Unknown Region, Dream realm.
Caster woke up immediately, and saw himself to be in the middle of a group of abominations.
"I essentially have no soul essence left."
Luckily, it seemed like most of the corrupted abominations had already gone out of the nightmare gate. However, there were a few hundred, maybe thousand, weaker ones were still left.
In the distance, Caster could see the figures of a few humans.
They were the people at the gate, two had perished before the terror made them unconscious but the rest 11 awakened were transported to the dream realm, supporting each other.
Caster was all out soul essence, he would rather just escape from between these beasts with his invisibility ability through Evelyn's graze, but it wasn't possible at the moment.
Caster willed himself to move and tear through these abominations, but he kept taking hits from all over, making his progress in catching upto the others really slow and dangerous.
Right then, disaster struck.
Caster fell on all fours and started clutching his chest.
At the worst moment, Caster gained enough fragments to form a new core.
He hung on just barely, running and escaping with all his might as the new core formed in his body.
It was one terrible situation after another. He got too injured to run past them.
He could only stall for time.
Luckily, Caster had already been a titan once in the past, so his physical constitution didn't need as much of a change now, so it hurt a little less.
It was still super painful though.
"ARGH!!"
With a shout, he barely held on, holding off the beasts like he was a wall. He was losing strength in his body, his vision was distorting, he felt feverish. The ground was covered in snow making it hard to keep his balance.
Just barely he held on until the core formed, giving him new found strength and a bit of soul essence.
Siphon!
Acquired Haste!
After siphoning strength from hundreds of beasts, he used acquired haste to leap off at unimaginable speeds, only after getting far enough from then did he look back at the figures in front of him.
They were in a terrible situation as well.
Even though there were eleven of them, they were still extremely exhausted and injured.
On them was a fallen devil. Not an easy opponent for them at all.
He noticed two had died again, and five were on the ground shouting in pain, begging to be killed.
Gemma was one of them.
Only four were still alive and keeping up with the fallen devil.
The four were Alyssa, the experienced awakened at the gate break, the guy who recognised Caster and two members of the Gold Reapers.
One of the gold reapers had a fire related ability which caused the snow around the devil to have melted.
Reflection!
After Caster got close enough, he used mordret's ability to teleport behind the devil and strike it with the siphoned strength.
It caused the devil to fall on the ground and bleed profusely, but the attack was not fatal.
"Careful! Don't let its attack touch you at all!"
Alyssa shouted desperately, after seeing Caster. Her eyes were hopeful.
Despite hearing it, Caster didn't back off, he pushed the two legged devil dressed as a hunter and brutally weakened it.
Siphon!
After that, the fight was rather straightforward. The five awakened that were still capable of fighting got rid of the devil.
Alyssa withdrew her wings, and the rest of the awakened dismissed their memories as well, falling flat on the ground with grim expressions on their faces.
Since the start of the gate break, four deaths had occured, and five were begging to be killed.
"What the hell..."
Caster felt himself lose his composure, seeing his own comrades writhing in pain. They couldn't even seem to listen to what was being said.
All he could hear were their screams of agony echo in his ears.
"The devil's ability was most likely a curse ability. Had we gotten hit by that dagger of his, we might have had the same fate..."
After a bit of confirmation, Caster found out that he could do nothing about it.
It was a mental curse, even someone like Gemma, who had superhuman regeneration couldn't heal from a curse like that.
Caster was hoping that the curse would fade off a little after the devil died but... it showed no signs of weakening despite a few minutes having passed.
One of the five on the ground passed away from the pain.
Caster grimaced upon seeing that.
Then another one passed away.
Then another...
Only two of the gold reapers were still hanging on, one of them was Gemma and the other was one of the people under Gemma.
Caster had a grim expression.
"All of you, turn around."
Just as the four awakened turned away, with a heavy heart Caster grazed Gemma.
He was now a demon, he had a spare saturated core to graze again.
The grazing didn't take too long.
It was slightly flashy but no one else saw it.
After that Caster, as painlessly as possible, beheaded the two of them. Freeing them from their suffering.
He didn't want to leave them behind while suffering to death, but he couldn't risk taking them with him either. The nightmare creatures that Caster shook off earlier were still trying to search for him.
It was a hard decision to take as a leader, but Caster had to do it anyways.
"Let's go. I think I saw a cave in the distance, we need some rest. This place is riddled with nightmare creatures. We'll try to figure out how to escape from the dream realm afterwards."
The four of them looked back down at the corpses while grimacing. The one member of Gold Reapers with fire abilities, Myra, knelt down and burned the seven corpses one by one before letting a pray out. Caster and the rest joined in the prayer briefly before all of them took off for a safer place.
Caster at the rear to to defend against any possible sneak attacks from behind by the nightmare creatures and Alyssa in the front, flying high to scout for a route and leading the rest.
All of them knew that their situations were dire. Escaping the dream realm? Only method would be to get into the second nightmare and successfully beat it.
Everyone knew about the method.
But it isn't easy.
There's another method, travelling the dream realm to a citadel, but god knows where they were. They were most likely in ravenheart, considering the snow, but they couldn't be sure.
Currently, there were just five people left alive after the gruesome battle.
Alyssa, an experienced awakened with an ascended ranked aspect. Her abilities included wind manipulation to a degree and being able to fly with wings that she could summon from her back.
Cain, someone who became an awakened just this winter solsctice. He was the person who recognized Caster immediately and was a fan of. His abilities included being able to jump really well and being innately faster than others of similar constitutions. His aspect is ranked awakened and is overall decently skilled in combat.
Tamah, one of the Gold Reapers from the forgotten shore whose aspect was ranked awakened. Her abilities included being able to create light and use it as a flashbang or sorts or use that light to heal. However, her healing is limited to herself.
Myra, also one of the gold reapers from the forgotten shore. Her aspect was also awakened rank. She could create fire and use it for ranged offence, or create semi-solid constructs with that fire, for example a fire arrow. As such, she practiced bowmanship. These contructs used to be slow, but after gaining deeper control over her soul essence, it got uncannily fast, extremely useful for an archer.
The fifth and final person was of course Caster.
His abilities include being able to accelerate to a degree that no one else can, at least at his rank. He can also graze the abilities of others as long as he can sacrifice a whole saturated core. For example, if he has [950/1000] fragments, he can not use grazing. Even if he had [1001/2000] fragments, he can not use it. The minimum requirement is having three cores.
At [2001/3000], if grazing is used, it will become [950/1000], as the third core was not unsaturated, it fails to activate the grazing first, the second core is saturated, so that second core is used for grazing. As the for why its 950, not 1000, thats because an additional 50 fragments are required in the process.
Currently, Caster has [958/1000] soul fragments.
His grazes include [Mordret], [Welthe], [Evelyn] and the newly grazed [Gemma].
Through Mordret's graze, he could create, control and travel through reflections and also enter someone's soul sea through their eyes to challenge them to a soul battle. If won, he could overtake their soul. Now, this graze was true graze, meaning it had a physical body and could be utilized in battle too.
Through Welthe's graze, Caster could now Debilitate someone's mind and senses. This debilitation was on a fundamental level, making it hard to recover from without initial resistances. The second abolity allowed him to Siphon the damage from a group to another group, or overload one person with all the siphoned strength, making him nearly invincible against a large group. The last ability this graze provided was Damage Relocation, it allowed Caster to transfer damage from anything to anything else.
Evelyn's graze also allowed Caster to debilitate someone's senses but it was weaker and hence not very usefull to him, however the second ability was the ability that was worth it. It allowed Caster to turn invisible and completely disappear from ones sense. Not just visibly, but even sense or others. Even strong special senses like Sunny's shadow sense wouldn't be able to detect him unless its from someone of a higher rank.
As for Gemma's graze, Caster was yet to check it out.
***
Graze Name: Gemma.
Graze Description: [This loyal lieutenant, condemned to an eternity of unimaginable suffering, was remade by the hands of the "Architect of ■■" before fate could claim him. His endless agony was exchanged for an undying existence as a Graze. Forever bound to the Architect, he now serves the one who saved him from a fate worse than death.]
Rank: Awakened.
Cores: [1/7].
Soul Sea: Inactive.
Status: Graze.
Attributes: [Tolerant], [Last Drop].
[Tolerant]: Resistant to pain.
[Last Drop]: The body can survive on extremely low amounts of blood.
Abilities: [Genesis of Life], [Crimson Arts].
[Genesis of Life]: Rapidly restores damaged flesh, blood, bones, and organs to their original state.
[Crimson Arts]: Allows the user to freely manipulate blood, weaponizing it through constructs, combustion, and violent detonations while controlling its flow with precision.
***
'A passive and an active ability... that's good, as long as I activate Gemma's graze, I will have the affects of his attribute's and passive ability by default without any essence expenditure apart from activating the graze itself. Sigh... unfortunately I now only have 1 core, so I can't activate multiple grazes in quick successions.'
Caster's ability, grazing, allowed him to be extremely versatile. But it still had certain limitations.
First was that it was extremely expensive to get a graze, having to sacrifice an entirely saturated core for it. The second was that the number of grazes that could be activated at once depended on the number of soul cores he had.
It takes a few seconds to change the activated grazes if its not the prearranged ones. Till now that hadn't been an issue since he had more cores than grazes, but right now he has 4 grazes and only a single core.
For now, he decided to keep Welthe's graze activated instead of Mordret's graze since there was a lack of water or media for reflections nearby. And it seemed like in a battle like the one earlier, Welthe's graze was better anyways.
Caster decided to summon Mordret and give it Evermelt, his trusty echo that helped him to no end in the forgotten shore. Since Mordret was allevated to the status of a true graze, he was given a physical body by the spell. And while the body still looked like Mordret, its constitution wasn't exactly human. Luckily, it was in favour of Caster, since the constitution was weirdly efficient in a way humans arent.
Evermelt covered Mordret's body from head to toe, just like how gunlaug wore it. Caster didn't want to risk leaking Mordret's appearance.
"What's that?"
"My echoes. An awakened titan and a transcended devil. You can trust in his ability."
The addition of their combat strength was comforting to the rest.
"Why didn't you summon them before?!"
The one who asked was Alyssa.
'Sigh... I did my best. In such a chaotic situation, I had having trouble using all my cards to their fullest ability. I lost composure...'
Of course that isn't to say he didn't consider it at all.
Caster had transcended ranked memories for himself, so he didn't have a use for Evermelt as an armor. He could have utilized it to let out a tide of molten metal, however it would have been wildly inefficient for him to use the soul essence that way, since it wouldn't be helpful enough against the stronger opponents, and it would consume too much essence against the weaker opponents.
Caster had to be mindful of his soul essence now that he had less cores.
That isn't to say that Evermelt would have been useless. It could have most likely taken on one or two corrupted beasts or a fallen devil by itself, however Caster wasn't in a state of mind to lead Evermelt properly in such a situation.
It was a similar situation for Mordret's true graze form.
Even if a true graze is manifested, Caster can still utilize its abilities, but even still he didn't summon it because he wasn't confident in being able to lead it. Not to mention, he was unsure of how much battle proficiency Mordret's true graze retained from his past life. As such, he didn't create more chaos than necessary and kept it unsummoned.
Of course, this doesn't excuse the fact that he could have played his cards better, but what can he do? He doesn't have perfect composure. There's no fourth wall anymore. Too much pressure and Caster will crack. Making perfect decisions was something only Kieron could do, as the owner of the fourth wall.
Anyways, right now is a different situation entirely. They aren't in a chaotic battle ground, but rather in a passive and at a slower pace. This allows them to strategize, and make use of all their cards better.
Of course, Caster didn't say any of that to Alyssa.
"The situation didn't call for it. I didn't want to create even more of a chaos in that situation. Had the corrupted terror been a more of a physical attacker, I would have summoned the two of them to try to deal with it. I needed them in decent condition for the fight, at least enough to be able to stall the gate guardian. However our luck was too terrible because not only was the gate guardian a corrupted terror, it also had mind related abilities, something none of us had resistance to."
It wasn't just full on excuses by him, that's basically what Caster had thought of. Except that the reason he didn't summon the echoes wasn't because he needed them in a decent condition but rather that he couldn't manage all of them in a well enough manner. Most likely, he would have gotten himself into a worse situation. (Mordret isn't an echo, but other's assume as told that he is by Caster)
As for Alyssa, she had no choice but to trust Caster. She nodded before flying off again, scouting for the rest.
After a few small skirmishes, it didn't take long before they reached a relatively safe spot.
"I'll be selfish and get some sleep first, at least one of you keep watch... make me the last watch, I need continuous sleep."
Caster was extremely tired, and he couldn't care less is others thought he was selfish for taking a rest first break.
"Also Cain, return me Aquifer's Gift."
Caster had given it to Cain earlier to spill water out at the battlefield in the waking realm to be able to make use of Mordret's abilities. Now, he wanted it back, it's a very useful memory after all.
Cain didn't take too long with it, he gave it back to Caster at once.
"Good night guys..."
After saying that, Caster dismissed his echoes—as keeping them summoned expends soul essence—and went to sleep immediately.
Just as he was about to fall asleep, he began thinking... this was probably one of the worst days that Caster has had in his life.
'Ah, I hate this so much...'