Abyssal Awakening-Chapter 961: Exploiting The Nightmare

Miki blinked her eyes, staring at the woman in front of her.

When people are summoned to different Zones, they appear as silhouettes that aren’t fully visible to the main ’host’.

Not only that, once summoned, fog would roll through, ’refreshing’ the monsters and causing their numbers to increase.

However, the only thing that happened was the fog obscuring Alice’s arrival.

There was no reset, no increase in monsters.

And more than that, she wasn’t a silhouette. It’s as though she’s the joint ’host’ of this zone.

"Heh~ how did you dispel so much fog? I can actually see a decent length ahead of me." Alice spun around, glancing at the Zone around her.

In her Original Zone, she had to fight carefully since she couldn’t see much of the battlefield.

Traps that were hidden until the last moment and so on.

But Miki’s zone wasn’t like that. With this much visibility, defending against enemies shouldn’t be an issue.

Miki let out a sigh.

"That’s because I’m in Zone 4. The boss to Zone 5 should be rather close."

Before Alice could even respond, something breached the edge of her detection. Turning around, her pupils constricted seeing Miki grab a spike out of the air.

"This isn’t like reality. The monsters here are significantly stronger, especially if you’ve just come from the second Zone." Miki narrowed her eyes.

"Items, stats, you are lacking both. You may have found a way here but you won’t be able to keep up."

With a flick of her wrist, she sent the spike back to the beast while ordering her squad to take care of the threats around them.

Once the area was secure, Miki turned to Alice.

"I’m going to assume since you’re not a silhouette, you’ve become something akin to a join host right?"

"Somewhat. When I found Alyss and Cayla, the monsters didn’t change either and I could buy stuff from their stores." Alice nodded with a smile.

Folding her arms, Cayla thought about it for a moment.

"Try using this. If it works, we’re going to cheat."

Alice blinked her eyes, catching the Embryo that Miki gathered from the later zones. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

With the branch next to them, Alice decided to sit down and tried to use it.

One second.

Two seconds.

A minute passed as Alice raised her hand.

"Shame, doesn’t work. I guess maybe I have to tag a monster?" Alice tossed the Embryo back.

Thinking about it for a moment, Miki made a decision.

"I guess if we have to cheat, we have to do so properly. Gina, Sam, I’ll dismiss you two for now. Don’t venture too far into your own zones and risk death." Miki turned to two of her squad mates as they nodded their head.

Breaking off a piece of chalk, Miki drew a circle and summoned two others in their place.

"Farming again?" Once of them yawned.

"You should raise our wages you know? Doing this over and over again gets boring." Another sighed.

"This time it’ll be easier. We’re going to raise her stats from zone two to zone five." Miki gestured to Alice with her chin.

"The f*ck?! You call that easy???"

"Stop complaining. We just need her to be able to defend herself in this zone. If things go well, we might be able to do something about this Nightmare."

The instant they heard that his could potentially resolve the Nightmare, their gazes sharpened.

"Where do we start?"

Miki glanced at Alice.

"Well my second zone Embryos are maxed out so I suppose the third zone?" Alice blinked.

Without hesitation, Miki hoisted Alice onto her shoulders and began to sprint with the others.

Since they didn’t have a Guide’s authority like Alice, they had to backtrack all the way to the previous zones.

Of course, they didn’t let this opportunity go to waste.

Handing Alice a cross bow, Miki had her tag every beast they saw on the way back.

A single shot would suffice to test if tagging them worked.

Alice had to admit, this was a rather... strange experience.

Not only was she being carried like a sack of loose potatoes, but there was nothing she could do the beasts around them.

Not even a single scratch.

Her Zone was picking up their presence and their attacks but her physical stats were far too low to react.

Therefore in this instance, she had to completely rely on the people around her for her own safety.

This sense of helplessness was a little different from her time in the prison.

Yet it was still unpleasant all the same.

With the beasts rounded up and Alice tagging as many of them as she could, Miki had her stand back while the rest of the squad, especially the two new arrivals, rained down large scale area of effect bombardments to kill everything.

Alice hugged her knees, chin resting lazily atop them as another distant explosion erupted.

"Do you have groups of people you summon for specific tasks?" She asked, voice absent of awe or excitement.

Seeing them destroy the wave like this made her way to move as well.

But she couldn’t.

"Naturally. It’s for efficiency. If everyone did whatever they wanted, we’ll never progress through this Nightmare." Miki folded her arm. "We have scouting units, boss killers, resource farmers, mappers and experimenters."

"Experimenters?" Alice blinked.

Scouting, boss killing and resource farming are all self explanatory. The two that Miki summoned must’ve specifically tuned their skills to kill large waves as fast as possible, as efficiently as possible.

But she wasn’t sure about the final group.

"Experimenters gather as many combinations as possibles. To figure out what synergises and what doesn’t. What is allowed and what isn’t. Take blood magic for example, there are certain combinations that should work in theory yet when put into practice, fail." Miki explained.

"Their responsibility is to find as many of this as possible so that our main fighters can choose the most efficient combination without wasting time or resources."

With their limited number of combatants, they have to be as careful as possible when it comes to selecting roles.

The most dangerous of the bunch would be the group responsible for mapping.

It is simultaneously the most dangerous yet at the same time, the most important.

They are the ones that have to explore as many paths as possible and bring the data back.

Scouters have similar roles but different objectives. Mappers are to find out about the terrain while scouters find information on the beasts.

This entire system was one that allowed everyone to contribute in order to resolve the Nightmare as soon as possible.

As for Miki’s role in all of this, she is part of the boss killing group.

Not because she wanted to be, but because she had to be.

She originally wanted to be part of the scouting group.

A commander who pushes her soldiers to die should have the resolve to do the same.

Hiding in the back, commanding others to die... Who would want to follow?

To rally soldiers, one must give them something to rally behind.

What Miki gave them to rally behind was not herself. But the idea of liberating Grand Cathia.

If one day, she becomes Signal Lost in this Nightmare, she knew others would take up her mantle.

But if they lost this drive from relying on heroes, how can she step onto the front line without worry?

When a fighter is resolved to die in a fight, that’s when they can exhibit their fullest potential.

"Once you’re around the same level as us, I’ll have the others form a proper group with you included. Scouters, mappers and boss killers. We’ll cover as much ground as we can and clear zone five." Miki explained.

Alice tapped her chin.

"Since I’m sharing this zone temporarily with you, I think I can summon people on my own too. Depending on the composition, do you think we’ll be able to go through the Nightmare faster?" Alice asked.

Miki furrowed her brows.

Four was the limit.

But if Alice was here... That rule could be broken. It was already strange that she was sharing this zone with her after all.

"I’m going to assume you’re talking about your friends. Can their stats keep up?" Miki frowned.

"Hmm... It’ll take a while. If they tag it as well, do you think they can level up in time?" Alice tapped her chin.

Miki creased her brows.

"Depends. You’re an anomaly, you can level up in this zone. I hope. But I’m not sure about the others. If you can, then yes, we can give it a try. Even if we don’t journey today, ideally we start progressing tomorrow."

Alice nodded her head.

"Once we get your level up to speed, I’ll summon the experiment group and we’ll test some of the interactions with your new ability." Miki exhaled slowly.

She didn’t want to get too ahead of herself. That’s how you trip and fall.

One step at the time.

Towards the goal of liberation.

###

A girl could be seen skipping through the fog covered streets of an unknown zone.

Sensing her presence, the beasts retreated deeper into the Nightmare.

She hummed a tune, spun around with soft laughter.

Then paused.

"Is... sister cheating? Well... Nyer allowed her to do this." She mumbled.

Sitting down on a bench, she kicked her legs back and forth, wondering what she should do about it.

Of course, regulating the rules are a must. You can work within them but exploiting certain factors were strictly off the table.

But these were exploits allowed by Nyer.

After all, Alice was only given the authority as a gift because Nyer allowed Karina to do so.

If he didn’t give the green light, Alice would still be stuck in her zone.

"If that’s allowed..."

The girl paused, her smile widening.

"Maybe I should go and say hi?"