CHAPTER 263 – DREAM SHAPING

There was an impact on his hip. His adrenaline surged, survival instincts kicked in and his spear materialised in his hand… at the same moment he engaged his sensory abilities. An information overload from Earth Sense swept through him even as his pseudo Spark sensing domain snapped into place.

Tom’s body was ready to spring up and defend itself.

He breathed in deeply and managed to stop himself from enacting any of the violent responses which would give them ammunition to tease him with for days.

The wooden butt of the weapon struck his hip again. Almost begging him to react, kind of like an out-of-control alarm clock.

“You saw my spear appear. You know I’m awake.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “But I’m just making certain.”

With an effort of will, he resisted the temptation to react and pushed himself upright. His rapidly beating heart slowly calmed down. A bowl of porridge was passed to him and as always everything else in the room was already packed up.

The moment he stood from his bed roll Everlyn bent down and rolled it up. “Did you have any interesting dreams?” she asked.

Tom shook his head tiredly. Why had he been shown the giant again? What was the true reason?

“Tom?” she prompted. “Did you dream?”

“Yes. They were confusing. That humanoid is a giant, not a dwarf. It’s like twelve metres tall.” No one, he noticed seemed surprised by that revelation. He looked suspiciously between them. “I assume you’ve already gossiped about that possibility.” The amount he needed to sleep was really getting to him. He was missing out on so much of the planning and debating that was going on.

Michael scratched his head. “Yeah, that was one of our working theories given your descriptions of the last couple of encounters. You can only say miniature so many times… before… well… we had some alternative theories.”

“We had it tagged as possible, but… not super likely,” Thor agreed with a sheepish expression. “We all figured that if it was a giant, you would have noticed and mentioned something. Well, we’ll know better than to assume you have a decent perception, next time.”

Tom shot him an annoyed look only to catch Thor grinning broadly. “Shut up. The perspectives when I’m in the dreams are confusing. I see them as they see themselves. So I have no true sense of scale. Size, appearance, half the time I’m inferring it from the environment.”

“We know.” Michael agreed with him.

With his porridge finished and everything packed up, they continued on the journey.

They went for fourteen hours without rest before they found another cave. This was fit for purpose and Tom exhausted, fell asleep. His True Dreaming activated, and this time it was Phil.

The man from his internal monologue had entered the fourth ring. He, like the giant, was more than halfway through, and he was incredibly pleased with himself. He was wondering if he was on track to be the first to exit and therefore earn the best prize. Within the other mans mind, Tom screamed and ranted about the stupidity of such an attempt and that the dragon would kill him. Of course, it did nothing, as he was experiencing a scene that had already happened.

Phil continued on butchering a floating snake with wings with brutal efficiency. A glance at the sky showed that night was close to descending, so he needed to pack up and hide away until dawn.

Tom woke up at a prod, and this time managed to avoid summoning his weapon. He sat up with the memory of the dream and specifically Phil’s latest location seared into his mind. He had to act. That was what the dream was telling him to do. “Thor,” Tom said catching the larger man’s eyes. “Can you contact Phil, or does he ignore everything?”

“He doesn’t respond, so we don’t know, but we think the messages are getting through. We have a disclaimer asking anyone else who purchases to immediately resell under the same search terms.”

“That works?”

“Yeah, it does. We’ve had a couple of our communications be intercepted and then relisted when they realised the mistake.”

“Good. Congratulate him on reaching the fourth ring and tell him the best way to complete it is to not enter the maze of cracks that lead inwards. Instead, once he has killed all the monsters in the offshoot, the most efficient method is to backtrack. Get to the outer wall and travel along the rim until you find another inward path. Clear that and then rinse and repeat. Also inform him that the dragon is already at the centre and if he goes that far. He will die.”

“He’s at the fourth ring already?” Michael asked aghast at the concept.

Tom nodded as he chewed on his food.

The healer sighed. “Phil’s clearing zones faster than we are and his are far higher ranked. I got the sense that the latest one wasn’t a guaranteed curb stomping, but instead challenged him sufficiently to treat it with respect. Despite that, his progress has been quite quick. No matter what you think of the man we all have to admit his inward progress has been pretty impressive.”

“He’s going hard on levels.” Tom told them. “I got a sense of satisfaction that he had increased them in the trial. The only way for him to have done that is to have used all the experience purely on his classes. He wouldn’t have got sufficient to do other stuff as well.”

“Probably not the smartest play.” Michael admitted.

“We don’t know that,” Everlyn disagreed. “He might already have maxed out his traits and skills before entering the trial. We have no idea.”

Thor finished scribbling his note. “Do I charge him twenty thousand for this?” They all looked at him. “This information is worth more than the crap he gave us.”

“No,” Michael said finally. “I imagine that Tom’s sending this more to prove the validity of his visions. We want him to read it and if we put a high price on it, then he won’t.”

Thor appeared to be disappointed with the verdict, but his face went inanimate for only a moment, and then the note was consumed by a portal.

They continued clearing the zone.

The next day was more brutal than the previous two. Tom was called on multiple times to intercede. Which relieved some of his stress. He wasn’t getting anywhere with his training.

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“Lunch?” Michael asked as he critically examined the small cave they had just cleared. “We can stop for half an hour, warm up, get some hot food into us and give Tom a chance to sleep.”

“Why would I do that? I can last to night.”

“It’s not for you.” Michael said, exasperated. “It’s a brief nap to give True Dreaming a chance in case something critical has happened. I’ve been thinking about that skill for a while. Whenever we’re having a break, you need to have a nap.”

“This is…” Tom stopped talking. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s a pain, but too much is happening for me not to use it as much as possible.”

He felt like an invalid as he unrolled his mats and then used his skill to force himself to sleep. Forty nonprophetic minutes later, he was woken up. There had been no dreams, but the strategy was the right one.

They continued on. The same steady fights occurred that did not need him to intervene, and the whole time he struggled to get his armour working for him. If there was a secret to solving the problem, he was missing it because he was making no progress.

They paused for night and the true dream took over almost the moment he forced himself to sleep.

Tom was immediately cataloguing everything but there was no need to.

The mind was human. How it thought and the different sensory pathways coming in made that certain.

Second. He was staring right at his own face and his hands held up a weapon.

Adrenaline flooded through him and he tried desperately to wake up but the True Dream did not let him go. He was stuck watching. The memory of Selena’s betrayal was clear in his brain.

This would be worse and the cage was locked over him and stopping him from waking up to counter whatever was going to happen. This was not right… They were his friends… he couldn’t.

Cold rationality snapped through Tom like it always did in situations where he felt death closing in on him. The person observing made no moves to attack and there were no active thoughts suggesting one was imminent. He forced himself to calm and felt out the mind’s intentions. There were no hostile thoughts, and Tom’s sleeping body was only background.

Instead, all the focus was on the tip of the weapon in his hand.

A spear.

A flush of mental embarrassment shot through Tom when he realised his misinterpretation of the situation. This was not being shared because he was at risk. It was the opposite of that. This was an opportunity. It was Rahmat, trying to form the domain. It was probable that there was going to be a key insight revealed in the next few moments which would boost his own attempts. Tom pushed down his own chaotic thoughts in order to experience Rahmat’s more completely.

The spear, the concept of a point, the flow of power along the shaft they were critical notions which defined the weapon. From the tutorial, he could remember the feeling of his domain. The awareness of all things spear related and the power that had come with it. An expertise that stretched for miles and a competitive advantage that had let him wage war on semi-sapient monsters that should have been way too powerful for him to challenge let alone triumph over.

That wisp of memory, the recollection of when he had access to the domain was a comforting presence. When he had it, the world had felt far more manageable. It was not just the scouting through that had been useful. It was the offensive abilities that had gone with it. The way his thrown spears remained deadly even two hundred metres away from him as he could use his Skills on them. What the domain had offered had been extraordinary, and he wanted that back.

He hadn’t been able to afford His domain when it came to spend contribution points and he had arrogantly refused to downgrade the effectiveness of it to something more minimal. Instead, he had been confident that with days if not weeks he would be able to recreate the conditions to acquire one. Misplaced arrogance in hindsight. Rather than finding success, he had run into blockage after blockage.

Rahmat looked at Tom who was fast asleep. There was a lesson to be taken from his success. Tom hadn’t come in with a plan to get an oracle skill, but when presented with it he had grabbed it and ran with it. Then with his dodge skill it was the same thing. He had adapted and adjusted his plans. Hell, somehow within a day of starting the process, he had evolved a tier two spell and a couple of tier zero ones into a tier four that, if everyone was being honest was closer to a five.

Then there was the stone armour he was currently practicing. He was sure that would end up being just as fruitful.

Was Tom’s success fate or talent? Was his own a lack of those? Or was he being stubborn in trying to force a domain which might be an impossibility. If he did lesser things, would he be making similar progress to Tom? Or was the other man just better than him?

The spear wavered in his hand as he applied pressure with his palms so the tip rotated through small circles. As the tip wobbled, he attempted to get the balance to be able to sense the spear without flooding it with a full-blown skill.

Was he tried to crunch time lines too much?

Not a lot of time had passed since he had arrived in Existentia. While he had hoped for weeks, he had been expecting the effort to take years. Now that they were in a trial and would be for a couple of months maybe waiting years was no longer the right option. The trial would become more and more difficult as time went by. What had Phil said in response to the note they had sent. Phil had admitted he hadn’t been intending on sending anything, but since Tom’s information was useful, he thought he would share some stuff for free. The ring five monsters had the rank increase by four instead of two and he speculated that when he got to ring three the rank would jump by six or maybe eight.

They had done the mathematics. Currently, they were collectively fighting creatures with a rank sixty percent higher than their own. If Phil’s information was correct, then they would never close that gap because the monsters would be growing faster than they could pack on levels.

Should he abandon the spear domain of focus on gaining a simpler source of strength? Do what Tom had done and gain high tiered skills that way.

If he got the spear domain working that would instantly double his strength, but that felt a long way off. What he was trying was not making progress, so maybe he should…

Tom was snapped awake as a spear butt prodded him.

“What? I’m awake,” he growled as he was poked again.

“Rise and shine it’s morning.” Harry said with a tone that Tom was sure was fake cheerfulness calculated to piss him off.

“Screw you.”

“Dreams?” Michael asked as a matter of course.

He remembered exactly what the dream had been and rounded on Thor. “Phil got back to us?”

“Yes, he did.” Thor said. A look of realisation came to his face. “That’s great. He’s lying. I knew it. That bastard made up those numbers to scare us.”

Tom winced at the confirmation. He had known that True Dreaming was accurate in what it showed, but independent verification of the bad news hit differently. If the zone ranks were increasing at that rate, then everything became so much harder.

Thor and the others caught his expression.

“He is not lying is he?” Thor asked, sounding worried.

Tom squeezed his eyes shut as the implication of the new knowledge sunk in. Internally, he probed the previous night’s dream to see if there was a context that could let him interpret what he had witnessed in either a positive or negative light. There was no indication either way. However, the fact that he had found out about Phil’s note from a True Dream… well that gave the information its own heavy weight. He opened his eyes. “I don’t know Thor. It’s not clear.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Michael asked, sounding confused. “If you were in the man’s head, then you should have noticed his intentions.”

“My dream wasn’t about Phil.”

“Then,” Michael’s eyes snapped quickly around the small cave. “Then who was it about?”

It was clear the healer knew that Tom’s dream was about one of them. In fact, by the way everyone was looking at him they had all realised it.

Tom turned to face Rahmat. “It was Rahmat. I dreamt about him considering dropping his pursuit of a domain.”

“So not related to Phil at all?” Thor asked.

“That’s creepy Tom.” Rahmat said at the same time.

“I don’t set the fucking rules of what it shows me. I was woken before the dream finished. Where did your reasoning end up?”

“What I don’t understand.”

“What did you choose?” Tom insisted, as an inkling of an idea of why he had gotten the dream occurred to him. “Are you going to abandon the domain or to keep trying to recreate it?”

“I…” Rahmat hesitated. “Um, the earlier. I sort of decided to give it a rest and focus on easier to evolve skills. We need to find ways to supercharge our strength. Did your dream tell me which way I needed to go? Is abandoning it wrong?”

Tom shook his head. “No. Sometimes when I think about the dream I get understanding about what to do. With this, there is nothing. No specific instructions. No hidden messages.”

Rahmat stroked his spear like he usually did when he was getting stressed. “Then what’s the point?”

“I don’t know.” Tom said, but he did know. He wouldn’t get a dream whose purpose was to change nothing, but he couldn’t say that directly and he wasn’t going to lie. “Why don’t you tell me?”