I’m Doomed! I Got Trapped in a Dream! [3]

“Don’t be afraid. I’m here,” Venti gently cradled Dvalin’s enormous face, comforting the wounded dragon with soft, soothing words.

“Venti! I finally get to see the real you—now let’s settle this once and for all… are you a guy or a girl? Hehehe…”

Unlike the Traveler in the cutscene, who was supposed to hide behind a tree with Paimon and observe from a distance, Chen Mo walked right up to Venti, completely unabashed.

It’s just a cutscene anyway. Even if I stroll right into the middle of it, you’re not gonna—

Dvalin: “ROAAAAR——！！！！！！”

Venti: “Who’s there?!”

...

Right.
Chen Mo had forgotten—
Even in the official cutscene, Dvalin does notice the Traveler.

A storm of wind and debris burst forth as the dragon took off in a furious gust. Venti vanished without a trace, leaving Chen Mo standing there in a daze.

The dragon’s wind wasn’t just for show either. The dirt and stones it kicked up hurt when they hit.

“Puh—! Ptooey—! Hack, blech—!”

His face was covered in dust and grit. He could even feel sand in his mouth. Chen Mo kept spitting as he wiped his face with his sleeve.

“That was close! I almost got blown away~ Good thing I grabbed your hair. Thanks!”

“Ptoo… ptoo…”

The story kept moving forward.

Even though Chen Mo had been at least thirty meters away from Paimon during the scene, her NPC still delivered the next line perfectly, exactly as the script demanded:
“Good thing I grabbed your hair.”

Then, two dialogue choices popped up in front of Chen Mo:

• [Good thing my hair’s still intact]

• [Good thing the dragon didn’t target us]

After that, Paimon went silent, awaiting his choice.

Chen Mo finally cleared the sand from his mouth and looked up to see Paimon’s frozen pose: hand pressed gently on top of her head, eyes locked onto his, floating patiently in the air.

They stared at each other for a moment.

Clearly, until he made a selection, Paimon would remain like this — expression unchanging, motionless.

“Tsk tsk… NPCs, man. Always sticking to the script.”

Chen Mo couldn’t help chuckling at how rigidly she was following protocol.

Still smiling, he clicked his tongue and selected the first option:

[Good thing my hair’s still intact]

“What even happened just now? I thought we were goners…”

The moment he tapped the option, Paimon resumed her voice lines, chattering away in her usual high-pitched tone.

Out of habit, Chen Mo began waving his right hand through the air, mimicking a tapping motion in front of him — trying to speed up the dialogue like players always do in the real game.

You can’t skip cutscenes in Genshin, but at least you can click to fast-forward line by line.

“…Huh?”

Nothing happened.

Paimon just kept rambling in her slow, sing-song voice, completely unaffected.

Refusing to give up, Chen Mo waved again, tapping the nonexistent screen harder and faster.

Still nothing.

“Ugh… so you’re telling me this is a fully-locked autoplay cutscene? In this version of Genshin I can’t skip anything?”

Not only was there no skip button — he couldn’t even tap to skip a single line.

“Agh… fine, whatever…”

Chen Mo gave up. Trying to cheer himself up, he muttered:

“After all… I’m actually living in this world now. If I skipped the story, it’d be like skipping my own life, wouldn’t it? Yeah. Can’t skip life.”

“Eh? What’s that thing? That glowing red light on the rock…”
Paimon turned her head and pointed to a flashing red speck in the distance.

“That’s Dvalin’s tear, duh…” Chen Mo grumbled.

“Let’s get a closer look…”
Paimon floated off toward it right after saying that.

Huh… doesn’t Amber show up around here?

Though he instinctively followed Paimon forward, Chen Mo’s mind was already wandering — thinking ahead about what he wanted to do next.

Paimon: “Be careful! I’ve got a really bad feeling about this…”

Chen Mo: “I mean seriously — with how huge the area around Mondstadt is, and how many spots need patrolling, how convenient is it that Amber just happens to run into the Traveler here?”

When the two reached the crimson-glowing “dragon tear,” Paimon put her hands behind her back and tilted her head, studying the orb with a puzzled expression.

“I’ve never seen a stone like this before… I can’t tell what it is…”

Chen Mo, however, was still fixated on Amber.
Wait — could she be stalking me right now?

At that thought, he quickly glanced around, scanning the trees and brush. His transmigrated body had perfect eyesight, but no matter how hard he looked, Amber was nowhere to be seen.

Paimon: “We just know it’s dangerous. Let’s keep it safe for now…”

Chen Mo: “Still nothing? Damn… Don’t tell me she’s gonna spawn in live during the cutscene…”

Paimon remained deeply focused on the corrupted tear, examining it seriously.

Chen Mo, on the other hand, hadn’t looked at it even once.

The two stood there talking — one serious, one distracted — but their dialogue didn’t connect at all. It was more like two monologues running in parallel.

Paimon: “Okay, got it! Let’s get out of here quickly!”

Chen Mo: “Yup. I’ve decided — I’m sprinting ahead. I need to see exactly where Amber pops up from!”

After collecting the corrupted tear Dvalin had shed, Paimon spun around in the air, then kicked off the ground and shot skyward. With a faint pop, her figure dissolved into twinkling stardust and vanished.

A bright green number 3 floated into Chen Mo’s vision — he’d reached [Adventure Rank 3].

At the same time, the game menu reappeared in front of him.
Time to move on.

As soon as the menu faded again, Chen Mo sprang into action, jogging a few paces forward to a spot he remembered — the exact location where Amber jumped into the scene. He wanted to see for himself if she really spawned from nothing.

“Hey! You there! Hold it right there!”

He turned toward the voice…
And saw a sight that was either completely absurd — or exactly what he’d been hoping for.

There, on the empty forest path, was a stick figure mid-run — literally a humanoid matchstick.

The whole scene looked ridiculously abstract. If you were being technical, you’d call it a rigged character skeleton — the unskinned framework of a game model.

The barebones rig lasted less than half a second. Then, black lines began rapidly forming around it, shaping into triangle meshes.

Those triangles wove together into a lattice that wrapped around the skeleton, creating a rough outline of a human body. The form matched Amber’s proportions — the flowing long hair, the distinctive twin tufts on her head that bounced as she ran.

Those tufts — two messy clumps of crisscrossing black lines — were unmistakably her rabbit-ear accessories.

That web of triangle meshes lasted less than a second before color flooded in.

And in the blink of an eye, there she was —
Amber, Scout Knight of the Knights of Favonius.

Her skin, her auburn hair, her ruby eyes — her outfit, white thigh-high boots, her bright red bunny-ears — all of it loaded into place, snap by snap.

A true, literal case of “voice before visual” — she’d already shouted “Hey! You there!”
before her model had even finished rendering.

---

T/N: thats freaky

This is a fan translation of 完蛋！我被锁在梦里了 by 六轩岛润人芙宁娜. All rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!