Dead tired and hungry, Lucien had gone home, ate a two man's portion of dinner and slept the moment he hit the bed. His father, already having an idea of what happened, didn’t say anything and just let the kid be. By his calculations, a few more weeks of suffering like this would be enough to break his will and make him start walking the path made for him.

“Are you sure of this honey? I could see in his eyes how bad it was today” Artemis asked Dalton after both boys went to sleep.

Without changing his expression like it didn’t bother him, Dalton answered “I wish there was an easier way, but the boy is too stubborn. I believe being the best fighter among his friends before the bestowment ceremony had grown too big in his head, and he can’t accept the sad reality” then he complemented “There is no meaning in being able to throw a few good punches if the other guy can literally burn you alive. He needs to learn that fact the painful way”

A bit sad Artemis was still hoping for a less painful solution “I hope he figures that out quickly, I can’t bear to watch him come back in that state every day…Do you think his first dream will really be unrelated to his dream path?”

Dalton looked at Artemis' eyes with a curious gaze “Do you really believed that? I think it's a way his brain found to keep him going forward. It’s a lie he created to have faith he can still reach his goals, whatever they may be”

She didn’t complain, nor refuted him. Deep down she also thought something similar, but she couldn't help but help Lucian. Seeing him so dedicated every day, be it training or trying to understand his visions, warmed her heart and made her support him, even if it’s a fool's errand.

But just like Dalton, she wanted the best for her kids, even if it meant letting go of his dreams in Lucien’s case, so she was divided.

###

Lucien woke up the next day like a new man, without even a scar to be seen. A bit dizzy from his vision, he stumbled to the dining room to find Artemis and get her to help take notes of what he had seen.

In the end it was just more of the same. Same apartment, same classroom and same people. It was basically the same vision as the other times, with minimal changes, like that was it. And just like the last time, no matter how much he and Artemis tried to find something meaningful in this vision they didn’t. It was just a simple routine with nothing special they could use.

After burning his brain all morning without any results, it was time to finally have a normal combat class. Lucien didn’t let that porcupine kid take away his motivation, in reality it was quite the opposite.

Burning with desire to get stronger, he made a vow to never let anyone humiliate him in that way again.

Despite not figuring out the reason behind the porcupine kid’s hate, he had already started preparing a strategy against that boy because he somehow knew it wouldn’t stop there.

Together with Tomas, Lucien walked to the training grounds, like the previous days. They both took their time walking around the village, specially to say ‘thank you’ to Sarah, the healing lady. After all, she had saved both from weeks of recovery from their injuries.

Getting to the class, everything went as usual for the first part. Mary was introduced as a new member of the class. The teachers spoke a bit of what they had planned for the day and told them to run some laps in the training grounds to warm up a bit. After this brief run, his group learned a couple of moves from Duke, along with all the other close combat dreamers and some long range dreamers who thought they would need it, like Cindy.

But when they split apart to spar other kids in the last part of the training, things started going bad, at least for Lucien.

In the first fight, he noticed something weird but let it go. The other kid felt specially vicious against him for a spar, like he was in a death match.

A bit hurt from his first fight he still faced his second opponent. It was normal training this time, even with his injuries bothering him a little. The other kid went a bit easy and didn’t focus on his bruised areas.

But in the third fight, hell began. Right from the beginning, he noticed a malicious grin on the other kid’s face and got ready for the worst. At first he didn’t know why, but Lucien was not dumb. He saw, during the class, the various groups the kids hang around and noticed a common pattern.

All the assholes targeting him were either friends with kids who got a lower rank than him or friends with another asshole. ‘So that’s what this is about huh?’ Lucien thought. ‘Lower ranking kids can’t stand the humiliation of being lower than me and asked their friends to make me quit?’ He finally understood. But despite knowing the situation there was nothing he could do, and his pride blocked him from asking the teachers for help.

‘If I ask for help against these fools, what am I gonna do against stronger foes?’ Having decided to face his problem head on, he prepared himself mentally.

When the teacher made the signal to start, the other kid ran at him like a wolf that had been starving for days. ‘Melee dream and a bit experienced at close combat’ Lucien analyzed. But just before getting inside Lucien’s range, that odd kid, who seemed to be a bit older than him, started making a punching motion harnessing all the strength he could.

Lucien’s brain started working, and he quickly figured his opponent was about to use his dream power to reach him. Despite not knowing his attacker's dream power yet, he reached the conclusion he’d better get away from his fists line of attack before thinking of a strategy.

In a swift motion, Lucien dodged to the left. By looking at his right, he could finally see his opponent’s power. When his fist reached its maximum distance, it didn’t stop nor decelerated. It kept going straight until it reached the place Lucien’s head was staying just a few moments ago. The kids arms extended like pneumatic pistons, exertings inimaginable strength.

Relieved to have avoided that blow, he put his cunning side to work while dodging and kiting back the other kid to the best of his ability. Of course he never defended his blows head on, always trying to direct his opponent’s strength in other directions. Even the teacher watching thought that it was truly a marvelous display of close combat skill for a child of his age.

When his plan was finished, Lucien adopted a different stance and got ready. He let both of his hands open, ready to grab his opponent's wrists and close the distance. Shortening the distance was the only way out of his predicament, and after that, he was planning to use some grappling techniques to erase the other kid’s long range advantage.

He was as ready and prepared as he could, to apply his strategy in the next punch. And the punch, as expected, came. Like a snake, Lucien enveloped his opponent’s wrists with his hands and got ready to move his plan to the next stage.

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But the next part didn’t go as planned. The other kid, who had been training with his dream for a year, was well aware of his ability’s shortcomings, and, of course, had already developed counter measures.

Right when Lucien grabbed his opponent’s wrists, he felt his wrists getting grabbed as well. Like a two way pneumatic piston, the other kid’s arm returned to its original size with the same force it stretched, bringing Lucien along with it.

Using the momentum of Lucien going in his direction, the older kid jumped and hit his knee straight into his face.

His vision got blurred by blood, and his mind got confused by the impact. That was the end.

But the other kid didn’t let Lucien fall. Extending his arm, the boy grabbed his shirt and brought him back when he was almost hitting the ground. He placed his head right next to Lucien’s ear and spoke some words that only he could hear.

“I hope you never show your face in this class again you f*cking support. It’s too humiliating for some friends of mine to be ranked later than someone with no powers, so I will make you leave with this parting gift” Said the other kid.

That being said, the boy extended his arm holding Lucien, and before the victim could voice his ‘give up’, he brought him back, and received his head with the other fist, to maximize his punching power. Lucien’s head got smashed in a very ugly way and his neck made a movement it was not supposed to.

The teacher watching that scene got in a panic. The leader’s kid getting badly hurt was one thing and he was even advised to let it happen, but dying was a completely different story and, as the responsible to watch that fight, the shitstorm would fall on him.

Without even stopping to lecture the other kid, he quickly summoned his dream and gently covered Lucien in a coffing of rocks and dirt that positioned his neck at its rightful place. He had done this exact same technique a few times but none of them were pleasant, because every single time he used someone was close to dying. During the second the coffing took to completely cover Lucien, a stone pillar hit the other kid on the center of his chest, making him release the semi-dead boy.

With the coffin completed he rushed through the Clan, towards the healer’s house. He was moving at an unbelievable speed, with all the ground in his path helping him go faster, and the coffing was going even faster, being remote controlled way ahead of him. The only reason for him to be following Lucien’s coffin instead of only sending him ahead was the limit of his earth manipulation’s range.

-Sarah-

Today was another normal day for Sarah, she had healed a few kids, took care of her plants and was having a very enjoyable tea in the afternoon. That is until a block of rock suddenly broke through her house’s walls.

This was the third time she saw this very same scene throughout her life, and in all of them, like the earth manipulator, it meant a very serious trouble.

All the patients brought by the stone coffing always had one thing in common, near death patients.

Since receiving her dream, there had always been some cases where even she couldn’t heal, which took many of her nights of sleep, and made her train harder and harder hoping to, one day, find a solution to, no matter what, save those who came to her still breathing.

There is a saying in Taknoa that God always gives what you need the most, the dreams you desire most deeply in your subconscious, despite what you think superficially. No one really knows if that's true, but for Sarah it was and the solution to her worries arrived 10 years ago, when she finally completed her dream path.

Completed dream paths were rare in all of Taknoa and could be counted in two digits. It was so rare to reach that level, that even if one trained every day for their entire lives they most likely would not reach it. But she had. People who reached this level needed one thing they all had in common: Unconditional devotion to their paths, to the point of fanaticism. And she had it.

The final piece of her puzzle was a nightmare, one that summarized all her hopes, desires and despair developed through all her many years journey as a healer. And since receiving it, no one died in the mixers Clan anymore, if they could reach her alive.

The coffin instantly opened after ‘entering’ her house.

Stopping all she was doing Sarah ran to the box of rock. Time was of essence in situations like this. Getting near, she noticed it was the Clan leader’s son, who had visited her earlier just to say thanks for healing him, what an irony.

Activating her nightmare, she started to work. A dense green ethereal mist exploded from the healer’s house and soon covered all the Clan, reaching every single member inside the area. The mist could be seen from very far, given its gigantic proportions, and everyone who had seen it once, knew what was about to happen.

Just a second after being covered by the mist, strings of a darker green color started leaving, people, animals and plants all the same, and going toward the same direction, moving with a single purpose.

In Sarah’s dining room, a scene that could only be described as magic was being displayed. All the green strings from all around the Clan were joining and rotating, turning into a big vortex and being funneled into a big glowing ball right over Lucien’s head, from which two concentrated and almost black strings were leaving to envelop Lucien’s head and neck.

The effects of the enormous light show could be seen by the naked eye. His nose that had caved in, was getting back to its rightful position and his spine, which had broken in two pieces, was getting fixed at a visible rate. Cracks and weird noises kept coming out of the boy’s bones nonstop in the middle of what could only be called a miracle.

But all nightmares had a price to be paid.

Right beside Lucien’s body, Sarah could be found standing, piloting the whole process with her hands, while tears broke through her eyes and blood ran through her nose. She was feeling it all and even more. It was a price she was ready to accept, to pay for all the souls she couldn’t save in her healing career.

The side effect she was suffering was quite simple, but very hard to deal with. Every time she activated her nightmare, she suffered all the pain her patient was suffering, multiplied by how close he was near to death. The good and the bad part of it was that the power wouldn’t kill her, but if she passed out from pain, her nightmare would be canceled.

She had to endure. All of it. Otherwise her effort would be all for nothing.

After a few minutes passed, the teacher responsible for Lucien, who had sent the earth coffing ahead of him, finally arrived. Opening the door, he faced a scene that could very well be from the outcome of a beast attack.

Half of the front wall and the chairs in the dining room had been crushed by the coffing, which was now resting right beside the dining table. The floor, covered in a puddle of blood, now served as a resting bed for an exhausted and passed out aunty with her white hair tinged by her own blood. Getting closer to the coffing, he could see the young boy, also covered in Sarah’s blood, resting profoundly and intuition told him the kid was safe.

Breathing relieved for having avoided a much bigger problem, The teacher started to deal with the aftermath. First, he took the hardworking healer to her bed and fixed her wall. Then he started controlling his coffing with Lucien inside again, but this time moving very slowly and careful to shake it as little as possible.

Leaving the house relieved and a bit tired, the teacher took his time to exit the house. He was getting too old for such adrenaline filled events. But unfortunately for him, his predicament was not over and he found the worst possible situation he could imagine right outside the house, Dalton.

“What happened?” Dalton asked the teacher right in front of Sarah’s house. He was dealing with some problems outside the Clan, but came back at max speed the moment he noticed the green mist. He knew someone almost died, but survived in the end.

He had complete trust in Sarah, to the point he considered the person as saved the moment he saw the green mist spreading. But still, he had to go back to check the situation.

“How can I say it…” The teacher lost his words while thinking of a way to tell the leader his kid almost died. After taking a few seconds he started “One of the kids didn’t control his strength properly and ended up hitting the other kid with much more force than it should”

And then he delivered the bad news. “The poor boy didn’t have any defensive dreams at all and had his head and neck smashed. The problem sir, is that the kid happened to be your son…”