Upon entering the nightmare, I could immediately tell that something was off. I was standing inside a dimly lit room. Only illuminated by loud, buzzing, lightning-fueled lights… A few of which seemed on the verge of falling off the ceiling.

  The room I was in was bizarre to begin with. It was a big room filled with cheap-looking desks, which were all separated by fragile-looking walls. It didn’t feel like a place that I could encounter in the real world.

  I looked around the messy room for a few moments, but the papers that littered the ground were all completely illegible, and the strange objects had seemingly all been broken or taken apart.

  After a while, I approached a cracked window. Only then did I realise that the structure I was in was actually incredibly tall. A bizarre grey tower covered in windows all over its surface, but the most surprising thing here was my reflection.

  It was… It was definitely me, but also not. Now that I think about it, since the nightmares were capable of giving me new abilities temporarily, then changing my appearance also sounded very plausible…

  And change my appearance, it certainly did this time.

  My purple eyes were unchanged, but I almost looked like I had become a theoretical, non-existent sister of mine. My face was similar, but definitely softer. My shoulders were no longer as wide. In fact, my silhouette was very lean now.

  Although these changes were quite significant, they were the least of them… I was no longer a human. I didn’t have any human ears. Instead, I had fluffy, animal ears. The ear fluff made me think of a cat, but they weren’t pointy. They were rounded.

  These ears were impressively big. Rather than being on the top of my head like with most folk-like beastfolks, they started from the sides of my head and extended upward, making them noticeably large compared to my head.

  The moment it noticed them, I uncontrollably made them twitch–Which looked adorable when combined with my much softer face at the moment.

  Oh my… I have become… Cute? It feels nice.

  Of course, the ears weren’t the only addition, for one, my pupils were cat-like as well, and there was a tail swinging behind my back. As soon as I became aware of its presence, I realised that it was extremely important to my balance.

  In general, my realisation led me to actually understand the differences between my human body and this current one.

  I was lighter, but somehow also more powerful than in my human form–By a large margin as well. In fact, I could tell that my legs could allow me to jump especially high for some reason. There was dire, feral power stocked in these… Prodigiously large thighs. By the gods, I didn’t realise, but they are big and muscular, especially compared to the rest of my body.

  I even have fangs and… My tongue has spines. What kind of beastfolk am I right now? I was obviously a feline of some sort, but the specific kind was uncertain. I seemed to have lots of good animalistic attributes, but retained a very human-like appearance nonetheless. This seemed like a rare sort.

  I believe that you are a tigerfolk, at the moment. Your hair simply remained raven black all over… Also, it seems like you have taken on the appearance of a feral kind of beastfolk. Normally, a beastfolk like you are now should have no sapient thoughts, which is why this body is so strong despite appearing so humanoid

  Is that so? That’s quite handy.

  As I was busy getting used to this new body, a system panel manifested before my eyes.

  The special Nightmare Trial’s goal for the prey is as follows:

  Monsters lurk around the lost city. Fighting them is meaningless

  Find your way to the highest point in the city. Beware of those who might be your allies

  The longer you take, the stronger and more perceptive the monsters will become

  Good luck

  The highest point…?

  I forced one of the windows open and looked outside. The building I was in was definitely the tallest by a long shot. The strange streets below were illuminated by lights placed upon tall, lanky poles.

  I spotted nothing in particular.

  Are the so-called monsters going to be aggressive toward me?

  Hard to tell, but logically, they should only be interested in the prey

  Very well. So, I need to defend this place and stop them from reaching the top, right? I have to familiarise myself with the place and block off the paths leading up.

  I stepped outside the large room filled with desks, arriving in a hallway with carpet as flooring. The same lights were buzzing and flickering there as well. For some reason, all of the lights were turned on.

  There were rooms all over the place, and they did not seem to follow any logic. I ran into three closets filled with cleaning equipment placed right next to one another… Offices and strange bathrooms littered the place en masse.

  Eventually, though, I discovered a staircase. Within which a pale, humanoid creature was to be found, facing a corner and banging its head against a wall repeatedly. The thing stopped to glance at me, but quickly lost interest, returning to smashing the wall with its skull.

  I guess that answers one question, at least.

  The monsters could not care less about me… Even as I walked right past the creature, it did not react anymore. Thus, I was able to get to the ground floor without problem, just having to squeeze past another monster that was basically just a mass of fat crawling around, using an excessive amount of arms to do so.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Looking around this floor, I found that the place was rather easy to get access to, there were several entrances–More than there should be, really. So barricading them all was not realistic. Instead, I focused on finding out how many staircases there were.

  To my surprise, there were only two of them. The one I had come from, and another on the other side of the floor.

  Funnelling the prey in a single place was the way to go if I wanted to make sure none would slip past me.

  Thankfully, the place was full of furniture, desks, tables, machines whose purpose was lost on me, chairs, and also a whole bunch of smaller items.

  I took my time, but after figuring out that there was an egregious amount of paper and curtains, I figured out a way to completely conceal the other staircase.

  First, I closed the door leading to it, and then, ripped off the handle before using a whole bunch of small metal spikes with colourful handles–I had no idea what they were, but I had seen them used to impale paper to walls.

  I did the same thing here, covered the door and its surroundings with paper until it was all but impossible to tell that a door had been there. I then placed a few pieces of furniture in front of it just in case, and proceeded to cover other walls with paper as well, so that this one place would not look suspicious.

  I also hung curtains haphazardly all over the place and created obstructions in hallways. Really making sure that this floor was as miserable as possible to traverse as was possible, hopefully, my prey would waste as much time as possible here.

  Though I left the other staircase noticeable and visible. Simply making getting to it the worst part of this floor, as I not only stacked furniture on top of one another, but I sprinkled shards of glass all over the place as well, just to make the experience that much more terrible.

  Of course, at this particular staircase, there was my good friend, the fat monster, blocking the way. They would have to get through its great mass of fat…

  Now, there was the problem of if they managed to get up the staircase. Once there, what they would do could be guessed, but wasn’t guaranteed.

  Logically, they would go up the stairs for as long as they were able to. So as to get closer to the top as quickly as possible–However, nothing stopped them from going to another floor in between.

  It would be fine if the two staircases she had seen were the only ones, but they weren’t. There were more that simply started after the ground floor, meaning that once they got here, prey could easily disappear and go unaccounted for…

  Now, I have stronger senses in this body and might be able to track them, but I would rather avoid having to deal with unknown quantities, or at least, limit their odds of happening.

  As such, I went around breaking the doors down to make it seem something dangerous was already on the floor, and then shattered the lights–Or at least, that’s what I was doing to do until Nara spoke up.

  The light should be controlled by a main breaker. As long as we can find it, turning it off or breaking it should be enough to plunge the building into the dark

  Oh, sweet! Any ideas where I could find this thing?

  The stairs could lead you further down than the ground level. The main breaker should be in the basement

  Alright then.

  Being more used to this different body, I was able to move rather quickly, even if running and jumping off walls like I was an actual cat was quite bizarre, it worked out splendidly. I quickly found myself inside a damp, dusty basement.

  Nara seemed to have somehow already figured out how this entire building was wired, and led me to the breaker room–I didn’t ask what a ‘main breaker’ was, but upon seeing some sort of square-shaped lump of steel with flashing lights on it, even I could tell that it was probably the thing I was looking for.

  For a moment, I flexed my fingers, causing sharp claws to bulge out of my fingertips. The momentary thought to slash the thing faded away, though. I wasn’t a machine at the moment, and as undead-like as I may be, getting shocked by whatever amount of lightning this thing stocked seemed like a bad idea.

  I grabbed a metal pipe instead and threw it right at the breaker, piercing the thing’s surface. Resulting in sparks of lightning–And then much more of them as the breaker smoked before a deafening sound came from it.

  The lights above my head flickered for a few moments before disappearing.

  Seems like it was successful.

  …Mara. Please don’t do that again next time, that was really dangerous!

  My bad.

  If you keep scaring me like that, I’ll cry

  She’s learned how to get a point across to me, it seems… I am so proud of her!

  That will be another hug to add to the list.

  In any case, I made my way back up in the darkness, once again squeezing past my large-bodied buddy, sitting down in the darkness, keeping a close eye on the staircase for any movement.

  Although it was dark, there was light peering through the windows of the floor, and with this light, my feline eyes were able to see rather well despite the ambient darkness. So I simply stayed there, waiting with my tail swinging from side to side and ears twitching from time to time.

  …I presume that there are several prey in this trial… Where are they exactly? Spotting the tallest building in this place shouldn’t be difficult, and I’ve been here for quite a while already. Are they lost? Are there a lot of monsters roaming outside, delaying them? I only encountered two in the building so far.

  The one trying to break its skull, and the fatty.

  Well, I don’t mind spending a while here. Time is on my side anyway.

  After thirty minutes and sitting still, I heard the sound of a door below being pushed open, accompanied by several sets of footsteps–A lot of footsteps, actually.

  Oh. They grouped up…

  I quickly moved over to a window above the door I had just heard, and confirmed it myself.

  There was a large group of people… There were both beastfolks and humans amongst them, so it seemed like people from both the Rootriska and Heldinot had been pulled in together.

  This might be why the pull was stronger this time. This is a final trial for a lot of people.

  Mmh… What could I do…?

  I got an idea.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Hey. You down there”

  Quite a few of them flinched as they heard someone speak from above, but they relaxed quickly. A felid beastfolk looked up at me, clearly able to see quite clearly.

  “I don’t recognise you… Did you get here before us?”

  I nodded.

  “Yep. Be careful down there, this place is a real maze, and I am fairly certain there is only one way up… But that’s not the worst part. The upper floors are crawling with monsters. Whatever you do, just keep climbing up if you can… I went into this floor, and I’ve been stuck here because of monsters blocking the way back to the stairs”

  “Is that so…?”

  “Yes. I would appreciate it if you could help me when you get here”

  With these words, I stepped away from the window, acting like a monster was nearby.

  Of course, all I did was take a few steps back and then lie down on the ground, waiting for them to move into the building before demonstrating my feline attributes, and jumping out of the window, landing on my legs without a problem.

  I think it would be best to thin out the herd a little bit…