Nightmare Realm Summoner

The 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?