It was now August.
In just a few days, the engagement ball is due.
Many things had happened in the last few months such as the Chain Breaker being fully fixed and operable now. Sunny and Nephis had helped take down the corrupted nightmare creature that had infested it, and as such, Sunny got the Undying Chain armor.
Caster had asked to take a look at it, so Caster could look at the weaves and potentially recreate the undying enchantment in the future.
Anyways, Caster left the Chain Breaker to Cassie. She'd be the one driving it most of the time, so her familiarizing herself with it would be helpful.
He had grinded for cores rigourously. Especially for graze merging he'd done.
Back then, the core graze was Welthe. And hence her aspect had evolved. It, of course, didn't get any attributes from Laylah's telekinetic abilities due to them being fairly different.
In Mordret's case, merging was unavailable because his aspect was already divine rank, it couldn't be evolved further.
***
Graze Name: Welthe
Graze Description: [A knight of bravery, courage and valor, fallen to the hands of the "Architect of ■■" after getting overwhelmed. The prideful knight now served the architect, unable to escape his impossible design.]
Rank: Ascended
Cores: [6/7]
Soul Sea: Inactive.
Status: Graze.
Attributes: [Will Cohesion], [Adaptive].
Abilities: [Debilitation], [Siphon], [Damage Relocation].
***
Caster had poured in all his cores into Welthe's graze. Because of that he was now a measly monster.
[Soul Shards: 1813/2000]
But Caster felt it was worth it.
'Just two hundred more shards to make Welthe into a true graze.'
The best time to gather these shards to make the grazes into true grazes would be when Caster's weak. Awakened and Ascended nightmare creatures are more common, so its more efficient.
Previously, Welthe's graze had three abilities. Drain, which drained someone of their strength. Strengthening, which allowed her to use the drained strength for herself. And Damage Transfer, which allowed her to transfer damage from herself to another through physical contact. It couldn't be used to heal others.
Now though, the graze's three abilities were Siphon, an evolved version of Drain and Strengthening. It allowed Caster to drain the strength of a group instead of just one person and put the drained strength into another group, or if he wanted, he could overload a person with the strength of many too. Making one almost invincible while fighting against many more enemies.
The second ability was Debilitation. It allowed Caster to debilitate someone's mind and senses. It was a simple ability, but if used well could be devastating in combat. Especially if it is used smartly to catch the enemy off guard. This ability didn't make the victim blind, just disoriented and unable utilize their brain properly. The effect is simple but significant.
The third ability, probably the best one out of the three, damage relocation.
It allowed Caster to relocated damage from anyone to anyone or anything. For example, if Caster breaks his finger, he could relocate that damage from his finger to the ground. The ground would shatter for maybe a few inches.
If significant damage is dealt to a saint and relocated to a mundane island, the island is likely to burst apart since the energy required to hurt a saint is more than enough to destroy small islands.
So not only could this be used to injure the enemies if physical contact is possible, it also allows for a form of healing. If that wasn't enough, it gave another offensive ability, albeit, weaker than Caster's other methods and way more situational to acitivate.
Nonetheless, Caster was simply relieved to have a decent healing ability.
In the most cumbersome situations, he'd at least have the capability to heal.
This wouldn't help against poisoning, decay and certain other types of damages, but it was way better than nothing.
***
The day of the ball.
Caster was initially supposed to enter normally, but he was told to have a presence. To leave a strong impression.
As such, he initially decided to arrive with his friends. But he went back on it. He wanted the Gold Reapers to enter the legacy circles. And this is the perfect time for that.
The main cohort is popular enough.
If there was someone who needed more exposer, it would be Gemma.
Caster, along with six other members of the gold reapers and Gemma decided to go together.
Caster got out of his house, dressed up in a black suit and saw a large PTV waiting outside.
One of the members of gold reaper's was driving, the rest were waiting inside.
After Caster got in it and sat in the front seat next to the driver, the PTV took off.
It was finally a moment of peace for him.
Caster was so focused on the work he had in the dream realm that he wasn't even returning to the waking realm for months at a time. His body was disoriented whenever he got out of it. Because he took so long to return.
Usually, he'd recover from that in just a few hours but, it still meant that staying in the dream realm for so long was unhealthy.
Now that he finally left the dream realm, he finally had a chance to rest.
'I'm getting engaged huh...'
Caster wasn't really talking to the other people in the PTV, he was strangely quiet and looked to be lost in thought.
But he kept getting called in the conversations.
"Sir, you tied the knot early huh? Way to go Sir!"
"Yeah, I wasn't expecting to see you get married. I thought you were the aromantic type of guy."
"What sort of impression do you have of me?"
Caster replied in a playful tone.
'I can get used to this...'
Caster's heart was wavering.
Wavering from his goal.
He simply wanted to rest.
But he knew he didn't have time. Fourth Wall was rapidly recovering. He had to do something. And he was anxious.
He wanted to retain his body, and mind. But fourth wall's recovery was rapid. In just these few months, Caster felt like it had recovered a decent bit.
Currently he had no way to stop or delay that from happening.
He had no way to fight its recovery. He had just barely started to learn weaving, he couldn't depend on that. Most he could do was heavily injure his soul to hurt Fourth Wall even more, to slightly delay its recovery. But that would leave Caster himself unable to do anything. And worst case scenario, he might just die.
It felt like a time bomb, that would go off in a set amount of time if he didn't solve complext calculus questions, but all he knew to do were basic arithmetics.
He had many anxious thoughts like this. Always brainstorming for a solution. But everytime he got to the same conclusion... that it was a hopeless situation. That he could do nothing but resign to the circumstances.
It made him terribly, terribly anxious. But he refused to give in so fast.
He was feeling a strong sense of melancholy but eventually, he calmed his mind down and stared outside thoughtlessly.
Noticing the trees, buildings, people go backwards, feeling the strong tempest on his face, looking at the bright sunlight landing into his eyes...
A moment of peace like this wasn't bad at all. In fact, it was what he needed the most right now.
But that peace didn't last.
His communicator suddenly let out a grating, echoing ringing sound. A second later, the sound repeated.
…And it wasn't only just him. Every person in the PTV was receiving the same notification.
Caster's chest grew cold.
He knew that sound, of course. Everyone in the world knew and dreaded it.
Looking down, he saw the familiar text appear on the screen of his communicator.
'No...'
The notification read:
EMERGENCY ALERT
EMERGENCY ALERT
GATE ACTIVITY DETECTED IN YOUR PROXIMITY
ETA: 201 SECONDS
EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY!
'A Gate… there is a Gate…'
"What do we do captain?"
There was technology the government used to detect the appearing Gates in advance, but it failed this time. Usually, people would receive a notification at least ten minutes, half an hour, sometimes even days before the dreaded event.
This gave most of them time to evacuate out of the impact zone, and also allowed the government forces to arrive before the flood of Nightmare Creatures broke free of the opening Gate and cut through the ranks of the nearby Awakened who tried to stall it.
'You're kidding me!?'
Two hundred seconds… that was nothing. Less than nothing. It was not nearly enough time for people to run, and not nearly enough for help to arrive. Such a small time window meant only one thing…
That unless something happened, there was going to be a massacre.
They were in a rather crowded part of the city. It was a residential area.
"Stop the PTV. We will fight."
As people jumped to their feet and ran away with panicked expressions, Caster sighed and pressed on the notification.
Immediately, a map opened up, showing him the location of where the Gate was going to appear, as well as optimal evacuation routes.
'Close…'
"Drive to the spot! Hurry."
Not paying a lot of attention to the chaos happening around him, Caster pressed on the symbol, and additional information appeared on the screen.
ATTENTION ALL AWAKENED
REQUEST IMMEDIATE ACTION
ATTENTION ALL AWAKENED
REQUEST IMMEDIATE...
Below that, several lines of text shimmered:
Gate Category: 2 (51% probability), 3 (35% probability), 4 (13% probability), HIGHER (undefined).
Strike Force ETA: 16 min, 14 sec.
'Thirteen minutes!'
A corner of Caster's mouth twitched, a resentful grimace appearing on his face.
The earliest any government force would be able to arrive at the Gate was in thirteen minutes after it had opened. Thirteen minutes… that might as well have been an eternity.
'That's too long. We won't be able to depend on the strike force.'
In just a few moments the PTV reached closer to the center of the map displaying the Gate's impact zone.
"Stop the car- PTV. We'll go on foot from here."
Due to Kieron's memories, he mistakenly called the PTV a car. Memories being mixed up isn't easy to deal with.
The awakened stopped the PTV and Caster got out of it.
"Anyone who doesn't wish to fight can leave. I won't force you."
Of course, none of them refused.
Caster had taken them out of hell. If anyone would be loyal, it would be these people.
Caster had appearances to put up. He couldn't just avoid this fight. Without control over the public, the future won't be so good.
It was a pragmatic decision to fight here. Not a sense of duty. Caster had already began changing. His sense of duty was dwindling.
He activated his Hourless Charm and his aspect, rushing over to the expected position of the gate. The other seven followed but were much slower than Caster.
A few seconds later and hundreds of meters away, an armored figure in black appeared out of the dusty road, the long sword Dusk Warden resting on its shoulder.
The Opposer of Miracles had arrived at the Nightmare Gate.