In the basement of the house…
Merlin stood in front of the dreampod for a while, after thinking it over, it was finally time for him to make his entrance, and this time, he would take Sunny's legacy right off the scoreboard.
He pondered go a while, and finally decided that his looks would be too conspicuous, so he decided to tweak it a bit.
He changed his looks to one he had seen online in his past life.
The strongest hunter of the five seas.
Gherman Sparrow—
He was now similar to the image he saw on wikipedia, he summoned the cloak and changed its form to resemble a set of clothes he was familiar with, the one worn by Gojo Satoro during his final fight, except this time it was just all black.
He also summoned the Formless, and changed it to the gauntlet style.
He opened the pod and laid inside as it closed around him. A moment later, a calm mechanical voice sounded out.
"Enter Dreamscape?"
"Yes" "No"
He sighed, then concentrated on the "Yes"
The next moment, he found himself standing in a boundless, black void, all around him were countless stars that burned with ethereal light, an inconceivably complex weave of strings connecting them together.
It seemed just like the nightmare spell at first, but when he activated his spirit vision, it showed no signs of life like the nightmare spell, it was just a mere imitation.
"Challenger! Welcome to the Dreamscape." the voice sounded out again.
He sighed and prepared himself.
"Before proceeding further, please choose an alias."
He smiled and said the words out loud.
"Gherman Sparrow"
"Welcome, Gherman Sparrow, please, choose a dream of your liking." the voice said.
At that moment, several images appeared in front of him, they all contained depictions of different environments, although most looked like an arena of some sorts.
From his memory of the book, he immediately chose the one that Sunny once chose, the mechanical sound echoed in his ears again, the black void disappeared, and he was suddenly somewhere else.
"Challenger Gherman Sparrow has entered the Colosseum!"
He squinted his eyes due to the sudden influx of sunlight, and when it cleared, he was standing in what seemed similar to one of the seven wonders of his previous world, but there were obvious differences, in the sense that this one was actually a complete infrastructure, and not a relic.
The sand beneath his feet and everything else felt real to the touch, but when he activated spirit vision, it showed no response.
'Figures…'
At that moment, amidst the cheering of the spectators, a person walked up to him, wearing a bronze armor and holding a short sword.
The moment he stared at the person, he nearly choked out a stifled laugh, what he saw written above the person was.
"Son of Mongrel 13"
Victories: 43
Defeats: 104
At this point, he didn't know whether to cry or laugh for the sake of the unlucky lad.
The other guy who didn't take the hint tilted his head and asked.
"Gherman Sparrow? Looks like a newbie…"
He stared at his opponent and immediately challenged him.
An announcement rang out in the colosseum.
"Gherman Sparrow has challenged Son of Mongrel 13!"
"You've got guts…" the opponent smiled.
He smirked and replied.
"Son of Mongrel 13… Victories: 43, Defeats: 105"
"Huh?" His opponent looked confused, "my defeat is 104"
The moment his words landed, he immediately coughed up blood, his eyes widened as Merlin who was a few meters away, was now right in front of him, with his gauntlet hand impaling his chest.
"105" he repeated in the opponent's ear before removing the hand.
The mechanical voice sounded again.
"Gherman Sparrow has won!"
The body on the floor disappeared into specks of light, followed by the blood on his gauntlet. The cheers from the crowd grew wilder as he walked away.
A while later, he met his second challenger, this one was dressed like a knight, through and through, even his face was hidden behind a silver helmet, and in his hand was a broad sword.
"You won't happen to be holding Excalibur would you?" He joked.
"Save your words on the battlefield" a stern voice sounded from the helmet.
He shrugged and looked at the knight's information.
"Knight Dolph"
Victories: 97
Defeats: 14
"So are you going to challenge, or are you going to spit some line like 'I will not fight anyone weaker than myself'?" He smiled as he summoned his weapon.
Although the gauntlet was still in hand, he was summoning another weapon he had not used since he got it.
.
Memories: [Cloak of Mysteries], [Formless], [Fur Coat], [Poison bottle], [Stone Sword], [Sunlight Shard], [Messenger's Wings], [Chittin Armour], [Spectre Suit], [Dimension ring], [Chained Sickle], [Poison Blades]...
.
It was the Chained Sickle, the memory he got in his second nightmare, for a Supreme memory it was not very powerful.
Just like its description, it was a pair of sickles that were attached to each end of a long chain, its enchantments were rather simple too.
Each of the Sickle was detacheable, and could be thrown as far as the eye could see with incredible accuracy, and could also be called back from any distance within an instant.
The other was that the chain could stretch on endlessly for over a kilometer before coming to a halt.
As he summoned the memory, it appeared with each sickle in a hand, connected to a chain that wrapped around his waist.
The Knight stared at him for a moment then the mechanical voice announced.
"Knight Dolph has challenged Gherman Sparrow!"
As the words landed, Dolph immediately moved and reached Merlin in a heartbeat, his sword coming down in a slash, Merlin immediately raised the curved side of the sickle to block.
Clang!
The broadsword clashed against the sickle, but the seemingly fragile sickle didn't give way.
Merlin's foot shot out, aiming for a kick to the torso, but Dolph was prepared and took a few steps back, putting some distance between them.
Merlin didn't let Dolph rest, he immediately used the momentum from his kick to throw the sickle in his right hand with the chain still attached to it.
Dolph deflected the sickle, but Merlin held it by the chain and redirected it mid air like a whip while simultaneously closing the distance between them.
Dolph sensing the incoming attack raised his sword to block, but Merlin had already reached his front, he used the inward curve of the other sickle to hook the sword in place as the flying one approached.
Knight Dolph immediately ducked to avoid the projectile, but the moment he did, Merlin's knee connected with his face, causing him to stagger back.
Merlin didn't give him a chance to recover, he dashed forward and slashed with the claws of his gauntlet, the slash accurately pierced Dolph's neck as the latter bled out and fell to the ground.
"Gherman Sparrow has won!"
The voice announced as the body and blood disappeared.
From the two fights, he had noticed something, he couldn't see their Spirit Body Threads, he attributed it to the fact that although it was his ability, the only reason it worked was because the opponent had a soul to take control of. In this giant illusion, only the mind of the participant was present, so the soul was out of the equation.
He sighed helplessly, in the first place, he wasn't even planning on using the ability here, he had another reason for participating in the dreamscape.
Just like Sunny did to hone his shadow dance, he was doing so to record as many abilities as they could offer.
Honestly, that was the reason he didn't just oneshot Dolph from earlier, he wanted to see some cool ability or something like that, but unfortunately, he wasn't so lucky.
Ever since he stepped into the colosseum, his Scribe ability has been active, the reason the illusory book wasn't floating beside him was because he simply deactivated that effect.
In reality, the illusory book was simply for show and could be hidden at will, if it couldn't then everyone who fought a mid-sequence beyonder of the Door pathway would be aware of when they were about to use their Scribe ability.
Right now, as long as he wanted to record anything, all he needed was a thought, then he would achieve the desired result.
He turned around, as he dismissed the memory, waiting for the next opponent to arrive.
…
"Gherman Sparrow has won!"
The cheers of the crowd echoed in his ear as he stared at the disappearing opponent. His status currently read.
"Gherman Sparrow"
Victories: 18
Defeats: 0
He had ended 16 more participants in his time here, and unluckily, only 5 of them settled to use their ability, out of the 5, 2 of them were useless abilities, one made the opponent focus on him, much like a taunt skill, it had no effect on him since he was currently wearing the cloak, and he didn't need the ability even in the slightest, his life was already troublesome enough, the taunt skill would just make it worse.
The second was a skill that made the opponent lose their balance, although it seemed like a useful skill, it was useless to him, after all he had the Tumble ability in his Trickaster's stash, and from what he saw, his own was a cut above whatever the poor guy hoped to achieve.
As for the useful ones, one had the ability to stiffen the body of the target for a while, depending on the strength of the other party, for him, he was frozen for a second.
That ability had almost cost him a match, but with Cuthul's glove on hand, he was trading not being able to move for not being able to think, and he was able to Record the ability a total of 6 times until the opponent realised he wasn't going to win by relying on that ability, so he started fighting close combat, and he instantly ended the now useless resource.
The second had the ability to cause quick sand, although it wasn't a really powerful ability, Merlin still recorded a fair amount of it.
The last could temporarily harden air resistance and use it for defense, although the defense was weak, it slowed down the attack of anyone for a fraction, helping to avoid or counter in different situations.
He was happy with the three he managed to get, the remaining participants he fought were all stingy freaks in his eyes.
He caught sight of another challenger.
"Mongrel#135"
Victories: 13
Defeats: 30
He sighed and immediately challenged the person, not for the ability, it's just the name that had a very dire effect on his mental state.
"Gherman Sparrow has challenged Mongrel#135!"
"Huh? Who are you?" The opponent asked.
He didn't answer, he just pointed one finger at him.
Bang!
An air bullet immediately struck and the poor opponent's head bursted open like a watermelon as the voice sounded.
"Gherman Sparrow has won!"
He turned his eyes away and sighed.
"That's enough dreamscape for me, anymore and I'll be mentally scarred"
Just before he commanded the dreamscape to eject him, he immediately heard the mechanical voice again.
"Dringer has challenged Gherman Sparrow!"
He turned around in surprise, whoever challenged him hadn't even shown their face. He looked around and caught sight of a lady in a gray armour with her head covered in a helmet with only her long black hair visible.
"Dringer"
Victories: 125
Defeats: 12
He tilted his head in confusion, but she spoke.
"I saw the move you used just now… that's an interesting ability"
"I'm guessing you didn't come here to die by the ability, did you?" he asked.
"No… although you have only 19 victories, I can see you have skill" she spoke slowly.
He sighed and offered a polite smile as he said.
"Can you please get to the point so we can end this fight?"
"How about a deal… if you manage a minute in a fight with me, I'll forfeit, and if not, you'll accept my invitation" She said softly.
"An invitation? To what?" He asked, confused.
"If you fail to last that long, I'll naturally tell you" She smiled through her visor.
Merlin's eyes twitched slightly, he wanted nothing to do with this cryptic looking lady, sure he was interested in the invitation, but it came at the cost of his pride, he solemnly swore that he would beat her ass, gender equality and all that.
"If you defeat me, how will you be sure I'll even get your invitation? I might as well just not show up again" he asked curiously.
"You don't have to worry about that, I have my ways" She said softly.
"Alright… one minute, I accept" he nodded and summoned the Chained Sickle.
Dringer summoned a bow and arrow and got into position, a few meters away from him.
"Well then… let the match begin"