'It's hot.'
Kaelen just stood there for a few seconds and took in the new surroundings; the ground was black like obsidian. There were walls that glowed red and boulders here and there over the ground. Rivers of magma in the distance are shown in a pale red glow.
Looking up to the sky, Kaelen saw a roof of sorts, the brown rock glowing with the red veins beneath.
'Am I in the earth's core?'
No, of course he wasn't, but it definitely seemed as if he was in some underground region. Or maybe the depths of some volcano
He let out a disappointed sigh – ' No swimming then, huh...'
The armour was not strictly built for the ocean, and he could definitely use it on land, but in a place where a nightmare creature was lurking around in his path, the armour would be like an alarm, the steel clanking on the ground as he stepped.
Right now, until a battle began, the armour had more risk than reward.
He focused and dismissed the armour.
The moment that he did, he felt the heat sweep over him; his clothes that had still been soaked had started to steam as the water evaporated.
'Shit!'
Instantly he resummoned the armour and waited for it to form around him; by then his clothes were only a bit damp.
He should have thought about it before dismissing the armour. How come water didn't enter the armour when he was swimming?
The armour's second enchantment must have been some sort of internal regulation – like homeostasis. Keeping the internal environment constant
Having his clothes a little wet would help him keep cool, but that was not the reason he resummoned the armour.
After killing the Shattered Sea, he absorbed that 'essence'; he saw his blood undergo a change, becoming water.
Water would evaporate, and here in this flaming hell, he did not think he was going to find a place to drink water, and so he might have no way to replenish his 'blood'.
After making sure he was good and the armour was on, he raised his head and looked forward, raising his finger he pointed.
'The door opened facing that way.'
That would mean that, like the last two trials, the objective of this trial would be in that direction too. The unfortunate part was that the thoughts still plagued his mind – the thought of being correct about what was waiting there.
Letting out a sigh, he started to walk.
...
'My body is definitely different...'
He had been walking for a few hours now, and using his judgement, it had been about 10 hours since he came here. The odd thing was that he did not stop walking the entire time, and it was for a very simple reason.
He had not got tired.
His body felt very vitalised and very fresh, as if he was not walking on the ground.
At first he thought it was the armour, but the armour did not affect his own body; in fact, he doubted there was any armour that could do that.
Aside from the mantle of the underworld and maybe a few other rare ones out there.
This armour, however, just maintained the area between his skin and itself, with the only outside influence being the air filtered through the 'gills'.
But then he noticed something else, something that was directly happening to his own body.
There was no sweat.
While he walked around, he had not sweated a single droplet; that should not have been possible.
But it was for him.
'That attribute [Formless] is making me become the elements of the trials I completed.'
His skin had gained a stone/rock property after the earth trial, and his blood had gained the properties of water.
So each time he was sweating, it was being reabsorbed. He was not getting thirsty because his water was keeping the moisture within his body.
He was not getting tired because his internal body was being kept at its constant peak.
'What changes are going to happen when I finish this trial?'
But there was another thought.
'If my fatigue lowers, then I will be able to finish these trials with relative ease compared to the previous two.'
His enemies were likely growing stronger, but he was too.
'Let's get this over with then.'
He continued to walk.
...
A day had passed by now; he had not come across a single nightmare creature.
'Where are these bastards?'
There definitely were nightmare creatures here; he knew for a fact that they were here somewhere.
He sat down behind one of the boulders with a groan; his stony skin was tough enough to resist the heat emanating from the boulder. It was quite warm, actually.
Dismissing the armour, he smiled as the warmth seeped into him. He noticed his skin grow sort of grainy but quickly return to normal and stay like that. He guessed that would happen and was very glad his guess was correct.
The water from the clothes had all but evaporated by now, and Kaelen couldn't help but feel annoyed.
His clothes were tattered, his pant leg was ripped when the bastard grabbed his leg, his shirt was torn too, and his jacket had long been lost in the earth trial.
His shoes was old and worn before, but now it was a lot more so.
Taking out the shoes, he threw them into one of the little lava pools to the back of him; he watched as they burned. He threw the second one too, but as he heard an odd sound,
It wasn't the same as when the first shoe caught aflame; it was a different one.
Like the scratching of a stick against stone
'First prey' – a smile crept onto his face.
Crouch walking around the boulder, he peeked through the side of it.
It was an oddly humanoid-looking creature aside from the unnatural skinny form and dark ashy skin. Oh, that and the third arm sprouting from its back and also the fact that rather than two eyes, it had one large eye in the middle.
Its teeth were unnaturally sharp too.
And it was crawling on the wall...
'... Thank the gods I harvested a bunch of meat from the last trial...'
If those were the creatures in this region, he might have starved to death with how skinny those things were.
Looking down at the wooden dagger in his hand, he rolled his eyes; it was not going to be of help here for long.
'That thing does look like it has some sturdy bones.'
Well, to be fair, it looked like it was mainly made of bones.
Perhaps it was time to forge a new weapon.
Stepping out from the burning boulder, Kaelen moved towards the Nightmare Creature slowly; he was not really hiding himself, though it was possible the boulders were blocking its view.
But he stopped soon after.
'That thing should have noticed me by now...'
Could it have been blind? Or maybe it was not able to hear.
'No, something is wrong here.'
The ominous feeling poured over him; unlike the last time when the Shattered Sea was moving under his boat, Kaelen listened to this feeling and stopped, looking around on high alert.
Just as he did, another nightmare creature, identical to the other one, launched itself from atop a boulder.
He jumped back, but as he did, the creature's third arm shot forward, nicking his chest.
Or it would have, if the armour did not prevent it. Just as he jumped back, the armour had already been summoned.
The nightmare creature was on the ground walking like a spider, and Kaelen felt a shiver.
No, it was not fear; it was more so disgust.
'Nothing is supposed to walk like that.'
It was the same walk that the people who got possessed in horror movies would walk, and it was freaking creepy.
Just as it launched itself forward with its 2 hands pointed towards him and jaws wide open, Kaeled sidestepped and stuck his fist out.
The fin of the armour dug into its eye and went straight through, forming a cut through its head.
'Nice'
It was not a weapon, but in a fight, anything could be a weapon, especially if it was sharp and hard.
[You have slain a Dormant Demon, Ash Stalker.]
It was good that he managed to get rid of that one because the second one was already charging towards him.
'I was right!'
The cunning bastards had worked together to lure him in, and they failed, pathetically.
Looking at the other one that had begun running towards him, Kaelen's face scrunched in anger.
"Did you really believe you could outthink me?"
He waited for it to get close, and before it could leap, he moved his leg and kicked it straight in the jaw, watching the sharp, gem-like teeth break and fly off.
Before it could reorientate, it walked over and brought his leg down onto the hand sprouting from its back, and the free food was brought down onto the creature's skull, smashing it into the ground.
Bending down, he grabbed both its arms and pulled, ripping them both off.
He watched the creature writhe and roar.
"For a demon you're pathetically weak."
Maybe it was because it was just dormant; letting out a sigh, he lifted his leg up and brought it down again, and again and again.
[You have slain a Dormant Demon, Ash Stalker.]
'How boring'
It was so amazing how a human could adapt; about 2 weeks ago it took him so much effort and energy to dispose of a nightmare creature, a dormant beast no less, and now he killed 2 dormant demons with barely any effort.
He dismissed the armour and closed his eyes, focusing on his sense of hearing.
'No one else then?'
There were no sounds, just stillness and the sounds of the bubbling magma.
Kaelen looked down at the corpse and dismissed his armour.
'...Have I been becoming more aggressive lately?'
He was
Being fair, though, it was not like he had another choice, but it was definitely something he needed to work on.
He was alone here, completely alone with only things that wanted to kill him around. He had also been alone for a long time with no humans around and only things to kill.
At least when he was on the streets, he would at least have a conversation with a shop owner or another homeless person, but now he did not even have that.
Summoning the seafarer's satchel, he sat down on the ground and pulled out some of the 'fish' meat.
He walked over to one of the lava pools and pulled out the wooden dagger.
It was not going to be of much use for long.
Stabbing the meat, he held it over the pool and turned it every few minutes, cooking the meat. The smell was not exactly good, but it was better than raw.
He was not the biggest fan of sushi.
Once the meat was cooked, Kaelen moved back to the boulder the ash stalker leapt off and sat down.
'What does my counter read?'
He didn't have a way to be sure even though he took count of the creatures he killed and the shards that he absorbed; the reason for that was very simple.
The rank of his aspect was still unknown.
Now did he know what rank it was for sure? No
Was he about 99.99% sure of what it was? Yes
He was brought here from another reality, chosen by some mysterious being and sent into arguably the oddest First Nightmare in the entire history of the nightmare spell.
That, and he sincerely doubted anyone had to kill 2 awakened creatures and multiple dormant creatures before the trial had even reached completion.
It had to have been Divine.
And if it wasn't, he didn't know how, but he was going to sue the spell.
Anyway,
Since he was mostly sure that he had a Divine rank aspect, that would also mean he had some sort of way to gain fragments or shards differently from others.
Sunny got Shadow fragments directly from his kills and had no use for Soul shards.
Nephis could gain a tenth of the creatures Soul Shards if killed with her flames, and if she didn't, she could absorb the shards.
Mordret too must have had a really fast and efficient way to form his cores.
So how would his work?
There was no way to tell.
He knew absorbing shards was working because the essence was entering his soul, and though he could not see the count, he could feel it.
'If I can't tell what it would look like with the direct kills, I can take count of the shards I've absorbed.'
He pulled the ash stalkers' corpses towards him and started to fish around in their bodies.
Pulling off the little meat from their bones, he held them in his hands.
They were the length of short shors and after shaving them on the ground he would definitely have trustworthy weapons
Holding on to one of them, he started to scratch it onto the ground; he was scratching the kills he had made.
He pulled the memories of the last 2 weeks and accounted for all the creatures he killed.
18 dormant beasts, the mud crawlers
5 dormant monsters, the rock shard scavengers
1 dormant monster, the silverback eel
36 dormant beasts, the forsaken
5 dormant beasts, the pale skimmers
'I also got 6 dormant shards from the corpses floating in the water.'
There were also the 2 awakened shards from the shattered sea.
'So if I look at just the shards I absorbed, that greedy bastard of a rock shard scavenger stole the shard from my first nightmare creature kill, and the shards from the Broken Earth were not harvested because of the filling mud the awakened shard from the seafarer is still in the satchel, so by now, based on just shards, it should be roughly...'
He grabbed another bone since the other 2 had been sharpened well.
'80/1000'
Turning his head to the 6 dormant soul shards besides him, he grabbed them and started to smash each one.
'86/1000'
"I need to start keeping a good count of this."
His violence and indifference were worrying things; they may not have shown very clearly right now, but they were the steps into a slow descent into insanity, and a way to mitigate that, especially when you are alone – with no one around – is to take account of something. It could be the number of friends you have, the days you have been here or the count of ones core.
Letting out a grunt, Kaelen woke up and stretched. - 'Let's raise that count and get out of here faster.'