Erwin had entered the dream realm.
Erwin.
The person he was most similar to in the group.
A clanless who had no idea how to enter the dream realm.
And within a week after being told the basics he had already done it.
It didn't take long for Arthur and Ressana to venture into their dream realms as well.
Luckily Shin and Victoria came back after another couple of days.
Victoria recounted her exploits with gravitas while Shin was more private.
Both had progressed toward their quests but had yet to make major progress.
That was fine though, the first quest typically took three months. Even the fastest dreamers took a month to complete their quests. Not to mention those dreamers usually took shortcuts or got a lot of help.
Although that was usually frowned upon. Not because of a concept of honour.
Well… not just because of honour.
Dreamers who took the easy path often received weaker abilities as a result, as if the realms graded their completion and rewarded them appropriately.
So quick dreamers were not only slackers but also tended to be weaker than others of their rank.
Regardless Jacob quickly got bored of hearing about the wonders of the Jin clan's dream realm.
Time went by like that.
Jacob stopped hanging out with his friends as much, devoting himself to gaining more data in his spare time. Although he made sure to attend classes after a short personal talking to by his professor.
His friends on the other hand, doubled down on their discussions related to the dream realm.
Each time he saw them there was some new and exciting thing that they wanted to mention about their adventures.
Then the day he had been waiting for came.
Erwin got back from the dream realm.
Unfortunately for Jacob, he was doomed to be disappointed.
Erwin had apparently just gone to sleep after setting up a bunch of symbols that roughly emulated what he saw in his nightmare trial.
Jacob's memory of the demonic symbols from the mansion was too hazy for analysis to recover and even if they weren't he would be hesitant to use them.
He didn't think he could summon an actual demon.
But why tempt fate?
His friends were interested in what Erwin had experienced but surprisingly the English boy was tight-lipped.
He mentioned his experiences vaguely, describing them with little or difficult-to-interpret detail.
Jacob couldn't blame him. If his realm was indeed the same as Jacob's, then he was bound to want to keep it to himself.
That didn't stop him from joining the conversation of the others though.
Soon enough the whole group was back, the only people who had yet to visit their realms were Stephanie, Jacob, and Fredrick.
The boy wasn't permitted to enter the dream realm until he turned at least 16, for his own safety.
Regardless they enjoyed talking about what they had learnt and seen in the dreamer realm.
Sharing tricks and tips on how to navigate certain situations, like how covering yourself with mud to mask your scent was only an effective strategy if the hunter was at the level of earth animals.
Supernatural creatures tended to have better senses, making such tactics worthless.
Jacob doubted that particular bit of information would be useful to him.
He felt the same way about most of the things they were talking about.
More often than not he found himself making excuses to leave early or avoid their gatherings entirely.
His annoyance with the whole situation culminated in challenger training.
He was sparring with Shin, as usual.
But he noticed something.
[Shin: 80%]
Shins counter combat analysis had gone down by quite a lot.
Meaning his friend had improved significantly since they last fought, courtesy of the dream realm no doubt.
In the past Shin had gotten stronger but usually only by one or two percent at a time.
In the first place, Jacob was weaker than other dreamers in a direct confrontation.
The only reason he had done as well as he did when fighting Victor's goons was because they were all rank 0 dreamers.
They were only slightly stronger than normal people.
Hell, a dreamless could beat them provided they trained enough.
But Jacob knew that in a proper fight against another dreamer with the same rank as him, he would lose.
His combat system gave him a small chance, but it was nothing compared to the reliability of a combat ability like Shin's or Victoria's.
Hell, even something like Arhtur's self-heal was better for a head-on fight since he could use it to turn the tables unexpectedly.
Even though it had been a decent while since Jacob had won his single victory against Shin, he still had some pride over being able to last a while against him.
Yet in that match, his pride was decimated as Shin threw him down in a total of four moves.
He tried not to let it get to him.
He even kept getting back up until his counter combat was back to 100% and able to be used again.
It increased his time from four moves to nine.
Jacob didn't fare any better against Victoria who had also grown.
He left class early, saying he had to study.
Not a total lie since he was headed to the library.
As he walked, he thought about his life recently.
He had gone through a fair bit more than he signed up for.
He had gotten beat up, four times.
Three of them by the same person.
And had made some friends because of it.
But did he really need them?
Sure, it was helpful at the beginning when he knew nothing about dreamer society but now…
He could find out most of what he wanted from the library, and what he couldn't was bound to be unimportant.
He couldn't exactly get allies for his quests since he was clanless.
He doubted they would even stay in contact with him after they went back to their clans.
Maybe if there was more time for them to deepen their friendship. As things stood he was good friends with Erwin while the rest were more casual.
Even with Erwin, he assumed that the main reason they were close and ended up spending a decent amount of time together was because they were both clanless and a little put off by the whole situation.
The others in the group were all from much more intense backgrounds, even if they didn't talk much about it.
Hell from what he could tell Arthur had become a bonified big brother to Fredrick over the past couple of months.
It wasn't like they had much in common anyway and now that they could enter the dream realm he doubted they'd suddenly go back to the way they were before.
If he wasn't enjoying himself and there was no real benefit to being friends with them, why was he bothering?
If anything, they could become a risk to him.
He had been in the dreamer society for less than six months and he already had a huge secret to keep.
The fact that his nightmare trial was such an anomaly probably meant that his dream realm was bound to be different as well.
If he accidentally let that information slip it could end terribly for him.
It may have seemed like he was protected but after the incident with Victor he knew it was an illusion, one that would end when he finished his course.
As he was walking towards the library, he saw a semi-familiar face.
It was the hoodie man he had seen headed into the library during his first week.
"Hey, wait up!" Jacob said loudly as he caught up to the man.
"Oh! What the… Wait, I remember you!" the man's face went through expressions of shock, confusion, and finally realisation as he looked at Jacob.
"Yeah man, I never got to introduce myself, the name's Jacob" he offered.
"Yeah, I'm uhhhh, Tony, yeah Tony" he was clearly lying but Jacob didn't see anything wrong with that.
He had randomly called him out twice now, it'd be odd if he wasn't suspicious of Jacob's intention.
To be honest Jacob was also wondering what his intentions were.
"You're not used to people calling out to you, huh?" he jested.
"N-not really no. I tend to fly under the radar most of the time. being in the spotlight tends to end badly for clanless you know?" the ugly man's voice was slightly timid to begin with but ended up being tinged in spite towards the end.
"Well, it's not like it's the worst thing in the world. At least here at UDRD it doesn't seem that bad" Jacob reasoned.
"I remember thinking that" Tony responded.
"God I was so naive back then…" he finished in a whisper.
"Come on man, it's the 21st century! it can't be that bad right?" he responded with the same mirth.
"That's because you're naive!" Tony snapped back.
"After the showcase tournament there's nothing to stop them anymore! Even if you stay at UDRD you'll still get the shit beat out of you by anyone stronger than you! But that's not even the worst of it! Even if you're stronger than them all they need to do is whine to their mommies and daddies and suddenly everything gets 10 times worse!" Tony ranted.
He hadn't quite shouted but it was clear that he had been through a lot, courtesy of the clans no doubt.
Jacob couldn't really be blamed for his naivety. He had grown up in a safe and happy environment. He may have had a few misgivings but for the most part, he had been sheltered from the rough parts of life.
He hadn't even been bullied properly as he didn't garner enough attention from anyone to warrant bullying. Not to mention his big sister watching his back.
With those circumstances, the concept of bullying was never really introduced to Jacob outside of TV and movies.
Even his confrontations with Victor could be chalked up to bad blood. Victor had taken it too far but technically Jacob had fired the first shot.
But Jacob could understand it a little now.
The expression on Tony's face, his clenched fists, and the venom in his voice when he spoke of the clans made it clearer to him.
He may not have experienced it for himself but if it could inspire this much hatred then he could guess.
Jacob gave Tony a few seconds to stop panting and calm down.
Afterwards, they talked a little more, Tony giving a variety of warnings about the dos and don'ts of being clanless after the catch-up course had finished.
They parted ways when the reached the library as Tony was looking for MAT research while Jacob had other interests.
Their talk made Jacob think harder about what exactly he would do after the tournament. Should he just join The Agency as a data analyst?
He disliked the idea of continuing to live in his sister's shadow, but he didn't have so much pride that he'd turn it down if it was his best option.
Maybe he should join The Order as a research co-ordinator or something. Tony had mentioned that The Order and The Agency were the only places where clanless wouldn't be treated like shit constantly.
It wasn't perfect as there were plenty of clan members working for the order, but it was better.
As he was thinking through his options, he absent-mindedly picked some books on a variety of subjects and sat down in his usual spot.
He began going over the information, reading and slowly comprehending as he increased his data storage.
Eventually, he noticed an anomaly in his harmonious environment.
At some point, Stephanie had arrived.