And just like that a month quickly passed inside of the village.
There were similar occurrences like the sandstorm, where they got attacked by creatures but overall it was pretty nice and easy for Ragna, especially with Layla by his side.
They often spend their days either talking or just sparing, which made their knowledge in hand to hand fighting progress at an absurd rate.
But things naturally couldn't stay like this forever. This village already gave up escaping the Dream Realm. They were too scared to fight the Fallen Devil guarding the Gateway. They didn't think they could beat a creature of that calibre while just being sleepers. Ragna also wasn't that positive about it. Yes, he had already killed creatures of higher ranks and classes but those were special cases. As Isaac told them, that Creature was completly fighting oriented.
Yet Ragna had a bitter taste in his mouth at the thought of not even trying so he persuaded Layla to run away from the village. Of course he didn't plan on going to that creature just now. He first needed to fill his core to the maximum, get better and more Memories and, of course, also find more teammates he can trust.
Thankfully Layla decided to leave the village without even asking him why, like she wanted to leave anyways.
So thats why they found themselves walking aimlessly in the dessert again.
The wind howled, the desert heat poured down on them and they could feel the soft sand under them.
Ragna and Layla didn't talk much on their way, they just walked south.
After just about a week of traveling, sparing and struggling to stay awake they arrived in front of the dark veil Ragna saw on his first day in the dream realm. It spanned for thousand, if not hundreds of thousands kilometers. Just pure darkness and mystery behind it.
"Let's go inside, okay ?„
"Sure .."
When they stepped through the veil everything changed. It still looked like a desert but also completly different. First of all it was way hotter, it felt like their skin would have burned if they didn't have their superhuman bodies. The sky was also completly black and the sand was white as pearls. Those changes weren't that bad but of course that wasn't all. Ragna and Layla saw way more Nightmare Creatures, roaming around in the open. Thankfully, of course sarcastically, his [Obvious Blood] Flaw made them sense him the moment he and Layla stepped inside.
So right now they were in a situation where four Creatures, three dormant and one awakened, were running viciously at them.
Thankfully Layla reacted quickly and just splashed a big amount of ink at them while Ragna started manifesting his Memories.
"I made the Dormant creatures physical prowess grow weaker and made the Awakened one go blind. Go get them !"
Just when the Mirrorblade manifested it shone with yellow light, probably because he felt confident in slaying those creatures because of Layla debuffing them, which made the [Emotional Blade] Attribute activate.
He felt his speed and precision rise and he quickly killed the dormant beasts each after the other.
[You have slain ...]
[You have slain ...]
[You have slain ...]
[You have spilled blood]
[Your Core grows stronger]
Of course Layla didn't just stay still after splashing ink at the creatures. She started attacking the blind and confused creature with a Memory of her own. It was a fully black Katana with a thin blade, probably of the awakened rank. She tried slashing its head off with one clean swing but it didn't work like she wanted to because the creatures fur and skin was too hard.
Its blindness slowly disappeared so it instantly tried slashing at Layla.
Thankfully Ragna was already there and cleanly cut it's thick arm off with the Mirrorblade before it could reach Layla. Then he spun around and quickly thrust the blade through the creatures chest, piercing its heart and killing it on the spot.
[You have slain and awakened beast, Whitefang]
"Thanks, Ragna. For saving me "
"Oh, no, problem. Things would have been worse without your Aspect ability so you also helped me. We should probably stay on guard because it seems like there are more creatures in this area than in the "normal" dessert. We'll probably get attacked more often than before.
This Part of the Dream Realm was far more dangerous than what they had already encountered. This time they were the ones who survived the fight but would this continue ? Defenitely not if they just stood still like now.
"We should probably get moving."
Layla continued standing still for a while and looking around
"Agreed."
As they began walking again, keeping a slower and more cautious pace, Ragna couldn't shake of the feeling that something was wrong. He looked over to Layla and saw that she was just as on edge like he was.
"Layla, do you feel it too ?"
"Yeah, something is wrong. Let's walk a little faster."
And indeed something was wrong. Something was watching them from afar, a Nightmare Creature to be precise. It wouldn't show itself for a while because it liked to lure it's prey into its fangs.
It's tactic was simple. Make them feel its presence but not show itself, slowly corrupting the preys brain. The creature used that sacredness and wariness to attack the ones it wanted to lure mentally.
So without even knowing it, Ragna and Layla fell into a mind attack and were slowly and automatically walking directly to where the beasts was located.
Since Ragna nor Layla had any defences against mental attacks they didn't even know that something was wrong. They thought that they were just cautiously walking through this dangerous place, avoid any sort of danger but in reality they were slowly getting nearer and nearer to a white mountain of the pearly white sand, without even realizing it.
The white mountain of sand in the distance, though still far away, began to dominate their vision and thoughts. It pulled their gaze towards it every time they glanced at it but Ragna and Layla didn't find it weird so they just continued getting closer and closer.
The pull just grew stronger and stronger with each step.
Deep down in Ragna's body something screamed for him to stop, to turn around and never come back but his feet just continued to move, just like how Laylas did.
Still outside of their view, the creature waited patiently on top of the Mountain.
As they started going up the mountain, miraculously not getting attacked by any Nightmare Creature on their way. Ragnas and Laylas senses grew more and more limp the nearer they came.
The blue strings of Ragnas [Unseen Link] Attribute played crazy in front of him but he couldn't even see them and just continued walking up and up. And after a while they arrived at the top, the pure black sky right over them. The moment the creature made itself known, Ragnas heard a really loud pang in his ears, the blue strings of the Attribute weaving around him like they were protecting him. And so, somehow he got out of the mind control but it was already to late.
The thing stood just a dozen meters in front of them, Layla still being stuck in the mind Control, not realizing in what danger they were in. The creature looked kinda humanoid but there was a big difference. It was just completly white, no face, no hair, no teeth, no nothing. Just the human body with really white skin.
Ragna froze because he was scared so the creature didn't realize that he wasn't stuck in the mind control anymore. It just slowly approached them, somehow looking satisfied and happy even tho it couldn't show expressions or emotions.
The creature first walked to Ragna since Layla stood a meter behind him. He slowly moved his purely white hand in front of Ragnas face and wanted to grip it.
Ragna was absurdly scared but his body moved to the side automatically and thrusted his Mirrorblade, augmented by his blood, directly at the creature.
It just took a step back, avoiding the blade but still getting hid by the blood slash that followed since it didn't know Ragna could do that. Sadly it did next to none damage and now the creature knew that Ragna wasn't affected by his mind control anymore.
Since the creatures speciality was mind attacks it wasn't the strongest physically but being a fallen creature still made him way stronger than Ragna. Before the creatures could react, Ragna solely augmented his feet and dashed back, pulling the seemingly braindead Layla with him.
"Wake up, god damit ! Get out of it!"
Sadly, she didn't
'Shit ... sorry.'
Ragna decided to push Layla down the Mountain, since she wouldn't be able to fight and protecting her would be too hard. As far as he had realized while walking up the mountain was that there were no creatures on it so she should be save.
The creature looked angrily and Ragna, like his food was stolen by him.
Ragna smiled while sweat was rolling down his head.
'Time to beat a fallen creature as a sleeper in a direct fight, I guess.'
——-Author's Notes——-
Words: 1545
Still felt bad today and I wrote a exam today and will write one tomorrow too
Skipped homework and studying to write this. Wish me luck 🙏😭
Peace ✌️