Dream Garden

The man goes by a name now.

Morse.

It seemed like a fitting name for him, so he decided he would call himself that.

In this era, not many have the concept of a name. Most merely go by a designation or job title, while their children are usually something like 'Third Child of a Weaver'. 

Not the greatest or most advanced form of language, but it was still growing.

Morse merely jumped a few steps ahead and created a name for himself. 

It's not like the humans of this era would understand the concept of a name yet. They only understood concepts like jobs and skillsets. Not individuality.

Individuality was almost considered a bad thing. Separating yourself from the tribe.

Morse felt his cursed energy within himself and smashed it together, causing the positive energy created to cycle through his cursed technique.

Yes, he had managed to replicate reversed cursed energy as it was noted in the show.

He is probably the first person in history to use it now.

He leaped with increased speed and grasped at the small Grade 4 cursed spirit that was hiding nearby. His reversed cursed technique activated, causing the curse to melt in his hand and to be absorbed through his eyes and into his brain.

He barely felt any change after absorbing the curse, but that was to be expected. Considering the curse was so weak.

After Morse replicated the reverse cursed energy technique, he found that his reversed technique was quite incredible.

While his usual technique could allow his physical body to enter another dream, his reversed technique allowed him to pull 'fruits' from a garden landscape inside his own dream.

He needed to slowly grow these plants in his dream garden by absorbing cursed spirits with his reversed technique. And so he had been doing this, for more than 3 months.

He had hunted ALL the cursed spirits in the area and around the nearby tribes completely.

This one he had just absorbed, marked the last he had found.

As the energy from the cursed spirit settled into his dream realm, he closed his eyes and ran his cursed technique to mentally enter it.

His body slowly faded into a grey mist.

...

Morse's dream realm was not a pleasant place to stay, but it was safe for him.

Perhaps due to the influence of cursed energy, the sky was a hazy dark red and set in an eternal night. The only light in the sky came from the gigantic red blood moon, which hung as big and close as it could be. It looked like a dark scene out of the most common of nightmares.

Morse's body faded into existence as grey mist condensed his form in the dream.

He immediately walked in the direction of the single plant he had been cultivating in a large open field. It was a dark red vine-like plant that one might see on pumpkins, where the end of it contained a small coconut-sized fruit, which looked like a large rotten blueberry.

"It's finished," Morse spoke.

His voice was deep and horse, reminiscent of a grating chalkboard of a deep pitch. 

He reached and plucked the fruit with his hands, holding it in his palm.

*Tsss*

The dark red vines shriveled up and hissed as they seemed to disintegrate upon the removal of the fruit.

He held the fruit up to his eyes and narrowed his eyes.

While he was within his own dream realm, he had nearly unparalleled sensing power inside. He could sense even the most minute uses of cursed energy that would leave even future generations in awe of it. If he ever managed to pull a cursed user into his dream realm, he could be able to immediately trace their technique and understand it. That's why he was able to recognize what exactly the fruit in front of him, really was.

It was something unique. It was not a cursed spirit, nor a cursed item of some kind.

It was a single-use 'dead' curse, which operated with a technique that would change the eater of the fruit in some way.

"Dream Fruit," Morse said to himself.

He decided he would call it this.

With a quick circle of his cursed energy through his technique, he faded from his dream again with the Dream Fruit in hand.

...

His body reappeared in the real world in a condensing grey fog once more, but this time the Dream Fruit appeared with him.

"So it does," Morse commented to himself.

Without hesitation, he bit into the fruit and gulped it down.

*Fwoosh*

A burst of swirling energy activated as the remains of the fruit activated an effect, before merging into his body.

Morse felt his vision grow slightly clearer and the sounds of the forest around him more acute. He could feel the wind on his skin and smell scents in the air more distinctly. It was as if all of his five senses were improved by more than 20%.

"Interesting, hahaha. INTERESTING!" Morse let a sinister smile grow across his face.

"And this was only a low-grade fruit. I wonder what a special grade one would cause." He said closing his eyes with a wide smile.

'This life, might not be a waste after all,' he thought.

"But perhaps, I should wait a few years... until stronger curses appear."

With a thought, his cursed technique activated again causing him to dissolve into grey smoke as he entered his dream realm.

He had an ambitious idea of how he could pass time quickly. If he could find a way to keep his dream realm active through other humans, he could use their dreams as anchor points to make the time move faster. Jumping from dreamer to dreamer he could... speed through time.

He was certain it was feasible... he only needed some time to master it.