A Sorcerer's Journey - Chapter 517

Chapter 517: The Dreadlord IV

“Who are you!?”

A terrified Nightmare Creature roared out loud from the pockmarked ground surface.

A Fallen emerged out of nowhere and attacked it from behind. Its ability was one that provided full-concealment of its body and the creature had nothing to fend against such tactics.

As of now, this Nightmare Creature had disintegrated twice in this world in which its losses had amounted to roughly 10,000 points of Fright Energy. Evidently, its body which originally stood ten meters tall had now shrunk down to less than five meters.

It would not allow the situation to go on like this!

Once a Fallen one embarked on his journey toward becoming a Dreadlord and had started collecting Fright Energy, the most difficult part would undeniably be at the beginning, when one had less than 500 points of Fright Energy.

During that period, the Fallen one would not even have the power to create Nightmare Shadows. This meant that his method of collecting Fright Energy was inconsistent, one that fluctuated with his luck.

One example would be the Nightmare Shadow of the Sorceress-Apprentice Grimm had bumped into when he first arrived at the Nightmare World.

Bam!

Grimm’s Sabbatic Goat Staff hammered down hard on the unfortunate Nightmare Creature, shattering its entire body into pieces. Soon after, he felt a refreshing wave wash over him after he had absorbed the Fright Energy that the creature had lost.

A rough estimate put the amount of Fright Energy his victim had lost at nearly 15,000 points. At the moment though, Grimm had only absorbed about 300 points, which was around one-fiftieth of the total loot.

This rate of harvesting far surpassed the speed at which Grimm was absorbing Fright Energy through his Nightmare Shadow.

Grimm’s Nightmare Power, paired with the concealment ability enabled by the Awakening Ray and the Sorcerer World’s Principal Will, was basically the Achilles’ Heel of these Nightmare Creatures!

This was why Grimm renamed himself as the “Nightmare Jaeger”.

“Grrr, I don’t care who you are, but I will definitely report this to the King of the Earth Splitter! You are intruding on the will of the Nightmare Mire Dreadlord! You’ll definitely regret this!”

While it roared, the body of this Nightmare Creature, which had been slain for the third time, had split into seven identical clones, each seemed to be around three meters tall. Upon realizing that its Fright Energy had been massively depleted, they scurried like rats in every direction.

The combat capability of the Nightmare Creature was originally on par with Grimm’s powers but when facing a completely invisible enemy, there was basically no chance for a fair fight so the only thing that could be done was to escape for its life.

“Hmm? Is this its Nightmare Power? Interesting.”

It was obvious that such a Nightmare Power allowed the creature to protect itself, particularly its storage of Fright Energy, from being completely emptied out by a stronger foe. But such an ability was of no use during peaceful times and was counterproductive as it required a good amount of Fright Energy to maintain.

Even so, it was a much more preferable outcome rather than being continuously attacked by Grimm, forcing the Fright Energy level of the Nightmare Creature to run dry.

Grimm chose a random clone that had split off from the main creature’s body and gave chase. Raising the Sabbatic Goat Staff high above his head, he was prepared to hammer down hard on his victim just as he did before.

It seemed that only when Grimm was in the process of absorbing Fright Energy that he became visible.

In the enemy’s eyes, a Fallen one that stood more than a dozen meters high leapt into the air. Its body was covered in a layer of lush red hair. That rough and furry hand slammed down on its body, causing the earth to quake from the impact. After a fleeting moment, an expanding palm print which was more than ten meters wide appeared on the surface of the Nightmare Mire.

After revealing itself for a split second, the Fallen one once again faded out of view and gave chase to the remaining clones.

A little over half an hourglass later, after killing the fourth clone from which Grimm had absorbed about 30 points of Fright Energy, he no longer displayed any interest in the remaining clones. Instead, he continued striving forward in search of a new prey.

Two hourglasses later.

Under the thick veil of the Nightmare Mist, a regular village came into Grimm’s view. It appeared to house around a hundred or more families.

Such villages were easy targets for the creatures of the Nightmare World to infest themselves in.

There were no other explanations for this other than the fact that these people, whose standard of living was relatively low, could hardly experience what were so-called beautiful fairy tales in their lives. On the contrary, during Grimm’s youth, not only were they not exposed to such experiences, they had to experience an unrelenting stream of Nightmare Draws day in and day out.

Although the old caretaker of the Viscount’s Residence was long gone, Grimm still could not wipe off the memories of the nightmares that the old bastard had given him when he was still a young one.

Horrifying Creatures was what Grimm called these beings that roamed the Nightmare World. On the other hand, these Nightmare Creatures had bestowed upon Grimm the name of “the Fallen one”.

It was less than one hourglass’ time before dawn broke. This was when the Sorcerers World was at its most peaceful moment. For the Nightmare World however, it was their final moment of rage before the sun rose!

With a silent “creak”, Grimm pushed open a wooden door to one of the village huts.

In the Nightmare World, the doors to a regular building seemed to be constructed by some kind of law. Their opening represented Grimm’s intrusion into some other person’s dreams. Even though Grimm’s intrusion into someone’s dreams would not cause any essential changes as to its main structure, he would appear in their dreams in some inconspicuous form, like what a random passerby would look like walking on the streets.

As such, there would be a silent “creak” that broke the peaceful silence of the Nightmare World when he pushed open the wooden door.

“Boo hoo…”

Just as he entered the doorway, a little girl’s cries came from beyond the World Aperture. Soon enough, Grimm discovered a rag doll that was wrapped in a grey-colored sack.

He had no idea what was happening in the little girl’s dream but judging from her painful wails, it must have appeared as a nightmare to her.

“Is this nightmare a coincidence? Or is there another Horrifying Creature encroached somewhere around here?”

Thinking for a moment, Grimm released a portion of his Fright Energy before he proceeded to distort some of the room’s features and wrap an additional layer around the rag doll using his Fright Energy.

“A talking rag doll?”

Gradually, Grimm could see visions of the little girl’s dreamscape. In the dream of the girl, who was only five years old, there was a talking rag doll that played with her by her side.

Mom and dad were working far away in the city, and elderly grandpa would go off to tend to his farm on the hill everyday. Grandma passed away last year so for this little girl, her daily life was extremely lonely. There were no other children in the village that was her age that would play with, or at the very least, talk to her.

And in her dreams, there would be a talking rag doll that would come along happily to play with her.

But for today, for some reason, this rag doll refused to speak to her. The silence came to the little girl as very much terrifying indeed. The rag doll would not respond no matter how hard she called out to it. Because of this, the little girl started shedding tears of pain and sorrow.

Losing a non-existent friend was akin to having a nightmare.

“Something’s wrong!”

With Grimm’s intuition as a Sorcerer, he quickly realized that something was wrong with this nightmare. The reason for coming to this conclusion was that the talking rag doll did not fulfil the representation for the birth of a Nightmare Draw. This was simply not the obsession of the little girl, so there must have been someone or something else from the outside pulling the strings.

It seemed that there was indeed a Nightmare Creature lurking around in this location.

With this in mind, Grimm exerted the entire force of his Fright Energy and busted open the room’s door. With the Awakening Ray raised like a lantern, he left the room to search the other huts of the village.

“Squeak!”

After searching through a series of thirty-odd huts, Grimm finally stumbled upon a hairy ape, that was about seven or eight meters tall, curled up in one of the rooms. Just as Grimm pushed open the door, it shifted its gaze over to Grimm’s position.

Of course, it could not see Grimm using its naked eye, but it could very clearly feel the intrusion of someone else into the dreamscape that was in this room. Its suspicions were further confirmed by the “squeak” of the opening door that broke the silence of the Nightmare World.

“A Fallen one that possesses the ability to conceal itself?”

The Horrifying Creature’s eyes instinctively darted around the room, its guard raised in case of any sudden attacks. A pair of silver eyes glowed in the dark, hoping to find that Fallen one who refused to reveal itself. In any case, he would at least want to know what the motives of the unexpected intruder were.

At this moment, the creature was at its most vulnerable point as the Fright Energy it had invested would only return following the rise of the black sun!

“Hmph hmph, for someone who’s blatantly interrupting my nightmare creation process, your Nightmare Power has certainly piqued my interest.”

Roar!

Following its ear-splitting roar, the Horrifying Creature flew out of the room in an instant. The hut in the Nightmare World had now been reduced to mere rubble. In mere seconds, this hairy ape-like creature was lying defeated on the ground, with one of its limbs snapped and bent in an unnatural position. The ground beneath its feet had suddenly turned into a trench. Despite its best efforts to look for its attacker, nothing out of the ordinary appeared in its surroundings.

“Why! Why would you attack me?! I have never fought in battles between the Dreadlords.”

The Horrifying Creature bellowed in despair.

Thud!

Grimm’s Sabbatic Goat Staff slammed onto the skull of this ape-like creature, shattering it into pieces which scattered across the ground. After Grimm had absorbed more than 100 points of Fright Energy lost by his victim, its blurry features reappeared ten meters away, right before it completed its resurrection process.

It escaped in giant leaps without even turning to look back at his perpetrator. When faced with an invisible enemy, even it knew that there was no chance of victory.

Yet, without a moment’s notice, it realized that Grimm was close on its tail but it was too late as he smashed down at the creature once again!

Investing Fright Energy for its returns was considered an extremely risky move to the creatures of the Nightmare World, the reason being that the creature would inevitably subject itself to weakness when danger rolled by whenever its luck went stale.

Fortunately for this Horrifying Creature, the black sun of the Nightmare World had started rising above the horizon…