Chapter 31

Author's Note: I'm not sure most of you read the 'Author's Thoughts' section at the end of the chapter, which is why I'm resorting to this. This is a small chapter, only 700 words compared to the usual 1000. I am pressed for time lately. I will write another chapter today. It will be the last chapter of Dane's first Waking World arc. The Dream Realm Awaits!

***

The Dreamscape announced, "Eight hundred and fifty-eight strikes."

Dane's sword arm had been bitten off and was healing. The Stalker moved slowly under the strain of hundreds of shallow wounds. Dane was in tip-top shape. If his soul were taking the brunt it should have, he knew that he would have been dead ten times over.

Dane learned many things from exchanging blows with the bear. For one, his intangibility excluded him from all physical laws, including motion. That was why he had started using a new approach to battle.

The bear pounced at him on all fours. Dane held his sword out in front of him and waited. Its maw fell, and he ducked under it. Two blood-soaked paws shot down after him. He was practically crashing into the bear. He transformed. His foggy figure stopped instantly and moved backward through the great arms that could squeeze a Sleeper to death. He was ignoring the laws of inertia.

Returned to his flesh, he thrust the broadsword into an open wound in the Echo's chest, piercing its heart. It burst into a shower of sparks and disappeared. The Dreamscape's voice said, "Your echo has been destroyed."

It was not destroyed. Memories and Echoes could not be lost within the Dreamscape. Dane fell to the floor in the white nothingness, his half-plate armor slick and soaked by crystal-clear blood. He had not struck the bear a thousand times…though he did kill it.

It was not enough. The Ashborn Stalker would have killed him if the fight took place in reality. There were problems in the way he used his Ability. He wasn't able to react fast enough, getting wounded unnecessarily, and the toll the ability took on his mind certainly didn't help.

Dane sighed and pulled his consciousness out of the Dreamscape. He needed to eat something before hitting the sack.

***

From that day forth, Dane spent five hours a day inside the Dreamscape. He trained in combat against the Ashborn Stalker. Sometimes, he would practice entering and regressing transformation as fast as possible. He would set up various drills where he transformed with the slightest of stimuli. It left him drained.

He was glad to have Sunless, the ever-hungry and near-wordless Sleeper, to talk with. He also attended Professor Noble's classes. They got better each time. Since the first class he attended, no topics related to Lineage Memories were brought up. He was thankful for that.

Cassia, the poor blind girl, was silent as ever. Her mere presence was akin to a shroud of death, and it left a pit in Dane's stomach. It wasn't much, but he handed her forty soul shards and wished her luck. That seemed to reduce the tension around her a bit.

Ten days into his time at the academy, he could proudly say that he would only die eight times over instead of ten against the Stalker. On the eleventh, he made a fatal mistake, and the bear devoured his Heart, instantly killing him. He did not regenerate after that, and the Dreamscape logged him out.

He felt freezing when that happened, even when wrapped in blankets. He could not stop shivering. He was unsure why, but he knew something more would happen if his Heart suffered physical destruction. 

On his thirteenth day, a girl he had never met started flirting with him. She came right up to his table, and when she left, Sunless seemed like he wanted to laugh until death would beckon Dane to do its bidding. When she came again the next day, he pretended to have left his spelltech aid at the dorm.

By the twentieth day, transforming and regressing in the blink of an eye was as natural as breathing to him. He didn't even have to focus. Desire sufficed.

On the twenty-eighth day, he struck the Ashborn Stalker a thousand times while the accrued soul damage was equivalent to seven deaths. A considerable jump in capability, if he said so himself. There wasn't much else to do, he considered. The only way to reduce the amount of injury taken was if he could stay transformed longer. Or, kill the bear. That was a task easier said than done. Though…with a Divine Aspect. Dane thought he might be able to if he completely saturated his core.