As he got closer and closer to the eastern end of the forest, he started noticing the ground around the region becoming more barren and darker….as if it was under some kind of curse…
As time went by, the giant white trees started growing fewer and fewer in numbers and the bright sunny sky started transitioning into a darker and ominous one, soon the entire purple sky was covered by dark clouds, enshrouding the world in eerie darkness…
As Aron kept moving, the most noticeable change he noticed was the presence of the dense ominous gray fog covering the entire region…shrouding everything in an eerie veil of mysteries…
Due to the lacking numbers of giant white trees, Aron now had to travel the remaining forest by walking the ground, traversing through the thick veil of the gray fog…
At this moment, Aron was fully alert and had his guard up all the time. Walking through the thick gray mist he was barely able to see or sense anything more than five meters from him, it was because the ominous gray fog was seemingly obstructing his senses… making him take every step cautiously with a battle-ready mindset…
As he kept moving he noticed the gray fog becoming even more denser and now he could hardly see any of the giant white trees in the obscured surroundings….
As he was cautiously looking around and moving carefully, suddenly…
[Alert! Several Aberrants have been detected within the range of 50 meters from the host…]
Hearing the System alert his eyes become sharper with a glint of solemnity…
His heart was pounding like a war drum, but his gaze was cold and calm like a serene lake…his movements were like a cold hungry predator with an aura of indifference and ruthlessness….
The coat of deception covered his entire body, making him appear like a grim reaper shrouded in an ominous grey fog of death…
Looking through the dense gray fog, Aron was able to make out the faint silhouette of several small humanoid creatures with a giant round object floating over their heads that was giving off tiny red sparks from the top…
Each of the small humanoid silhouettes had two pairs of blazing red flames for eyes making their obscured appearance even more eerie and terrifying…
Looking at the several small silhouettes moving towards him, his body tensed up and he started running forward in the direction where there were large gaps in between them…
As he was running towards them through the dense grey fog, he saw some of the small humanoid silhouettes starting to throw those giant round objects floating over their heads in his direction…
Looking at those giant round objects being thrown in his direction, he suddenly started having a very bad feeling about them…
'F#CK! Those definitely look like giant bombs!'
Looking at the giant bombs being thrown towards him, he quickly summoned the Havoc-Lykor and quickly climbed over its large neck…
"Quickly run! Get us out of here!" he shouted at the Lykor who quickly started running at a terrifying speed appearing like a blurring shadow…
Riding the Havoc-Lykor he quickly covered a large distance through the fog within a few minutes, getting closer to the position of skeletal silhouettes…
Then suddenly…
[Alert! Several high-tier Aberrants have been detected within 30 meters range from the host, the Aberrant has been identified as Nightmare-Bomber]
[Alert! New Quest has been issued!]
[Undead Hunter: Hunt down up to 10 Undead Aberrants]
[Possible Rewards: Naruka gems, Echo of the Hunted creature, Special Title]
As he got closer and closer to those humanoid silhouettes he was finally able to discern their actual appearance.
The creatures appeared as small black skeletons covered in strange red runic tattoos all over their bony bodies. Each of the small black skeletons had a blazing red flame burning in their hollow eye socket.
Behind each of their small skeletal figure was a black giant cartoonish bomb with its fuse on fire. The bomb was five times larger than their skeletal bodies.
It was a pitch-black round cartoonish bomb that you could see in cartoons, but the thing setting it apart was the presence of a thick purple mist faintly enshrouding the bomb giving it a mysterious yet dangerous appearance…
Looking at the giant bombs up close he felt a faint cold shiver running down his spine…Wasting no time he quickly made his signature gun-like gesture, summoning the terrifying purple-black flame, and pointed in the direction of the bunch of Nightmare bombers that were about to throw their giant floating bombs in his direction.
"Burn them to ashes!!" he shouted as he shot the purple-black flames in the direction of the nightmare bombers and kept moving away avoiding the giant bombs that were being thrown at him…
Looking back he saw one of the giant bombs exploding into an Icy explosion of frost, turning the entire area of thirty meters around it into an icy field, full of countless giant icicles emerging from the ground like giant spikes pointing towards the sky…
Everything within thirty meters of the frosty explosion was frozen solid including the gray mist which started turning into gray snowflakes snowing down over the entire icy field.
But before the fost could spread outside the area of the explosion, another bomb fell over blasting into an explosion of purple mist that quickly started spreading everywhere.
The explosion of purple mist was even more bizarre and terrifying than the frosty explosion. Anything within the range of the purple mist started mutating…the icy field filled with countless icicles started mutating into icy creatures…but at the same time, the purple mist also started freezing into mutating ice…
Looking at this extremely bizarre scene made Aron's blood run cold, he saw a large number of the giant spiky icicles turning into humanoid icy creatures with sharp spiky limbs.
But what he saw next was even more terrifying…he saw a large number of the mutating frozen mists slowly turning into real nightmare creatures!!
[Alert! Several Aberrants have been detected within 50 meters range from the host]
'F#CK!! '
'This shit is crazy!! '
'I am getting out of here!!'
Cursing from the inside, he signaled the Havoc-Lykor to run away deeper into the gray fog…
In the Meanwhile, he started getting several system messages…
[You have killed a Tier-III Aberrant Nightmare-Bomber]
[You have killed a Tier-III Aberrant Nightmare-Bomber]
[You have killed a Tier-III Aberrant Nightmare-Bomber]
…
…
…
Looking at those messages…'The purple-black flame seems to be doing its job...'
[Alert! Quest—Undead Hunter: Hunt down up to 10 Undead Aberrants has been completed!]
[Rewards: 3600 Naruka gems, Echo of the Tier-III Aberrant Nightmare Bomber, Title: Undead Hunter]
Looking at the generous rewards, he clicked on the Title out of curiosity…
[Undead Hunter: When facing against an Undead creature you will deal 2x damage including skills and echos]
'Oh-ho! This title is pretty insane…facing against any undead creature my skills and echos will deal twice the damage…Undead Hunter is quite the fitting title for such an insane offensive boost…'
As he was riding the havoc Lykor suddenly the Lykor started turning into purple mist and the next instant it abruptly vanished, making Aron who was riding over its neck at a speed of more than 200 km/hr to come crashing down the hard ground at an extremely terrifying speed.
Crashing and tumbling like a rag doll, his body continued to crash and tumble for several seconds more until the momentum of his body was fully neutralized by the extremely painful crashes…
In the end, Aron's body could be seen being dragged forward with his face buried in the ground before his body fully stopped moving.
'F-F#CK…'
'Urgh! Damn! It hurts!'
'I totally forgot the summoning cooldown…sigh~'
'Thankfully this much damage is nowhere near enough to break my bones or cause any serious injuries…My body is a lot stronger than it was before when I was a human…'
After lying there was a while he finally got up while dusting his entire body, his black trench coat was totally unscathed without a single scratch or mark over its matt black surface….
After getting up he opened up his status window to continue looking at all the system messages and alerts that he was going through before crashing down from over the Lykor's neck.
[Authors Note: Please refer to Chapter 11 to recall the updated stats]
Status:
Name: Aron Smith
Race: Gospeler of Nightmares
Rank: Aberrant - I
Level: 10
Title:
Champion Of The Nightmare Realm [You have been chosen by the Nightmare Realm to be its champion!]
[Advent Of The Apex Predator: While facing against any beast type monster/creature you will deal 2x damage including skills and echos]
[Undead Hunter: When facing against an Undead creature you will deal 2x damage including skills and echos]
Echo: 3 [Havoc-Lykor, Solaris-Iromot, Nightmare-Bomber]
Soul Points: 16,500 [1 Solaris-Iromot (1500) + 12 Nightmare-Bomber (1250*12)]
Health: 950/950
Nargy: 1600/1600
Stamina: 390/390
------------------
Attributes:
Strength: 208
Agility: 190
Vitality: 390
Intelligence: 325.6 [+29.6] (Temporary boost by the Coat Of Deception)
Defense: 245 [+50] (Temporary boost by the Coat Of Deception)
Senses: 197 [+25] (Temporary boost by the Coat Of Deception)
Stat Points: 55
Skill Points: 0
Talent points: 2
-----------------
Skills :
[Eyes Of The Paragon (Level 1)]: You can summon the @#$&# rune into your eyes to see the ultimate Truth. By summoning the @#$&# rune into your eyes you can cast an inescapable Nightmare illusion onto your enemies that cannot be avoided.
[Kasimo's Flames (Level 6)]: You can summon Kasimo's flame for a set duration. WARNING! Kasimo's flames are extremely chaotic and can have unexpected effects.
[Kasimo's Mark (Level 1)]: You can mark up to 3 objects/beings with Kasimo's Mark which will directly mark the target's soul in the case of living beings. The mark can be tracked irrespective of the distance.
If Kasimo's Mark is attached to a living being, it will constantly release a fixed amount of Nargy into their soul, slowly corrupting the soul of the target, and ultimately turning them into Kasimo's soul puppet.
If Kasimo's Mark is attached to an object, it will constantly release a fixed amount of Nargy into the object, slowly corrupting it, and ultimately turning it into a bizarre Object.
[Kasimo's Soul Poker (Level 1)]: [Locked]
[Kasimo's Nightmare Circus (Level 1)]: [Locked]
-----------------
Talents:
[Nightmare Body (Level 4)]: A body Forged by the will of Nightmare Realm, you have the highest affinity to Nargy and the Nightmare Realm—your body courses with a highly concentrated amount of Nargy and will regenerate Nargy every 0.001 seconds. Your body can convert any kind of energy into Nargy and vice versa. Your body has 75% resistance to Nargy-related damage and 25% resistance to all kinds of damage (physical/elemental/soul/mind)
[Shroud Of Nightmares (Level 3)]: In the liberated state your wings will generate a shroud of Nightmare Aura around you, which will boost your Nargy regeneration rate up to 3 times. Anyone who comes within the range of the Shroud of Nightmare will be instantly trapped inside a nightmare.
'Oh-ho! I got tonnes of soul points after killing those tier-III aberrants, with this much I could easily level up eight to ten times…'
'Should I level up now or later?'
'As far as I've seen, the more deeper I go into the forest the more higher-level Nightmare creatures I will have to face…'
'I think I should level up now itself while I still can…..'