Nightmare realm summoner.., p.42
Nightmare Realm Summoner: A LitRPG Adventure, page 42
“Hey!” the axe-wielding man yelled, pointing one of his axes up at the Overseer and ignoring the conversation entirely. “Can you hear me?”
“Be quiet. Please. All of you,” the man in the wizard hat said. “The Overseer obviously isn’t going to say anything until we stop talking. I want to see what I get and then get back to work. I have important business to get to. Work might be a foreign concept to the rest of you, but I’m swamped with it.”
“You just spoke more than all of us,” the girl with the paintbrush said.
“I figured out who Stem Major is,” the naked man said through a nasally snicker. “Do you really think the System would get stunlocked on a bunch of idiots yapping? I doubt it’s even registered us talking.”
“I’m not Stem Major. And shut up. Don’t lecture me,” the robed man who was definitely Stem Major said. “I—”
The leaderboard vanished from the air, and the Overseer brought its hands together in a gentle clap.
“Your excess rewards will be distributed shortly. Upon return to your former locations, any deferred rewards will be released. It is suggested that you steel your Mind Palace in preparation for Energy Overload.”
What the hell is Energy Overload?
“Just give it to us already,” Stem Major muttered under his breath.
The air before Alex crackled, and a tiny golden portal traced itself into existence. His hands shot out a moment before a tiny white crystal fragment tumbled out from the portal and landed in his palms. Glistening words traced through the air above it, identifying the small item.
Unstable Nexus Core Shard (Epic)—Consumable
Upon Destruction: Permanently gain 7 Units of Soul Energy.
If the user of this item is killed, it will re-form at the location of their death.
The first three Unstable Nexus Core Shards returned to this location will evolve.
Alex’s eyes went wide—7 Units of Soul Energy was practically enough to upgrade every single one of his skills. That was a ridiculously good item. His gaze shot up to everyone else in the room. Each of them looked to have gotten something similar, but the description strongly implied that there were different rarities—and Alex was willing to bet they’d been distributed in order of rank. He’d placed around the upper middle of the leaderboard… so the ones at the top probably gave even more Units.
I don’t know what the rarity even means in this case, but I’d be willing to bet it determines the quality of the ability upgrades I get. Holy shit. What an item… and what a way to put us at each other’s throats. If we kill each other, we get another upgrade—and if we combine 3 shards, we can bring it back here and get an even bigger reward.
But doesn’t this mean…
“The System is making us hunt each other,” the portly man leaning on his cane observed. “It’s keeping us from banding together and launching ourselves even farther ahead of everyone else by causing infighting. That also ensures only the strongest can benefit from these shards, while the weakest may end up falling to someone that doesn’t even have one and distributing the power to the more deserving. Intelligent.”
“Stop sucking your own dick,” the mostly naked man said, shattering his own shard. “You really like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?”
The other man continued speaking without missing a beat. “For anyone who wishes to sell their shards, I will purchase them at a very good price. My name on the leaderboard is the River King. Find me.”
Yeah, not happening. No way am I giving this up.
“Hand over your shards!” the heavily armored man proclaimed, also ignoring the River King completely. “Give ’em here and save yourself the—”
“Stuff yourself,” the girl with the paintbrush said. Her silhouetted hand rose, a glistening shard pinched between her fingers, and she crushed them shut. The shard shattered, transforming into glittering motes that flew into her body. “I don’t want to deal with any of you, but I’ll be happy to take the shards off your bodies if you come looking for me.”
A shimmer in the air before Alex caught his attention. He glanced down as the tiny portal that the previous item had fallen through undulated with a final flicker of energy. It vanished, but not before dropping a little glass disk into his palms. He barely managed to catch it before it slipped between his fingers.
Looking Glass (Legendary)—Consumable
Upon Destruction: Choose a single entity in the Nexus Point and reveal their leaderboard identity and appearance.
Alex’s eyes widened. His gaze shot up to try and see if anyone else had gotten the same item, but their portals had all vanished. There was no way to tell if they’d gotten the item as well. The safe bet was to assume that they had.
He scanned the silhouettes around him, both trying to figure out who to use his own shard on while also trying to see if their body language revealed anything. Unfortunately, with their faces completely missing, it was hard to draw any conclusions.
Well, shit. I want to know who all of them are, but I’ve only got one shot.
Who do I reveal?
There were several people that hadn’t spoken yet. A lot of them already had pretty evident silhouettes, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t just change their clothes. Alex frowned as he studied everyone for a moment.
The girl with the giant hat and the staff seems really confident, and she’s not as dumb as the axe guy. If she ends up putting that staff and pointy hat away, she’ll just look like any other random woman. The others are generally a bit easier to recognize, so she seems like a good one to go with.
Alex shattered the piece of glass.
The shadow covering the girl evaporated like water in the desert heat, peeling away from her form and disappearing. She looked to be around 24, with bright red hair that rolled down to her shoulders and pale, freckled skin. She wore dull purple robes trimmed with flowing silver designs. The side of her lip was marred by a small scar. A large portion of her face was concealed by her hat, but Alex could still make out more than enough of it to commit to memory. Letters carved into the air above her head.
GoGently
Sweet.
She’s the Rank 2 on the leaderboard. I got a pretty good guess. She’s definitely stronger than me right now, so I’ll have to keep an eye out for her until I can close the gap a bit farther. I definitely don’t want to get into a fight with her yet.
“Rewards have been distributed,” the Overseer proclaimed. “Return to your former positions is imminent.”
Several of the other silhouettes shattered their fragments instantly. Alex followed suit. He wasn’t about to sit around on the shard and wait for someone to steal it from him.
The crystal shattered between his fingers as he crushed it. Tingles raced across his skin. Something tightened in his chest. His heart skipped a beat, and a painful pressure built within his ribcage.
Alex nearly staggered as energy exploded within him. It roared from his chest like water bursting through a dam and flooded his entire body, flowing through veins and muscles alike with effortless ease. Pain ripped through him with such sudden intensity that he didn’t even have a chance to scream before it had vanished.
In its place, golden words were carved into the air.
Unstable Nexus Core Shard has insufficient strength to influence Singularity Core.
Singularity Core has refined the Unstable Nexus Core Shard.
You have amassed 5 Units of Soul Energy.
Alex blinked as he studied the words floating in the air before him. Singularity Core had shown up before—back when he’d first gotten his class in the Mirrorlands. He had no idea what it was or what it was doing, but he’d gotten five whole Units of Soul Energy. That was an entire five-level boost. A grin split across his face. This was exactly the kind of reward he’d been hoping—
Singularity Core has enriched [Requiem to the King]’s potential upgrades.
It did what now?
57
Before Alex could even finish processing the message that had appeared before him, someone stuck the entire world into a blender. His ears whirred, color shifted, and everything mixed together in a soup. The ground disappeared, and his stomach flew up into his throat as he found himself plummeting through the air.
His senses evaporated as he fell, but this time, Alex was ready for it. He braced himself, forcing his core to remain loose. It wouldn’t be long until—
A grassy field snapped into existence beneath his feet. His knees jerked, and Alex took a step forward to balance himself. His ears popped, and he finished drawing in the breath that had started a moment before the System had shunted him out of the Nexus Point like an unwanted rodent.
He was back outside Towntown. The bodies of all the monsters and survivors who had died on the battlefield around the town had vanished as if they’d never been there, leaving nothing but trampled grass.
Night had fallen in true—the massive stars seemed to have lost some of their luster and had let the surroundings plunge into relative darkness, illuminated only by the normal glow of the moon.
“Alex!” Claire exclaimed from behind him. “What was that about? What happened?”
He turned to face her, his mind still buzzing with all the new information he’d learned and power he’d gotten. He prepared to fill her in on what had happened when a buzz filled his ears.
Alex paused and glanced around. The sound was distant. He couldn’t quite tell if it was coming from inside his own head or somewhere else. Confusion creased his face, and a question formed on his lips.
He didn’t get a chance to let it free. The System’s golden letters flashed through the air before him in an instant.
Reward received.
Alex doubled over in a surprised wheeze as energy drove into his gut like the punch from a professional boxer with a vendetta. He dropped to his knees, eyes shooting wide open, as a freezing cold hand clenched around his brain.
It felt like an ocean of freezing water was being funneled directly into his skull. His entire body stiffened of its own volition. He fell forward, landing face-first in the grass, and gasped for air, unable to even form words as the power ravaged him.
Hands grabbed his shoulders and spun him over. Claire’s mouth moved as she yelled something and shook him, but he couldn’t hear it. He could barely even feel her. His entire body throbbed. His head pounded, his throat constricted. Alex could only manage to form a single thought.
So this is what the Overseer meant when it warned about Energy Overload.
He gritted his teeth, trying to remember what it had said to do. Something about preparing his Mind Palace. Alex had no idea what that meant or how to do it, but he did his damned best to try.
He drove his squirming thoughts inward. There was no way he could actually sink into meditation when his entire body felt like it was getting transformed into a large ice cube, but he focused on imagining a wall forming around his mind and slowing the flow of energy, focusing it into his basin instead of letting it run amok through his entire being.
Agonizing seconds dragged by. Alex had no idea if his efforts were successful or if he’d simply just waited the System out, because the pain slowly started to recede. The pounding in his skull slowed and his fists unclenched, leaving pinpricks of pain in his palm where his nails had dug into the flesh. His jaw sockets throbbed with pain from how hard they’d been clenched. Tiny stars danced in the air above him.
“Alex!” Claire said, shaking him like a doll. “Do you need blood?”
“I’m fine!” Alex managed. “Stop shaking me!”
Claire jerked to a halt. “Sorry. Blood?”
“I don’t think it would do much for me.” Alex blinked as his vision cleared back up. “You’re the Dhampir here.”
“I figured you might have lost too much in the fight.” Claire let out a relieved sigh. “I didn’t mean you should eat it. I thought we could put some extra back into your body.”
“That doesn’t work. Humans have different kinds of blood,” Alex said with a small laugh. Claire pulled him back to his feet, and he gave her an appreciative nod. “Thanks, though.”
“No problem. And that makes sense, actually. I never thought about that, but you all do taste different.”
“Have you eaten from a lot of humans?” Alex tilted his head to the side.
“Yes. But more importantly, why did you just seize up? And why did you just vanish? What in the bleeding hells is happening?”
Alex blew out a breath, and a smile crawled across his face. “Rewards from the System. A lot of them. It’ll take a while to fill you in on everything, and I still don’t know all the rewards yet. I have to meditate as soon as I can… but it’s good. Really good. Give me a second.”
He reached down, grabbing a Spatial Mirror from the box at his side and examining its surface to see if the System’s rewards had included the souls of the monsters he’d killed during the challenge.
Spatial Mirror
Stored Energy:
High-Mid Novice (Floraking) - 1
Low Initiate (Riftwarped Crawler) - 1
Low-Mid Initiate (Riftwarped Granite Soldier)
High Novice (Corpse Burrower) - 1
Low Novice (Corpse Poker) - 1
Mid-Novice (Boneraptor) - 1
Reward Soul (Conglomerate) - 1
Bonded Creature: Shardwalker (Novice 7)
Alex’s head tilted to the side.
That’s interesting. I can’t wait to see what happens when I feed that to one of my monsters. But something is off. What’s going on here?
The System had obviously condensed the soul rewards he’d gotten from the Trial into a single one… but there was an outlier. For some reason, he had the soul flame of a Boneraptor. A frown crossed his lips as he thought. Now that he thought about it, Alex could even remember when it had happened.
After killing one of the Boneraptors, there had been a strange sensation a moment before he’d seen something fly into his Spatial Mirror of its own volition. That must have been the monster’s soul flame.
But why? How come I was able to get that soul flame but none of the others?
He had absolutely no idea, but he didn’t want to just stand around in the open thinking forever. Alex lowered the mirror and returned his attention to Claire. “Did the System tell you what you got?”
“Not yet. I need to go meditate.” Claire shook her head, then glanced back in the direction of Towntown. “But I’ve been holding off on heading back. It’s only been a few minutes, and I was hoping you’d return sooner rather than later. Figured I should make sure nobody strolls up and waits to stab you in the back.”
“It’s appreciated,” Alex said. “Was someone looking like they were planning on doing just that?”
Claire gave him a half-shrug. “I don’t know. They haven’t gotten close yet. I think that idiot Isaiah’s group came back to town when they realized that the fight was over, and it was safe again.”
Alex followed her gaze. A group of survivors had gathered at the edge of town. It was split roughly down the middle, and even though he wasn’t quite in earshot, the tension was clear. Several people had their hands on their weapons and seemed to be a moment away from drawing them fully.
“Figures,” Alex said through a snort. Right now, the only thing he wanted to do was sit down and meditate to process the rest of the rewards he’d gotten. With the amount of energy he’d just gotten—well, he wasn’t even sure how much he could accomplish. There was already enough for multiple advancements to his abilities, not to mention the extra power the System had just injected into him.
“We going to bother getting involved?” Claire asked.
Alex scratched at the side of his head as he studied the survivors. It seemed that he and Claire had been forgotten in the wake of the growing argument. People had started yelling over each other as the tension rose.
He rather liked Ben.
Moreover, he did not think much of Isaiah. Throwing a hissy fit and then coming back to the town they’d abandoned rubbed Alex the wrong way.
That all said, Alex wasn’t so sure he wanted to get himself completely wrapped up in a bunch of politics. He wasn’t even sure if he could. Alex wasn’t exactly a master negotiator. His last interaction with Isaiah had been punching the man in the face. That was a remarkably effective way of ending an argument. It was slightly less effective for actually making a point. Slightly—but he supposed slightly was better than nothing.
Alex started forward.
Claire put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. He glanced at her in surprise.
“What? I was going to go help Ben.”
“How? By beating the shit out of Isaiah?”
“Probably, yeah,” Alex admitted. “Glint and Spark are still alive. I’m pretty sure Ben is Ben-10 on the leaderboard, and Mary is also on his side. She seems capable enough. I’m pretty sure we can deal with a bunch of low-Novice pricks if they try to kill us.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “Alex, there’s more than one way to deal with something like this. Not every single situation results in having to kill or fight something, and there’s more than one way to fight.”
“Not arguing that. But I don’t exactly know what else to do, and it’s best to be prepared for the worst.”
“Then let me handle this one,” Claire said, a small, dangerous grin pulling across her lips. “I think it might be more up my alley than yours.”
“Sure. What are you thinking?”
“The more you try to prepare for something like this, the worse it’ll go. Just back me up. You’ll figure it out as we go.” Claire strode toward the group confidently.
Alex moved to keep pace with her.
“Can’t you at least give me a hint? What am I supposed to be preparing for? A fight?”
“You wanted to see a bit of how Court was played, didn’t you?” Claire asked, keeping her gaze on the survivors as their argument grew louder still. “I’m going to give you a small demonstration.”
58
Anoticeable shift occurred in Claire as she and Alex drew up to the arguing survivors. The easygoing smile normally present on her face evaporated like summer rain. A cold glint lit behind her eyes, and her lips curled into a faint, confident smirk. It was an expression that would have fit perfectly upon the face of a lawyer whose defense had been caught mid-crime.
