Nightmare Realm Summoner-Chapter 193: Long time

Alex’s hair snapped around his eyes and ice gripped at his chest. Magical energy poured into him from the frigid water coiling up from the basin beneath him. It slithered across the palm of the massive marble hand he sat in to flow into his mouth and pour into his soul.

There was still dried blood on the top of his lip from where his nose had bled from his previous inadvertent activation of his Visualization.

The very air around him trembled from the pressure driving down into his shoulders. Creaks and groans echoed out from the statue beneath Alex, threatening to shatter it entirely. By all logic, the sheer force from the approaching star should have been enough to drive him straight down through the statue and into the basin waiting beneath.

But it didn’t.

Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Alex could have sworn that he could withstand the pressure marginally better than he had been able to the previous time. The weight on his shoulders was just a little bit less; the force constricting his lungs just a little bit weaker.

Alex extended his hand up toward the brightening star that was well on its way toward him. The rumble of its approach did nothing to strike any fear into his heart. The only thing he could feel was the ice of the magic shooting through his veins and the thump of his heart as adrenaline spiked it into overdrive.

It didn’t look like he was going to get the assistance of a giant marble hand to help him grab the star this time around. He was all on his own.

And that was just fine with him. He’d grabbed a star before. The Visualization had all but told him that this was entirely a mental game. Ripping the stars from the sky required nothing more than the complete and absolute belief that it could be done.

Alex had done it once.

He could do it again.

More and more pressure tried to crush Alex as the star approached him. But, the closer it got, the more he refused to back down. His fingers trembled as he fought to clench his hand into a fist around the rapidly approaching ball of light.

Even though his palm blotted the center of the star out, energy spilled from the sides of his hand and between his fingers. It was so bright that Alex could feel his skin prickling like he’d stood out in the desert in a particularly sunny day.

The harder he tried to close his hand, the harder it seemed to become.

Cracks started to form in the marble beneath Alex. Every breath came harder than the last. Even the heightened strength his body had been filled with from the magic he’d absorbed could only take him so far.

The star was getting closer. It would not be denied so easily.

Alex’s jaw clenched. He forced himself to push out the breath that had been sitting in his lungs and draw in another one. Panic tried to squeeze its way into his mind, but he crushed it out. There was still time.

This was not impossible. He had done it before… but this star was definitely stronger than the previous one. If the first star had come down with this much might, Alex was pretty sure that it would have killed him on the —

No. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I will not be distracted.

His heart thundered in his ears like a war drum. Alex couldn’t see anything but the brilliant glow of the star bearing down on him now. It spilled out around his hand, leaving only the shadow of his fingers in its wake.

The star was nearly upon him. Alex couldn’t see anything but the screaming white light, but he could feel the heavenly’s body approach as it ground closer and closer to his body. Even keeping his hand held aloft was practically an impossible task — and yet, Alex refused to let it fall.

Alex pushed back with everything he had. He drew the resources of his body to the absolute limit — and then he drew even harder. There would be more. There had to be. He would accept no other option.

And there was more. He didn’t know where it came from, and he didn’t care. Alex latched onto the scrap of power and drank it in like a starving man scarfing down a freshly cooked meal.

His fingers twitched.

The star grew closer.

“Come on!” Alex roared.

He wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or the star. Perhaps they were one and the same. Alex wasn’t sure. He didn’t care. Only a single desire remained within his mind. A single goal. It washed everything else away, the waves of a mighty ocean swallowing the ships of thought that dared sail upon it.

Grab the star.

Alex’s eyes involuntarily closed from the intensity of the light searing into him. But even through his eyelids, the sheer heat and light pouring out of the star assulted his vision just the same. There was no escaping it.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to see.

I just need to grab the star.

His fingers twitched again.

The ground shuddered beneath him. Cracking marble echoed through his ears. The star was practically crushing his soul from its presence alone. Somehow, the very ground beneath him was shattering while his own body had managed to hold itself in one piece. It was a minor miracle that he hadn’t already been flattened into a pancake.

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And then there was no more liberty for even thoughts. The star brought everything it had to bear down on Alex. Every last mote of breath was constricted from his lungs. Sharp marble dug into his backside as the ground cracked even further beneath him. His bones squeaked like a wrung dishcloth.

And through it all, his arm remained pointed to the heavens, palm out to the star, fingers splayed as if to grasp it like a baseball.

It was the one piece of protest he had left. The only fight he could muster. In the end, he hadn’t been able to simply visualize himself plucking the star from the sky. It was too much. Such a feat was the act of a god. And, no matter what Alex wanted himself to be able to believe, he couldn’t do it.

The star was there. He was here.

And so he’d had to let the star come to him.

A searing pain drove into his palm with an intensity the likes of which he’d never felt before. It came with the force of a thousand hammer blows straight to his outstretched limb.

Every bone in in his arm snapped and shattered nigh-instantly. There was only a moment to process the pain.

But that moment was enough.

For the briefest flicker of a second, Alex held a star in his hand.

And if he could grasp it…

His fingers clenched.

The bones in them were pulverized to little more than debris, the skin fried and charred. But this was his soul. It belonged to him. If he said that his hand was going to close, then it would close. And if a star had conveniently delivered itself to his grasp —

It was his.

Alex’s eyes opened. There was no more agonizing light. His arm wasn’t broken, despite the searing memory of the pain that was imprinted into his mind like a hot brand. It had been. He knew that for a fact. But the star’s influence had vanished along with it.

All that remained was Alex. He’d risen to his feet at some point and stood, arm outstretched to the sky, fingers clenched into a tight fist. He had caught the star. Tremors raced through his body as he fought to catch his breath, the thrill of the adrenaline coursing through him threatening to spill over into hysteria.

The fingers of his free hand were clenched so tightly that his nails had dug into the bed of his palm to the point where it bled. Amusingly enough, the only injury that he had retained from the ordeal.

Alex slowly unfurled the fingers of both hands. Nestled within his right palm was a glowing white mote. The moment his hand was fully open, the mote floated free to fall upon the upturned palm he stood on. It landed beside the first star Alex had caught, glistening alongside its fellow like two diamonds embedded into the marble.

Only then did Alex finally manage to take stock of his own situation. The feeling of denseness he’d gotten the previous time he’d activated his Visualization had magnified.

“Whoa,” Alex muttered. He turned a hand over, trying to figure out just what it was that had changed. “I feel… heavy.”

He cringed almost instantly afterward.

Glad nobody else was here for that. It sounds like I went to town in a burger joint, not got stronger.

Alex wiped the sweat and blood from his face. He cast a glance up at the starry sky that blinked innocently above, then turned and made his way over to the edge of the marble palm. There he paused, his eyes going wide.

I’m a hell of a lot higher than I remember being.

The stone hand he stood on had nearly doubled in size. It now dwarfed his basin completely, rising far above as if to shield it. But that wasn’t all. Details had appeared in the hand. Details so intricate that they may as well have been real.

Now that he was looking for it, he could practically make out the veins within the marble. There might have even been a print upon the pads of its fingers. The base of the statue had changed as well.

Dozens upon dozens of carved marble hands wound up the length of the arm he stood on. They stopped just below the wrist to open themselves like blooming flowers, each one reaching toward the sky above.

It was equal parts eerie and beautiful.

When I thought of a Mind Palace, this really isn’t what I saw myself building. But hey, I’ll take it. I think my Visualization just has a thing for hands. I won’t judge. They’re cool.

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But his Visualization had done more than that. One more glance over the edge of the palm revealed that the gate between two of the pillars had changed as well. It had lifted just slightly above the surface of the lake, and a small stairwell leading up to the stone door had appeared from under the water.

The designs upon the door itself had also grown more intricate. While it still only bore three lines, each of the lines had been carved in a flowing, wavelike pattern rather than a mere straight line.

And that wasn’t all. The lake was crystal clear, and Alex could see no more building materials below its waters.

For that matter, he couldn’t see any of them at all. A smile crawled over his lips. If there was absolutely nothing left to build with and nothing beneath the surface of the lake, then his Mind Palace had absorbed every single scrap of power that it could for the Initiate Stage.

Alex’s smile faltered as he realized that his basin was now completely empty. He’d gotten a huge amount of power from the fight with the region Boss. The fact that his soul had drained it entirely was ridiculous.

Just how much energy can my soul take? I mean, I’m glad I filled it to the brim, but holy shit. There’s no way most people are spending this much to advance their Mind Palaces. I could have definitely reached well into the Adept Stage with the amount of power I just spent.

But if I spent the power… doesn’t that mean I’ll be able to punch well above my weight class? It’s not like the magic was wasted. I’m just not barging ahead and leaving behind potential strength.

That was, of course, assuming he was actually getting stronger.

A strange urge gripped Alex. Before he knew what he was doing, he took several strides forward.

And then he leapt right off the edge of the palm and straight into the open air. The surface of the lake was easily twenty or thirty feet below him.

Whether it was his soul or not — Alex could not fly.

He dropped, the wind whipping against his hair as a delighted laugh peeled from his mouth. Something about the fall felt slower than normal. But, slower or not, he didn’t have all that far to fall.

Alex hit the lake feet-first with a thud. Ripples of water washed out from the impact.

An impact that he barely even felt. It was like he’d hopped a foot rather than twenty. A landing like that should have basically crippled him on the spot, even with the enhancements the System had given him.

This was new.

Oh, yeah. I’m definitely growing stronger… and my Visualization has to have something to do with whatever bent the magic the Gorgonaga sent at me. What else is it capable of?

That was something he’d have a whole lot of time to find out, and he planned to enjoy the hell out of the process. In the meantime, he was nowhere near done in his Mind Palace. Now that it was maxed out on capacity for the Initiate Stage, the rest of the energy he got would be going into advancing his level.

And it also meant one more thing.

Alex reached into his pocket and pulled the white Aspect Gem out.

This had been a long time coming.