David was sitting in the lounge chair behind the guards' gate station again. He was at a complete loss of what to do next. This had to be the fiftieth time he had lived through this nightmare. He had tried everything at this point. He had turned around in the cab and went home. He had stopped to see all the events at the party. David even walked around an eavesdropped on multiple conversations. He also started a few fights just for kicks. David had been killed several times and even managed to kill himself once by accident. He had partied hard, ate so much food and drank so much wine.

It was like he was trapped in a nightmare of repeating this party over and over again. No matter what he did, he was not going to escape. David couldn't really edit this dream like his other ones so modifying a different result was hard. He had tried his magic word to escape the dream over and over again. But in the end, David always returned back to the cab arriving at the Carmine estate instead of switching to something else.

Other than the fact that this had become the most epic repeater dream of all time. David had a ton of questions that needed to be answered. Was this dream a reflection of reality or was it something that his mind just made up? Was the first time he went to the party real life or was that just a dream also? If it was real, then why was that guy Atkins so strong? Just how stunning did Karine look in that dress? Those were just a few of the many questions that he had floating in his head.

Sitting there in the lounge chair, David started to feel a little down.

"Why does this shit always happen to me? " he said out loud to himself. Almost as if the complaint triggered a memory, David remembered some advice his dad had given him once: "If you have time to complain, you have time to take action." The memory sort of refreshed David's outlook on the situation. What could he do to make this issue positive?

After pondering for a couple of hours, David finally came to a conclusion. He would use this gift of a repeatable evening to train himself. He would train how he interacts with people. He will try to educate himself as much as possible. He will learn how to fight. If he was blessed with living the same party over and over again, he was going to make the most of it.

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While David was busy planning out how to use his time in the dreamworld, his body was being tended to by light magic healers at the Carmine's compound. Karine would stop by to check on David every evening. For some reason, she felt at fault over what had happened to him. David had been in a coma for around nineteen days.

Karine had to call David's work and family to let them know that David had been in an accident. Actually, she could have made someone else call but she had called since she felt responsible.

As the public story went, David had wondered off during the party and appeared to get lost in the darkness of night. In his nighttime journey, he had tripped an fallen off the edge of an embankment at the rear of the Carmine's property. The fall had caused David's arm to get severely injured to the point that it was just hanging by a thread. He almost bleed to death. A patrolling group of guards had found him with just enough time to save his life. The doctors even managed to reattach his arm. Everything was good except for the fact that he was in a coma. The doctors had performed an detailed exam and determined that he was now perfectly fine internally but he was stuck in a deep sleep. The sleep was probably a reaction to the large amount of blood he had lost. He just needed something to trigger him awake. It could be anytime or it could be years. No one really knew.

That was the story being told to everyone. It was believable. The Carmine family had felt so guilty over the accident that they had opened up their own private care facility in their home to treat David. Most of this reaction was the doing of Karine.

The real story wasn't that believable for common people. You would have to be a part of The Other to understand. The Other, as in the other world, the reality where magic was real and monsters roamed. David had accidentally wondered into a complex mirror illusion field and encountered a plot by one of the Carmine's elite guards to kidnap Karine Carmine. David had stood up to the assailant and had his arm ripped off and almost died. The guard, Atkins Landish, had immediately fled when the mirror field broke and alerted the other guards. David's arm had been reattached using magical means and he was currently in a coma. The only truth to the story was that no one knew when he was going to wake up.

The entire Carmine family forces were currently searching for Atkins to try to find some answers about the kidnapping plot.

After the kidnapping attempt, Karine's guards were now doubled. The usual guard, Charles, was now joined by a female guard by the name of Heather.

Tonight, Karine was waiting for David's mom to show up to her house to visit. Both his mom and dad had traveled all the way from their little town of Benson located 6 hours away. They had drove over pretty quickly for the previous visit when David was first injured. David was the only child they had left and they were of course concerned. They had stayed three days before leaving the last time. Karine had assured them that David was stable and they would be notified immediately if anything changed. After two more weeks of waiting at home, David's mom decided to come stay at the Carmine house until David woke up. It was Karine's idea for her to stay near David. Karine's mother had died when she was young so she seemed to enjoy having the older woman around the house.

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Back in his dreamworld, David had started to train in his never ending party dream. Oddly he had found a few limits to where he could go in the dream. Particularly some locations inside the Carmine house. It was like an invisible barrier restricted his access when he tried to enter these places.

Regardless, David had mixed and mingled with people for all that he could mentally stand. Now was time to train how to fight. His first few attempts were against Atkins in the standard dream finale. He couldn't call that training as he was instantly defeated every time. If he had his arm ripped off again, he would still feel the pain before he died in the dream. He preferred not to go through the excruciating pain repeatedly.

After a few humiliating defeats, he decided his best bet would be to start with some easier opponents. Using his wits, he managed to convince a few guards to spar with him a few times. He even did some crazy stuff like causing a ruckus in the middle of the party and fighting the guards as they tried to remove him. He also convinced the MMA expo organizers to let him fight once. It was a pretty good show.

After living in the dream world for over 200 party times, David started to get pretty good at brawling. It wasn't just martial arts training. This was practical fighting experience. He knew how to dodge guards and go on the run. He even tried to assassinate a few people to see if he could. He would also fight Atkins on occasion as a basis to see how much he improved.

His favorite part was improvising weapons from things he could find around the estate. He had a propensity to use common objects to inflict damage on people: forks, table legs, pencils, scissors, loose garden paving bricks...whatever was sharp or heavy and easy to wield at people.

David has developed a love of the almost senseless violence in his dreams. Why? Because he could. David had even started to enjoy mercilessly beating the hell out of people. With a little self reflection, he had become aware of his violent tendencies. He didn't really feel ashamed. He couldn't be like this in real life but he could be as violent as he wanted in his dreams. What's wrong with that?

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While David continued his slaughter in his dreams, a few more months had passed by in the outside world. David's mom had left again after spending a few weeks at David's bedside. Now he was all alone in the room with just Karine sitting in a chair reading a book at his bed side.

For some reason, Karine had become attached to visiting David. She didn't realize how used to his company she had gotten over the months of designing the zoo exhibit together. During the day, she had still been working with the design firm to finish up the plans so the project could go to construction.

It didn't feel the same to her though. Whenever they were in meetings discussing the project, she would find herself missing David. She didn't become fully aware that she was attached to him until earlier tonight. The contractor had just been selected for the job and everyone was celebrating the start of construction at the office. Everyone but the guy who had worked on the project the hardest. Karine couldn't enjoy the celebration at all. David had been in a coma for four months. The healers were expecting him to wake up anytime. Karine could only hope that they were right. With David on her mind, she sat in the chair in his room and dozed off to sleep with the book still in her hand.