Chereads / Volition / Chapter 159 - The Last Dream

Chapter 159 - The Last Dream

Iustus found himself in a strange place, everything seemed to be darkness except for incredibly luminous shapes in the distance, large chunks of earth floated all around him, trees, skeleton and corpses of various creatures, simultaneously decaying and restoring themselves as they flew through the air.

Everything came together in an utterly perfect motion, everything only moved in a single way, forming into a landscape, a place that the young hero could have walked upon for real.

Only then did he realise this was yet another dream.

'Did I fall unconscious?' he wondered, the parasite from Oath Breaker had still made quite a mess inside of him after all, everything was quite blurry in his mind, he might have immediately passed out or not, he barely remembered anything before getting here.

Similar to the first dream, two figures met in a desolate and empty area, the two of them vastly different from the other, the virtue, Charity looked like a normal man, apart from his incredible presence, nothing stood out absurdly about him.

The sin however, Greed was anything but normal to Iustus, he saw nothing but a mass of darkness, almost impossible to make out any intricate feature, the sin was absurdly tall, looking like nothing but a pole of darkness rather than a living and breathing being.

All that betrayed this illusion were the two horns and what appeared to a crown upon his head.

Something was deeply off here however, the scene seemed to have frozen, as if time had stopped flowing.

After long minutes of nothing happening, the sin suddenly but slowly turned toward the young hero, from the front, it was much easier to make out the true appearance of the old Greed, his limbs were terribly elongated and so were his fingers, they almost dragged along the ground, his neck was also much longer than it had seemed now that Iustus could make out the sin's shoulders.

He seemed to be covered in hair or fur as he made his way toward the hero with slow and small steps, which translated to quite the distance with his build, without bending his legs a slight bit, the ancient Greed bent forward and place his darkness filled face right in front of Iustus's.

The virtuous hero couldn't moved no matter how much he tried, he too was frozen in place, it seemed like the old Greed had taken control of the dream, did this mean that similarly to the old Lust, that he was still alive in some capacity?

" " Greed said something but Iustus only felt his head reel in pain, he didn't even hear anything, it felt like he had been pushed back thousands of kilometers back without moving an milimeter.

Greed reached out with his huge hand and placed it on the hero's head, encompassing it in its entirety.

Only then, after fear infused hours seemed to have passed, that Greed uttered a single, comprehensible word.

"...Meaningless..." said the legendary beings as Iustus was forced awake, finding himself in the usual place, the bedroom he had been sleeping in for as long as he could remember.

"He looked around in shock unable to comprehend what he was doing back here" Iustus heard someone narrating what he was doing and stared at a dark corner of his old room.

It was abnormally dark, clearly the work of an outside force.

Without having time to understand what he was doing back in his parents house, two metallic hands reached out from the darkness and grabbed onto the walls, sinking their fingers through the wood as if it was jelly.

Soon, the man emerged fully from the dark as it was instantly cleared, revealing a well-dressed, humanoid figure wearing nothing but black, black pants, black shoes, black waistcoat, black tie, black shirt, black hat...

The only thing that wasn't utter darkness were the metallic hands and the grey mask the figure wore, the mask bore no features and no holes for one to see or breath through.

"Brings you back doesn't it?" spoke the man in a hoarse tone as he was suddenly right in Iustus's face.

The mask suddenly lit up with purplish flames, forming into two round eyes and a crooked smiled.

The figure stood up, making the sound of steel grinding against one another with his movement as he grabbed the edge of his hat and tipped it.

"Nice to meet you Iustus, I haven't many disappointements like you" taunted the man as Iustus was more focused on what was going on.

"You are still dreaming Iustus, however, you aren't in any dream, you are in one made by me and I only make nightmares!" exclaimed the man as a deafening sound overtook any other noise in the area, drowning out the few screams before leaving nothing but silence.

This was when Occult had unleashed his deadly breath upon the defenseless villagers, soon, the sound of the mighty beast landing right atop the house was heard.

"That day, you were the only survivor because you were slothful and your parents didn't bother to try and wake you up, they went out to work and got caught up in the Occult's attack, what a shame, the hero managed to unconsciously use his powers to protect himself and only himself!" the masked man laughed and laughed, his fiery visage twisting in a dreadful manner.

"Have you even managed to use your power as effectively as you did while sleeping? No, not at all! Nothing! You could only save yourself!" with this words, the scenery suddenly changed as Iustus found himself in front of Occult, right next to another version of himself.

"You don't remember how you activated your powers that time, right? Well, it's a good thing since it was quite unsightly, using virtuous powers by giving in a sin? What a joke!" the man kept taunting Iustus as he remembered the scene in it's entirety, the power he dragged out had been potent, probably the most powerful usage he had made of them ever and yet, the draconic sin had gotten out unscathed, he had for some reason simply let himself be thrown away.

The metallic man scratched his chin for a moment.

"Mmh, that's about all I need to show you, one last thing though" he spoke before punching a hole right through Iustus's guts and forcing him awake for real this time.

The wound had felt real but no sign of it were to be seen on him, although, he could clearly see that he had just lost a good chunk of HP all at once.