Nightmare Realm Summoner

It ended up taking Claire a fair bit longer than Alex had expected to get all of the resources. Even though she’d asked for an hour, he’d been fully expecting her to only take a few more minutes before joining up with him and Derek at the Town Hall. Buying some resources for a few days’ journey hadn’t been something he’d thought to be too time consuming.

He was wrong. Claire showed up just about when she said she would, after just under an hour. Orchid actually joined up with them a fair bit before Claire showed up, making the Dhampir the final of the four to arrive at their meeting point.

“Sorry,” Claire said as she drew up alongside them. “That took a bit longer than I was thinking. Glad I left myself a bit of leeway. You weren’t waiting for too long, were you?”

“Not at all,” Orchid said.

Alex just shrugged. He’d been busy thinking about what kind of Region Boss they were about to find in the Mirrorlands. His fingers were already twitching at the thought. Waiting a bit longer to make sure they were all properly equipped felt like a fair tradeoff. That said, nobody ever loved waiting. That didn’t mean they had to—

“We kind of were,” Derek said, in his typical blunt fashion. He wouldn’t have been able to tell a white lie if his life had depended on it. “I’m bored.”

Claire just grinned. “Well, we’ll fix that shortly. I’ve got everything we need, now. We can head out immediately.”

“When you say everything, does that include food and supplies for all four of us?” Orchid asked. “I don’t want to get trapped in the Mirrorlands without anything to eat.”

Claire’s lips twitched in amusement. “I couldn’t relate. Never happened to me. But yes, I’ve got enough food for everyone that needs it. Water too. It’s all in my Spatial Ring. A week and a half worth of supplies. More than enough for what should be a considerably shorter trip.”

“And I can always open a portal back to 274-50 if we really need one,” Alex said. “I think we should be totally fine on necessities. There shouldn’t be any trouble there at all.”

“Unless you get yourself killed,” Orchid said in a tone that made it clear she was only partially joking. “But I get the feeling we’ll have much bigger issues at that point. You have gotten stronger since the last time we sparred, yes?”

“I’d certainly hope so,” Alex said. “I think all of us have. This doesn’t mean you get to jump me again. We’re not wasting time and energy in another sparring match right before we go hunting.”

Orchid’s cheeks reddened and she raised her hands with a sheepish grin. “That was a one-time thing. Don’t worry. It isn’t happening again.”

“Then we can go now?” Derek rubbed his hands together eagerly. “We’ve got everything we need, right?”

“And then some,” Claire said with a sly grin. “Yes. We can go. The Warped Embassy awaits.”

***

The return to the Mirrorlands went as easily as it could have. Due to the constant portal open between the two versions of the Warped Embassy, no Riftwarped Monster was waiting for the four of them on the other side. They made their way out of the reflected walls of the town and continued a short way out until Alex drew to a stop.

Ascending Forerunner wasn’t the easiest title to use in the Mirrorlands. There were so many immensely powerful monsters that the ability was pretty much constantly active. But, with all the different directions that the monsters were awakening from, the ability found itself with a unique dilemma.

Like a certain cape-wearing villain in a spandex uniform had once aptly claimed — when everything was super, nothing was. Alex’s mind was being pulled in so many directions at once that the ability was basically canceling itself out.

If he wasn’t really, really reaching to try and sense the information coming from it, it may as well have not been there at all.

Locking onto a single monster was surprisingly difficult. The sheer number of choices would make it tough. There wasn’t even any guarantee that the first monster they found would be something anywhere within the realm of what they could fight. Any one of the massive City-Eater Centipedes would have still entirely eclipsed their abilities… and those weren’t even Region Bosses.

Still, I’m sure there’s something that we can take in the Mirrorlands. Something could have fallen in here or the like. We’ll just have to be careful.

Alex focused his senses, directing his magic into Ascending Forerunner. The Ability wasn’t an active one. But the closer he focused, the more the faint, invisible tugs on the edges of his thoughts grew stronger. There were a lot of them. But that was little surprise.

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He didn’t rush. Alex didn’t try to grab onto any of them yet. He just waited, letting the knowledge trickle into his mind. The strongest of the pulls were the closest. Those were the ones they were interested in. That didn’t narrow their options down too much, but it was a little easier to focus on than the cacophony of different monsters all throughout the Mirrorlands within the range of his powers.

Alex slowly filtered out the weakest of the lines. One by one, he let his focus narrow down the potential Region Boss-level monsters until only a few of the tugging threads remained. It was a bit unfortunate that Ascending Forerunner didn’t give him a little more information about what exactly he would be hunting.

Maybe that’s an advancement I can get by combining this with another Title Fragment. It would be quite helpful.

The others stood in silence around him as he worked, making sure to avoid distracting him while ensuring that nothing jumped out to attack while he wasn’t paying attention.

Finally, after around fifteen minutes of sitting with his eyes closed, Alex rose once more. His mind had firmly focused upon one of the many lines tugging for his attention. It was the closest of the monsters. Of that, he was certain. As for its strength… that was something they’d find out when they got closer.

“Found one,” Alex said.

“Can we beat it?” Orchid asked.

Alex just shook his head. “I don’t know. We’ll see. That’s the fun part. If not… well, like I said before. There’s no shortage of monsters in the Mirrorlands. So long as we do this smart and don’t go sprinting, screaming, into some monster’s lair, we should be able to take a look at what we’re up against and turn around if it isn’t possible.”

“If it’s anywhere near us, it shouldn’t be too powerful,” Claire said. “This area of the Mirrorlands isn’t as dangerous as some of the others that we’ve been to.”

“A good point,” Alex agreed. He nodded in the direction of the invisible pull on his thoughts. “So let’s go find out, shall we?”

***

The first monster was a bust.

There was no other way to put it. After sprinting through the Mirrorlands at their top speed for about 16 hours, they caught their fist glimpse of it and immediately realized that a fight was entirely off the table. They spotted it from what must have been miles away and immediately skidded to a halt, simply standing and staring in disbelief for several long seconds.

That was partially due to the fact that the monster in question was a giant tornado and partially due to the fact that it was a Master Tier tornado.

Not much discussion was needed for that particular incident. Everyone just quickly glanced in Alex’s direction, who nodded quietly in response. Nobody bothered saying anything. Getting closer was completely pointless. Alex just called on his magic once more, sifting through their options before leading them off in a different direction.

It took another 10 hours — as well as a few fights with random, relatively uninteresting Mirrorlands Monsters that they stumbled across on their run — before they were upon the next monster.

It was unfortunately a somewhat similar result. Alex’s senses had pointed him right at a random mountain in a large, flat field. When it became clear that the mountain was their destination, Derek had pointed out that some of the crags in the mountain’s side looked suspiciously like closed eyes.

They beat a hasty retreat shortly after that.

That particular monster didn’t seem to be awake, and they had absolutely no desire to go trying to change that. 26 hours of running was quite the distance when they could move at the incredible speeds of a System enhanced body… but it didn’t feel like anywhere near far enough when it came to pissing off a beast of such size.

Alex had mentally understood that the Mirrorlands was completely stuffed full of immensely powerful existences. But actually seeking them out and realizing that there were monstrosities like this, within a day’s travel of his town, was more than a little unsettling.

He could tell the others’ thoughts were one and the same.

They needed to get stronger.

The four of them took a short break to rest and recover after they’d put enough distance between themselves and the mountain. Claire distributed food and water amongst all of them from within her spatial ring. They didn’t need long to eat and rest, but none of them wanted to go fighting a Region Boss on a lack of sleep.

Then Alex drew on Ascending Forerunner’s knowledge once more and they were off again.

It was just around 8 hours of even more sprinting later when they started to come up on a small city.

Or, at least, the remains of one.

Houses laid in ruined piles, torn apart from within by massive, glimmering gemstones the size of school busses. What had once been what seemed to be high-rise apartments were now more like horrifying middle-school art fair pieces, large swathes of them swallowed up by an encroaching wave of translucent stone.

The road leading out of the town was torn to shreds, with tiny bundles of gems sprouting up from the earth to replace the flowers and weeds that might have tried to grow there had this been 274-50.

Alex frowned as he squinted past the cracked walls of the outermost houses. There was an odd sense of silence around the entire town. Not a single monster seemed to be present. Yet, despite that, his senses told him very firmly that there was a Region Boss somewhere right before them.

“Here?” Orchid asked in a low tone.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “I’m certain of it. Somewhere in the town.”

“Not as big as the other ones,” Derek observed. “It’s hiding somewhere. Or sleeping underground.”

“I think it’s promising,” Alex said. “We should check it out.”

“I agree,” Claire said. “This looks more promising than the other ones. That doesn’t mean this Region Boss will be weak, though.”

“I don’t think any of them are,” Orchid said. She tightened her grip around her staff. “I hate surprises. But this might be our best bet.”

Alex nodded. “Just remember to take it slow. No speaking once we’re near the town. Not until we see the boss, at least. If anyone has anything to prepare or say… now’s the time to do it.”

Nobody said anything.

They just turned back to the town, watching it silently for a moment longer.

Then, without another word, the four of them started toward the town to hunt themselves a Region Boss.