Diving into his Soul Sea, Juno was greeted with a familiar yet somehow different sight.
His Soul was as still, grey, and lifeless as usual, with all the same bleeding red edges. The same grey and hollow sun hung above it all, looking even hungrier than it did before. Above it hung the dead clouds, casting a bizarre shadow on it all.
What was new, now that his senses had settled enough to perceive it properly, was the "wall".
It surrounded everything — the sea, the sun, the whole of it — a shimmering boundary that he hadn't been able to see before and could now only perceive through [Piercing Mind], the way certain things only became visible under specific conditions of light. It wasn't solid exactly. More like the surface of something, a membrane between what he was and whatever existed outside of what he was, faintly luminous and faintly alive in a way the sea itself was not. He had no idea what it meant yet. He had a feeling that he would find out soon, and that the revelation would be crucial to everything.
Approaching his sun, Juno saw three spheres of light orbiting around it like small moons. The scene made him smile widely.
Savoring the anticipation, Juno mentally summoned the King's Execution and started to read its glowing Runes.
Memory: [King's Execution]
Memory Rank: Ascended.
Memory Tier: I.
Memory Type: Weapon
Memory Description: [A tyrannical king once ruled a small nation. He was powerful, but never the most powerful. He was always destined to die, and so he did. Sun Chaser did not care who had laid claim to the king before him, whether it was his friend or Fate.]
Memory Enchantments: [Blood Fang], [Place of Execution]
This was all he had seen before, but now he was going to go further. He was going to see the Enchantments descriptions. He was going to see his future.
[Blood Fang] Enchantment Description: [When steel meets blood, the steel wins. All blood is devoured, including the connected blood, drawn in from the wound until there is nothing left to devour. The stronger the blood, the more the blade is restored.]
'Whoa. Very deadly. I love it.'
[Place of Execution] Enchantment Description: [The weak point of beings and things is exploited.]
'Jackpot!'
Silently, Juno pumped his fist and reread the Runes again. He was not wrong in his original assessments.
Firstly, it was obvious that both of these Enchantments were passive. This was massive, as without the need for Soul Essence to activate Enchantments, they could benefit him immediately after he was sent to the Dream Realm. Secondly, both of the Enchantments were plainly good!
'Hmm… Blood Fang could be used in different ways, like straight-up sucking the blood out of Nightmare Creatures, or using the surrounding blood to heal the weapon. I could maybe also throw it.
Place of Execution might be even better, though. With how weak I am going to be as a Dormant, making weak spots even weaker is a massive gain! Though I wonder how I could use the Enchantment on things. Like, weakening a weapon or something?'
After thinking for a few more moments, Juno decided that he would try that part out as soon as possible, just to start thinking of use cases.
Sending the King's Execution away, he summoned the next Memory: [Away from Home]
As the small canteen floated in front of him, Juno summoned its Runes and began to read.
Memory: [Away from Home]
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Tier: I.
Memory Type: Tool.
'A tool! It might not be armor, but this is almost as good!'
Description - [A woman once loved a man, so before he left for one of his wars, she made sure to make it so her lover would never be thirsty, nor forget her. She succeeded in making sure he never forgot her, but he did forget their love. How tragic.]
'Wow. The Spell being a bitch was not something I expected. How low you've fallen.'
Memory Enchantments: [From Home], [Momento]
[From Home] Enchantment Description: [A water pouch meant for war, it can hold enough water for a whole campaign.]
'Endless Spring that needs to be refilled. Good enough.'
[Momento] Enchantment Description: [All the liquid drank from this canteen invigorates the drinker]
Nodding silently, Juno unsummoned the canteen without much thought. The Memory could hold a lot of water, and the water made him stronger. Not much to it, unlike the sword.
Finally, he summoned his final Memory. Quickly, a green mask appeared before him. It wasn't a full face mask, but rather one that only covered his upper face. It was a beautiful shade of dark green that bordered on black, tinged with gold on its sides. Juno didn't know much about luxury, but even he could tell this was true luxury.
Silently, Juno summoned the Runes and read them quickly. Then again, and again. Finally, after six rounds of reading them, he laughed with pure satisfaction.
Memory: [A Snakes Mask]
Memory Rank: Awakened.
Memory Tier: I.
Memory Type: Garment.
Description - [A kind man slowly turned sinful, and eventually turned on his sinful friend. Who knew that his horrible deed would be attributed to a beast?]
Memory Enchantments: [Hidden in the Grass]
[Hidden in the Grass] Enchantment Description: [When surrounded by living beings, the presence of the wearer is lessened, making them incredibly easy to miss.]
After rereading the Runes for a seventh time, Juno laughed again. It was all good. It was all too good!
Dismissing the Memories and leaving his Soul Sea, Juno found himself back in the Waking World. Once he did so, he opened his eyes and started to think. There was a lot to think about, after all.
'A sword that devoured blood and exploited weak points. A canteen that never ran dry and strengthened whoever drank from it. A mask that made him easy to miss in a crowd. All these things combined, I'm probably the strongest Sleeper when it comes to Memories, even amongst the Legacies!
And I got them all on my first night. As a snake. Hehe, Sunny, who is the most treacherous?'
He let that sit for a moment, savoring it with the particular completeness he reserved for things that were genuinely, unreservedly good.
Then, because his mind never stayed in one place for long, it moved forward.
He thought about the Dream Realm. About what it contained. About the things he had read in the novel and the things he hadn't, the chapters he had skipped, the parts of the world that existed beyond the edges of what had been written down. He thought about what a person could accomplish in that world with the right preparation, the right Memories and the right mindset going in.
A thought arrived quietly. He didn't examine it too closely. He simply noted its presence and moved on, the way you noted the weather through a window without deciding yet whether to go outside.
'Eh, I'm too green for it all. Maybe after I live in the violence for a little bit, I could survive better. Hmm…'
Soon, he turned his attention to his Attributes. After he had gained his [Godless Blade] Aspect, he gained two new Attributes. They had really peculiar titles, so he really wanted to examine them and think of what they did. Sadly, as the trend had been, he didn't get the chance to do so. On top of that, he never got the chance to think deeply about his original Attributes either.
[Dream's Spawn] was the very first Attribute of his that was listed, and it was one of the most critical. The Spell knew that he came from a different world. It wasn't that big of a surprise, he was a carrier after all, but still. It didn't seem to do anything to him, though, but that was currently. If he was right, the results of this Attribute would only show themselves when he was a Saint and beyond, integrating with the current worlds, getting a Will, and having a Domain.
[Flame of Divinity] was the least complicated of all his Attributes. He didn't even have to think about it.
[Anunnaki] was perhaps his second best Attribute. The description the Spell provided was great in answering all his questions. Divine and nightmarish, blessed and cursed, body and mind and soul, unlike anyone else's. He had experienced the nightmare creature aspect of it firsthand in the First Nightmare and had emerged from the experience with small horns and a Soul Sea that looked like something had died in it centuries ago and never fully decomposed. He also felt much stronger than he did before, and if Sunny's description of normal Sleepers applied, then he was much stronger than regular Sleepers, too. A beast is supposed to be strong after all.
[Malicious] remained what it had always been. Accurate. Unsurprising. He moved past it quickly.
[Indomitable Humanity] was one of his two new Attributes, and perhaps the funniest. "What is God to a non-believer?" was the best description he had ever read. He was a fan, after all! But that was inconsequential, since the other part of the Attribute was much more important, and much better than some description.
'If God cannot touch, who else dares to? A Soul protection Attribute. I bet that is what it is on the surface, but it probably also goes much deeper than that. If the barrier I saw and felt around my Soul Sea is my humanity, then it probably protects me from Corruption as well. Too bad I don't have any Corruptible knowledge to test it with…'
[Godscorned], he approached carefully, the way you approached something you suspected was larger than it looked.
His Aspect, [Godless Blade], was clearly centered on slaying those with Divinity. How, he wasn't sure yet, but his gut feeling told him he was right in his guess. [Godscorned] was an extension of that "mission" Fate had given him; thus, he possessed the ability to find those with Divinity and kill them easily.
However, just like his humanity Attribute, Juno bet that there was more to it. The War God had noticed him. The Gods collectively had tried to strip something from him, and the universe had immediately replaced it with something better, which suggested that whatever the [Godscorned] Attribute was truly doing, it was doing it in a direction the Gods found uncomfortable.
'Losers. If all of y'all weren't dead, then you might have succeeded. Truly, what are the Gods to a non-believer?'
He closed his Runes.
He sat with the full picture of himself for a moment, the Memories and the Attributes and the Aspect and the Soul Sea and the wall and the hollow sun, and felt something that was adjacent to satisfaction but larger and less easily named.
He could also feel his Flaw starting to act up. It was only a little bit, though, so he didn't really care. It wasn't a real Flaw anyway.
He was seventeen years old. He was in Shadow Slave. He had a Divine Aspect, an Ascended Memory, and an Attribute that made Gods uncomfortable.
He was, genuinely and completely, just getting started.
A thought drifted through, quiet and unhurried, the same one that had arrived earlier and been set aside. He let it drift. He didn't reach for it. He simply noted that it was still there, patient as the sun above his Soul Sea, waiting for him to be ready to look at it directly.
'Not yet,' he told himself.
He was still telling himself that when he heard it.
A shift in breathing from the other bed. The subtle transition of a body moving from enchanted sleep toward ordinary consciousness, the small sounds of someone remembering how to be awake. A pause with the quality of a person collecting themselves before attempting anything more ambitious.
Juno settled his expression to mirror his excitement and waited, with the particular patience of someone who already knew what was coming and had decided to enjoy it completely.
Sunny was waking up.