Chapter 7: Dream
« When demons infect small creatures, they rarely attack another creature alone. After all, the physical envelopes they steal from their hosts, even when horribly mutated, have only limited power to harm. Instead, they prefer to gather in howling, chattering packs to overwhelm their victims with their numbers, like a raging, hungry wave. Then they bite and scratch the legs and ankles of their opponents, not forgetting to tear off any bits of flesh they might have the opportunity to devour. Their small teeth are as sharp as razors and leave a constellation of bloody bites on their victims, who rarely die instantly. Such injuries are just the beginning of a long and unpleasant excruciating agony.»
- Excerpt from a report by Captain Donward Lyel, on the recent increase in demonic activity in the remote areas of Oswald County.
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When Mars reopened his eyes he stood in a forest of oaks and walnut trees. The sun's rays barely passed through the foliage of the trees.
Suddenly (foreign) images, ideas, memories and feelings came into his mind as the Tower influenced his mind
Here, in this dream, his identity was Henra Barn junior, son of Henra Barn senior, a soldier in the service of Baron Valem and soon married to Marrela, the pretty daughter of the tanner from the neighboring village.
Recently some of the inhabitants of the villages on the Baron's land had disappeared, and strange rumors had been circulating: deformed and abnormal creatures eating human flesh had been seen by the peasants.
They had then alerted the lord of their land, and in keeping with his reputation as a wise and prudent ruler, and concerned by the rumors he had heard, he sent a squad of soldiers to inspect the surroundings to find out what the situation was.
So he and some of the Baron's other soldiers were chosen to investigate the situation.
Henra had heard scary stories about sources of corruption and monster packs roaming the forest in the Mistendahl area, which was not far from here, but he was not convinced that such things could exist.
At worst, they were going to meet some wolves or a rabid animal. The men always had this tendency to exaggerate their stories, especially here in the countryside where the slightest incident could easily turn out to be fatal, but he could not really blame them. He himself felt a certain uneasiness from the beginning when he approached this forest. By the gods, there truly was something unnatural here.
Unfortunately he soon discovered that not only were the stories true, but they were severely underrated. The forest was infested with monsters, and the other soldiers in the squad were dead or missing. He also assumed that the hunter who had served as their guide had died a few minutes earlier after fleeing.
Now he found himself here , all alone, trying to survive in this cursed forest.
The grimoire was floating in front of him.
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-Take up arms, survive the horrors that lurk in the shadows of these woods, and flee so that you can tell what you have seen.
or
- go in search of the place where reality itself is broken before returning to share your findings. If you succeed, the Gods will reward you more generously.
In these places, your desire to survive and the fire burning in your heart will be your only help against the evil that overwhelms it this place.
Time limit: until sunset.
Number of resurrections remaining for this test: 9/9
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The landscape became clear again as Mars regained control of himself.
He looked around before looking at his hands. When the Tower injected memories into his dream-linked mind, the experience was truly strange.
It was as if his memories as Henra were as real as his own. In fact, he might as well have woken up this morning and suddenly remembered that he too had always been Henra.
It was almost as if two personalities were sharing the same body, and it really made him feel schizophrenic.
The good thing about it was that it was an easy way to acquire skills, know-how, and useful personality traits like being able to fight with a sword or being able to spot danger in the damn dense forest, and that had been very helpful to him the first time.
Even if they disappeared once the dream was over, it was a very good way to gain experience, because since the dawn of creation, men have always learned by imitating others. And for anyone else it would have been useful.
In any case, the first and good news was that he no longer wore that damned uniform that scratched his skin as if demons themselves were hidden in his clothes. Private Henra's clothes were much better than the ones he had been given. A bit shabby , but despite their stench, they were at least not uncomfortable as hell. And just for that alone, Mars felt ready to face any danger.
About ten paces away, the corpse of one of the soldiers was on the ground, Mars approached it to retrieve the weapon from the hands of the corpse whose flesh had disappeared. The man no longer needed it and he did, because the enemies would be numerous.
The sound of leaves crunching behind him caught his attention. Turning to face the source of the noise, several small rabbits with brown and colored fur, red eyes and small prominent teeth approached him jumping happily with cute little noises, before stopping a few meters away and looking at him while gnashing their teeth.
This scene brought back so many memories for him.
When he looked into the rabbits' eyes, he could hear a voice whispering in his ear and a distant feeling of dull, icy pain. The animals in front of him were only a shadow of their former selves since nightmare spirits had taken over their bodies. He could feel these things looking at him from the inside.
Most creatures were born to live, but some were born to kill, and the things that had infected the rabbits fell into this category.
Suddenly the rabbits began to transform, their bodies grew and deformed with a mixture of squeaking and cracking bone noises. The little balls of fur almost doubled in volume and size and now looked like some kind of creepy fucking zombie animals.
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Some started laughing or whispering unintelligible words with distorted voices, and when they had completed their transformation, the deformed creatures threw themselves at him like a tide of fangs and claws. No sooner had he clutched the shabby handle of the sword in his hand than one of the creatures came upon him after a series of small jumps. Mars easily cut the creatures off one after another while they were jumping, so they were unable to change their course.
From then on it was not much different from a baseball game, except that this version was a tad more extreme and a little but bloody.
Each of his blows cut the swollen flesh of a monster and the blade methodically fell in a deadly manner on each of the mutants. He easily got rid of each monster that came for him, and after two dozen mutants were killed, the starting area was cleared.
It was so different from the first time.
And it was time to check the question he had been asking himself since he realized he really came back in the past.
His grimoire appeared in a spectacle of flames in the air in front of him, and its content answered his questioning as the pages lit up with words made up of glittering letters. Mars joined his hands in a pose as if praying while hoping to hit the jackpot.
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White and pure as a blank sheet of paper, your soul is as immaculate as it is appetizing to the hungry predators of the immaterial worlds. It's a pity that your physical body is so weak, because there will be many, people” attracted by the prospect of such an easy meal. But do not despair, perhaps you will manage to survive. Good luck. You will need it.
Reinforcement level: zero
Contained souls (infused): none
Souls in possession: none
✙ Physical strength: +0
Innate: 4.6
Total: 4.6
✙ Resilience: +0
Innate: 3.3
Total: 3.3
✙ Vitality: +0
Innate: 3.1
Total: 3.1
✙ Psychic power: +0
Inner: 81.3
Total: 81.3
✙ Clarity of soul: +0
Inner: 67.9
Total: 67.9
✙ Magic energy: +0
Innate: 9.8
Total: 9.8
☽☾ Blessings: none
☽☾ Gifts: Minor Perception of Ideas, Minor Perception of Emotions, Minor Perception of Essence.
☽☾ Magic: None
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Mars almost choked when reading the equivalent of his character sheet. Even though he already knew this, confirming that he had lost all of his 816 levels of reinforcements as well as all the things he had acquired still made him bitter.
But not everything was bad in his situation. The amount of innate statistics he now possessed for his soul and spirit were the same as before his death. All the hours and days he had spent training his mind and strengthening his soul with the help of magical techniques and exercises had not been in vain.
His psychic power and clarity of mind was equivalent to that of a 1st circle sorcerer, although for some reason he didn't understand, this was not the case for the amount of his magical energy reserves.
It was what he had acquired through his own personal effort, and not through the curse of Narkasum. Perhaps that was why they had not disappeared? Hard to say, but probable.
And although the pages of spells in his grimoire were empty, he had this strange feeling.
That he hadn't forgotten them, but rather as if they were distant and blurred in his memory, as if they were missing something.
Except one. Thinking back to telekinetic magic, he clearly had the feeling that he could manipulate the objects around him as he pleased, even if the spell wasn't written in his grimoire, so...
Could it work?
Mars focused on the sword in his hand, looked at its shape, length, color, weighed it in his hand and felt the roughness of the sword hilt. When he concentrated his attention on it, he could perceive something more than just a material form ... as if each of its characteristics defined part of the object's identity. A secret and intimate identity linked to something more than the object itself.
Through his weak magical senses, he felt the coldness of the metal blade, its hardness, its solidity. Familiar feelings that evoked its story... first a long and slow existence surrounded by rocks, then the movement, the heat in the fires of the forge, the hammering that shaped it, the hands that held it, first full of heat which then disappeared. It was as if the sword carried, in its own way, a form of life within itself.
The bond grew stronger as the magic was transmitted inside the sword. He rarely dwelt on these feelings, the contact with each object had become such a deep reflex in him that it had long since become useless to focus on them, but in the beginning it had taken him a lot of time, effort and frustration to learn how to handle telekinesis properly .
And when Mars released the hilt of the sword, it began to float in the air. Mars laughed because the news were good, and that made his situation a little less desperate.
"Wait, does that mean my other spells might work too?"
Without further ado, Mars concentrated, trying to channel a flame spell, but the link was so weak that it was almost as if it was non-existent. He felt glimpses of the magic he was trying to summon, but they were so fleeting and so tiny that they were insignificant.
Channeling the streams of magic, a tiny spark appeared in his hands, but it was as fine and small so weak that a simple breath would suffice to extinguish it. Ok so burning his enemies with hellfire was out of the question. The feeling was strange, it was as if he was missing something he couldn't identify to make the spell work.
He would have liked to take the time to check each of his spells, but the place was not very favorable for this kind of activity, that could wait until this dream was over.
He then advanced in the direction in which he felt the most intense discomfort, because that was probably the source of the corruption.
Along the way, he regularly encountered groups of infected animals with them becoming stronger as he progressed. Each time, the noise, the agitation and especially the smell of hot blood attracted other monsters in large numbers.
Distorted things ran around him, panting and exulting with voracity, they howled at the feast of hot and juicy meat that he represented to their eyes, while some of them started to laugh in an almost parodic voice.
The monsters moved in disordered groups, jumping frantically in a succession of small jumps that betrayed their origins, those of small herbivores once harmless to anything but small plants. A dozen of them had come together, while things more or less distorted, threw themselves at him without worrying about their own lives. Mars would strike with slashing or decapitating the things that were thrown at him.
One of them, coming from the side almost caught him by surprise, but a well-placed elbow strike broke the nape of the thing's neck, while the point of his sword pierced into the neck of another monster to skewer it. He had to strike one of them since it had come too close and tried to bite him. Striking the hilt of the sword hard into the beast's skull and smashing its brain, the thing's blood splattered on his face.
When the last one jumped on him, he received it like a soccer ball and gave it a violent kick, breaking its spine and paralyzing the creature, before finishing it off with his sword.
Mars looked pensively at the corpses around him. It was such a strange situation. The first time he had had this dream, things had been so horrible and nightmarish, he had been unable to see more than twenty meters away because his eyes were totally wet with tears from the pain and horror of being eaten alive by these fucking monstrosities.
And he had wet his pants more times than he wanted to count. But fortunately, to safeguard his personal honor, he had always lied about it since it was not necessary for others to know such details. But this time he wouldn't have to because things were totally different.
It almost looked like a walk in a badly frequented suburban park.