Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 313 Under the Dream Lamp and the Dream Breaker

He is not a god.

It was only when he raised that lamp that I remembered my name.

—From *The Dream Lantern Record, Part One: The Oath of Duvik*

My name is Jar Duvick.

No, I... I am Jar. You may not remember the name, but I do.

My number is βE-13, which is the number they branded on the bone behind my neck.

They said it was sealed with iron tags and ink, and that it was a serial number to prevent escape, but I knew it was a mark to erase one's name.

I served in the Sixth Fleet for seven years, rising from a junior soldier to a sergeant.

Back then, I believed in destiny runes and in the Empire. I thought that as long as the secrets in my hands remained unextinguished, my life would have weight.

My secret card is a four-star Life-type card – [Spear-wielding Fisherman].

That card was something I picked up from a fallen corpse when I was wiping out the Rose Private Army. It burned my palm and caused it to blister, but I still forcibly bound it to my hand.

I thought it was my medal, a symbol of my "recognition by the empire".

We carried out more than a dozen missions, from Rose Straits to Deepwater Islands, from border pirate raids to combating the Iris Fleet.

I remember after each battle, someone would stick up to me and say, "Sergeant, when you get back, you'll be promoted to lieutenant officer."

I believed it too.

Until we received an order:
"Head to the Sea of ​​Dreams, accompanied by the flagship Crown, and participate in the 'Officer Promotion Assessment Competition'."

They told us it was a special honor drill.

We will board ships to fight pirates, simulating old wars, and the winners will be nominated for the military's mid-level pre-selection system.

We believed it. We always believe too easily.

On my first day aboard the Whale Grave, I saw that the ship wasn't a ship—it looked like the skeleton of a sea monster, or something behind a door that had swallowed light.

There was no sunlight on the ship, only fog and incantations.

We made a life-binding oath and put on the "Arena Team Standard Suit," which was very heavy and had a chain pattern sealed with whalebone as the lining.

We started the "competition".

The first battle was against the "enemy samples" of batch αF, who were draped in tattered military flags, had blank eyes, but were extremely murderous.

We initially thought they were remnants of the enemy forces, but we later learned that they were the victors who had boarded the ship earlier.

I have defeated seventeen opponents.

The seventeenth was a pirate captain. I cleaved his ribs in two with one stroke. As he fell to the ground, he uttered, "Don't win... if you win, you won't wake up..."

I didn't understand what those words meant at the time.

As the third competition ended, a strange bell rang out from the center of the Whale Tomb.

We are preparing to march out and return to the bridge for training.

But we heard a song, low, strange, with a kind of incantation-like vibrato.

The next moment, our whole body tensed up, our life lines reversed, and my consciousness began to leave my legs. I saw the reflection of someone else in my own eyes.

I'm still standing.

But I can't move.

I was put into a deep sleep.

From that day on, I became βE-13.

My body was auctioned off by Whale Grave to a viscount in the capital, who used me to pull carriages, hunt, and fight with his fierce dogs at family banquets.

I know that's not me, but I can also feel that it is me.

I could see my hands being pressed into the mud to shovel horse manure.

I could see my feet were bound with iron rings, and the noble lady sat on my shoulders and said, "More obedient than a falcon."

I remember one night, the Viscount brought guests to a banquet, and they drank too much and wanted to put on a show.

My shirt was stripped off, and I was given fever-reducing stickers. A group of people surrounded me, shouting, "Watch how the person with the number goes crazy!"

I fell to the ground and saw myself rolling around like a dog.

I didn't call out.

I cannot call out.

But that cry in my heart, forever tearing and screaming, tells me I am still alive.

I don't know how long I've been asleep, nor how long I'll remain awake.

Until that night.

The fire started in the dungeon, and the noble guards ran around in panic outside, someone shouting: "The Sleepers have rioted!"

I still can't move.

But suddenly the cell door opened, fog rushed in, and a figure draped in a black robe walked in, whispering a word whose meaning I still don't understand:
"The person in the dream, return to your name."

He didn't look up, but simply raised a lamp. The light shone into my eyes, and my life lines exploded with a burst of light.

At that moment, I "saw" my name.

It is not βE-13.

It is Jar Duvick.

I stood up from the ground, as if I had leaped out of the sea.

I didn't cry. I just threw the crushed numbered plaque into the brazier, then walked out of the cellar and into the night.

Walk toward the Monument to Military Spirit.

I didn't expect I could escape.

I never expected that anyone would hear my story.

I thought that if I returned to Chongqing, I would just be another beggar.

The clothes I was wearing were servant's robes stolen from the manor kitchen.

With burlap sacks tied around my feet, by the time I reached the fifth alley, I was too exhausted to walk any further.

Until I met her at the entrance of Morning Star Alley.

An old woman, dressed in black as a navy widow, sat on a street corner selling charcoal.

She glanced at me, squinted, and asked:
"You...which team are you from? The Sixth Fleet?"

I paused for a moment, then didn't answer.

She slowly approached, looked at the number mark on my face, and whispered:
"It's you... my youngest son, who was on the same ship as you..."

She raised her hand and touched my face, and I didn't flinch.

At that moment, I knew she recognized me.

Not because I'm still alive, but because—I remember who I am.

She took me home and gave me a clean, old military uniform with her son's name written on it. As I put it on, she whispered:

"If you continue to live, at least we'll still have someone in the military in our family."

The next morning, I got up very early and pasted a piece of paper on the broken wall opposite her house.

The paper was written by my own hand:
【Dream Lantern Record, No. βE-13】

My name is Jar Duvick.

It served in the Third Fleet, Cruiser No. 13.

I have slain nineteen pirates from the Whale Tomb and brought back a flag.

The victors of the competition sleep as slaves.

He was sold into a nobleman's stable and his name was erased.

Burn the serial number and rename it.

The returnee is not a dream.
He who calls me holds a lamp.

That was the best writing I ever did in my life.

This is also the first time I've written something for myself.

I thought it would be blown away by the wind, but it was still there by morning.

At noon, an extra piece of paper appeared next to me.

A man named Amo Rezier wrote down his number and his past.

Then came the third, the fourth, and the ninth.

By nightfall, the entire wall was covered with names and numbers.

At the very top, someone wrote a line in red ink:
"This is not a memorial wall, but a monument to those who remember."

I don’t know where they heard it from, but people started whispering about “the man with the lamp.”

Some say he is the one who lost the Whale Tomb, while others say he is the "successor of the Dream Lamp".
Some people say he is the one who opens the dream, the "dream breaker".

I didn't say who the dream breaker was.

All I know is that he saved me—but he wasn't a savior.

He didn't shout slogans or speak the truth; he simply recited a sentence, and then I saw myself in it.

This is enough.

By dawn on the sixth day, the Morning Star Times published a citywide circulated publication, without any reporter byline, only featuring a rubbing of a wall. The title consisted of only one line:
"Dream Lamp Wall - First Ten Pages Input"

I saw my own handwriting printed in the first column.

I didn't cry.

I just stood there, along with the other numbered men, took off my hat, and gave a military salute.

Midnight, Military Spirit Square.

The fire has been lit.

The anger of the numbered soldiers, the cries of the military families, the echoes of the civilians, and the betrayals of the soldiers all turned into flames that engulfed the night sky of the capital.

At the edge of the fire, in the position closest to the center of the monument, a group of people were sitting quietly.

They were numbered soldiers who had just been liberated and emerged from their slumber in various manors.

They bore fresh burns, old whip marks, and cracks in their life lines, but their faces showed no fear, only one thing—they were all whispering a name.

He came in carrying a lamp.

"He said he wasn't there to save people, he was just there to 'start a fire'."

"He didn't ask who we were, he just told us to look at our hands."

"Then he said a sentence, and the lamp shone on our hearts."

This is not a folk song, nor is it propaganda.

This is a memory that is surprisingly consistent across different people.

They all remember:
Deep in the foggy manor, at the end of the chains, on the numbered tags, a blurry black figure appeared in the firelight.

Sometimes he was a noble official in a hat, sometimes a knight in black, and sometimes just an old man with a cane.

But everyone remembers that he was holding a lamp.

The light was very small, like a navigation light on an old sailing ship;

But when the lamp fell into the eyes of the sleeping numbered person, it illuminated not the wall, but—the name.

“I saw my signature written on the bugle.”

“I saw my mother’s surname sewn into my collar.”

“I saw my own face when I said, ‘I am willing to fight for the empire.’”

The atmosphere in the square that night gradually changed amidst the whispers of the crowd.

What began as a wave of anger and sorrow has now become a kind of almost religious silence amidst the firelight.

It's not worship, it's consensus.

People began to write beneath the monument, using charcoal, their own blood, and rags:

"The Dream Lantern Messenger has been here."

"He didn't say who we were, he just told us to write it ourselves."

"The Whale Tomb swallows us into our dreams, but it is he who wakes us up."

Si Ming stood atop the Morning Star Tower, watching all this unfold, quietly holding the unactivated Mysterious Card in his palm.

That was a mysterious derivative of the "Handwriting of the Nameless One," a life mark card that could only be used once.

He didn't use it.

He simply let them write it themselves.

Selene leaned against him, a smile playing on her lips:
"Look, they're practically treating you like a god."

Si Ming did not respond, but only whispered:
"God doesn't need me."

"They just—don't want to be numbered anymore."

Rex sat on the steps of the dilapidated lighthouse on Broken Tower Street, telling a story to a little boy, drawing a lamp in the sand with his hand.

The child asked, "Is this your lamp?"

Rex laughed:

"No, I just... saw it once."

In the last hour of the sixth day, 232 “Dream Lantern Monuments” were spontaneously erected in different blocks of the city.

They had no statues of gods, only a stone slab with the inscription, "When I awoke, I saw a lamp."

Beneath the stele, the number and name are written side by side.

The curse of the Whale Tomb remains unbroken, but they no longer wait for people to call their names.

They shouted it out themselves.

And the person holding the lamp has become a symbol of "breaking the dream" in their hearts.

The flames in front of the stone tablet swirled in the night wind, like a blazing furnace burning with the city's conscience.

The numbered individuals lined up in a row, each with a pebble under their feet bearing their own name—and the name of someone who had not yet returned.

The crowd had not dispersed.

It wasn't because they were reluctant to part, but because they knew that not everyone was standing here anymore.

Among them, there are still those who remain in the dark dungeons of the manor, still imprisoned by the nobles as "sleeping resources" in stables, hunting grounds, and private underground theaters.

Jarl Duvík stood before the monument, gazing at his name on the stone. He neither sat down nor left. He simply murmured his name:

"North Kevin - cook."

"Tavel Joss - Artillery Operations Company 1".

"Aina Rom - a logistics seamstress".

Every time he called out a name, someone next to him would look up and join in.

This is not a roll call.

This is a distress signal.

One veteran wrote:

“My wife is still alive, and that manor holds the lives of my entire family.”

A young officer wrote:
“I remember my brother went to the arena at Whale Grave with me—he didn’t come back, but I, number TJ-0, returned. I can’t live just for myself.”

A female soldier stepped forward and said:

“I was called back, not to rejoin the army, but to bring my sisters out of their dreams.”

They stand here no longer for themselves.

Their purpose was:
Comrades who were sold off and had no way to escape

"Future recruits" included in the draft list of dormant numbers

The families of soldiers whose death records were rewritten
And those children who might be numbered again in the future because they are "not expensive enough".
"This is not a memorial, this is a warning."

"We are the echo of survival, the final anchor."

"We will not allow any more batches of numbered individuals."

Rex stood at the back of the crowd and silently lit a cigarette.

He whispered:
"This struggle is not for the sake of reminiscing."

It's for the future.

The Morning Star's midnight special edition featured no names on the front page, only an anonymous letter titled:
To the Person in the Lamp

The full text is as follows:
-
You don't know me.

But I woke up when you raised the lamp.

But I'm not satisfied just by standing up.

Because I remembered that the sapper next to me was still asleep.

I remembered that my daughter had also received a recruitment notice from the Empire's navy.

She is a child of a commoner; I can already guess her number.

I don't want to have a second nightmare.

So I didn't wake up for myself.

They woke up for them, and for their children.

We are no longer dormant.

We are human beings.
-
Under the firelight, before the Dream Lantern Monument, a little girl whispered to her father, who stood beside the monument:
"Dad...who is Mengdeng?"

The man who had been numbered bent down and said:

"They are the ones who put a lamp in our hearts."

"But we'll pass it on to you."

They stood no longer to prove they had names.

It's so that future generations won't have to lose their names.

The Dream Lamp is no longer just a flame.

It became the spark.

—From *Dream Lantern Stele*, Chapter Six: Finale

(End of this chapter)