Chapter 59

Dreaming Jarka

Her whole world, the village was in flames. Everyone she knew was lying dead on the ground. On the square were ripped mutilated corpses of her fellow villagers stuck on bone spears, jutting from the ground.

She walked through the square equipped with her trustworthy axe and clad in the red mist. She madly laughed while she slaughtered everyone in her vicinity; children, women, men… She was skipping from house to house murdering the dwellers. They screamed… so, so much. It made her happy.

Everyone she could find fell under her axe, clad in the deep-scarlet mist.

She glanced at her hands and saw them so bloody, she could not see her own skin.

The dream suddenly moved forward. Now, she was in the shaman's temple. She could control her own body again and ripped apart the screaming love of her life, Shaman-Garza, limb by limb while chuckling.

She was the crazed killer; a Siran.

As she walked by a pool of blood, she saw her reflection. An insane smile crowned her disfigured face, the reflection looked back at her and winked.

Her skin was pitch black, except for neat scarlet lines emerging on her body. From top of her head protruded a crown of black horns as if mocking her heritage of the druegar; the true Dwarf.

She merrily laughed again while stomping in the bloody puddle, disrupting the reflection.

The dream shifted again.

Now, she was before a shadowy army of small figures. She was able to discern goblins, clean-shaven druegars and hairy dwarfs, but there were many other races she could not discern at all.

Her own body was completely dark-red as dried blood, but still she was a druegar.

She was not fighting the army; instead, she was yelling some indiscernible words.

Her fight or flight instinct flared and she rapidly turned around.

Before her sat a smooth, white stone on a white pedestal. The smooth rock filled her whole view and she was not able to move even a millimetre.

The stone levitated and formed a powerful deep-blue missile while making a strange, high-pitched sound. It laughed.

The missile came closer and closer at her. She was unable to move even a finger, unable to cast a skill.

The deep-blue rays filled her eyes…

Jarka rapidly sat up, fully-woken up from the nightmare, drenched in sweat and gasping. For a while, she remained still, confused and not recognising her surroundings.

The Darkul-damned [Third Eye] talent. It helped in battle, but otherwise, it was a shit.

She deeply inhaled and slowly checked her calmly slumbering party. Her gaze stopped at the Orc.

The meditating Orc slowly opened his eyes, feeling her stare, and scrutinized her. Then he closed them again, returning back to his meditation while muttering some kind of mantra.

"Darkul damn it… Again," she quietly muttered. "The whiet stone is a new one, though. Wonder what that means." From time to time, she had this nightmare. She hated it. Especially the part where she ripped the shaman apart. The one who saved her. The one to who she pledged her life to. And her lover.

She found the half-empty canteen and quaffed it, thinking it was merely water. Her eyes bulged as she coughed it out.

"Aaah, darkul ass… Grog."

She sipped the grog again, this time prepared and let the poison slide into her stomach.

She searched for the knapsack as a certain thought could not leave her. She needed to be sure. The resemblance was uncanny.

As she was slowly opening it, she was interrupted by a familiar druegar.

"Darkul ass! Ya scared mea. What're ya doin' her'?"

"Happy minin', Guard-Jarka. I'm here with the master. I'm supposed to sleep here," he replied without emotions or participation; like a doll.

He immediately laid down on the first free bed he saw and closed his eyes.

"What happened to ya?" She asked while kicking him off her bed.

"…" No reply came back as Dafur's chest with the three implanted mana crystals was slowly rising and falling. He was already deep into sleep.

"Whatever…" she loudly yawned and returned back to her bed.

This time she dreamed about an immensely huge white stone slowly conquering the infinite universe. And she was helping it.

☁☁☁☁☁☁

Bored Lucifer observed as Dafur promptly returned with a thin goblin right behind him.

"Where is yar boss?" The shaman asked. He still had closed eyes.

"H… H… Hunt," the goblin's teeth clattered in fear as he carefully replied with a broken celestian language.

"Bring mea to the strongest one," the shaman commanded, completely ignoring the goblin's existence.

The goblin rapidly nodded. Even though he never had seen such a powerful druegar, the order came before the boss left for the hunting; 'do whatever the shaman commands. Otherwise, you will be roasted alive.'

Dafur's appearance greatly interested him, "those three embedded crystals should have killed him long ago... And those empty eyes… That takes me back. I faintly remember when I was in that poor elven boy, we met an enslaved dwarf. He had similar eyes… But I doubt he pledged with the Oath. Food for thought…"

Lucifer carefully sneaked back to his favourite hiding place behind a large tent not far away from Jarka's group.

In twenty minutes, a party of guards appeared and entered a nearby shaft. Two 2nd-tiers and five 1st-tiers were marching in a tight line as the shaft did not allow otherwise. Lucifer liked that. His imaginary eyes sparkled with expectation.

He tracked them down somewhere in the middle of the path as they were too fast for his levitation. He internally facepalmed at the sight. Lucifer wondered if they were unlucky or he was lucky.

One of the 2nd-tiers crouched, shitting on the ground, whilst the rest waited for him. They nervously shifted their eyes from side to side and flinched at any random clang.

Lucifer was twenty meters behind them, wedged in a small crevice on the ceiling.

[Your spell Life-for-Life Hex gained a level]

[You have tagged 7 goblins. Challenge accepted!]

Lucifer happily tethered as the Universum sent the messages. Even though the [Life-for-Life Hex] message was kinda random and definitely should have taken much longer to level the hex. It seemed like the [Hex Master] had some hidden perks.

He focused back on the goblins and fired up a single purple missile as much as he could. Too bad that a [Flux Shaping] did not work on the spell. There could be some very interesting application of this combo. With altercations, Lucifer could substantially increase its penetration power.

"I need time to train and find a library. Maybe I will be able to return back to the memory behind the throne… After all, it has to be somewhere in my mind," his thoughts wandered. The [Flux Missile] flickered, pulling his focus back on the task.

The missile travelled through the air and landed on the 2nd-tier goblin in the front. It pierced his chest without much resistance, paralyzing him.

The purple missile continued in its way without slowing down and punched through all of the 1st-tiers, instantly killing them. The last goblin, still busting a grumpy, tried to evade, but a badly timed cramp did not allow him to.

The missile penetrated directly into the eye of the target, exploding it in gore. The excrement mixed with the bloody remains flowed on the ground.

"Heh… Explosive diarrhoea," Lucifer chuckled as he levitated back on the ground.

The paralyzed and utterly frightened goblin whispered; "G… ho… s…t… G…h…", again and again until he bled out.

[Challenge cleared!]

[134.78% experience is split according to talents Subordinate and Parasite]

[Lucifer gained 87.61% experience]

[Stone gained 47.17% experience]

[You have levelled up!]