Nightmare Realm Summoner

Alex sat at the edge of his basin, studying the waiting mantle before him. He’d delved right into his Mind Palace the moment he’d gotten back to Mirrorwane and found a spot to sit. The idea of delaying his power-up any longer felt painful.

And sure enough, there were quite a deal of rewards waiting for him to cash in on. Killing the River King had netted him two main boons. He’d already gotten the first reward. Namely, the Nexus Fragment.

In addition to the extra bonus he’d get if he managed to get one more of them and brought it back to the Nexus Point, the powerful item had also just flat out given him 5 Units of energy.

Pairing that with the 2 Units he’d been sitting on ever since he’d advanced from Initiate 8 to Adept 1, he now had a total of 7 Units to work with. Both Requiem to the King and Riftwalk needed 8 points to advance them… and he had more than enough magical energy floating in the ball of mist above the massive marble hand rising above him to push up to Adept 2 and make up that last missing point.

But that wasn’t even getting into the other reward that was currently staring him straight in the face. It was scrawled in pitch-black letters across the plain white surface of the mantle behind the Basin.

[Title: Unmaker]

Objective Completed. Rewards Earned.

Accept Rewards [1/1]?

The River King had been an Anomaly. Killing him had completed the objectives of the Unmaker title, which promised to straight up upgrade one of his Auxiliary Skills without even needing to consume any points.

That meant Alex was sitting on what was functionally 2 upgrades. But the real question was how he was going to use them. Points were a real pain in the ass to get his hands on — and if the pattern continued, then the costs of advancing them would continue doubling every single time he advanced a skill.

It won’t be long before I basically won’t be able to get enough power to advance my skills from leveling up alone. I’ll be forced to do things like the Nexus Point, Titles, and presumably other Trials and alternative ways to get my hands on points.

It was pretty obvious that the smartest way to use the free skill advancement was to cash it in on whatever would be the most expensive. It was free, after all. Using it on a skill that only needed 4 points to upgrade would be a terrible waste.

“The smartest thing to do would be to upgrade one of my Novice 8 Stage skills twice, right?” Alex muttered to himself. “Either Riftwalk or Requiem to the King. That would push one of them to needing 16 Units for their next upgrade — and I could use the completed Title to advance it again.”

A part of him would have preferred to upgrade each of the skills once, but that was just an objectively worse usage of his overall resources. It made the path forward a lot more straightforward, leaving functionally only one question in his path.

Which one do I upgrade?

Requiem was the core of his class. There was no doubt about that. Being able to bring his monsters back and gaining other benefits from them while they were dead was incredibly powerful. It was also one of his biggest advantages over any other summoner.

Riftwalk was versatile, though. Being able to slip in and out of the Mirrorlands was a huge boon. If he advanced the ability further, it would almost certainly start giving some massive advantages in fights as well as outside of them.

He considered his options for a moment.

But, in the end, it turned out he didn’t have to think all that long at all. As great as advancing Riftwalk doubtlessly would have been… it still wasn’t the core aspect of his class. Requiem to the King had always been his most powerful tool.

Chances were, that wasn’t going to change now.

His decision was made. Two upgrades for Requiem to the King. Alex grinned to himself, gathering his thoughts as he craned his neck back to look up at the ball of swirling mist above him. It wasn’t the largest amount of power he’d ever had at once. But the River King had been pretty damn powerful. There was more than enough magic waiting there to push him up a level if he meditated.

So that was what he did.

***

It didn’t take Alex long at all to condense the mist into a rain of pure blue energy that he then proceeded to absorb. And, sure enough, the River King’s power was more than enough to get him all the way up through Adept 2.

That, in turn, got him the final Unit he needed.

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Alex wasted no time at all in turning his attention back to the mantle at the back of his basin. He rejected the pitch-black words offering him the Title reward, instead bringing up the typical gemstones that represented his abilities.

Then he selected the one representing Requiem to the King.

Black lines flowed down from the gem, forming into three new ability advancements on the marble.

(8 Units) Echoes: Duplicate and gain a permanent extra Spatial Mirror that does not impact the limits imposed by your current class. This ability does not duplicate the monster or souls stored within the mirror.

(8 Units) Song of Binding: Significantly expand and strengthen the walls surrounding the extradimensional space within your Spatial Mirrors by fusing the power of the Singularity Core into them.

(8 Unit) Solo Act: Transfer magical energy from any monsters that remain within your Spatial Mirrors into a single summoned monster. This ability can only remain active so long as your other summoned monsters remain within their Spatial Mirrors, and scales depending on the number of non-regenerating monsters residing within the Mirrors.

Alex read over the options, his head tilting slightly to the side. As always with Requiem to the King, every single option seemed powerful. Solo Act lent itself toward trying to make one really badass monster — basically a miniature raid boss.

On the other hand, Echoes would just straight up let him add a free monster to his arsenal. That was a simple ability — but it was an enormous boon. He hadn’t even realized that Auxiliary Abilities were capable of something like that.

But the middle ability gave him a moment of pause. Song of Binding seemed… almost pointless. Sure, Alex had no doubt that there were monsters out there that were far too powerful for him to summon.

But his Spatial Mirrors grew stronger when he advanced Stages. He initially hadn’t been able to summon Riftwarped monsters. That had changed… which meant this advancement really didn’t seem like it was doing all that much at all. It wasn’t explicitly breaking any of the existing rules of his class, nor was it giving him some apparent significant advantage.

So what’s the point of it? I don’t think I’d get a completely useless skill. The only thing I can think is that this means there will eventually be monsters so powerful that I just can’t get them into one of my Spatial Mirrors.

Alex hesitated for several seconds as he thought. The idea of losing out on that potential hurt. He wasn’t even certain that his analysis was right, but it made sense. There wasn’t much other reason to get the option of making his mirrors bigger and stronger.

The other options were good. There was no doubt about that, but he was pretty sure his mind had already been made up.

Goddamn it. I love gambling way too much. I’m getting another ability anyway. Might as well take a risk. As the sages of the old world used to say…

Fuck it, we ball.

Alex pressed his finger to Song of Binding.

The words on the mantle faded. Power infused itself into Alex in a lattice of freezing lines. He drew in a sharp breath, a smile pulling across his lips as the magic settled into its new home.

But he wasn’t done.

Not yet.

With another thought, he pulled the previous words that had been sitting on his mantle back to its forefront.

[Title: Unmaker]

Objective Completed. Rewards Earned.

Accept Rewards [1/1]?

“Yes,” Alex said, rubbing his hands together in greedy anticipation.

Unmaker has progressed to Unmaker II.

Unmaker II: Granted to those who rid the system of an Anomaly. While this title is equipped, slaying anomalies saves a portion of their power inertly within your soul. At the next milestone, consume this power to permanently improve an Auxiliary Skill. [0/4 Anomalies slain].

You have fulfilled the requirements of Unmaker. Select which Auxiliary Ability to Upgrade.

(16 Units) [Requiem to the King] (Initiate 7)

(4 Units) [Monster Medley] (Novice 4)

(8 Units) [Riftwalk] (Novice 8)

Initiate, huh? This is the first time I’ve got a skill upgrade higher than Novice. How badass is this going to be?

Alex’s lips pulled into an eager grin.

“Well,” Alex said, making his selection without any hesitation. “At least it looks like I was right about the Units shit. Makes things even easier. Give me Requiem to the King. Let’s see what you’ve got for me, System.”

A shimmer of black sliced down his basin as three new skill names appeared once again. Just the sight of the dark line was enough to set Alex’s hair on end and fill his veins with pounding adrenaline.

But it seemed that wasn’t enough. His own soul seemed to want him to drop dead on the spot, because one more line shimmered into being.

Singularity Core has enriched [Requiem to the King]’s potential upgrades.

Alex’s eyes went wide.

Oh, no way. You can’t be serious. Fuck yes!

A delighted laugh slipped from Alex’ slips as he watched the new ability options twist into being before him. He was practically swimming in rewards. Today was a good one. Someone up in the heavens must have really hated the River King.

(16 Units) Run it Back: Once per [24] hours, draw upon the Singularity Core and pull all of your monsters back into your current plane of existence, regardless of their current status. Any regenerating monsters will similarly return to life until they are killed once more.

(16 Units) Forceful Conductor: Significantly expand your control over all your monsters. They will now instinctively follow your goals and desires including specific and complex demands.

(16 Units) Symphony: Draw upon the Singularity Core to warp the extradimensional space within your Spatial Mirrors, cutting through planes and enabling you to commune with the masters of the reflections you control.

Alex froze. He could barely even believe what he was seeing.

I knew they would be powerful… but this is on an entirely different level! How are these options even allowed to exist?

And how the hell am I supposed to choose one of them?