Chapter 18: Deeper and Deeper underwater.

**//AN: Slight warning. The next chapter is going to be tough. I don't know how you guys think the nightmare trial will end, but I still should give that warning. So, proceed at your own pace and risk.** 

Nightmare**

Stress. 

An overused word. 

How many places is it really used? 

Materials are stressed, items, humans, animals.....

Everyone has experienced a version of it in their life. 

It's a psychological poison that destroys your psyche. Few manage to become immune to it. 

Some adapt. 

Some die. 

What happens when you keep putting stress on something? Does it bend? 

Or does it eventually break?

What if you let out that stress briefly and then apply it again?

Does it bend easier?

Or does it break?

What happens after breaking? 

What if it's still forced to bear that stress, with no end in sight? 

What happens?

**

Underwater…. A feast was happening. 

There was limited food. But who cares?

The taste is heavenly. Not even the most potent drugs can top it off. 

Gluttony is considered on par with lust. For good reason. 

With every bite, every tear, Rake felt bliss. He felt happy. 

His mind was filled with all the happy chemicals and hormones. 

So, whenever it ends, he goes berserk. 

This has been happening for some time now. But with each revolution, his frustration grew. 

Each time, he only manages to get one to two bites and maybe some mouthfuls of blood. That's it. 

By the time the bliss ends and he wants more, but the body would be speck clean. 

Not even bone fragments would remain. 

And sometimes, he would not even be able to get a bite. Sometimes the awakened piranhas would get there extremely quickly. Leaving him with absolutely nothing. 

So, Rake slowly got angrier and angrier. 

'I MUST HAVE MORE!!!!!

I WANT MORE!!

FK YOU!!!

FK EVERY ONE OF YOU!!!

ONLY I DESERVE TO EAT THIS!!!!

NONE OF YOU CAN!!!

MINE!!! MINE!!! MINE!!! MINE!!! MINE!!! MINE!!! MINE!!! MINE!!! MINE!!! MINE!!! MINE!!! 

ALL MINE!!! 

MINE!!!!!!!!

ARGGGHHHH!!!

I'LL KILL YOU ALL!!!

I'LL KILL YOU ALLLL!!!!!!

YEAH! THAT'S RIGHT!

IF I KILL EVERY ONE OF YOU, THEN ONLY I WILL BE LEFT TO EAT. 

YEAH YEAH..

THAT MAKES SENSE. 

IF THERE'S NO ONE ELSE TO EAT IT, THEN I WIN. I CAN EVEN SAVOR IT!

HELL YEAH!

I'LL BE ABLE TO EAT THE EYES..

AND THE TASTY LIVER….

AND THE SPONGY MARROW…..

HUFF HUFF…

*GULP..'

And by the time his musings were finished, the food was already devoured. 

He has to start again. This time was unfortunate. 

But that's alright. 

The food will return soon. As soon as he kills himself, the food will return. 

'No, not this time. I need to start killing these bi**es. I'll kill them again and again until I can kill everything before they can finish the food. 

No, before they even touch the food.'

And with that strangely lucid thought, Rake began. 

...….

Rake was now in the body of a piranha. To be more precise, a nightmare creature that looks and works like a piranha.

With this new body, came new challenges and advantages. 

The first challenges waere mostly overcome. 

Rake adapted to his new body extremely smoothly. Like a fish in water. 

By the time he started to work with a goal, he had subconsciously adapted perfectly. 

Now, the next part is where he needed work. 

And that is controlling water. 

Every dormant Piranha nightmare creature has passive control over water. 

That's how they swim extremely fast. They also can band together and make extremely strong whirlpools and other water attacks. 

Their control over it is very weak. But they still have potential. Not to mention they don't have access to controlling essence. 

Two things that were extremely important for Rake. 

Even though he was dormant, maybe not even that, he still could control essence. And the body that he was in, had a core. 

A dormant weak core, but a core nonetheless.

Unlike his previous human body. 

And so, he already had the tools that an awakened would have. Just very shoddy and weak versions of them.

But that didn't matter, all that matters is his potential. 

In this body at least. 

All he had to do was slowly get more and more control over the water. 

**

Rake flew through the water. 

He used his fish body to the extreme. He did not need to save any stamina. Speed was key, so he pushed more and more. 

He got more and more control over his body until he finally did it. He was able to control and feel the water around him. 

And so he then tapped into his essence. Like an awakened, he started to use essence. Even though this body wasn't capable of channeling it properly, he still did it. 

And the moment he pushed it too far like using up all the essence at once, his body exploded. 

Well, he didn't experience that of course. After all, he didn't have enough consciousness to realize that he exploded. But after losing consciousness and restarting the loop multiple times, he found the maximum that this body could take. 

And so that became his new standard. But swimming at that speed is not easy. 

And that was all he could do at the moment. 

He used the essence to speed himself up. He first enhanced his body to the extreme using essence.

After that, he controlled the water around him to create an artificial slipstream. A slipstream that would be impossible for him to create using just physical strength. 

But after making that using his control over water, he reached a level of speed that was inconceivable for him. 

Literally. 

He couldn't see anything at that speed. As much as he could strengthen his body using essence, he couldn't do that to upgrade his eyes or brain. 

By the time he started moving towards a point, he would've reached it. 

He didn't have large dorsal fins.(The ones at the sides of a fish).

They were only there for control. And they were quite small. He tried to use them. But each time, they broke due to the extreme pressure he was putting on them. 

'I can't do this. The slipstream needs to be controlled.'

**

And why would he need this much speed? Simple, that's the speed at which the awakened fish would move. 

There are two ways that nightmare creatures evolve as they grow stronger. 

One, grow bigger and stronger. 

The other is to become more insidious and remain small and condensed. 

These piranhas were of the second kind. 

In this swarm, there were exactly two. Two that herded this swarm of at least 5000 hungry savage fish. 

They were fast as hell. 

And they were faster than Rake's reaction speed. 

**

He had found speed. But he lacked control. Rake tried again and again. But his reaction speed was simply too slow. 

He had to change tactics or find a different method.

'I need to be able to control this slipstream itself. Like controlling a raging bull by controlling its head. Or by just considering this slipstream as a car that I am a passenger in.'

But he couldn't see using his eyes anymore. 

Also, slowing down to control the direction was not an option. The moment he slowed down, he would be killed. 

And he has been, multiple times. 

**

This high speed also created a new problem. 

He couldn't use his fangs and sharp teeth. 

That would slow him down way too much and was ineffective anyway. 

That would've been like using an awakened wea

**

Underwater, the composed and orderly flow of water was disrupted. 

**

'HA HA HA!

DEAD DEAD DEAD.

THEY'RE ALL DEAD. 

COME COME

COME FOR MORE. 

ONLY ME. ONLY I CAN HAVE HIM. 

ONLY I CAN EAT HIM.

I VOW TO MYSELF UNTIL I FINISH MY OBJECTIVE OF KILLING ALL OF YOU BEFORE YOU CAN GET TO HIM, I WON'T TOUCH IT. 

I WON'T EAT!!!!

HA HA HA. 

ONE MORE TIME, I'LL KILL YOU ALL VERY SOON.'

All the dormant nightmare creatures was dead. 

He had found a solution. 

And he had killed the small ones so fast that the bosses couldn't react. 

**

Real world.

Rake was walking around the outskirts. 

The more he walked the more and more familiar it felt. 

He has been here. 

No he had seen this. 

Slums. 

That's what the outskirts was. 

Not a dystopian hellhole where people had no way to live or survive. 

The houses were extremely low quality. 

The floor was made of plastic trash and the roofs were also covered by plastic trash. 

That seems to be the most economic way for making cheap house. 

But the sanitation was practically nonexistent. 

As he walked he found the sanitation situation. It wasn't pretty. 

There was big holes on the ground and a dirty platform sat on it. People would swat over the hole and defecate. 

It was extremely horrible. He had seen squatting toilets before. 

Hell, he had grown up in a house that used them. But not like this. This was just a hole on the floor. 

He had it so much better on his previous life in a third world country. 

He had seen poverty before. But not this condensed and in such a large amount. 

He remembered an incident that happened when he was young. His neighbour country did a genocide fueled by misinformation and hate spread by social media and caused a immigrant crisis on his country's borders. 

He didn't see the conditions of the people, but he had heard of them. Those poor people were forced to love in a giant slum/settlement (Whatever you want to call it). 

He imagines that must've been like this. But it was still so much worse. 

'Sigh…Is there anything I can do?

Seems too big a problem to be solved by one person.'

But the longer he walked through the settlement, the worse he felt. 

'But what …can I do?'

Seeing more and more people with disabilities, for some reason he was reminded of Effie. 

Remembering that chapter where it was revealed that she used to be crippled before ascending, he got an idea.

'Hmm, this might actually work…'

**

"Ah Miss Ayna, welcome. How have you been? Working from home must be nice."

They were seated on a table with Rake and Ayna on opposite sides of the center table. 

There were some small pieces of cake and drinks on the table. 

"Please try these. I bought these as I was returning home. I haven't had the chance to try these in a long while. I was curious about their taste and I loved them so much that I bought too many. 

My fridge is now filled with sweets. So, feel free to help me with finishing them."

Rake said and immediately took a bite out of one of them. 

Ayna was sitting across from him wearing an impeccable long skirt and modest clothing. She also had a white blouse and beautiful earrings. 

The earrings had beautiful blue jewels in a flower pattern. She also had light makeup and red lipstick. 

The result was that she looked like a beauty. Maybe not as beautiful as an ascended woman with perfect body proportions, but she wasn't too far either. 

"Mr Rake, these are delicious, please tell me the address of the shop later."

"Of course. Please remind me later to do that. I might forget." he replied amicably as he sipped on a glass of soda that reminded him of Coca-Cola. Apparently, this company was interdimensional. It was the same taste and feel. It was too nostalgic. After seeing some posters, he realized that this company was created before the invasion began and has been still thriving somehow. 

Small mysteries of life. 

"So, Ms Ayna. I called you here because I have a proposition to make. Would you be interested?"

"That depends. You are already helping us so much by providing your blood. What more could you be suggesting?"

"How about being able to infect anyone with the Nightmare spell? Creating potential thousands of awakeneds?"

 "...you must be joking"

**

AN: Double chapter. 

Well, I couldn't finish it all in one chapter and I felt like these two chapters need to be read together. Otherwise, it would lose some impact. Also, shoutout to Cookie007. I had to find some time from my studies for this. But I feel like it was worth it. These two chapters have been eating at me for some time. 

And warning again. Don't say I didn't warn you. Power is costly at times. 

Thanks for reading. Hope you like these two chapters.