Nightmare

Chapter 125: Nightmare

/When the young Hunter came back to themselves, they had many messages from the system to get through. After the battle was over, they'd eaten and drank a little, before passing out in their last hideout. They'd stashed away the pursuer's body in their inventory after stopping the decomposition of it, to take a closer look at once they'd recharged.

Now, after barely having woken up, there was quite a bit for them to get through. They'd received a special title, which apparently only one person could hold at a time. Before, they'd been a hunter, certainly, but now it was different.

[By listening to their calling, the individual has found the <The Hunter's> abode.]

[By besting <The Hunter> at their own game, the individual has inherited the title of <The Hunter>.]

They also warned the Hunter of the dangers the title carried, that occasionally, promising candidates would perhaps feel a calling, and that once they were found, they would hunt or be hunted.

For the first little while they read, the Hunter felt a mix of emotions. Yes, the title suited them, certainly, yet was it truly them who had decided to inherit it? Why did they feel the call rather than simply a quest? It felt as though their freedom was restricted somewhat, and they did not enjoy it at all.

Shaking their head, they read on, and over time, they realised why they'd been picked. Well, rather than being picked, it could be said that they had picked this fate. The call wasn't some mysterious entity that would reach out to promising young hunters. It was the other way around.

Anyone with a sufficient passion for hunting, one that rivals the current holder of the title, may feel the call. Not when they wished to simply live off the wild, or when they hunted for sport, but instead, only those who truly wanted to be the greatest hunter would feel it. Rather than them being called, it was a manifestation of the system to guide them to their destiny.

Then, once the Hunter was reaffirmed of their freedom, the mood around them lightened. If the call or their title had been a shackle, they would've cast it aside at a moment's notice. But this? It simply meant they were free to do as they pleased, and to prove to the whole world that they were still at the peak.

When the young Hunter read on about their title, their smile widened. The title came with no additional Skills related to the hunt itself, that much would give the holder too great an advantage over other hunters aiming for it. No, rather than that, it mostly consisted of a compass.

It was a very special compass, too. One that would not pinpoint the location of any creature, nor would it point in just one direction. Instead, it would show the path the individual had to take to meet something worthwhile hunting.

With glee on their face, they looted the body of their predecessor, left their temporary camp, and began to journey off, onto the next hunt./

(Legends: The Hunter - 4; Inheritance)

- - - - - -

The very next moment, Mercury's eyes opened again. Drowsily at first, like after a long nap, then much quicker as he didn't recognize where he was.

Underneath his feet, the ground felt unfamiliar, and somewhat dangerous. It was soft earth, covered in a thin sheet of grey mud, yet somehow the air was dry and stale, almost suffocating. In a second, Mercury found himself fully awake, quickly spinning his head for any sign of another living soul, but what little he saw through the thick fog that hung about the place was desolate.

Gazing down at himself, Mercury discovered that he certainly was not currently in his waking body. His feet were made from a construct of stone-looking tubes, wrapping around each other into a statue-like recreation of himself. It calmed him down slightly, knowing that at the very least, his body was still where he'd fallen asleep, at least as far as he could tell, though at the same time, not knowing where he was unsettled him.

Up until now, the only time he had gone to sleep and woken up somewhere other than the fountain, he had chosen that path on his own, but this time, he'd done nothing the like. Somehow, he'd either been abducted, or his mind had suddenly changed a lot to look like this.

Was it because he was still slightly poisoned, or maybe because exhaustion had caught up with him? Could it be because all the creatures he saw around the planes of ash unsettled him? That wouldn't make sense though, given that even when his psyche was severely rattled, he'd still woken up in those same verdant plains, albeit a little more sinister then.

Shaking his head, Mercury banished those thoughts. He quickly scanned his surroundings again, sensing the mana in the air as well. Rather than it being more abundant, like where he usually found himself, here the air felt dead. Every time he sensed a triz, he could feel it was different from most.

They weren't smaller than others, since they couldn't really be, but it felt as though they wanted to be. The difference was so slight that most mages might not have noticed it at all, but yet Mercury did. After all, he had spent a fair share of his time trying to absorb only the triz that felt "better" than the rest back in Treyno, so picking up the feel of the mana in this place was much easier.

If Mercury had to put words on it, the mana felt... scared. It wanted to shrink away, to not be here at all, yet of course it couldn't move. Almost all the mana in the grey bog felt that way, trying to disappear to the best of its ability, and soon, Mercury could tell why.

From the edge of the fog, he heard a quiet rumbling sound, and within moments, it was upon him. The ground rose for a moment, small cracks opening up in the earth. The grey mud slid down there, silently descending along the edges of the fissures, before being swallowed up. Then, Mercury could feel a tug on his own core, as the mana in the air nearby was swallowed up.

Only a handful of seconds later, the fissures closed, and new mud rose to the top, first snow white, then quickly turning grey.

Over the next couple seconds, the mana in the air began to stabilize again, returning to homogenous levels, but Mercury could clearly tell it had lessened slightly.

As a cold shiver ran along his back, Mercury began to move. Something definitely wasn't right with this place, and he was not going to stay in one place to wait for the cracks to maybe eventually become bigger and open beneath his feet. That was a big nope in his book.

When the mopaaw moved, his figure cut a streak into the fog. It felt heavy and thick, more like a liquid than a gas, and Mercury would have sworn that some of it genuinely clung to his fur. When he looked back, he saw that there was a small tunnel behind him, and though it was closing rather quickly, he could still see some of the path he'd walked.

Taking a deep breath that stung his lungs a little, Mercury tried to calm himself down. He couldn't afford to panic. Keeping his steps measured, he continued his trek through the marsh, seeing absolutely nothing of note. Every step he felt the mud dragging against his legs, the fog clinging to his skin.

Every step he took, it almost made him wonder why he was still walking at all. After all, it would have been so much easier to just lay down and wait to wake up, wouldn't it?

Mercury banished the treacherous thought the moment it sprouted up. He knew it for sure now, this place was messing with his mind. With his astral body slowed down, it felt like he couldn't quite think right. His head felt sluggish and slow, but it wasn't enough to make him stupid.

If he stopped moving, he would just sink further into the mud, and moving on would become even harder. He had to keep moving, even if just for the sake of moving at all.

Time in the swamp seemed to pass as slowly as Mercury moved. The air was still with no wind, and the fog seemed to always hang around just the same as before. His only real indicator of the passing of time was the rhythmical expansion and contraction of the ground, as it sought to leech his mana from him.

Every time, Mercury carefully avoided the cracks, and made sure his core didn't have any leaks, then moved on once the event was over. It felt like he'd marched forever until something finally changed.

He only noticed once the ground expanded again, rising him up slightly before the wet mud drained away, exposing the earth below. There, he could see tracks, a sign that something had moved through here before.

Whatever let behind the prints, they were much larger than Mercury's own, and the thing must have been quite a bit heavier than him, too, given their depth. They were somewhat heart shaped, though the back was much more rounded, and the front had three smaller humps rather than two of them.

Given what he had learned about tracking when he was living on his own, Mercury was also quite sure that the creature had been in a hurry, running from something else. The imprints it had left in the mud were far enough apart to make him think it was running as fast as it could actually, though he wondered what it might have been running from.

Before he got the chance to look for additional tracks though, the cracks in the earth closed again, and the ground was once again covered in mud, probably destroying his chances. Even if there were other tracks there, cleaning away enough mud without more flooding in would have been impossible with how flat the landscape around him was.

Instead, Mercury decided to begin following the tracks. If there were more creatures around, he'd prefer finding them himself, rather than being found.

- - -

The journey through the marsh proved as exhausting as it was demoralizing. The landscape always remained the same, nothing new to see in the slightest, and Mercury had to feel out whether he was still following the tracks by stepping into them, which resulted in him landing face first in the mud more than once.

With the air feeling barely worth breathing, and no sign of progress, the march wore Mercury down. Luckily though, being worn down was something he had plenty experience with from a 21st century office job.

Instead of wallowing in his misery, Mercury used all his spare attention for thinking, no matter how sluggish. His mind still felt clogged and lazy, and he had to focus on walking just a little to avoid losing the slight change in scenery he found, but that much still left him with quite some mental capacity to spare.

Mercury tried to use as much of that as possible on trying to further understand <Breath>. It was his first ihn'ar, and one of the most useful ones, too. He still needed its help plenty of time, for bursts of strength, to regain his stamina or focus, to calm down when he panicked, the list went on. To him, it was one of the most important tools for survival in his arsenal, and while <Nothingness> might allow him to weave water into existence, he had hardly any clue on how to start.

Meanwhile, when it came to <Breath>, he even had two of them. The first was rhythm. When he synced his breath with his heartbeat and stamina, he could feel a sort of resonance between them, which had significantly sped up his recovery. If he could do that much without even levelling <Breath> again, he certainly had a path of improvement ahead of him.

The second path he thought of was depth. When he took deep breaths during the storm, he could feel the wind trying to fight him for it, but it lost the battle. When he was taking shallow breaths before the abduction, it made even the creature from the blood eclipse think he was dead. Clearly, there was some untapped potential there, both in terms of stealth and keeping his breathing going in difficult situations.

If he was right, then there was a good chance that by learning both of them, he could level <Breath> up again, maybe even twice. For now though, Mercury decided to focus on the former rather than the latter. If he was able to use rhythm to draw out more power or regain his stamina faster, it would make hunting much more efficient, and increase his chances of survival by far.

Having set his mind on the path to pursue for now, Mercury split his mind, using one zeyjn on tracking, and the other on developing his breath. It was more taxing that way, but because of just that it was also a great way to develop his zeyjn further. Keeping them active for long was difficult after all, and if he could keep them up for quite a while, maybe he could eventually begin developing a third.

The split happened just in time, too, since the one focusing on tracking soon caught notice of something new. The air had changed. Now, mixed in with the smell of age and decay, there was something else. A mix of sweat and fear, just a hint of it, fading quickly.

As Mercury noticed it, he felt like the fog was trying to curl around his nose, but it was too late by then. He'd caught onto it already, and with his <Enhanced Smell> he wasn't going to let go. A small grin found itself onto his face as his steps sped up a little, the trace growing stronger until the fog couldn't hide it anymore if it tried.

When the ground split again just a little while later, Mercury could tell he was still on the right path. The trace his nose picked up matched the direction of the tracks he had found before, and the ones he saw now seemed much more recent.

[Acquired the Skill <Tracking lv. 1> through a specific action.]

It seemed as though the system agreed with him. He'd tracked some small game before, but it wasn't quite enough for the Skill, apparently. Now though, whatever caused him to gain the Skill finally, he had a much easier time following the tracks.

With the Skill, the distance between the prints seemed to make much more sense, meaning he spent less time poking around in the mud, and more time actually following them. Additionally, he was now able to hone in on the smell much more, shutting out most of the decay as his journey sped up considerably.

Not much later, only a few dozen cycles of the floor expanding, something began to poke through the edge of the fog. The creature was large, about the size of a rhino, and looked like someone had fused one with a tiger and a triceratops.

Its skin was brownish where Mercury could see it, but also covered with brown and grey striped fur. The creature's legs were entirely covered in scales, all of the same brownish colour, though especially towards its feet, they became more orange. Its neck featured a spike rimmed shield, and two bull-like horns rose from the top of its skull, while a third one extended from the front of its face.

Honestly, it would have been menacing, if not for the fact that it laid on the floor, dark blood staining the mud around it. Its breath was weak, shallow and fearful, and its eyes hazy. As Mercury slowly approached, the creature tried to get up on its legs and run, only to stagger and fall to the floor again with something of a grunt.

'Stay... away...' it thought.

Mercury was surprised he could understand it for a moment, but the surprise faded quickly. This was a dream, after all, and he had understood old Dreamweaver just as well.

'I won't hurt you,' Mercury replied.

The creature grunted and huffed in reply, a symphony of disbelief radiating from it.

'You're dying,' Mercury noted.

'Most nights, the same,' it replied.

There was shame written beneath those thoughts, and plenty of pain as well. All of it though was covered in a thick blanket of anger, and it made Mercury almost glad he met the thing on the verge of death, since otherwise, it might have just gone and attacked him immediately.

He took a small step back to give the creature space.

'Most nights?'

It affirmed his thoughts. 'Most. Escape, sometimes.'

Fear smothered every other emotion at that sentence.

'Escape from what?' the mopaaw tentatively asked, but the beast only grunted in reply, the lights in its eyes already extinguishing.

All that Mercury could read from its thoughts now was pain, fear, and somehow, solace.

Moments after it died, Mercury felt the ground shake again, more severely this time, before a larger crack opened up in front of him and swallowed up the thing he had spoken to. Then the ground closed, and silence returned.

The mopaaw could feel himself shaking slightly in fear. He was waiting for something to happen, a chewing sound, maybe a sickening crunch, but there was nothing. Rather than any noise, the absolute quiet was much more unsettling. Any trace of the creature in front of him was now gone. No more stained mud, even its tracks were going to be washed away soon.

Frankly, he could consider himself lucky to have actually found something at the end of the prints he was following, instead of them simply ending.

Taking a deep breath, Mercury calmed his thoughts, and turned around to head backwards. The fog glowed slightly as he looked into it, a hue of yellow as though it sneered at it. Somehow, it seemed thinner, just thin enough to see two long streaks of black stretching into the sky in the distance.

Almost defying his own will, Mercury's gaze trailed along the streaks of black, and followed them upwards. Strangely, wherever his eyes touched them, they blurred, and seemed to disappear, yet the yellow glow remained.

And at the top, when he was finished following the strange streaks, there was a large black circle, with a smaller yellow one inside, casting a dim, chilling light onto the area where he had seen the other creature die.

The thing, whatever he was looking at, tilted its head, then it twitched, and its edges turned blurry. Unlike the stalks that led up to it however, it didn't disappear, but instead, a gleaming white crescent of fangs revealed itself beneath the source of light, before streaks of black shot out from its side towards Mercury.

Before he could even think, he began to run.