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Nightmare Realm Summoner by Actus Chapter 60: Rewardmaxxing Fiction Page Donate Report Chapter Preferences Previous

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Advertisement RemoveReportThe System messages slammed into Alex one after the other, but his attention was completely fixed on the final one.

You have unlocked [Riftwarped] Domain Qi.

Riftwarped Domain Qi?

That sounds fucking sick.

But what the hell is it? When I was in the Nexus Point, one of the silhouettes mentioned Qi as well. He said I didn't have it yet… so this is what he meant. It gets unlocked when you reach Initiate Rank.

Given the amount of stress that guy put on Domain Qi, It seems like I just got a huge power-up.

Alex's head tilted to the side as more pieces of a massive puzzle started to slowly slide into place.

Even before the apocalypse had come, a true coincidence was rare. Things often tended to depend on each other in one way or another. That was especially when they happened at once.

His Mind Palace was linked to his level. Meiderly's warnings implied that advancing Stages would somehow cap or otherwise lock in the Mind Palace, which would be why it was important to completely fill it before progressing.

That leaves me with two things.

My new Soul Manifestation and this new Riftwarped Domain Qi energy. I'll take a look at the former in a moment, but Domain Qi has to be related to either my Soul Manifestation, my Mind Palace, or possibly both.

Probably both.

Everything has to be connected somehow. The thing I need to figure out which threads lead where, and what I can do to optimize everything beyond the obvious 'just keep following Meiderly's advice'.

A new thought passed through his mind. He'd pushed his Mind Palace as hard as he could with magical energy, but was it possible there were other ways to make it stronger?

The presence of the indents in the pillars implied that there were. Fortunately, they'd only shown up after he'd finished his Novice level Mind Palace — or as the System had referred to it, taken his Mind Palace from Establishment to Illusory.

The name Establishment makes sense, but what does Illusory mean? Given what I know right now, it probably has something to do with the Riftwarped Domain Qi that I got right when I leveled up.

His gaze flicked over to the letters of gold that floated in the air before him. He'd been ignoring them as he dug through his thoughts, but if he wanted to get any level of proper analysis done, he had to actually finish completing the level-up process.

You have amassed 8 Units of soul energy.

Please select an Auxiliary Skill to upgrade.

The corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile. 8 Units. He could barely contain his excitement.

As Alex watched, the blue gems on the mantle of Alex's basin shimmered with light. Black letters traced across the white marble surface.

[Requiem to the King] (Novice 1)

[Monster Medley] (Novice 2)

[Riftwalk] (Novice 4)

Alex studied his options for a moment. Of his points, 3 were from leveling up to Initiate 1 and 5 had come from the Unstable Nexus Core Shard.

He hadn't forgotten the message he'd gotten when he'd used the item. Something called a Singularity Core — the same skill that had somehow caused him to get Requiem to the King as his first Auxiliary Skill — had "enriched" the very same skill.

Enriching is definitely a good thing.

He was definitely spending at least one of his skill points to upgrade that, which left him with 7 more to play with.

He'd already decided that he would be upgrading Monster Medley as well. Since it was a Novice 2 skill, it would cost 2 Units to upgrade, so he'd be left with five points and an interesting situation. Both Monster Medley and Riftwalk would be Novice 4 and thus cost 4 Units to upgrade.

I can get either of them. Then again, there's a chance I'll have to use a point to upgrade my Soul Manifestation or something. I should probably make sure it doesn't need something like 5 Units or some crap like that before I go using them on something else, as I'm pretty sure upgrading my Core Skill is the most important thing I can do.

Alex summoned his status sheet with a thought and scanned it until he found his Core Skill.

[Spatial Mirrors] (Initiate 1) – Spatial Mirrors contain the Evoker's bonded creatures. They can only contain bonded creatures that originate from the Mirrorlands. The creatures stored within Spatial Mirrors can be summoned at will. Upon death, the creature's energy will return to the Spatial Mirror until it recovers.

Available Spatial Mirrors: 3

Domain Energy [Illusory]: Riftwarped Qi

Hell yes.

A grin split Alex's lips. He felt like a pampered child on Christmas morning. Advancing to Initiate had earned him his third Spatial Mirror. It looked like it was going to be time to return to the Mirrorlands soon. He was steadily advancing closer and closer to having an actual army to call his own.

There was only a small change to his Core Ability. A single line at the end — but that one line carried quite a bit of information with it.

I already suspected this, but this just about confirms it. Domains, the Qi, and my Core Ability are all heavily linked if not the same thing. The Mind Palace almost certainly has a huge amount of influence over them, which is why Meiderly put so much focus on it.

I still don't know which element directly changes which, or if it's all a soup where each ingredients affects something else. I suppose that, for now, all I can do is start hunting for information while making sure I don't advance before every single part of my Soul Palace is completely at its peak.

"So at the Adept Stage, I should unlock my actual Domain," Alex mused. A vision of Berith destroying the enormous Riftwarped Monster flashed through his head. If that had been a Domain, then even getting a portion of those powers would be incredible. "I wonder just what it is that this Riftwarped Qi can do… but I can't get ahead of myself."

He dismissed his status screen with a wave of his hand and turned his attention back to his skills. The System had decided to be kind and didn't demand extra Units of energy to upgrade his Core Skill. He'd gotten access to Riftwarped Qi energy entirely for free. That let him save everything to upgrade his Auxiliaries.

And, of those abilities, Alex was starting with Requiem to the King. He had to figure out what the Singularity Core meant by enriching a skill. The instant Alex's mind was made up, his Mind Palace responded.

Black lines flowed down his mantle, running from the blue gem that aligned with Requiem to the King. Three small boxes appeared beneath the gem.

(1 Unit) Synchrony: Summoned monsters regenerate faster while you are meditating.

(1 Unit) Encore: Intensify the pull of your soul, summoning every regenerating monster back to the plane you currently reside in for a brief period of time.

(1 Unit) Support Song: Empower your voice with magical energy and rally your summoned monsters, empowering all of them for the duration of your song.

What the fuck is up with Encore? Bring every single dead monster back to life? That's bullshit!

I want it. Getting enriched is absolutely a good thing.

Alex paused for a moment — just to make sure he hadn't missed something good on one of the other two abilities. Support Song could not have possibly been farther from what he was aiming for if it had tried to be. Alex had never dismissed an option faster in his life. The absolute last thing he wanted to be doing in the middle of a fight is singing to his monsters and deafening everyone in a five mile radius around him with his horrible pitch.

Synchrony was definitely a useful skill. Getting his monsters back faster was always going to be convenient. But compared to Encore, the skill was just mediocre.

Alex could still hardly even believe his eyes when he looked at Encore. It was the first upgrade that Requiem to the King got, and not particularly useful if he only had a single monster, but when he had two, three, or more… the ability's potential was immense, and it only grew even more with every single extra monster he got.

A vision passed through Alex's mind. His entire army, defeated after a grueling fight — only to be ripped back from the clutches of death and return to the battlefield once more. Even if it didn't last long, that was a trump card like no other.

Alex selected the option without a millisecond longer of hesitation. If this was what the Singularity Core, whatever it may have been, did when it enriched an ability, Alex only knew one thing for certain.

He had to get more Unstable Nexus Core Shards.

Blowing out a slow breath to try and contain his excitement, Alex turned his attention back to the golden letters in the air before him. There were still seven points he had left to distribute. This was almost too much.

He wanted to get back to the real world and test his new abilities out so bad that he was tempted to do it on the spot, but he still had more points to use — and he knew just what he was going to use the next four of them on. The most important thing he could do to grow his own power was to grow the power of his monsters.

He had so many Soul Flames waiting to be used that choosing any skill over one that would make them grow even stronger still would just be foolish.

Alex selected Monster Medley.

The marble mantle wiped itself clean. A glimmer of light shimmered within the centermost blue gem upon its surface. As Alex was growing used to, black lines raced out from the gem and slithered down to form into new boxes.

(2 Units) Elemental Affinity: Permanently empower a monster with an elemental affinity drawn from a Soul Flame, changing its form and granting it attributes of that affinity. A monster can only have one elemental affinity.

(2 Units) Fusion: Fuse yourself with one of your summoned monsters at a continuous cost of magical energy.

(2 Units) Harmonious Evolution: Fuse two monsters to transform them into an entirely new one. The potential of the new monster scales with the potential of the combined ones. Complementary abilities will be magnified, while competing ones will be reduced.

Alex scanned over the options, the excitement filling him like a bubbling stew and threatening to spill out in a delighted laugh. Another set of great options — two of which carried the potential to make his Mirrorlands monsters even more powerful than they already were.

These are awesome. They all seem pretty damn good... so which one should I pick?

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Nightmare Realm Summoner by Actus

Chapter 61: The Rewardmaxxer

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Seconds ticked by. Alex went over the skills several times, trying to make sure he didn't miss anything from their descriptions. Two of the options were directly related to improving his monsters, while the third was more of an active ability that would be useful in a fight.

Purely based off his goals for the ability, Alex dismissed Fusion on the spot. What he needed now wasn't short term power boosts but something that would let Glint and his other monsters continue to scale.

Fortunately, he was at no shortage for that. Both Elemental Affinity and Harmonious Evolution were very promising looking growth-based skills. Alex was predisposed toward Harmonious Evolution off the bat, but he didn't let himself make a choice too quickly.

Elemental Affinity seemed like the safer of the two options. It would give his monsters a direct boost in strength related to the element they got. Simple and straightforward. Fire burned things. Air cut things. Water… watered things. He wasn't really sure what water would do to a monster.

Either way, it was direct. It wasn't going to turn around and blow up in his face. He wasn't so sure the other could be said for Harmonious Evolution.

The third and final skill offered in the list promised a way to combine and evolve monsters, but it came at the risk of potentially making something that was completely useless if he combined the wrong monsters.

Alex drummed his fingers against his leg as he thought over his options. But, in the end, it proved to be a largely pointless exercise. He blew out a short breath and shook his head. His decision had already been made some time ago.

I've never been one not to take a bet, and Harmonious Evolution might as well be calling my name. It's not even an actual gamble. I just need to make sure I'm intentional with the monsters I combine. As long as I am, I shouldn't end up with a result that's just objectively worse than the two original ones.

"I choose Harmonious Evolution," Alex said with a grin.

The surface of the mantle had already changed by the time he'd started to speak. At the very instant his mind had been completely made up, black lines pulled back and retreated into the blue gemstone. The marble fell inert in wait for another command.

A shiver ran down Alex's back as he felt the magic settle within himself. His heart thumped in his chest like a racing horse. He was pretty sure the amount of adrenaline and excitement he'd gone through in the past few days was enough to kill a small animal.

He swallowed and shook his arms out. He still had 7 Units left, which meant he had at least one more ability he could upgrade. Alex took a quick glance at his entire status screen.

Alex Vaya [Human]

Class: Evoker [Mirrorlands]

Stage: Initiate 1

Title Fragments:

[Top Ranker]

[Lone]

Active Titles:

[Unbound Mirrorlander]

[Unmaker]

[Anomaly]

[3/5]

Inactive Titles:

Soul Manifestation:

[Spatial Mirrors] (Initiate 1)

Auxiliary Skills:

[Requiem to the King] (Novice 2)

[Monster Medley] (Novice 4)

[Riftwalk] (Novice 4)

Riftwalk and Monster Medley were both at Novice 4, so they would need 4 points. He could also upgrade Requiem to the King a third time— or he could choose not to use the points at all and save them for later.

A frown crawled across his face. Alex drummed his fingers on the smooth white marble that made up the rim of the huge basin in the center of his soul. His eyes flicked around the dark lake that surrounded him, running over the pillars and staring into what seemed to be the infinite shadow beyond.

"I can't stand around here forever," Alex muttered to himself. "I want to see what I can do after all these power boosts. I need to make decisions, so I'll start by removing options. I can forget holding off on using the points. Sure, that would increase the challenge with weaker monsters… but at this point, why wouldn't I just seek out stronger monsters instead? I don't have to restrict myself anymore. My hunting grounds aren't the real world. They're the Mirrorlands, and pretty much everything there is stupidly powerful. Why would I screw myself out of a good fight?"

That was decided, then. He'd use the points.

The only question remaining was where he'd use them.

Unfortunately, that was a bit harder to answer. Riftwalk promised utility and the ability to fight while his monsters still lived. Monster Medley let him make his monsters stronger, and Requiem let him use them more.

If it had been a decision in a vacuum, Alex feared he might have been sitting around and debating for the next ten minutes. But there was one small thing that his mind latched onto. Perhaps it was only a way to give himself a way to actually take a step forward, but his thoughts caught back on the most mysterious reward he'd gotten upon reaching the Initiate Stage.

Riftwarped Domain Qi.

He still didn't know what it did, but it did have Rift in the name.

Of course, that wasn't really the best basis for making decisions. Alex didn't particularly care. It wasn't like he was going to lose access to a skill by picking a different one first. It was just the next thing he got access to.

Considering he'd already leveled his other two abilities, it felt like a fairly safe bet. Thus far, every one of his abilities had been pretty powerful, and it would be nice to make sure he could still fight while his monsters were alive. Having them kill themselves constantly was honestly just a bit rude.

With that all in mind, Alex selected Riftwalk.

(4 Units) Mirror Image: Warp the space around you with rift energy, causing images of yourself to appear. The images will copy your motions perfectly unless otherwise directed. The number of images scale with the amount of magical energy spent. Images will disappear when they are hit by any form of attack.

(4 Units) Spatial Screech: Use rift energy to rip a small partial portal into the air, releasing a loud, ear-splitting noise that will disorientate anyone in a nearby vicinity.

(4 Units) Rift Surge: Gather rift energy in the air before you and release it in a concussive blast. A portion of any magical energy caught in the zone of Rift Break will be consumed, causing the blast's radius to increase. The size of the detonation scales with the amount of magical energy spent and consumes energy the larger it grows.

You're kidding me. How busted is Riftwalk? I mean, all of my skills kind of seem completely unbalanced, but these are some really good options.

Alex read over everything for a minute. He had an interesting dilemma this time around. All three of the abilities were quite promising, and he wasn't certain any of them was objectively better than the others.

Rift Break definitely seemed strong, but there was nothing in the skill that said anything about stopping it. If it consumed magical energy that was caught within its radius, it could easily hit Alex as well as his target — and it could end up completely draining him in the process of going off if it grew enough. It could end up consuming all his power and leaving him with nothing. The ability sounded cool, but it could end up being a trap.

My real power is my monsters. This is going in the wrong direction. It doesn't help them. If anything, it might end up killing them.

Spatial Screech was something between utility and offense. It looked like it would be most useful for catching enemies off guard, but it said nothing about preventing himself or his allies from getting their own eardrums destroyed. That could be handled with earplugs, but he couldn't exactly give his monsters earplugs.

And finally, Mirror Image was another utility skill, but it gave him a ton of extra survivability. Even if the images vanished after getting hit, they would buy him precious seconds in a fight. Being able to control them also came with a lot of potential uses.

Mirror Image seems like it would be able to synergize with any other abilities I have. I can conceal where attacks are coming from and keep myself alive for longer while my monsters still alive. It's just too versatile to pass over, and it'll be useful long in the future while I can definitely get other offense skills at some point.

Alex made his final decision of the day and chose Mirror Image. The surface of the basin's mantle adjusted to his choice, then faded away. Blowing out a long breath, Alex rocked back on his heels.

He still had 1 unit left over, which would have to wait until he next meditated and got some extra power to work with.

Alex nodded to himself, satisfied with how things had played out.

He couldn't wait any longer.

It was time to go back to the real world, where Claire was waiting. Alex needed her to get started with her meditation as soon as possible. Because, when she was done, they were going straight back to the Mirrorlands.

Alex let himself slip out of his Mind Palace. His eyes re-opened in Room 221 and he blinked awake.

Claire sat on the other end of thfe bed, her eyelids half-shut, but still awake and watching the door. Her sword's tip bit into the ground and she leaned on its hilt for support. Her eyes flicked to Alex as he moved.

"Done? Did it go well?"

"More than," Alex replied with a shit-eating grin. A quick glance out the window showed that it was still deep in the night. The unnaturally bright light from the previous day had faded, and the enormous stars had shrunk down to a slightly larger than normal size. "Sorry for taking so long. I'll take over watch while you meditate."

Claire was too tired to respond. She just gave him a curt nod and let her eyes drift shut. Alex watched her for a moment, then reached down to the deck at his side. He pulled three cards from within it.

One was empty, but the other two had monsters waiting patiently within them.

He might have finished his own advancements, but now it was Glint and Spark's turn.

I can't wait to see just how strong this will make them.

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About the author

Actus

Actus

07/08/2024 09:00 Texas

Bio: Author of Return of the Runebound Professor, Rise of the Living Forge, Steamforged Sorcery, My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror, and Morcster Chef. Also some other stuff. Come join my discord:

https://discord.gg/sxmHQRBG2D

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