Chapter 19

"Where am I? Home?" My eyes fluttered open, and I was in a place I only dimly recognized.

I was in a queen-sized bed, lying across a flood of various lumpy-shaped pillows that had been collected over the years. A familiar fluffy comforter that had only accumulated a few holes over the last decade covered my body. I was wearing a cotton t-shirt and cotton panties. It was incredibly soft, and provided me a nostalgic feeling I hadn't felt in forever.

Forever? This… is my room.

I had finally woken up. It was a strange dream that had felt like it took place forever. However, now I was in my room again. My walls were adorned with flowery paintings from the local art fair that came once a year. I had a corner enshrined to my childhood stuffed animals that I no longer cuddled with. The room still had a few lingering designs left over from my teenage years. It was technically my parent's home after all. It was still untouched from when I went off to college.

That's right, college. Shouldn't I still be living in the dorm room? I told myself I'd move into my own apartment next year. That felt like a long time ago. Why did everything feel so fuzzy? What was I forgetting? I forced my mind to focus, and things started to grow a little clearer.

"Min…" That couldn't be a dream.

Those months I had spent, that couldn't be a dream. No, something was off. Even as my mind tried to hold onto thoughts of the other world, they tried to fall away.

"Status." I murmured.

There was no screen that appeared. However, I was stubburn. Something felt off when I tried to call my status. It was like my body was fighting it. It felt like I was struggling against some opposing force.

"Status!" I pushed forward, summoning my will to do so.

My status appeared.

I sighed and lied back in the bed. Status was still a thing. The last few months were real. Min was… I couldn't think about Min at the moment. I had to focus on my own thoughts. This was some kind of illusion. There was no way I'd believe I'd just magical end up at home. I wasn't prepared to accept that. However, if I wasn't home, then where was I?

"A dream…"

As soon as the words left my lips, I found that I could easily accept them. I had fallen unconscious trying to control others. That had been a complete disaster. Right now, I was lying in the middle of a forest surrounded by the dead. Min was dead or dying, and I would be a meal for monsters if I didn't do something immediately.

{Dreamer (Passive) – Remain in control of your dreams. Easy lucid dreaming. Can earn experience in lucid dreaming equal to challenge.}

Is that why I'm here?

It wasn't that hard to reason out. This new skill of mine allowed lucid dreaming. In other words, I was conscious in my dreams. While the skill says I can remain in control, it doesn't seem particularly easy. I feel a constant pushback, like the dream itself is alive. It seems to want to force me to fall back into the dream at any moment. If I didn't remain focused, my brain quickly started growing foggy and confused.

"Wake up, Aria!" I muttered, trying to will myself awake.

The dream resisted, and I felt no closer to the real world. After trying again unsuccessfully for a few minutes, I finally lied back down and sighed. It really did feel comfortable. The sensations felt real. I felt like I was lying on a plush mattress. It was a sensation I thought I'd never feel again. Of course, the dorm's mattresses were hardly built for comfort, so when I found myself sleeping on the ground in the new world, the shock wasn't nearly as drastic.

If I couldn't force myself to wake up, what was the point? A monster could be eating me or ravishing my body at this very moment. I wasn't sure which would be worst to wake up. The point was that my body was exhausted. Even if my mind worked in this dream state, my body wasn't responding. It still needed to rest until I could leave the dream world. The only way I could regain all my stamina in one go would be to level up.

My eyes immediately snapped back to the dreamer description. Earn experience equal to the challenge? What did that mean? Did that mean that while I was dreaming, I could level up? Equal to the challenge. If I thought it through, that meant that I only leveled when I worked hard. I couldn't just imagine myself killing a dragon and then get the experience of a dragon. I had to actually put my mind, and virtual body, through the challenge. If I imagined a dragon that was as easy to kill as a mouse, I'd only get the experience of a mouse. At least, that's how I imagined it.

For someone with no fighting ability or skills, it'd be impossible for me to create a challenging enemy without risking my own life. Then again, could I die in a dream? There was fiction that certainly painted dreams as a place where death was possible. However, that wasn't something that made sense to the chemist in me. I didn't think I could die, but was it worth the risk? Either way, I didn't have time to waste throwing myself against opponents that could easily overwhelm the current me.

"That leaves me other means of leveling."

Sex. However, where was the challenge in sex? Do I make a guy's dick uncomfortably large? Do I make many many different men? Do I seduce a disinterested guy? Is it the quality of the sex, the duration of the sex, or the amount of sex that matters? If this is my dream, I could theoretically make a congo line of men that made Nova's camp look like an innocent romp. I'd never become raw or sore, I could fuck indefinitely and reap the experience. Unless, I had to allow myself to grow sore and raw to gain experience. If that was the case, should I imagine myself sore and raw from the get go to maximize experience? There was far too little I understood about the process.

The doorbell rang. I jumped a bit, surprised at the sudden change. I hadn't changed my dream, had I? I had been thinking of men, but I hadn't felt like I was conjuring up a particular man. Was there a congo line of men lined up at the door ready to fuck me? Perhaps I needed to start being a little more careful of the thoughts running through my head. This seemed a bit dangerous.

I opened my bedroom and ran down the stairs, walking through the nostalgic home I had grown up in. Everything looked like how I remembered it. A clean, immaculate family room surrounding a large flat screen mounted on the wall. My dad's prized deer head from the one hunt he did was still mounted in the corner. Dad had insisted on putting the deer on the wall, and so mom had done everything to make the room décor match. In the end, that filled the entire room with natural wood furniture, giving the room a distinct mountain lodge feel.

I swung open the front door, still wondering what I'd see on the other end. The world outside our house wasn't some ethereal white. It just appeared like the outside I remembered. There wasn't a congo line of horny men either, just the one guy. However, if I imagined the kind of guy I'd want to fuck, he'd be it. Medium-length Blond hair, dashing blue eyes, muscular build, strong jaw and soft cheeks. He resembled Devon if Devon had a more Austrian look.

"Hey, uh…" His eyes flickered down before he looked away.

My eyes followed his to see that I was standing there in my underwear. I actually didn't know how I looked at the moment. As Aria the seductress, I never really felt like I needed to worry how I looked. From any angle, my high charm and refined appearance gave me the confidence that I'd look hot. However, being back at home, it could have meant I had my old looks again.

That really wasn't where my concern should have lied. As a woman, being partially naked in front of a man of this world, I could have shown the slightest sign of embarrassment. However, Mental Fortitude aside, what was the point? I had created this man to fuck me, it really didn't matter that he saw me in my underwear, even if the underwear themselves were unflattering. The other world didn't really have lingerie, so only wanting to be seen in a sexy thong were the kind of thoughts that had died some time ago.

"I was wondering if I could use your phone. My car broke down."

He pronounced phone and car strangely. Or was it I who had grown strange. In a world without these luxuries, I hadn't heard those common words come out of someone's mouth in months. Now that they did, it felt weird to hear it.

"Really? Your car?" I responded wryly.

The man raised his head up with a blush while scratching the back of his neck, showing just the right amount of shyness to turn me on. He really was the perfect creation. However, does the fact that he is so close to my strike zone lead to less of a challenge? And what was with the silly scenario? It seemed to come right out of a porn. However, this was my dream world, so there was no point sticking to the script. I reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him into the house.

"What? Ah…" He didn't pull away, following my lead even as he looked around confused.

"Come on, we're going to my room."

"Your room! What for?" he looked flustered in a way that was irresistibly cute.

"To fuck…" I responded simply, but turned back with a teasing smile, "You do want to fuck, don't you?"

"You're really… I didn't think it would be this easy." He spoke partially to himself.

I raised an eyebrow, "You're calling me easy?"

"No, uh… that's not what I meant, I mean to say, ummm…"

I put a finger over his mouth, stopping him from talking. The way he was so flustered was totally within my tastes. In fact, his innocent behavior was really turning me on. It was getting to the point where even if I wasn't gaining any experience I'd probably still go through with it.

"Let's just say it's your lucky day. Enjoy the meal."

"Meal?" the boy stopped as I took another step up, forcing me to turn back again.

He had a strange look on his face. I gave a wry smile.

"Well, I guess you don't have to eat my pussy if you don't want…"

"Ah… right… pus- I'm sorry, it's just so sudden. I was just suspicious."

I rolled my eyes and pulled him the rest of the way up the stairs. It was a bit strange. I had created him, yet he seemed so natural and real. He was suspicious when I said the words eat? Was that a reflection of my own psyche? I lived in a world were monsters ate people. At this very moment I feared for my life. Was my creation echoing my own worries? It was a thought I didn't like. Instead, I liked seeing him as a real person. If he was just a reflection of me, then it was too close to me saying I was just fucking myself. This entire exercise could just come to an extravagant form of masturbation.

I jumped onto my bed, looking up at the nervous guy while I stretched seductively. This was the bed I had lost my virginity on, well, the first time. It had been very hush-hush at the time, as my parents were just downstairs when it happened. It felt a little weird being so brazenly sexual here now. The old me couldn't have possibly dragged a guy up to her room, even if he was technically imaginary.

"This is… such a weird place…" The guy said, looking around the room cautiously.

"Huh?" I couldn't help but let out a breath. "It's just my room."

"I've never seen rooms like this. These colors… Or material like this." He said, his fingers touching the fabric of the pink comforter on my bed.

My eyes darkened and I lowered my head. "Oh, you're from the other world then."

It had to be my mistake. I imagined a guy I could gain experience from. I likely created a guy from the other world. I was certainly making a mess of my dream with the dreamer skill. I'm in the modern times, creating a guy from another world, whose playing the part of a guy from the modern times. No wonder he is so confused.

"Another world? What do you mean?"

"The world… ah… how do I say this. This is a dream, and my body is unconscious in another world."

The man's eyes widened and he took a step back. "You know this?"

"Yeah, well, that's not even the world I was born in. This is my world." I held out my hands sadly. "Or… a dream-like approximation of it. But, why here?"

The man shook his head. "I'm sorry. That must be a mistake…"

I chuckled lightly. I was essentially talking to myself, explaining to myself my own situation. Well, he was a dream representation of my wants and desires, so not exactly me, but he still had a hand in my reality. I didn't know if that soothed me or confused me.

"I don't disagree, but it's not like I have much of a choice, do I?"

"That's…" he turned his head away, a slightly guilty look on his face.

"Let's just have sex then." I responded simply.

"What? Now? Even though you know?"

"Some monsters grow by killing each other, or eating, or gathering magic. Most humans grow by fighting and killing monsters. If I want to leave this place, sex is the only option, right?"

The man stared blankly at me for enough time that I started to fidget. Just as I was about to respond, he lowered his head and gave a reluctant nod.

"Very well. I will… be gentle."

I gave the man the most comforting smile I could. "Don't… I like it rough."