With the Can Man long gone and a tiny, fluffy little pupper in his arms, Vaile felt it was time to try that maze again. Hopefully he would be able to clear it on this fourth run, but he wasn’t really sure if that would be the case. Actually, a part of him was of the mind that he should try and avoid going into the maze, despite him not understanding why that part of him felt that way. Well, it didn’t matter in the long run, as this was a dream, and unless a certain Dream Demon showed up he was fairly certain that death in the dream would not equal death in real life.

He made his way towards the maze entrance, but the doggo in his arms began to squirm and eventually broke free of his grip. The tiny little King Charles Spaniel landed gracefully on the ground before taking a stance that indicated that it intended to warn Vaile away from the maze. Obviously the dream dog knew something, and Vaile was a bit hesitant to ignore such a cute little fluffy baby’s desires.

He approached the dog in a lowered posture, cooing words meant to calm the dog, but the dog advanced on him and headbutted him a surprising distance back just as something unspeakable reached out from the twisting liquid-like field that made up the maze’s entrance. Vaile barely caught a glimpse of what lashed out towards him, but it looked paradoxically both insectoid, cephalopodic, mammalian, and reptilian at the same time, and that unnatural mix of features gave Vaile a hell of an incentive to stay the hell away from the maze’s entrance.

Once again, the dog had saved his life… well, his dreaming life, but that didn’t much matter now. Vaile sat up from where he had landed, watching the little doggy trot over to him with a smug look on its face. It was now beyond obvious that the dog was smarter than it let on, and Vaile was going to find out what the hell was going on, one way or another.

And he figured that he knew just the way to get it to open up to him. Well, he would have used that way if he wasn’t in a dreamland and could access his Item Box, so he chose option ‘B’. Once the dog was close enough, Vaile reached out, grabbed the little thing, and gave it one hell of a scratching. If anyone was watching, they would have been surprised at how fast the dog’s leg moved as Vaile hit that sweet spot and put the dog in a state that all dog-lovers think is absolutely adorable. After a good ten or so dream-minutes of this treatment, Vaile stopped abruptly and stood up.

The little dog was stunned, and more so than it should have been if it wanted to pretend to be a mere animal. This was compounded upon when Vaile stood with his back to the little thing, arms crossed and eyes closed with his face pointed up. The little critter danced around him, barking and scratching at his legs and feet to try and make him continue, but Vaile remained steadfast against the attempts and stayed utterly still and silent.

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Finally, the dog walked away looking rather dejected but stopped when Vaile spoke a few words, which in turn caused the dog to break its disguise by accident.

“Want some more scritches?”

“Do I ever! You’re the be-….” The dog paused as it realized that it had just blown its flimsy cover before cursing its foolishness. “Shit.”

“Knew it,” Vaile said as he sat down again, beckoning the dog over. “So, do tell me what you are, what this place is, and what the hell is going on.”

The dog came closer and locked Vaile dead in the eyes before the telepathic pooch spoke up again.

“Only if you give me more scritches.”

Vaile, ever the negotiator, took a few moments to make it look like he was mulling over his options, all the while, his fingers were dancing and looking very inviting to a dog who wanted his masterful touch. Finally, Vaile looked down at the cuddly little fluff-butt and replied with a single word.

“Deal.”

…

Vaile had sat mostly still while scratching the tiny dog and listening to it explain things, but to be brutally honest he couldn’t wrap his head around much of what he had been told. This was not because the dog (which, as it turned out, was the monster that had been in the room before he had passed out in an astral projected form) had explained things poorly, but rather because most of the words that it spoke were either impossible for him to understand, censored by random beeping noises, or had the auditory noises that he normally would have understood utterly scrambled beyond any semblance of normalcy.

And this was saying something, because he had asked the dog-thing to simplify its language at least five times by now, and the telepathic dialogue was still mostly indecipherable eldritch gobbledygook. He had at least gotten a single bit of information that made him feel slightly better.

He now knew that he was probably right to have decided to fortify those rooms and hold out for the night inside them. After all, even if some of the natives simply wanted to use him for things that may or may not be hazardous to his health but would let them break free of the loop that they had found themselves trapped in, there were others that were more than willing to just outright kill him if the first group managed to get their hands on him.

Well, there was one other bit of info that gave him some kind of calm. At least now he knew that those dog-like things that he had been spotting out of the corner of his eye were only watching him to make sure that he didn’t end up getting killed. Or worse. He still didn’t much care for how they looked, as eldritch beings tended to evoke existential dread even back in the MMO. But, despite all of that, he at least knew that there were some nice doggos on his side, should he ever need their help. All he needed to do (if they ever showed up) was to close his eyes, plug his nose and ears, and just think happy thoughts in order to avoid the creeping existential dread and fear that they generated.

Well, on the plus side, he now had a bunch of cuddly-wuddly doggos to play with in his dreams. Although, the fact that they were all super intelligent would always be in the back of his mind and would make playing with them until he woke up rather weird.