Ch-17: Nightmare

A/N

This particular chapter might be a bit dark so be warned.

I tried removing the dark parts and will leave them to your own imaginations as even I felt a sense of disgust reading the earlier version.

***

Back to the present time.

In Ignus city.

While Richard was sleeping after completing his task, Jarien was having a nightmare. It was the same nightmare he used to get in his past life due to which his mentality had been shaken badly.

Jarien was seeing the faces of his victims and their families with tears of blood looking at him from all directions. He thought he had gotten used to this sight in his previous life but reality turned out to be quite different.

"It's…you…"

"You…are…the…reason…for…my…pain…"

"You…monster…"

"You…scumbag…"

"My…child…lost…everything…"

Many such creepy voices were surrounding him from different directions and Jarien was trying to run away from it all…

"NO…I…I- I did it all for your sake…" shouted Jarien trying to not let these voices drown him.

"NO…NO…you…did…all…that…for…your…ecstasy…" screeched out those creepy faces together.

…

***

Jarien woke up in cold sweat due to his horrifying nightmare.

"Why…now? I have been here for nearly a month so…why?" muttered Jarien.

He thought he got rid of them just like his past life memories but who knew the trauma of his actions would haunt him in another life too.

He was too shaken to go back to sleep and his entire being was in unrest due to reliving the memories that caused that trauma making him jolt awake in pain.

His heart was pounding as if wanting to break through his chest. His entire bed was soaked in cold sweat. He decided to do something meaningful to distract himself as it had been only around 2 a.m.

He wanted to try swinging his sword but as he did not have that, he could only use the tree branch from his storage ring to practice a little uncomfortably but he gave up as it felt useless. He used this same branch during his survival training to guard and search for food.

He started practicing his movement arts as well as hand-to-hand combat from his memories but it was very awkward due to it being his first time. He did not know any of these forms' names as Jarien had created them for fighting with efficiency of piercing the chest or blowing the head to kill monsters at the minimum expense of mana, stamina and time.

After about 3 hours he exhausted his physical strength and hence tried meditating to recover mana as well as his strength. He finished recovering in about an hour but continued meditating to increase his mana.

Due to the hellish training from Richard and his trauma giving him a sudden shock, his mana had become unstable which aided him in breaking through to mid-F rank in just 20 days from reaching early-F rank.

It is common for peerless geniuses in this world to easily leap to E rank in about a year and for normal geniuses it usually takes between 1-2 years lest they can be just called exceptional or normal.

This is because a lot of people on their awakening form G-rank mana cores while some geniuses create F-rank mana cores as well as E-rank mana cores. This means that they can reach those ranks without any bottlenecks from G-rank.

Any hunter is G-rank at awakening only after they form the first ring can they be considered true hunters and reach F ranks. The mana core rank changes as one ranks up as it is the same as the hunter's rank.

Even if a genius forms F or E-rank core, they still have to go through the same procedure except it is easier for them to reach F or E-rank and after that it becomes the same for future rank ups till B-rank.

There is a moat that everyone faces before reaching A-rank as only 1 in 100 veteran B-rank hunters reach A-rank and 1 in 1000 or even less A-ranks can reach S-rank.

This was why Jarien's progress was too fast as he had awakened only a F-rank core, so his progress should be slowed down yet he reached a minor breakthrough in less than a month but it would not have been possible without his bloodlines which let him absorb and manipulate mana more easily.

After waking up, he felt refreshed and calm as if that nightmare never occurred. He still was not ready to face that trauma of his.

"It really isn't easy to focus for so long. Those damn authors make it sound so easy that the MC did not sleep and kept swinging for days, kept walking for days…This is simply nigh impossible…" cursed Jarien at those authors who made him believe this immense concentration is easy.

The only reason he was able to do it was because he was a surgeon in his past life and has worked for hours without a break and 2-3 days without a wink of sleep in his past life. If not for this, he would have just given up and relied on the protagonist for everything.

He even wanted to steal the treasures and resources of the protagonist but unfortunately for him, the MC only got lucky once to stumble upon a fortuitous encounter that too because of his bloodline which led to a certain chain of events.

According to his guess, it would be happening soon. He enjoyed reading the novel as the MC worked hard for everything and did not rely on plot armour for everything but now, he was cursing at this entire world as how would he get stronger without cheats as he is not the genius Jarien was.

Jarien created his own sword arts and everything related to himself to reach the ultimate A-rank that can be reached barely by a countable few every century. He was the only one to reach it by himself as the MC had his protagonist halo and the chain of events while the other 2 guys had their own systems.

After cursing at everything, he left to shower and have breakfast as it was already morning. After finishing cooking and eating, he went to Richard's room and knocked it out to see him still sleeping.

Ignoring him, he looked at the page by the table to read the rumours:

'Jarien Dawner was saved by a healer named Arkas and his entourage, else there was no chance of him surviving and how the Dawner family wanted to recruit them but they rejected as they wished to save as many people as they could'

'Aino Aalto, a commoner girl with above A potential had been injured and finally cured. Some say it was the elusive Arkas who even denied an elite family's recruitment but no confirmation'

'The Cuzlades Academy is going to reopen from 1 January, 988 resulting in a lot of geniuses of the continent gathering as new freshmen will also be there and events including them would be broadcast as usual'

'...'

'So, they are not going to use the other one until they find that this one is useless to catch the culprit.' mused Jarien as he read them one by one.

'Who is this Aino? There was no mention of her anywhere…she is definitely a variable. I need more information about her but for now it will be difficult with just Richard.' thought Jarien.

'Cuzlades Academy huh? I hope my dear sister has also changed and took care of Lim. Well, I just gave her a lead, it is up to her to catch the real culprit.' smiled Jarien.

He was disturbed by Richard's sudden snoring and he also wanted to take revenge for his suffering and therefore he used all his strength to slap Richard to test his new strength.

*Bang*

His slap reached and awoke Richard who got alerted thinking it was an enemy attack.

Upon seeing this, Jarien could no longer hold back his laughter and chuckled startling Richard. As soon as he saw Jarien, he understood what happened and decided to torture him in the name of training later as his revenge.

"Good morning, Dimo." said Richard hatefully.

"Good morning, Uncle Albar." said Jarien bashfully and continued to ask about the news and the happenings of yesterday to which Richard just recounted the events making Jarien dumbfounded as Richard was boasting about his shamefulness.

Jarien then came to his major concern which was Aino so he asked Richard to give more detail which left him a bit baffled.

"Dimo, she is supposedly a SS-rank potential meaning she may even reach SSS rank, this above A-rank is a rumour as no device can discern above A-rank potential till now except the SSS rank artifact used in the second-year of the academies which is owned by Global Academy" said Richard.

"Why SS-rank and not S-rank?" asked Jarien curiously.

"That is because she is already able to make S-ranks from the association protect her directly just after getting healed" said Richard as he had sensed several S-rank auras near the world association branch.

"Hmm, I suppose I'll know more after meeting her. When do you think I will be able to meet her?" asked Jarien curiously.

"Seeing the current situation, even if we use the family name it would not be possible. I think not before next year" answered Richard after pondering.

"That's true I guess" said Jarien and left to prepare for his training.

'Under normal circumstances only' completed Jarien in his mind.

'I have a hunch though; I will meet her before that' thought Jarien as unknowingly he was looking to forward his meeting and even his gut feelings were aligned on this.

…

…

…

After his hellish torture of a training by Richard, Jarien was too tired to care about anything and fell asleep as soon as he lay on his bed.

His nightmares returned to haunt him again but this time the faces kept changing, he was mentally strong as he was used to all these dreams but the sequela was not something he wanted again.

He wished he could just forget this but how can one forget their regrets so easily?

After his lover died in his past life, he was forced to go on many dates to find a marriage partner as he refused many dates but still met 4 women and convinced them to reject him by telling them about his situation.

Later, they remained as acquaintances as they all were from different fields. He one day found one of them in a miserable condition and asked her and she reiterated everything even if she harboured doubts as any person would like to vent their sufferings in their life at someone.

Her story was truly tragic as she even had a 3-year-old daughter with her husband and after that he forced her to turn sterile and used her as a tool and offered her to his business partners to get deals leaving her miserable but what broke her was the fact, that he sold their daughter's first time to someone for a business deal.

She ran away to protect her daughter and was still running away from her husband as she had no proof and he could easily evade any actions which may even lead him to offer her daughter just as she was. She even thought of killing her own daughter to save her from that humiliation but how could a mother who suffered so much for her do that to her own daughter.

This was just one story, he heard similar stories and blamed himself for their misery as if he had accepted them, at least one of them could have lived a better life even if it would have been a loveless one.

So, after hearing her story he could not control himself and ended up torturing quite a few fellows. Him being a surgeon, he knew which cut would not kill them and just give them immense pain, so he did just that until he killed them post their confessions.

He did the same for who knows how many people and why he did this remained a mystery because most of the ones he did it for blamed him and committed suicide or begged him to end their misery to which he agreed.

He did not mind their deaths or even killing them, being blamed is the reason his mind broke as he had seen way too much death to be shaken by it. He thought he had become immune to emotions after 'her' death yet reality gave him a face in the slap.

After this, he took anti-depressants, pain-killers and so many pills just to forget those memories as he had started getting the same nightmares. This led to his body's functionality decreasing ultimately leading to his brain illness causing his death.

Due to reliving his memories every time he had this nightmare, he even preferred fainting to sleeping as at least in that state he will not get those nightmares. Obviously, he couldn't just not sleep forever.

Despite this, he continued his training but the efficiency would drop down and Richard noticing this asked him but he said it is nothing making Richard unable to ask more.

Jarien had felt a little better seeing the opening ceremony of the academy and even Lyn who looked the same but appeared much different and he liked this positive change as this made a part of his future plans manyfold easier.

He returned to his daily schedule from the next morning which was to train till he drops dead which was more like torture then go through mental torture in his dreams which started receding as he slowly adjusted along with the world but still make him break in a cold sweat.

This schedule was not broken until one month later, on 4 February, 998 when Richard came running to his room and barged without knocking to tell him the recent rumour.

"haah…Young…Master…haah…Young Master…" panted Richard as this was important to the point he even forgot to catch his breath. Seeing this Jarien guessed what could have happened but waited for him to calm down.

"Calm down and I am Dimo." said Jarien.

"This isn't the time for this, there are rumours that you were unofficially banished from the Duchy. Please tell me this is not true?" said Richard with a sliver of hope which broke as soon as he heard the next words of the boy in front of him.

"Finally, it has been so long. Finally…" said Jarien with a smile which made Richard slump on the floor as he had no idea about the plan.

Jarien decided to tell him lest he cause some problems. On hearing all this, he finally relaxed and he knew that he could not have been told such a plan earlier as it may cause some variables but it still left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.

***