Chapter 10: Echos

Looking at the Alert message, he quickly started collecting all 8 of the Nightmare cores and put them in his pants pocket.

After waiting for a while for his Nargy to fully regenerate, he soon started looking for more of those Havoc-Lykors or any other nightmare creatures in the vicinity.

Shortly he found a group of three Havoc-Lykors, that started growling at him, staring at him with those cold hungry eyes…not giving them a chance to attack, he directly summoned the purple-black flame and shot it towards the three Lykors.

Feeling the threatening feeling coming from the purple-black flames, the three Havoc-Lykors tried to retreat, but it was already too late….

As soon as the purple-black flame came in contact with them, it directly exploded….but this time not in an explosion of hot scorching flames, but instead in an explosion of extremely cold chilling waves of flames that froze all three of them on the spot. 

Looking at the unexpected outcome, Aron found himself staring at those ice statues with a sightly dumbfounded expression…

'In the warning, it was indeed mentioned that the flames are extremely chaotic and can have unexpected effects….but experiencing myself it is a totally different thing….These flames are really Bizarre!'

[Alert! Quest—Advent Of The Apex Predator: Hunt down up to 10 Lykors has been completed!]

[Rewards: 500 Naruka gems, Echo of the Havoc-Lykor creature, Advent Of The Apex Predator have been received!]

[Would you like to Level Up?]

[Yes/No]

Looking at the sudden Alert by the system and the option to Level up

"YES!" he clicks on the Level up…

Suddenly the very next instant an intense purple aura appeared enveloping his entire body….emmiting an extremely strong and vitalizing aura.

[You have Leveled Up!]

[You have Leveled Up!]

[You have Leveled Up!]

…

…

…

…

At the same time, a humanoid creature standing tall at a height of 2.5 meters, with its entire body covered in white chitin armor could be seen staring in the direction of Aron from afar, with its cold indifferent yellow eyes glinting in curiosity…But it wasn't the only one, several powerful-looking Nightmare creatures could be seen staring in the direction of Aron who was currently leveling up….

Meanwhile, after getting enshrouded in the intense purple mist, Aron's body starts to grow stronger rapidly, while his mind becomes sharper and colder like a predator. Soon the intense purple mist starts dissipating…

After leveling up he felt his body feeling a bit lighter and stronger than before….his skin now felt even more smoother and tougher than before.

His mind and senses felt sharper than before.

Looking at the rewards…

[Rewards: 240 Naruka gems, Echo of the Havoc-Lykor creature, Advent Of The Apex Predator have been received!]

[Advent Of The Apex Predator: While facing against any beast-type monster/creature you will deal 2x damage including skills and echos]

'Whoa!! the damage multiplier of this title is incredible! Now I will be able to deal twice as much damage to any beast-type nightmare creature I come across!'

'But just what are these Naruka gems for? And what with this Echos!? I've received the Echos of a Havoc-Lykors….Are Echos the souls of the Nightmare creatures?'

After Looking at all the Alerts and messages from the system he opened up the Status panel…

Status:

Name: Aron Smith

Race: Gospeler of Nightmares

Rank: Aberrant - I

Level: 10

Title:

Champion Of The Nightmare Realm [You have been chosen by the Nightmare Realm to be its champion!]

[Advent Of The Apex Predator: While facing any beast type monster/creature the host will deal 2x more damage]

Echos: 1

Soul Points: 0

Health: 550/550

Nargy: 1000/1000

Stamina: 190/190

Attributes:

Strength: 190

Agility: 175

Vitality: 240

Intelligence: 280

Defence: 175

Senses: 160

Attribute Points: 55

Skill Points: 11

Talent points: 11

Talents:

[Nightmare Body (Level 1)]: A body Forged by the will of Nightmare Realm, you have the highest affinity to Nargy and the Nightmare Realm—your body courses with a highly concentrated amount of Nargy and will regenerate Nargy every 0.001 seconds. Your body can convert any kind of energy into Nargy and vice versa. Your body has 75% resistance to Narygy damage, and 25% resistance to all kinds of damage (physical/elemental/soul/mind)

[Shroud Of Nightmares (Level 1)] (Passive): In the liberated state your wings will generate a shroud of Nightmare Aura around you, which will boost your Nargy regeneration rate up to 3 times. Anyone who comes within the range of the Shroud of Nightmare will be instantly trapped inside a nightmare.

Skills :

[Eyes Of The Paragon (Level 1)]: You can summon the @#$&# rune into your eyes to see the ultimate Truth. By summoning the @#$&# rune into your eyes you can cast an inescapable Nightmare illusion that cannot be avoided.

[Kasimo's Flames (Level 1)] (Active): You can summon Kasimo's flame for a set duration. WARNING! Kasimo's flames are extremely chaotic and can have unexpected effects.

[Kasimo's Mark (Level 1)] (Active): You can mark up to 3 objects/beings with Kasimo's Mark which will directly mark the target's soul in the case of living beings. The mark can be tracked irrespective of the distance.

If Kasimo's Mark is attached to a living being, it will constantly release a fixed amount of Nargy into their soul, slowly corrupting the soul of the target, and ultimately turning them into Kasimo's soul puppet.

If Kasimo's Mark is attached to an object, it will constantly release a fixed amount of Nargy into the object, slowly corrupting it, and ultimately turning it into a bizarre Object.

[Kasimo's Soul Poker (Level 1)] (Active): [Locked]

[Kasimo's Nightmare Circus (Level 1)] (Active): [Locked]

Then he continued to carefully look at each and every increment in his status window with a big grin on his face…

Then he clicked on the Echos and a new window appeared in front of him. On the new window, he saw the pictures of the Havoc-Lykor…

The Echo section located on the left side of the status window displayed the Echo with a Star rating below their pictures, and a status window containing all sorts of information on their right side.

Status:

Race: Havoc-Lykor

Rank: Aberrant - I

Level: 1

Type: 2-Star Summon

Summoning Duration: 15 minutes

Summoning Cooldown: 1 hour

Health: 50/50

Nargy: 40/40

Damage Type: AOE

Attributes:

Havoc-DMG Bonus: +5%

Agility Boost: +3%

Skills:

[Havoc Beam (Level 1)] (Active): The Havoc-Lykor gathers a large amount of Havoc energy over its Nightmare Shards and shoots a concentrated laser beam at the enemy.

[Havoc Tail (Level 1)] (Active): The Havoc-Lykor gathers havoc energy over its tail and launches a havoc slash attack at its enemy.

While checking out the Status window of the Echo he unknowingly raised his brows and became more and more astonished as he kept reading…..'Damn!! It surely is powerful!! '

When he accidentally clicked on the Solaris-Iromot a popup message appeared infront of him.

[Do you want to equip this Echo?]

[Yes/No]

'Ahh, so I can equip Echos huh….'

As soon as he clicked Yes, He suddenly felt as if his body had become a bit lighter than before and tried running around, he became even more surprised to find his movements to have become a bit faster than before.

Looking at the system screen, he noticed one more section right above the Echo section, located on the top left side of the main status screen which he had previously failed to notice, the section on the top left corner of the status screen displayed an icon of crossed swords. Clicking on the icon he found a new window to appear in front of him.

[Wepon equipped: None]

[Wepon Inventory Empty]

'Hmm…so this is the weapon inventory where all the weapons owned by a character are displayed….'

Closing the window, he clicked on the Echo section below with the icon of a demon face, On the Echo window he noticed that on the leftmost side, there were 5 circular tabs, with the topmost one being occupied by the picture of the Havoc-Lykor. 

Looking at the 5 circular tabs, 'does that mean I can currently equip 5 Echos!? Nice! Gotta catch 'em all!….'

'So depending on the Attribute boost provided by the Echo, I can gain a solid boost in my attributes as long as I equip them….This is really a nice feature…'

Now let's look at all the things that I have missed, He went back to the Status window and started looking for things that he had previously missed…He then noticed the Soul Points which had previously overlooked… 

Looking at the Soul Points: 0

'Hmm…what are these Soul Points? It must have something to do with souls…I faintly remember seeing the numbers of the Soul Point in thousands while I was checking out my Health earlier….'

'Could it be that the system uses Soul points to Level up!? That would make sense…I was only able to level up after killing lots of Nightmare creatures in that nuclear blast…'

'So if I want to keep further leveling up… I would need more soul points to do so….and soul points can be gained by killing Nightmare creatures, or other beings with a soul…'

'Anyways….now that this has been cleared, let's move on to the free Attribute points that I received when I leveled up…'

He then opened his Attribute window…

Attributes:

Strength: 190

Agility: 175 -> 180

Vitality: 240

Intelligence: 280

Defence: 175

Senses: 160

Attribute Points: 55

Skill Points: 11

Talent points: 11