"Ow ow, you're going to tear my arm off."
No protest will stop the Princess Knight Aratsuki.
Wherever she's trying to take me, she won't stop. I don't recall feeling pain in a dream before.
Let alone from a girl. She drags me around like a ragdoll, and I don't have the strength to resist.
Things shouldn't be like this. When I fantasize about battles, they are way different too.
Valiant, heroic, not gritty and chaotic.
Sure, I know. Unlike in my daydreams, I'm not in charge when asleep, but this is too much.
Random memories flood my brain that aren't mine.
"Hang on, Odysseus, we're almost safe." Her voice sounds strained.
The weather is warm enough without all the exertion, and she's wearing heavy armor. Sweat glistens on her nape.
"Slow down—" No begging can convince her, but I can't put much effort into it either.
I'm getting flashbacks, almost like a dream within the dream, that I don't understand.
This is also new. I never dreamt about being someone else, but here I am.
She called me Odysseus. Now I understand who that is.
It's me? I have a wife and a toddler son somewhere.
"Home," I mutter. It's been ten years, I've spent ten years away from them, in this cursed siege.
My son must be in his teens already, and I want to return home, to meet them again.
But I can't.
Not before we take the city, and the war is over.
War. The Trojan War.
And the Trojans overrun our lines as she drags me backward.
It takes all my strength to yank my arm free from the girl.
"Where are you taking me?"
This finally makes Aratsuki stop to look at me with her curious grey eyes.
She's out of breath too, and once she deems the place safe, she sighs.
"What a place to dive into." Her armor is the same as always, but she holds a spear I haven't seen before.
She always uses her enormous sword in the manga, a trademark like her twin buns.
"How did you even do this?" She asks, but I don't understand the question. I did what?
I fell asleep while reading the Iliad, and now I'm inside it with her, and other manga characters.
One shows up right as the line of our warriors breaks under the enemy pressure, and throws herself into the gap.
Her face is familiar, she's that friendly rival chick I don't like.
Her entire character is to compete with Aratsuki, but her name eludes me.
I'll remember her better next time.
Her spear alone can hold back the Trojan breakthrough, massacring dozens.
"I could use some help." She complains, but her face is in a distorted grin. "I can't be everywhere at once, Nestor. You could make yourself useful too, Odysseus."
She's talking to us, but who's Nestor?
It's only Aratsuki and me, at least who stand out from the raging crowd. And what am I supposed to do, I don't even have weapons.
"Don't go overboard, Achilleus, we must pull back to another line." The girl grabs my wrist again, and we're on the move. Shit.
The name Achilleus rings a bell, but it's not in the manga.
"What is going on?" I don't even have the time to feel anxious about touching hands with a girl.
We're way past the usual embarrassment and heart-pounding excitement in this chaos.
"If you don't know, explaining it won't help either, we must move." She finally addresses at least one of my questions, though she's still not answering. "What the hell could the trigger be?"
Trigger? And she said something about diving too.
This battle is way more detailed and realistic than I could ever dream.
Yet anywhere I look, a few characters from her manga are around.
And then I spot it, the most surreal thing, even for a dream. A huge horse statue made of planks, like the one they showed on the last pages of her story. What a weird crossover.
She drags me to the beach because there is one, and ships line the shore as far as the eye can see.
The battle is far behind us, but the screams and the cries can still reach here.
"This is as far as we can go without boarding one of those." She stops to catch her breath, and we're in the middle of the Greek camp, filled to the brim with the wounded and the dead.
"Will you tell me what's happening?" I ask again, rubbing my wrist now that it's finally free.
This girl has a grip stronger than a vice.
That's the Princess Knight for you with her brutish strength.
"I don't know, this isn't my Dive. All I know is that I'm a guy called Nestor." She stretches her neck, then swings the spear around. She's not looking like a guy, that's for certain.
But then, even though my name is Max, I'm also Odysseus, as long as we're here.
It feels like my mind has split between them. And I don't want to be here as either of them.
"So if it's your Dive, you should know the trigger." She stares at me, ignoring the beach and all the wailing around us. "Do you feel any strong desires? That's how it should show up."
"S-strong desires?" I have plenty.
One was that I wanted Aratsuki to be real, and I wanted to win her heart, but I can't say that.
Well, there is something else too.
"I want to go home."
"Well, duh, we need the trigger for that. You can't leave a book without setting it off." Whatever she means by that, I shake my head, confident that this is what she's looking for.
"No, I mean it as Odysseus. I want to go home to my family, but I can't." I'm surprised I can talk to her without blushing. But I also withstand her gaze. "I can't leave before the war is over."