Walking through the rows of crystals, I kept to a slight jog, while following the direction my compass gave me. It was time to get out of this dreamscape no matter what. I came to a halt in front of a massive crystal that towered over the landscape.

A massive beam of light extended upwards from the crystal into the sky. I had to mentally repeat to myself that there was no symbology in this place, despite the appearance of something that would correspond to a tether.

My compass was pointing right at the massive crystal. Walking around, the massive crystal, it was clear that this was the source of whatever was doing this to Michelle’s dreamscape. The closer I got to the massive crystal, the more massive it appeared.

The crystal soon extended up into the sky. It was a was a massive structure, glinting with a rainbow light. The more I walked towards the base, the distance didn’t decrease, but the crystal grew bigger. Soon it was dominating everything in front of me.

Moving forward wasn’t helping me. It was time to take action, doing something else. I didn’t like walking forward as this crystal at the source of things kept getting larger and larger. For some reason, it just felt like the wrong thing to do.

I felt exposed without all my stats and skills in a situation like this. Well time to go overboard, and walking seemed to be pointless. I wasn’t going to walk into the jaws, or source of power, of whatever this thing was. If it wanted to fight, then we could fight.

“Break!” I yelled and swung my sword, imagining a wave of power coming from it and shattering the crystal in front of me.

The crystal began to break. Massive shards rained down in front of me. Each one caused the dirt and gravel landscape to tremble. “Break!” I yelled again and focused on the attack, I wanted to happen.

The massive crystal began to break more. All the crystals turned to dust. I quickly shut my eyes. Wake up. Wake up. My entire sense of direction spun, and I was suddenly back in the plaza.

I unclenched my hands and let out my breath. “Incoming!” Captain Francis yelled out. “Spotted something over there!”

“You four, protect Michelle. Captain Francis with me! Brace yourself,” I called out as I quickly got up to my feet. I winced a bit since, I had use his title. Oh, well, I was going to kill whatever was out there regardless. He quickly pointed in the direction he had spotted something. His sensory skills finally, coming in clutch. I grabbed him by the back of the armor, and kicked off the ground.

Air Burst. Air Burst. His armor groaned, under the strain, but it held. The armor had been designed with a place at the back for me to grab onto. It was a useful innovation for both myself and for soldiers to quickly move their comrades.

“There!” Captain Francis pointed out a hazy blur in the air. Focusing on it with my Sense stat, it had incredible stealth skills. There was just a blur of energy around the location of the human or monster. The blur landed on top of a building just as I came to a stop on a building across from it.

“Give up. There is no escape,” I replied and let Captain Francis go. He landed on his feet on the roof and began his song and dance to decay the stats of the being in front of us.

A barrier of null energy formed in front of it. Air Burst. I shot forwards. Captain Francis’s Body Decay, hit the barrier without effect. He then followed behind me as I chased after the being. Acid Shot x5. It was fast, but I was closing in.

After ten seconds of chasing, the blur disappeared. “Your abilities are weak,” the words hit my mind as I took in the appearance of what I had been chasing. Scintillating crystal scales rippled across the monster. I would have said it was a crystal golem of some kind, but there were various black structures inside of crystals where there would be organs and bones. And red blood circulating through it at various points that I could see. The eyes were glowing white.

“Then stop running,” I countered. A speaking monster was a novelty. Before I could say anything more, everything around it, burst into heat and flames. Air Burst. I shot forward without too much worry or concern. The energy was strong, but it was at the same level as a level 4 attack. Nothing I needed to worry about that much.

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Chains burst out of mid-air. The monster was covered by smoke. Acid Shot x20. The chains were quickly melted. Air Burst. I blasted my way through the flames and the cloud of smoke, unleashing Acid Shot in every direction.

I landed on another building after passing through the smoke. Stopping to look around, I didn’t see the monster anymore. “Any sign?” I called out to Captain Francis who was catching up to me.

“No, I have nothing,” he replied. I was kicking myself for not using beam attacks. I should have done that, but I felt that I was close enough and that my Acid Shot was better in such close combat. Beam attacks could be dodged more easily. I wanted to get close enough, to overwhelm the monster with a tidal acid wave.

Unfortunately, I had lost my chance. That really annoyed me quite a bit. I almost had the monster, but it had gotten away. Next time I would bombard it, without hesitation. I hated things escaping me. That was the one thing that united all strong people, pure rage at weaker beings escaping from them.

“Let’s return to the plaza togeather,” I said, and he nodded. The monster had gotten away. That was unfortunate. We quickly returned to the plaza. This had been frustrating interaction with the monster that had been doing this. It was at least a level 7. The fact it actually communicated with energy words, that wasn’t just a scream, made me think that it might be a level 8.

One that would retreat and attack from the shadows. We returned to the plaza, Michelle was slowly getting up. “Michael…I had the weirdest dream,” she said after we returned.

“I am glad you are awake. We found a monster that did this to. Probably level 7, or higher. No headaches or anything?” I asked.

“No. I am fine,” Michelle said.

“The fishes?” I asked. She frowned for a moment and then her eyes went wide.

“Wait, that happened?” she asked.

“I had to dream dive on you to wake you up. Whatever that monster was, it was able to grab onto a monster and attack you through it,” I told her.

“Resonance, I think,” she said.

“Regardless, we are leaving, five minutes. We are moving West,” I said.

“Is that a good idea? Shouldn’t we return?” Fiyaz asked me.

“No. We will keep exploring. That monster didn’t unleash that earlier beam attack. At least I don’t think so. If it had that kind of power, then it wouldn’t need to attack from stealth. There are still too many things that don’t add up. We push West, and will travel along the edge of level 3 zones. Hopefully there are roads. If there are we can follow them.”

“Got it,” he replied. I explained all of this, since I knew everyone else was listening in as well.

“The fact the monster ran away instead of fighting, shows that it is tricky, but not stronger. That is the most important thing to understand,” I replied.

“Its abilities are quite complicated. Pinning it down will tough,” Captain Francis said.

“Well, we just have to get out of range and find a city. At most it is one monster. We leave its range, or get somewhere else, we can lose it hopefully,” I replied. We couldn’t afford to bring it back to the Empire of Purgatory. Normal people wouldn’t be able to handle something like that monster. It was too dangerous. Thankfully nothing like this had occurred before, but it was something I would be paying attention to going forward. High level monsters, which would be a huge threat if they followed us back to the low-level zones.

“Ahhh!” A soldier suddenly screamed. A large crystal spear had speared them through the chest. What, how?! My soldiers were not weak in any way. They had enough stats, they should have been able to give out a warning. Michelle, quickly summoned several monsters to surround us. Captain Francis ordered the rest of his people to form up.

I quickly helped the wounded soldier over to one of the store pillars. I yanked out the crystal spear, and he got a restoration. The spear crumbled to dust. “What happened?” I asked him.

“One moment, I was keeping watch, the next moment, I was speared,” he replied.

“I will take the rear. Captain Francis take point. Michelle in the center. Let’s go,” I said. No one had anything else to do. We immediately set off through the city, heading west. I kept glancing behind constantly and going up high to scan the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. There were no more attacks.

I hated intelligent monsters that didn’t go for a straight up fight. I couldn’t name the monster either. Its endowed name was not coming to me, which was concerning. That had never occurred before. An endowed name was a name that was clear through its energy and what people named it. Similar to skills, an endowed name transcended language.

The fact I couldn’t place the name was highly concerning. It made it really hard to figure out anything about the monster. The number of abilities it displayed was immense. I had seen similar monsters in the past, with a range of skills. But it used them without weakness, one after another. It was also humanoid, and communicated, which was concerning.

Now that attack on one of my soldiers without anyone seeing anything. Whatever the monster did, it was instant, and had no warning. Why attack one of my soldiers? I was the biggest threat, then Michelle. Was it trying to weaken the overall combat power of my group? The questions were endless and kept running through my mind as I scanned the buildings around us.

I couldn’t wait until we got out of this city. We needed answers. That meant finding them out from people who were still alive. Michelle kept her monsters close by as we raced out of the city. The monsters were able to keep up with their level and the fact we had to go at the pace of the soldiers. They had decent Body stats but felt slow compared to me.