Jace floated in the dark void. Below him, the vast Sea of Collective Subconscious glowed with luminescent lights.
He gazed around at the hundreds of glowing dream islands floating around him in the dark void, his gaze locking onto one particular island that belonged to a person he knew.
Without wasting any time, he moved his hands and made the motions he would usually make while swimming and moved toward the dream island.
It had been about three weeks since he made a Sequence 5 'Dream Walker' his marionette, and from that day, he had explored the world and people from a different point of view.
A point of view from dreams, and he had to say he was surprised... People in dreams were a lot different than what they portrayed in real life—even the kind ones.
But Jace was a person who had no problem seeing the worst in people; in fact, he expected every person to be a bad one, as one way or another, they actually were.
So he wasn't really that surprised.
During these few weeks of daily dream walking, he had seen many dreams. He had also helped many people see and overcome their flaws through hypnosis within the dream; all in all, he had changed the lives of hundreds of people.
But it was time to move on to his next 'prospect' for a marionette.
By now, Jace had reached the dream island he was swimming towards. Without any effort, he breached the wall of the dream and walked in.
As Jace stepped in, he looked around... The dream was rather beautiful...
The landscape was of a plain grassland with small, round ups and downs. It was dawn; the soft orange light of the sun enveloped the sky, but it wasn't that bright, so the stars one would see at night were still visible and twinkling brightly.
'What else did I expect from a dream of an astrologer...' Jace sighed and looked around for the person to whom this dream belonged.
And there he was, laying under the single tree on the whole grassland, looking at the stars.
As Jace willed it, he instantly appeared near the tree. As he stood there, he pulled out a metal card from his pocket.
The real Jace, who was hidden in the reflection, stepped out into the dream using the Polymath Ring.
Jace stood beside his marionette. He closed his eyes and breathed in the air that was purely imagined by the subconscious of the dreamer... and he had to say, it was great.
The environment was beautiful and cool, the sky was clear with beautiful stars, the air was fresh, and the fact that he was literally in a dream made it even better.
After getting used to dream walking through his marionette, one day Jace decided to try walking out of the card into the dream himself, and it worked.
But it increased the spiritual consumption of his marionette to maintain the burden of his weight as well as his own in the dream island.
Not only that, it was also risky, as he had to control his marionette to make the dream accommodate the real him, as one whim of a dreamer could make it all dangerous for him. So he just had to control the dreamer better through hypnosis, and doing all this also increased his own burden to control his own body as well as his marionette. But since he was a Marionettist, it was fine.
It was a lot of trouble, but it was all worth it for the sake of Bizarreness!
After taking in the environment, Jace looked down at the man laying on the grass under the tree. He had a naive-looking face with gentle features, blue eyes, and blonde hair.
It was 'Harold Gunderson', the astrologer... well, now he was a Scribe.
Jace wondered why this guy was dreaming so peacefully, but didn't really mind as he got to see this beautiful scenery. He walked near and sat down above him, leaning against the tree trunk.
It was difficult to walk into a Beyonder's dream, especially an astrologer's since their spiritual intuition was strong, but Jace used the 'lucky' stopwatch so he was able to enter without trouble.
And there was also the possibility of the dreamer gaining lucidity in the dream—which was likely for a Beyonder. This would result in the dreamer gaining full control over the dream world and rejecting the anomaly, which would result in immediate ejection from the dream island and the Dream Walker receiving some backlash.
But that was unlikely since the Dream Walker would just hypnotize the dreamer to not gain lucidity after a successful infiltration, and that was what Jace was doing.
"When did you become a Sequence 6 Scribe?" he asked, as he made his marionette hypnotize the dreamer to answer.
"3 months ago," Harold replied. As he talked, Jace read the corresponding thoughts and scenes regarding the astrologer's advancement through his marionette.
"Show me the traveler," Jace asked, and controlled his marionette to remember the traveler and display the corresponding memories.
Right after the moment he did that, the sky changed, and the memories of Harold Gunderson related to the traveler started manifesting: the day Harold was approached by the traveler, the moment he gave him the potion to drink, his occasional visits, lessons in astrology, help in advancement, his appearance...
The traveler was a man in his mid-50s, with gray hair and a trimmed beard. He had a calm and controlled-looking face; he always wore a brown trench coat over his clothes with a scarf and a brown hat, and his clothes were always somewhat ragged.
This was Jace's prospect for his first permanent marionette.
While he liked the Dream Walker marionette just fine—even loved it—, it was always meant to be a temporary marionette for a month or two.
In truth, the only reason he had found a Dream Walker was for the Sequence 5 characteristic of the Spectator pathway for his cat, because finding ingredients was proving really hard as he only found one of the main ingredients.
So he decided it was better to just find a Sequence 5 Dream Walker.
And it worked out just fine. He enjoyed his time as a Dream Walker and even digested the potion at a faster rate. He also decided to get a marionette of the same pathway and sequence later to explore the 'Sea of Collective Subconscious', but for now, it was time.
Jace continued interrogating Harold about what he had done this past few months and all he knew about the traveler.
After a while, when his interrogation was done, he asked one final question, "When will the traveler come to visit you again?".
"Within a few weeks now," Harold replied.
Jace got up, 'mirror blinked' back into the card, and possessed his marionette completely.
Just as he was about to exit the dream island, he stopped and turned back to Harold, who was still relaxing while laying on the ground looking at the sky.
His lips curled up into a grin. He controlled the dream and displayed an image of a person in the sky; it was his own image—or rather, 'Jake's' image. It was him nonetheless.
"When you see this person, freeze and don't move, and don't resist whatever he does." Jace planted a final hypnosis in the dreamer's subconscious that would make things easier for him and exited the dream island.
He appeared in the void again, turned and looked at a nearby dream island, entered it, and walked out into the real world from that dream.
A few moments later, Jace walked on the empty street under the dark sky. It was still midnight.
Jace looked up at the crescent moon while walking. 'It's been a while since I met Natalie and Sarah...'
A mischievous smile appeared on his face. 'Should I go see what they dream of?....'