A couple of hours later, guessing that everyone should be asleep Lorien finally started using his ability

[Dreams]

He just activated it and did nothing further for now, and as soon as he used it, his perception instantly exploded outwards making him able to perceive the presence of everyone in a 50m radius

To be more precise, it enables him to feel whether there is anyone Dreaming or not, and from there he can do whatever he wants using his ability, be it directly transforming them into dream energy and absorbing them, or entering the dreams...etc

It's a pity that this caused the ability to be useless for other applications such as combat or reconnaissance, it doesn't matter much though as it wasn't what it was intended for anyway

But, thank god the ability [Dream] can be used remotely without having to be in contact with the target like the [Reality] part of his ability, or else it would have been too impractical to touch every single person to absorb dreams

Dreams are a very mysterious thing, Lorien has always revered them, even in his previous life

Scientifically speaking a dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep, most commonly in the REM stage

But in the supernatural and mysterious side of the world, Dreams are much more than what normal people perceive them to be, as they can even be called a different world on their own

Dreams are relatively omnipotent, as the phrase 'You can have anything in your dreams' explains best

Moreover, it's very inclusive to all other powers and rules, this is similar to how the [Reality] part of his ability can affect all other power and rules

Let's take the power of time for example

Generally speaking, it has nearly no connection with [Dreams] but here we are, having precognitive dreams

Lorien could clearly remember that he had Precognitive dreams many times, but at the time he ignored them for one reason or another as he listened to the scientific explanations

Even though at times he could precisely predict what would happen very clearly weeks and months before said event, which was a bit weird on its own but he didn't think much of it

What he didn't know at the time was that he was in a similar state to Saigai with his 'Origin' flaring from time to time

After marveling at the mystery of Dreams for a couple of moments Lorien finally regained his focus

He could clearly feel that there are around 11 people Dreaming in his perception range, the closest to him was Saigai but he didn't want to try it on her just to be safe

So his attention turned to one of the other 10 people, choosing one randomly of them he didn't directly absorb it as one of his objectives today was to test his ability, and now there are ready-made 'white mice'

The first thing Lorien tried was entering dreams, he was quite curious about this ability

[Dreams]: Traveling Dreams

Using this ability he instantly disappeared from the room and entered the dream of a random person, it was as if he was never there

'Quite the useful ability, if I wanted to run away for some reason its nearly impossible to catch me'

Entering the Dream, he felt as if he was in a bubble, this dream was quite fragile easily to break and manipulate

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Feeling quite curious he looked at what this person was dreaming of, he observed it

But as soon as he looked at it Lorien's brain crashed, his eyes burned as if someone paper sprayed his eyes, quickly closing his eyes he held back the urge to throw up

'FUCK!!! Who would dream of such a thing!!!'

He then used his ability to erase it with his eyes still closed, after a couple of moments he opened his eyes vigilantly still a bit afraid he looked at the new darkness around with relief and fear

"Yeah never again, you can't pay me enough to look at that shit again"

The worse thing is that Lorien could feel that what he's in right now isn't a Nightmare, it's a dream, so what he just saw now is something the owner of the dream wants

Right now, After what he just witnessed Lorien had no interest in observing other people's dreams it can even be said that he got a PTSD

But no matter what his mood is right now he still has to test his ability

Looking at the darkness around him he started manipulating it creating different scenes and scenarios

After playing around for a bit he observed his energy consumption

'Not much...'

But honestly right now Lorien can't think of any practical application of this ability other than rare applications and maybe if he wanted to train here and practice some dangerous techniques

After playing a bit more he reluctantly decided to stop even though it was a bit fun and novel turning pure imagination into 'reality' so easily

[Dreams]: Exit

Using his ability, he appeared in the room again

'Now my mood is a bit better...'

Right now there are two things he hadn't tried yet and that is what would happen if he were to kill in a dream which Lorien decided to skip for now

And the other one is the most important and that is Absorbing dreams

Without further wait, Lorien used his ability to attract all dreams in his perception range

Looking at the 11 multicolored 'orbs' floating in front of him Lorien could vaguely see some of the scenes happening inside, but after what happened earlier he had no interest in seeing them

After observing them for a while Lorien noticed something else, that is the Dreams in front of him have different strengths, and after investigating a bit more Lorien figured out what was happening

It appears that each person's dream has a different level of 'quality' depending on their state (Injured...) and life level

Absorbing the dream of a baby or a very old man won't give the same energy as someone in their prime, and absorbing the dream of a weak mortal won't provide anywhere near the same energy as the dream of a powerful being

After observing it a couple more times and making sure he didn't miss anything he finally started absorbing them

The 'Orbs' floating in front of him instantly transformed into absorbable Dream Energy and then it was devoured by Lorien

As soon as this energy entered his body it got partitioned into 3 parts, the first was used to improve his Soul, the second to increase his Energy, and the last part is for his Body

This allows him to have a balanced improvement with no shortcomings

This process didn't take much time as the energy he absorbed wasn't much, the dreams of only 11 people are nowhere near good enough to push his strength to a new level

After the absorption ended the first thing Lorien did was observe the changes and improvements

First of all, the soul, it became a bit stronger and more 'solid'

Secondly, it was the body, he could feel a bit of an improvement but it wasn't much, but what was interesting is that this improvement is an all-encompassing one, be it strength, agility, reflex, life energy (life span)....etc, This is a completely balanced improvement

And finally its the energy inside his body, he could feel that it increased a bit, this Source Energy is the fuel for his ability, the bigger the quantity the bigger the Dreams he could 'Realise'

Actually, Lorien wanted to do some tests with this Source of Energy such as the energy control, it's a pity that no matter how much he tried this Energy wouldn't budge a single inch

It's as if it was glued in place, feeling this Lorien soon gave up thinking that maybe it's because he's too weak to manipulate or maybe there is some other reason, so for now this Source Energy only acts as fuel and nothing more

Of course, that wasn't all the changes that occurred, the range of his 'perception' actually increased from 50m to 50.05 m

This increase may seem small but it's actually not considering that he only absorbed the dreams of 10 or so people, Moreover the bigger the perception range becomes the faster it will further increase

Imagine if this perception range was the size of a country, Lorien would be able to absorb the dreams of everyone in this country every single day, His strength at the time will quickly increase at an absurd rate

After finally organizing all of his gains Lorien stopped using his ability and his Perception returned to normal

Laying on his back Lorien looked at the wooden ceiling in a daze

'It appears that I'll have to do this every night, the improvement isn't much though but with enough accumulation, it'll do, I really need to find a place with much more people...'

As his mind was wandering around Lorien slowly relaxed with his eyes slowly closing, the even sound of his breathing soon filled the room as he fell asleep