent]
Currently running Impossible difficulty, Story <■■■'s Nightmare> in progress.
What am I even supposed to do here?
Like, literally nothing I do works.
All the students I'd put so much work into raising got wiped out,
and then the entire faculty showed up and they just got torn to pieces too ;;
The main body didn't even bother coming out herself, and everyone got killed by her little underling queens
<The End has begun.>
That single message just keeps blinking on my screen.
I've tried everything I could think of, but I genuinely have no idea how to push through this section.
If any vets out there know the clear... please help...
[Your run is cooked lol just restart from scratch]
-> If ■■■ has hit 100% Nightmarification there's nothing you can do
-> Once the Black Queen shows up there's literally nothing left for you to do
[It was literally designed to be a boss you can't fight...]
-> OppOfUrgentIsShortUrgent) Then what is the actual clear condition?? It can't just end like this.
-> Start over. Kill ■■■ before she hits 100% Nightmarification.
-> OppOfUrgentIsShortUrgent) Kill her??
-> Yeah, otherwise she'll eventually become the Black Queen and destroy the world
-> OppOfUrgentIsShortUrgent) Does she really have to die...? Is there honestly no way to save her?
-> On Impossible, no. Other difficulties each have a hidden path, but on Impossible, keeping her alive always ends in 100% Nightmarification and world destruction.
[There's a reason she has such a dedicated fanbase]
-> Her character arc is genuinely brutal, and on Impossible there's no salvation anywhere
-> Either the Nightmare eats her alive, or the player kills her...
-> A sweet, pretty character stuck in tragedy will always find fans
***
The Black Queen was never designed to be fought.
What the game demanded of players was prevention. Before ■■■ had finished her Nightmarification. Before she fell into the Queen. Kill ■■■ before she crossed that threshold.
'Too late for that.'
Nightmarification.
A status ailment that existed exclusively for ■■■.
'It'd be nice if SA Parrying could strip it away, but...'
Unfortunately, that was off the table.
As I'd mentioned before, SA Parrying didn't work on every status ailment. It reached the lower-tier ones, nothing above. Anything of a higher order was entirely outside its range.
'Nightmarification is out of range.'
Nightmarification was the bedrock of a calamity. Unlike Ghoulification, it was clearly a higher-order ailment, the kind that could wipe out an entire world without breaking a sweat. As long as SA Parrying couldn't touch it, there was no ailment-stripping bug to lean on.
'Then... well. There's only one option.'
I smoothed out my rumpled sleeve.
Scattered across the ground around me lay the shattered remains of chess pieces.
'Smash through everything.'
Nightmarification at 100%. That percentage was distributed across every nightmare that had taken form. The Jabberwock and its soldiers held 10%, each of the three queens held 20%, and the Black Queen herself accounted for the final 30%. The higher the percentage climbed, the more nightmares manifested.
'We're probably sitting at around 90% right now.'
The Jabberwock and soldiers had been summoned. All three queens had appeared. Left unchecked, the percentage would keep climbing until the Black Queen manifested. No need to open the status window. The nightmares themselves told me everything I needed to know about how far the Nightmarification had gone.
'In that case...'
What if I destroyed all of them?
The monsters that existed as the percentage of Nightmarification. The Heart Queen. The Red Queen. The White Queen. A full 60% of the total, right there.
If I attacked them here in the real world, what would happen? Not just attacked. Erased them entirely.
'The percentage would drop.'
White Queen: 20%. Red Queen: 20%. Jabberwock: 10%. Already half the progress, gone in one sweep. Every nightmare I destroyed forced the gauge down. Like plucking pieces from a puzzle that was moments away from completion.
'Just flip the whole board.'
The three pillars holding ■■■ up. The Heart Queen. The Red Queen. The White Queen.
Tear them apart, and the Nightmarification gets suppressed. No accumulation, no Black Queen.
'Of course.'
None of this was something a normal player could pull off.
If clearing Nightmarification were this simple, someone would have managed it in a previous run. There was a reason Story <■■■'s Nightmare> was considered one of the most brutal things in the entire game.
The nightmares the girl had called forth were fundamentally invincible. Not just powerful. Untouchable, entirely beyond the reach of any player's attack. The logic being that a nightmare was a dream, and physical force couldn't reach a dream.
The three queens, and the soldiers under them. Not a scratch on any of them.
'There's only one clear method.'
Kill the nightmare's host before the progress hit 100%. But even that stopped working once the Black Queen had appeared, from that point on, ■■■ herself was no longer classified as a character. She became a nightmare. The host turned untouchable too.
'The end.'
Unkillable soldiers. A nightmare spreading slowly across the continent. The player could only stand and watch as the world was torn apart.
Credits rolled. The calamity, Wonderland, had completed. The world fell into unstoppable ruin.
So hunting nightmares to drain the progress was an impossible strategy. The attacks didn't even land.
'But.'
Mine was different.
Hadn't I already learned how to deal with an enemy built to be unkillable?
'The Reader.'
The Apostle of the Evil God. Booky.
The one I'd swept aside with a single branch.
By any normal standard, it should have been unbeatable too. Its defense stat had been set to infinity. No matter how hard you hit, nothing connected.
'Same as the nightmares.'
Strictly speaking, Booky had infinite defense and the nightmares had infinite evasion, but the underlying mechanic was identical.
So I'd use the same bug I'd used on Booky. The one that dealt exactly 3 damage to any target, without exception. The nightmares, just like Booky, had their HP locked at 1.
'In other words.'
To me, these things were weaker than the goblins in the beginner hunting grounds.
It had been the same in the original game. The <Alice's Nightmare> story, notorious for its difficulty. Once I found this bug, its clear difficulty dropped through the floor.
"Hmm..."
Whoosh.
I swept the wind-scattered hair back from my face.
By the time my thoughts had settled, the surroundings had been reduced to rubble.
Soldier remains scattered everywhere.
Among the wreckage, one thing remained standing. A blood-red mannequin, crimson crown on its head.
"Last one."
<[◆◆◆◆◆◆]>
The Red Queen.
One unhurried step at a time, I closed the distance on the thing backing away from me.
A last-ditch effort. She swung out a blade aura, scarlet and wild.
Red flashed across my vision, but.
"Slow. Even your fall."
I was already standing behind it.
Shick.
A cutting sound, half a beat late.
The queen's head, cleanly severed, dropped to the floor.
The body went shapeless. Scattered like mist.
"Haah... rough going."
I worked the ache out of my shoulders.
Moving in a body with E-rank stats across the board never got easier.
"Engage. Gauntlets."
Shift.
The scythe crept up from my palm and fitted itself around my hands. With the other, I smoothed out my disheveled clothes.
"...Ah. ■■■-ssi."
A gaze at my back. Turning, I found a girl sitting there, dazed.
She'd been watching the whole time.
I walked over to ■■■.
"......"
Pale blue eyes.
Blood still tracked down her cheeks, but the despair had gone out of them. The shadows that had writhed across her entire body had lost their edge. The black crown floating above her head had faded too.
I stopped in front of her and carefully crouched down.
"Are you all right?"
A light question.
Time to wrap this up.
***
■■■.
She stared at the boy in a daze.
The jester who had slaughtered every last nightmare and knelt before the girl.
"Are you all right?"
A short question.
His voice was oddly gentle.
Or maybe she just wanted to hear it that way. The sound of her name on his lips had warmth threaded through it, she thought.
'I don't know...'
Everything felt muddled. Was it because she hadn't fully woken from the nightmare yet?
■■■ sat frozen, not a single word coming to her.
Still, the boy smiled as though he understood.
'Strange.'
Something stirred at the sight of that smile. Not like the nightmare's whispers. This was different, a sensation like something gently pressing on her heart.
"■■■-ssi."
"......"
Thump.
A hand settled onto her shoulder.
Gently, as if asking her not to startle.
The boy held her pale blue gaze.
Just as the warmth on her shoulder was starting to feel familiar ,
Wrench!
The shadow swirling at ■■■'s shoulder. He seized it and tore it free, like ripping off wrapping paper.
Stripped of its strength, it came loose in ragged strips. Darkness unraveling in tatters.
"Al■■-ssi."
"Ugh..."
"Did it hurt? Tell me if it did."
Al■■ swayed from the recoil.
Not painful, but the center of her body felt unmoored.
The boy reached out steadily and drew her in against his chest.
'...Warm.'
A foggy consciousness.
Al■■ had nothing but the most childish thought to show for it.
While she sat there, the boy, satisfied she was unharmed, reached out again.
Grip.
The crown bobbing gently above her head. He closed his hand around the black shape and wrenched it free, just as rough as before.
Tear!
"Ali■-ssi."
"Ugh..."
"Almost done."
The world spun.
The crown, cleanly detached, dissolved and scattered like the others.
'It doesn't hurt...'
Not painful at all. If anything, her body felt lighter.
The weight that had pressed on her shoulders, gone. The stabbing in her chest that never quite stopped eased off. The headache she'd lived with so long it had become normal went quiet.
'Oh...'
Breathing didn't hurt.
No seething misery. Only a faint, buoyant lightness remained. The voices that had crowded her ears fell silent.
Just that was enough to make her want to cry.
'How did I...'
Blue pupils.
Over them, a shimmer like scattered water light, blinking and dancing. Ripples spread across the pooled brightness, and each time they did, the girl's world shook with them.
A small, wretched sound was about to slip through her lips. The boy reached out one last time.
"You held on well."
Soft.
A palm, landing gently against Alice's cheek.
Warmth touched her, and the cold girl began to melt.
A thumb brushed the corner of her eye, sweeping away the bloody tears gathered there.
"It's been a long time. A hard one."
"......"
Careful.
So careful.
As though handling a glass bowl that might shatter at the slightest touch. As though she was so precious that even a scratch would be unforgivable.
"I know."
"......"
"You've done so well. You really have."
Soft words, seeping into her ears.
The touch she had never let herself hope for from anyone, in her entire life. Words of acknowledgment. Comfort that didn't ring hollow. The warmth of another person, their touch, their voice, she melted into all of it.
"Hnngh..."
No blood remained on her cheek.
Only the handkerchief in the boy's hand, stained dark red. And that too dissolved and scattered, part of the nightmare until the end.
Emptiness drifted through her.
Before she had even grown used to it, he whispered.
"Alice-ssi."
"......"
Her name.
Someone calling her name.
"Alice."
The girl had her name back.
And at the same moment, her older sister's voice rang through her mind.
"Hk, ugh..."
Only then did the girl shed transparent tears.
Only then did the lines streaming down her cheeks run clear, no longer dark with blood.
Sobs flooded out and colored her world.
Just a few drops, but to Alice, they were an ocean deep enough to reach the very bottom of the sky.
"Hh, hk... hnngh..."
She tried to hold them quiet. Couldn't.
Something too hot had lodged in her throat.
'It's gone. The nightmare... I can't feel the nightmare inside me anymore...'
It didn't feel real.
So she cried harder.
Such a long time.
Such an unbearably long time.
The trembling girl crumbled into the boy at last.
"Alice-ssi."
The boy didn't say much.
Just one line. Short, impossibly short.
"You've worked so hard."
"Hhnn... hk, hh...!"
Alice cried for a long, long while.
The calamity came to a close.
Ding!
[Main Quest cleared!]
-Title: Pitch Night
-Objective: Defeat boss monster 'The Red Knight.'
[You have stopped one of the Seven Calamities!]
-Special rewards will be provided. Please check your inventory.
Ding!
[Emergency Quest cleared!]
-Title: WelcomeToWonderland
-Objective: Stop the rampaging 'Alice's' Nightmarification.
[You have remarkably completed the quest without killing the host!]
-Special rewards will be distributed. Please check your inventory.
Ding!
[Hidden Quest completed.]
-Title: Queen Slayer
-Objective: Defeat the boss monsters ruling Wonderland, 'Heart Queen,' 'Red Queen,' and 'White Queen.'
[You have achieved a stunning feat, annihilating every queen!]
-Special rewards will be distributed. Please check your status window.
Ding!
[Sub Quest cleared!]
-Title: If You're Gonna Do It, Do It Right!
-Objective: Rank in the top 3 of the practical.
[Through a stunning performance, you have taken 1st place in the practical!]
-Additional rewards will be provided on top of the base reward.
The End went still. And with it, the practical was over.
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