The door slid open and Seraphine rushed to his side, red-rimmed eyes betraying hours of tears.
"You're awake…" she breathed, as if he might vanish again; then her frown melted into a radiant smile. "Thank the goddess…"
Ashen wanted to smile back, but pain immediately shut down that thought.
Seraphine didn't seem to mind his silence as she kept firing words.
"Ash, I won't be able to stay with you all the time since I still have classes, but the nurse said you'll be able to move a little after the second day. Don't worry, you'll bounce back in no time!"
Ashen almost wanted to believe her.
He had genuinely thought he'd be bedridden for half a year, even with all the mana jumbo-mumbo in play.
After what he had put his body through, he was only inches away from completely breaking.
Whoever was healing him… they deserved a damn raise.
"Hey there, missy..."
Braun's teasing voice snapped Seraphine out of her daze, making her jump to her feet.
"Mister Braun! Sorry! I forgot to check on you… Are you alright?" She shot him a sheepish smile before sticking out her tongue.
Braun shook his head, amused. "Nah, it's normal to care for your man first. As for me? Just a couple of days of rest, and I'll be good to go."
Seraphine's cheeks reddened slightly, but she didn't correct him. Instead, she averted her gaze, which landed involuntarily on Ashen's golden eyes.
"That's a relief…" she muttered, her voice quieter than before.
Ashen, in his current state, had no way to refute Braun's words. He could only watch as things unfolded.
Thankfully, he didn't have to endure Seraphine's antics for too long as she soon excused herself for her next class, leaving the room in silence.
"…"
Now that Braun had stopped talking, Ashen had nothing to do but replay past events in his mind.
It wasn't long before something very important resurfaced…something he had glossed over in all the chaos.
"Monsters flee, noses rejoice! My Sweetbane pouches don't just scare off beasts, they leave your pack smelling like sugared cedar. Last guy who bought some? Still alive to thank me!"
His anger spiked so hard he nearly threw himself out of bed.
'That goddamn scammer!'
Sweetbane? More like Monster Buffet Bags! He should have known… nothing that smelled like dessert ever ended well in the wild.
He had to get to the bottom of this. There was no way he was letting someone peddle death traps disguised as repellents, especially when he was the recipient.
But what Ashen really didn't understand was why. Who would even want to target them?
He didn't recall having any particular grudge with—
'…wait.'
Chris's resentful glare flashed through his mind.
'Could it be…?'
No matter how much he racked his brain, he couldn't come up with anyone else. Chris was the only guy they had a bad history with.
But why? What would he gain from this?
After a while, he gave up trying to think. Hunting for the culprit could wait… at least until he could speak without feeling like his mouth was about to fall off.
His thoughts then drifted to his status window.
With a simple mental command, it manifested before his eyes.
==============================
Path Skills:Trance (Entry+), Lucid Dreamweaving (Entry+)
Other Abilities:Spear Thrust (Entry+), Spear Slash (Entry+), Spear Parry (Entry+), Recall (Basic+)
==============================
His basic spear techniques were still stuck at Entry+. He hoped it wouldn't take too long before they broke into Basic.
His Path Skill, Lucid Dreamweaving, was steadily ranking up. Now that it was at Entry+, he had near-complete control over his dreams, within reason.
Lately, he'd been using it to train in his sleep. He had wanted to extend the ability to Seraphine, either for training or to give her some peaceful dreams, but every time he tried, something strange happened.
The will he left within the mana was surprisingly eroded by hers.
At first, he hadn't thought much of it, but after remembering what she had told him about what kind of dreams she's been having… the dots finally connected.
'I don't even know how she does that…'
Even if he could talk right now, he would've been too speechless to comment.
After a brief moment of mental facepalming, he set those thoughts aside. No point in dwelling on things he couldn't solve right now.
Instead, he focused on something more productive.
With that, he let sleep take him, the system's sweet voice whispering in his mind:
Lucid Dreamweaving activated.
He wasn't about to let an entire week go to waste.
He had to keep moving… a step deeper into his sin.
.
.
When he opened his eyes, the dreamscape that greeted him was neither the usual training ground his subconscious always conjured nor the blank void that sometimes replaced it.
No.
This was something else entirely.
Fffhhhww...
A battlefield. Or what was left of one.
The desolation stretched endlessly beneath a sky that churned with storm-tinted hues.
Silence reigned, thick and oppressive, as if the world itself had forgotten how to breathe.
Colossal corpses of giants lay half-buried in the earth, their skeletal remains jutting out like the broken spires of a ruined city.
Titanic entities, their flesh dull and cracked, slumped in eternal repose, fingers still locked around the hilts of petrified weapons.
Between them, countless smaller bodies… humanoid, monstrous, and everything in between lay scattered like discarded puppets with strings long severed.
Yet, the most disturbing thing was the black mist he sometimes glimpsed.
It slithered across the battlefield in twisting tendrils, devouring light, coiling around corpses as if whispering to them. Ashen could feel something lurking within it.
Something that had been there just before he looked…
But each time his gaze tried to settle, his subconscious wiped the image clean.
All that remained were ink-like stains on the earth, vague impressions of something that had once been but no longer was. A defense mechanism, perhaps, or simply a refusal to acknowledge whatever lay beyond that veil.
Ashen took a slow step forward.
And that's when he saw him.