Summer was now in full swing, the days were longer and the sun burned brighter in the center of the world. Out of the eighty students only two more had opened their Dreamscapes and others had begun to drop out after losing hope.

The school itself was more crowded than ever though, because of the attacks from Dreamer families within the city a lot of students no longer went out to the city any longer and instead stayed on campus. Some students, such as Melanie, still went out whenever possible, but there had been a few cases of other students ending up in the hospital.

As for me, I had gone through dozens of iterations of Breakdown, all to test the functions of the Dreamscape more than the ability itself.

If I made the structure of the Room more complex then it would increase the quality of my Intent and the Wit. If I had all my mechanical devices be watches then it vastly improved the rate of Breakdown for watches, but also decreased the efficiency on other mechanical devices.

I also tried a few simple Locks for my Wit. One condition was that I must speak the mechanical devices name before using the ability, and another was that I must hold the device with both hands before using it. For the name one I accomplished this by literately creating a lock on door of the Room with the intention of not letting me access the Room before fulfilling the condition. I could still create things within and upkeep them, but I could not utilize the ability.

For the both hands it was more difficult, but I had decided on a pedestal in the Room that once I put both my hands on the devices in the Room would start the breakdown process like before.

I found that the naming condition increased the effectiveness more than the hands one, and was reasonably sure that it was because I needed to identify the object before I could use the Wit, which increased the difficulty rather than just putting two hands on it.

I also created a Room that took an actual price instead of having me meet a condition. The price was that once I had finished using the Wit I would be unable to use my ability again for one hour. When I had used the ability this time the watch in my hand had fallen apart in only a second. The scary thing had been that it hadn’t just been that version of Breakdown that I had been unable to use for the next hour, it had been every single Breakdown Room I had.

That ingrained to me that price related Locks were very dangerous, but could be very powerful.

Once I had done enough experimenting with the nuances of my Dreamscape I started to test out different abilities.

I still wanted an ability to take apart people and animals, but after months of using Breakdown I realized something. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Yes the outcome was the one I desired, but the method was not. Just throwing something into a bubble of Intent and watching it take apart itself was boring. I wasn’t immersed in the experience of taking apart the object.

My next set of Room experiments were to see if I could make tools out of Intent just like how Ravik had made a pen and paper. I aptly named it Toolkit.

In the beginning I was only able to make the shape of the tool with Intent. Like a screwdriver or scalpel. I could achieve the same thing, theoretically anyways, just by practicing with Intent like Mr. Rider had showed us. Wits were just very complex forms of Intent manipulation that used the things created in the Dreamscape as a mold for their function.

As I got a better idea of what the Room’s required I was able to summon almost identical tools to their real life counterparts. They had no special function, and were less durable than the real thing, but I was able to do it.

Still I felt as though this too was not what I wanted. Toolkit was more useful than Breakdown yes, but it wasn’t enough. So I scraped it. Instead I would practice my Intent manipulation until one day I could create tools as needed.

However I would need to have a viable Wit soon, because just yesterday we got the information on what our final test would be for our first year.

“The Second Layer?! Really? We’re children!” Elina fumed, stalking back and forth in the woods near the school.

“All the teachers and the Forged Order will be there,” I said blandly sitting on a fallen tree trunk.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Between my hands was a ball of white Intent. At the moment I was practicing keeping it at the same rigid density all the way around. It was not going well, unlike Toolkit which was good at keeping it in the singular shape shown in the Room, doing it with just Intent required constant concentration.

Even when I could make the outside solid the center was still constantly shifting states as Intent’s natural form was vaporous. At least for non-natural born Dreamers it was. Those with Dreamer bloodlines apparently could have their Intent show differently than the normal colored haze. I wondered if it was possible to change the base way ones Intent showed itself even without a bloodline. At the moment I wasn’t interested in trying it.

“But still, half of us haven’t even really created Rooms yet, and those that have aren’t good,” Elina went on.

“Yours has been pretty effective.”

“For one hit it is, but it’s fucking exhausting to do.”

“Speaking of, you about ready to try again?”

Elina gave me a pout.

“Five more minutes.”

“No, stop being lazy.”

“… Bitch.”

I didn’t reply.

Elina walked to a tree, rolling her shoulders as her signature pink haze started to come off her. Then it all started to funnel towards her fist, making it rage like a bonfire. Sparks of light flew off, green, yellow, red, blue, making crackling sounds as they fell to the ground.

She drew back her fist, the light growing even brighter and a small whine echoing out through the forest, like a firework shot into the sky. Then she released her punch. It screamed as she pushed it forward and when her punched collided with the tree a blinding flash of iridescent light stung my eyes, and the sound of a firework deafened my ears.

After the strike I squinted my eyes, but the image of the firework was burned into my vision. With my ears ringing and eyes closed it came as a complete surprise to me when something tackled me to the ground.

I felt the hair in my face and slender limbs so I assumed it was Elina. Only a second or two later I felt the ground tremble, but when I opened my eyes I felt a stab of pain in my head and closed them again.

Elina’s weight disappeared off of me and I could hear the dull sounds of her talking to me, but was unable to make out the words yet. I raised a finger to signal her to give me a moment.

When I had oriented myself to the world once again I opened my eyes to see that the tree she had punched had been shattered and fallen towards me. Not the first time that had happened today, but it had been a lot more powerful than previous displays of her Firework Punch this time.

“Does your punch have a emotional aspect to it?” I asked.

I didn’t know if I was enunciating it properly because of my currently impaired hearing, but Elina got the message. She nodded with a proud smile.

“You’re covered in bark and dirt.”

Her smile dropped.

“Also please make sure to tell me next time you go that hard with your Wit. It was quite unpleasant.”

A look of guilt crossed her face and she spoke a few sentences that I still couldn’t understand. I knew she was apologizing, she wasn’t the kind of person to deliberately do that to me so she must’ve underestimated it’s power. I suppressed my annoyance, it was unproductive and unkind to hold onto when Elina looked genuinely remorseful.

“It’s okay. Its actually good that your Firework Punch is more powerful than we thought it would be.”

She lit up and started speaking very quickly.

“I cannot hear you.”

Now she looked annoyed. Why?

A shadow began to move behind Elina, if not for it’s huge size I might have missed it.

“Bliss.”

“Huh?”

Hey, I could hear again. That meant I could hear the deep growl coming from Bliss the Nightmare’s belly. That wasn’t good.

Elina jumped, squawking like a bird.

“Hello Bliss.”

Bliss’s eyes, which had been tracking Elina flicked to me. Her eyes were narrowed to thin slits and her mouth was tugging upwards to reveal a few of her pristine white teeth. She was angry, probably because of Elina’s very loud, very bright, display of power.

Bliss gave me a yowl of disapproval. In the past few months I had been able to dissect a few more homeless people and even a deer that Bliss had left for me. During that time I had met the panther a couple of times. While I couldn’t say that she loved to be around me, she had always required pets whenever we met, which I was happy to give.

“I apologize for the disturbance.”

I had told Elina about the panther before, but she still gave a look as I spoke to the Nightmare like it was a person. I elbowed her in the ribs.

“Uh, I too apologize, it will not happen again.”

Bliss tilted her head up to look down on us, then she walked a few paces, licked Elina’s face, turned and stalked away back into the woods. Elina stayed silent until the Nightmare was out of sight.

“Is my makeup smeared?”

“Yes.”

“Great… lets go back.”