Chapter 20: Dream Realm
Hugo slowly went through his morning routine savoring every moment of luxury he could get, knowing he might not see that same luxury for a long time once he entered the Dream Realm.
After showering, he wore his clothes and left his room to go towards the cafeteria.
Immediately after entering, he felt the grimness of everyone inside practically radiating through the air with every Sleeper feeling a terrible sense of dread at the looming Solstice.
Even the proud Legacies weren't looking too relaxed.
Hugo quickly poured food onto his tray and went to sit in his usual spot near Cassia and Sunless.
The tension in the air was strangely... the same. The trio practically never talked to each other so even though the Winter Solstice was today, nothing really changed about their interactions.
However, that did not mean they weren't afraid.
Cassia especially, due to her Flaw... she was practically a walking corpse, doomed to die in the Dream Realm which was exactly why Hugo never tried to interact with her more than needed.
'Sunless must feel the same way...' Hugo thought, eating in grim anticipation.
Right after he finished his food, he hesitated for a bit before speaking in a stiff tone. "Hey, Cassia, Sunny, if we ever end up in the same place in the Dream Realm, let's help each other out."
Sunny looked at him without saying anything, a strange emotion tugging on his face. "...Maybe," he said with a measured tone, clearly showing his doubt about the chance of them ending up in the same place.
Cassia, on the other hand, only smiled a little. "Yeah... that would be nice." Although that smile did not quite reach her face, making Hugo feel a pang of sharp guilt in his heart.
'Focus, Hugo... You can't be feeling bad for others when you're still in danger...'
With that, Hugo got up from the table, giving Sunny and Cassia a small nod.
' I should go say goodbye to my teachers now...'
---
Hugo knocked on the runic sorcery classroom door, not sure if there was anyone inside in the first place.
"Come in."
With a relieved sigh, he opened the door and entered the empty classroom, finding Miss J leaning at her desk, looking at the empty room without particularly doing anything.
She tilted her head, looking at him with a smile. "You know, I wasn't sure you'd come to see your humble teacher before you enter the Dream Realm. So Color me surprised..."
Hugo raised an eyebrow in confusion. "I mean it would be pretty disrespectful if I didn't. You taught me a lot of important stuff, after all..."
She sighed slightly before adding "I was just kidding, geez. You're way too serious compared to the other three idiots, even the twins aren't as robotic as you are." She stretched slightly before continuing. "You know, if you come back from the Dream Realm in about a month or two, you'd get to be here at my retirement party."
Hugo smiled before saying, "I'd try my best. If I take a little longer than two months, please leave some cake for me."
She chuckled. "It would be easier to kill an Unholy Titan than to save up any food when the twins are in the vicinity, but I'll try."
Eventually, she stopped laughing and looked at him with a serious expression.
"So you should make sure to survive long enough to enjoy that piece of cake, Paragon of Purity, understood?"
Hugo nodded, a bit unsure if the motivation of eating a piece of cake was enough to survive the dream realm.
---
After the conversation with Miss J, Hugo went to see Instructor Rock to thank him for all his teachings and training in the last three weeks.
Entering the silent training dojo of the academy, Hugo instantly spotted the giant man standing in the middle of the room, looking at the training ground with a reminiscent expression.
Hugo approached slowly, but the seasoned Awakened already sensed him. "Sleeper Hugo, you do know that all classes are dismissed today, right?" he said with a firm voice without turning back.
Hugo studied the man for a moment before speaking in a calm tone. "Well, I thought I'd come to thank you for personally training me."
"...You do realize it's my job, right?"
"Well, even if it is, you could've easily refused to train me when when I used my aspect without suffering any consequences, But you didn't,
which means a lot to me. So, Instructor Rock, thank you for everything. I will make sure to repay this debt once I come back from the Dream Realm as an Awakened."
Rock's shoulders stiffened a little as he let out a sharp exhale. "You're really something, aren't you brat?"
He finally turned back, showing his face, which had an unusually sad expression on it
"Make sure to survive, Sleeper Hugo. The Dead can't repay their debts, you know?"
Hugo nodded firmly, locking eyes with Rock.
"I will."
---
When the sun was close to setting, Instructor Rock gathered all the Sleepers in the foyer of the Sleeper Center and led them outside.
In the snowy parks that surrounded the white building, other Awakened were leading their own batches of Sleepers to the same destination. It was the Academy's medical center.
The center looked more like a shrine than a hospital. Its interior contained both highly advanced technology as well as some of the best Healers among the Awakened. For the duration of their first journey into the Dream Realm, the bodies of Sleepers would be kept safe in specially designed pods and sustained by the magical powers of those Healers if anything unfortunate were to happen on the other side of the Spell.
Of course, whether or not they would wake up in the end wholly depended on the Sleepers themselves.
Strangely enough, after entering the medical center, Instructor Rock did not take them directly to the wing containing Sleeper pods. Instead, he led them to a comparatively deserted floor and then opened the doors to a spacious gallery that was brightly illuminated by the beautiful crimson rays of the setting sun.
There, they saw rows and rows of wheelchairs. In each wheelchair, there was a person with a blank, strangely peaceful expression on their face. All these people were completely silent, motionless, and still. They did not show any reaction to the appearance of guests.
They all seemed to be… empty.
In the eerie silence, Hugo frowned a little, recognizing what these people were...
Instructor Rock looked at the empty people with solemn eyes.
"There is a reason I brought you all here. Look well and remember. Some of you may know who these people are… for those of you who don't, they are called Hollow."
He gritted his teeth.
"Each one of them was once either a Sleeper or an Awakened. Some of them were weak, some of them were strong. Some were even incredibly powerful. All of them have perished in the Dream Realm."
'...I really hope none of us end up like this...' Hugo thought with a grim expression on his face.
'If you're lucky, once your spirit is destroyed, your body dies with it. But if not, you'll become just like them. Hollow.'
Instructor Rock glanced in the direction of Hugo, then turned to Nephis and a certain Legacy that Hugo did not know the name of, and then added:
"So don't die out there."
---
Half an hour later, Sleepers had been led to their personal rooms and were preparing to enter the pods.
In one of the rooms, a blond, blind girl was entering her pod, a look of grim and strange... acceptance in her beautiful blue eyes.
In another room, a certain proud Legacy Caster was staring listlessly at the floor. His lips were moving, repeating one strange phrase over and over again. He was trembling.
Somewhere else, Changing Star Nephis, the last daughter of the Immortal Flame clan, was looking down at her hands. Underneath her skin, soft white radiance was slowly growing brighter and brighter. Her face was contorted in a grimace of harrowing agony.
And then there was a room where Shadow Slave Sunless, Lost from Light, turned away from the sleeping pod and glanced down at his shadow, muttering something to it, before entering his own pod.
Finally, the Paragon of Purity stood near his own dream pod, his eyes drowsy and tired.
He looked at his left arm; the Omnitrix symbol was glowing brightly as if excited by the prospect of entering the Dream Realm.
But Hugo paid it no mind for now...
"Mom... I'm sorry I didn't get to visit your grave..." Hugo said, addressing no one in particular, his expression unreadable.
"...After I awaken, I'll buy you plenty of flowers, the blue ones you always liked..."
He said before slowly entering his pod and closing his eyes.
Darkness quickly consumed the Paragon of Purity, transferring him to an entirely different realm.
Amidst that darkness, he heard the familiar voice of the Spell whispering in his ear:
[Welcome to the Dream Realm, Hugo!]
---
Hugo, immediately after hearing the voice of the Spell, found himself falling at an incredible speed.
Instantly, he willed [Proto-Tech Armor] and [Conqueror's Wrath] to materialize; the armor quickly encased his body while the charm appeared gently on his neck, filling his body with power.
Right as he was about to transform, he suddenly found himself not falling anymore. He had fallen, but not on ground—instead, he was in water.
Hugo accidentally opened his mouth, making the salty water rush in.
'Damn it!' he cursed, trying to find his balance, which was quickly secured thanks to [Aquatic Balance] enchantment from his charm. Although that did not fix his other problem...
His vision.
The body of water he was in was completely black rendering his vision useless.
Deciding to swim upward first, Hugo quickly reached the surface breaking through with rapid gasps of breath.
When he opened his eyes, he found nothing.
There was no sky, no moon, and no stars in the sky. There was simply nothing.
'A sea? Is this the Storm Sea?' he thought, trying to get a better grasp of his environment.
But it seemed his first visit to the Dream Realm was not going to be so simple.
Not even a full minute since he regained his breath, Hugo heard the sound of water splashing, and then a massive pressure jumped out of the water.
Without even identifying the figure, Hugo raised the dial of the Omnitrix, hitting it as fast as he could.
A flash of blue light illuminated the dark world, showing the terrible abomination that was attacking him.
It's body was a pale grey possessing a strange webbed digits, four on the hands and two other on it's feet, the former of which hosted yellow claws. The creature sported gills going down neck to torso, as well as patches of scales all over it's hideous body. On his arms and atop his neck were short swamp green fins. The stem of the angler sprouting from it's head appeared the same color as his webbing. Lastly it possessed strange circular eyes appeared vapid and entirely lacked lips to hide away it's harrowing teeths. When not forming a fish-like tail, he had a loincloth, segmented by off-white lines.
Unfortunately for the harrowing abomination, the shower of light lasted for only a second before a massive, tentacled fist slammed into it, sending it flying back into the water.
Now in the form of a Chimera Sui Generis, Hugo was no longer a helpless Sleeper. He was now an Awakened Noble Beast with the instincts and reflexes of a killer.
Not to mention, he could breathe and move inside water perfectly.
Immediately, Hugo swam towards the abomination augmenting himself with his soul essence as he began to strangle the nightmare shark then his other arm started punching it over and over again.
His already powerful punches were enhanced by both soul essence and [Conqueror's Wrath], making him devastatingly powerful.
And so in just a couple of hits, Hugo's fist broke through the carcases impaling the strange humonioed reptile.
But the abomination was stubborn, deciding to keep fighting despite being impaled.
It thrashed and spun violently in the water, with Hugo latching on to it like a parasite slowly tearing it's guts and insides away.
The dark sea was painted crimson as Hugo kept tearing the abomination apart untill he eventually reached deep within the abomination's chest finding it's soul cores and quickly clutching his giant hand crushing all four of them at once.
The nightmare creature screamed with it's movement slowly growing sluggish and weak as it's soul started to crumble.
not long after that, Hugo heard the sweet voice of the Spell speak:
[You have slain an Awakened Demon: Cursed Dweller.]
[You have received a Memory.]
The rush of satisfaction from slaying his first Nightmare Creature felt like heaven but his situation was still dire, considering a swarm of the same race as the shark abomination could come after him at any moment. Especially now that he was on a timer.
Hugo grimmiced at the fact that he wouldn't be able to absorb it's destroyed soul shards
But that did not mean he wouldn't get payment for his trouble before leaving the corpse drown in the sea...
Reaching deep within him, he activated his Innate Ability, [Essence Imprint], and focused on the corpse.
[Unidentified DNA sample detected...]
[Scanning...]
[...]
[Essence Imprint succeeded.]
Smirking, Hugo quickly begun maneuvering underwater, trying to find nearby land. Being blind and underwater was quite a dangerous problem, but he currently possessed the perfect biology to survive the terrain so it wasn't that bad.
Although Hugo doubted he'd be able to survive the harrowing depth dwellers...
'Focus...'
He extended his senses, which seemed to be functioning more effectively underwater making able to sense any dangerous creature nearby.
And soon enough, he did.
A gigantic shark like abomination was swimming fast through the waters, chasing after a strange small black dot.
The black dot suddenly rose from the water and disappeared, making the creature spin around in the water...
'Land!'
It was the only logical conclusion to how the black dot dissapered completely from the surface of the water... That or it somehow flew away.
Hugo was willing to believe the former and so he contemplated attempting to swim there...
'could I kill something like that?' he frowned, realizing that it's rank was definitely higher then the abomination he just killed.
But then, something else happened. The water rippled as Hugo could sense the gigantic creature being pulled by something to the depths by another by a mass of dark tentacles.
His eyes widened but he wasted no time. Immediately saturating his body with as much essence as it allowed, he swam like a bolt, reaching the strange platform in mere moments.
His sharp claws pierced the stone as he quickly began climbing the wet stone, hurriedly scaling the giant structure before the creature returned.
"Finally, la—"
Before he could finish his words, something hit his head, making him reel a little but the force of the impact was not enough to make him fall off just yet.
It was... a leg? A human leg, to be precise.
Looking up, Hugo sensed a figure standing on the platform and judging by the strength of the kick, that figure was merely a Sleeper.
"Wait! I'm a human! This is a transformation ability!" Hugo shouted before the mysterious figure used any of their weapon Memories to stab him in the head.
Strangely enough, the figure seemed to believe that instantly, giving Hugo some time to climb the platform fully and step away from the edge.
---
[Sunny's POV]
Sunny's luck was currently nothing short of abysmal.
He had entered the Dream Realm and not even 10 minutes later, he drowned and then got chased by a harrowing abomination the size of a house. Then, after escaping towards a stone platform he found by sheer luck..
Moments later, he saw the same abomination that chased him being drowned by dark tentacles that impaled it's body like toy.
As the sea slowly calmed, sunny had thought that was the end of his terrible luck but then another abomination climbed out of the sea, sticking to the platform like an insect before reaching the surface.
Without having anything to defend himself with, sunny simply kicked the abomination hoping it will fall back into the sea.
But it didn't and then he realized that the abominable creature was actually... familiar...
Not only That, the creature was one that he had seen before in the waking world, in fact, he had seen it every day for three weeks straight.
Well, it wasn't always in this form but Sunny quickly recognized the creature identity.
It was the Paragon of Purity, the mysterious Sleeper who had come out of nowhere three weeks before the Winter Solstice and placed second in the rankings, right beneath Changing Star of the immortal flame clan.
Through excessive observation with his shadow —totally not stalking— Sunny had found out that this mysterious prodigy's Aspect included turning into a terrifying tentacle monster that was 15 feet tall making Sunny envious of how powerful such an ability was.
There was also the fact that the mysterious Sleeper possessed a very bizarre shadow...
'...It's wrong... Everything about it is wrong,' Sunny thought as he once again felt the wrongness emitted from Hugo's shadow.
Luckily —or unluckily — the situation was quite grim so the feeling of wrongness was drowned by the need of survival.
"Ah... Sorry for kicking you... I panicked"
Sunny said in a hesitant tone, while Hugo kept Silence...
Making the treacherous lost from light speak again, this time in a more hesitant tone.
"Just to be sure, you're the same guy I ate breakfast with this morning, right?"
"Yes..." the Paragon of Purity said, his voice while transformed sounding nothing like his usual form.
"Who would've thought we'd actually end up in the same area..." Sunny mummuered, thanking the dead gods that he hadn't aggravated Hugo during their stay at the academy, like he had with many other Sleepers.
"Well... I really don't know what to say in this situation, but I think we should watch out for any abominations coming from the sea."
Hugo nodded his tentacled head. "Alright..."
'Huh? I could've sworn he seemed more social during the academy... What's wrong with him?'
Sunny thought, unaware that Hugo was currently fighting against the urge to shout an opera of slurs at him for the kick that was delivered to his face...