image [https://imgur.com/B3Tnc4I.jpg]
Nearly our whole party had been reunited after reliving some bad memories from our pasts. With an eastern dragon and a flying boat, we sailed across the sky toward Dream Island... The place where Belphegor had planted his fortress of slumber upon.
The castle silhouette was coming into view on the horizon, identical to what we'd seen back in Verrenville.
“You guys ready?” I asked the team. We were currently planning on the deck of the boat how we were going to tackle this final challenge. “this'll be our biggest fight yet.”
“How are we sure he isn't going to just send us back into those dreams?” Indena questioned. “He did it once, he can probably do it again.”
She brought up a good point. Belphegor has had a lot of time to prepare for us, so he'd likely just try and send us back into our dreams.
“You are mistaken…” Mella turned to me. “This world around us is still very much reality, not a dream.” We all remained quiet to listen closely. “The demon lord has not merely warped our perception of things, or sent us into an alternate reality. He has had the power to change reality all together.”
“I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “Are you saying we’ve been in the real world this whole time, not our dreams?”
“That’s correct,” Mella nodded. “The further out you go, the less change you’ll see. But his domain is spreading fast, it may have already encompassed the whole country.”
“So…” Indena looked distressed. “You mean he really sent me back to the village I was born in? And he changed me into a real kid?”
“If that is how things look, then yes. Everything you experienced was in reality, not a dream.”
That added a new layer of trouble to our fight. I couldn’t comprehend the immense power a demon could have to alter reality itself.
“We are screwed, no?” Marek cringed.
“We are not,” Mella claimed. “Observe the dragon’s tail…”
Samael had a lot of sparkles coming out of his tail, and those sparkles were causing parts of the sky to look more like normal daylight than that strange twilight. My systems were telling me that his tail wind was actually stardust energy.
“So, you think stardust can help us?” I asked.
“I’m no expert on stardust,” Mella admitted. “But I believe it will be a key part to winning this battle.”
Marek was plumbing his forehead with a fist, like he was trying to drum up some hidden memory.
“Yalda, you became a child again earlier, no?” He had an ‘ah ha’ moment. “How did you do that?”
“Oh, dang!” Indena’s eyes went wide and she pushed my shoulder a few times. “You were using that stardust aura spell, weren’t you?”
That’s right! I was using that spell.
“Stardust aura!” I announced, spawning a sparkly aura around my body. Just as soon as it bloomed around me, I instantly returned back to my normal little self. “Hey!” I cheered. “It worked!”
“Then stardust must still break the demon's control over reality,” Uncle concluded. “I guess we already knew that though, since we did find that safe zone at the antique shop.”
That was where we saw the Seven Star altar. It was producing a lot of stardust energy that kept the dark reality from taking over that shop.
Now I felt silly for not assuming this was going to work in the first place. Stardust certainly was the key to dealing with the demon's domain, and very likely beating him as well. Pooling together our stardust resources was the next step.
“Can you change me back next?” Indena asked with a hopeful look in her eyes.
“Mmm…” I hummed, disapprovingly. “If I did that, I don’t think you’d be able to use stardust anymore,” I told her. “We’ll need all the stardust users we can get to help out.”
The only reason I thought that was because in her normal form, she couldn't use stardust. I’m not sure what happened between her being a child and growing up, but something was preventing her from calling upon the power of solar light. It’s possible she forgot how to use it over time, especially since she had amnesia of her past.
So as weird as it was, she’d support us better as a kid then her teenage form.
Uncle also had a stardust weapon available to him, but as far as I knew, he couldn’t use stardust himself. It also looked like his longsword took a toll on his body for some reason.
“Uncle, if that longsword is your weapon of choice, why is it so taxing?” I asked.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“The more I use it, the more mana it draws from me to power up,” he said. “If I didn’t share my power, it wouldn’t produce stardust.”
I could see how tricky that was. That, coupled with how he says he hadn’t used it in a long time, made me understand how he was struggling to get back into the groove of things. It’s like how video game characters forget their special moves after every game and have to relearn them through the story.
“Old Man…” Indena spoke up. “Have you tried only powering it up when you're about to hit something? Priestess Sovereignty told me a while back that I needed to learn that so I don’t waste too much power while fighting.”
“That’s not a bad idea, but a bit wasteful when in combat.” He spawned the weapon, then powered it up. A burst of sparkling white flame danced upwards from the hilt and lit up the metal. “Starting it up takes a second and consumes a lot of mana. It’s more efficient to keep it burning than to turn it on and off between swings.”
We might have to think about upgrading its efficiency… Was it upgradable at all?
“Uncle, can I see the sword for a second?”
-Hyperion Longsword (Masterwork) (upgradable)-
-Melee, Slashing-
-Excellent quality-
-Charges = 0%-
-Stardust Fire Lv 2 : User may power with mana to generate stardust flames across blade-
-Elemental affinities = Mana (Weak + unstable)
His sword was a red item, which meant it was really good, just under legendary, which made it the third most desirable type of item. It had some interesting quirks, such as its elemental affinity being mana. I’m not even going to pretend I understood what the (Weak + unstable) part meant. From what I could tell though, it was a really good sword.
“I wonder if we can stabilize the mana affinity?” I mumbled to myself. “How could we though…” I turned to Mella. “Do you have anything that could help with that?”
She shook her head. “I am a mana witch, not a blacksmith or enchanter. But I can research possible ways to get the effect you're looking for.”
That would be a big help. If we could stabilize its mana flow, which was what I was kinda’ assuming that part meant, we could probably help Uncle out a ton. Heck, I might even be able to add an elemental affinity to my spear if that worked based on enchantments.
“Uncle, what are these elemental affinities?” I asked. “My spear says it can have one.”
“If a weapon has a particular elemental affinity attached to it, you’ll be able to command that power to some degree when you use it.”
Oh! I see!
“Since you saw a category for that in your weapon of choice, we’ll talk about it after we get this demon business taken care of,” he said. “There’s a special way you’ll need to go about it.”
If I could have had that done right now, it would have been a boon like none other… But based on how he was building it up to me, it seemed like it was a complicated thing that would take a little more time than the hour or so we had before reaching the demon fortress.
Speaking of which, it was unanimously decided that we’d all want to get some rest before storming Dream Island, but the moment anyone put their heads down, they felt a terrible rush of adrenalin.
“The Curse of Restlessness…” I discovered all of us had it in our stats. Nobody would be getting any sleep with that active. Instead, I tried to force shut down my systems…
-Restless.exe is preventing shutdown…-
“You’ve got to be kidding me…” I grumbled, feeling my eyes a bit heavy. It’s awful being tired and not being able to sleep all at once.
I did have Lesser Curse Heal, so I put that to work and started curing people.
"Baa baa black sheep, have you any curse? Yes sir yes sir, don't let it get any worse."
After reciting the incantation, a pulse of light energy, similar to when I used Lesser Heal, shot into whoever I was targeting. It wasn’t strong enough to cure the curse completely, but it at least allowed us to get a few winks before we’d make landfall.
~☆☆☆~
The island was only a kilometer away, which meant we’d be landing any second now. Atop Samael, I swooped in first to make sure the literal cost was clear.
He came down over the water and allowed me to fly off him and land on ash coloured sand. A tar like tide washed over the beach, leaving behind a residue that I deigned to touch.
Beyond the black dunes, purple tendrils of grass stuck out of the ground, mostly surrounding themselves near effigies of black and white flame. Beyond the hills of demonic looking flora was the sinister demon fortress.
I sent Uncle a message saying that it was safe to land. While looking around, I spotted a dock that they could park the ship at… Assuming they could figure out how to land a flying boat.
*CRASH!* went the boat as the front slammed into the old docks, causing the whole wooden structure to collapse into the water.
“Guess they couldn’t figure it out…” I snickered to Samael.
As a recovery method from that poor attempt at docking the boat, they simply beached the vessel and let the sandy friction halt their momentum. As they were coming out of the boat, I could hear Indena yelling at Marek about crashing the boat into the dock.
“You big dummy!” She was punching his leg. “That stupid landing hurt, stupid Blue Boy! You did that on purpose I bet!”
“It’s okay…” I said, approaching them. “Marek just got his boating license from a sponge.”
“Hey?” He looked so disappointed with me. “Fine, everyone make fun of me! I’d like to see any of you try and land a boat out of the sky!”
“Everyone, knock it off!” Uncle ordered. “Let’s keep our teamwork strong and remember what we’re here for.”
“We have to fight that demon,” I said, taking up my spear and preparing to march on the fortress.
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