Chapter 57: Defeated ’Hero’, Layla Jauregia. Part-3.

Passing through the narrow and dark tunnel while sitting inside the mining cart, Zephyr suddenly started feeling sleepy for some reason.

"Not sleeping properly for the past few days seems to be affecting me... yawn~... quite a bit... yawnnn~"

*Bam!*

Zephyr slapped his own face with his hands to drive away the sleepiness, but for some odd reason, the urge to sleep became even stronger when he tried to resist it.

"What’s going on... don’t tell me this is some kind of mind attack too?..."

’I should be immune to... such... attacks though... I feel... sleepy... No, I can’t sleep right now!’

’But... I really... feel... sleepy...’

Almost as if another subconsciousness had born inside of him and was urging him to sleep as fast as possible, Zephyr found it really difficult to resist this sleepy feeling trying to take over his mind.

The cramped mining cart felt oddly comfortable and warm for some reason, and even the continuous sound of the cart moving forward seemed like a lullaby to Zephyr’s ears in that moment.

It was as if everything around him were trying to put him to sleep and make him defenseless!

"No... I can’t sleep. What if this is a plot of some monster!?.... but... I..."

Zephyr tried his best and even thought about biting his own hand to wake himself up, but to his dismay, he himself could not break through his thick skin and could only give up the thought of injuring himself.

’Urgh, to think that I have become so tanky that even I can’t injure myself even if I want to... sigh...’

’I can kind of feel ’Ka*do’s pain now... tch...’

Zephyr resisted the urge to sleep for almost an hour with various tricks and methods, but eventually, he couldn’t keep up and ended up exhausting all of his mental strength right away, causing him to fall asleep in the mining cart.

The cart kept moving in the dark and silent tunnel with Zephyr lying inside it in complete silence; the world around became extraordinarily silent, as if nothing wanted to disturb Zephyr’s sleep in that moment.

...

"Hmm?... Where am I?"

Zephyr opened his eyes and found himself standing on a footpath.

In front of him was a familiar-looking street with eerily familiar looking houses that he had seen before.

"This is... the street I used to take when heading home from school during my elementary school days!"

Suddenly Zephyr noticed even more oddities; the street looked unnaturally big... or more accurately, his vision angle was clearly wrong and differed a lot for what he was used to!

Zephyr looked at his body and found that his hands were tiny, like a ten-year-old kid’s hands.

The powerful explosive muscles of his were nowhere to be seen, and he was thin, small, and weak, as he was in the body of a ten-year-old kid!

Zephyr felt pain in his shoulders as he realised that he was carrying an oversized schoolbag filled with books so heavy that the bag had almost the same weight as his entire body!

’Ugh, this reminds me of my school days. My teachers were pure scum and liked to order around children to bring all books to school despite the fact that they would only teach from a few at a time...’

’Moreover, my school didn’t even have a locker to put extra books in, and I had to carry the weight by myself...’

’Maybe that heavy weight was the reason why my height got suppressed until I finally got better teachers and stopped carrying so much weight at such a young age...’

Zephyr looked at the glass window of a nearby house and saw his own reflection only to find out that he was right now looking exactly the same as he looked back in his elementary school days.

’I regressed? No... my gut feeling is telling me that this is something different... come to think of it, wasn’t I trying not to sleep... did I end up in a dream?’

While Zephyr was busy contemplating various things in his head, a middle-aged aunt whom he recognised came out of her house holding the leash of her family dog.

The dog was an exotic breed and was almost a metre tall in height, and its entire body was packed with muscles!

It was a dog that the middle-aged aunt’s husband had brought back from somewhere, and except for the family taking care of it, the dog had a very fierce temper towards everyone else!

Seeing that big dog, Zephyr’s small body suddenly became frozen stiff, goosebumps appeared all over his body, and panic appeared on his face.

This dog was infamous in their neighbourhood for being extremely aggressive and very difficult to control, and it had bitten many neighbours before!

Many of the neighbours had complained to the family about this matter, but the caretakers of the dog didn’t give a shit about who was hurt and who was bit.

Due to these events, the family were on bad terms with almost the entire neighbourhood, and yet they refused to properly take care of their aggressive dog.

’I remember it now... this is the day when that dog attacked me!’

As if confirming Zephyr’s thoughts, the moment the fierce dog noticed Zephyr standing on the footpath, it became aggressive, growled loudly, and immediately charged at him while barking at the top of its lungs!

The middle-aged aunt who was holding its leash couldn’t even control the dog, and the leash snapped almost instantly!

With an intent to harm him, the dog rushed towards Zephyr with such fierceness and speed that Zephyr couldn’t even react properly.

Just when Zephyr thought that he was done for, a truck took a sharp turn around the corner of the street at a fast speed.

Before the dog could reach Zephyr, the small truck hit the dog with such power that the dog was sent flying into a nearby pole!

The dog’s spine cracked from hitting the pole, and it collapsed on the ground instantly!

To Zephyr’s shock, despite being almost dead, the dog still glared at him and growled at him with such hatred in its eyes that it sent shivers down Zephyr’s spine.

It was as if the dog was blaming him for what had happened!