After staring at the box for a few minutes, as he tried to process the weirdness of the night, Mark finally opened the box to look at the weird blood cake within.
'Why did that small child tell me to eat this before I turned 16? . . .'
The experience of meeting the small child that seemed much mature than his appearance suggested was like a fever dream to Mark at this point. With the strange spongy blood cake in his hands, he could hear the weird coos of the mystery bird coming from the elder tree in the distance.
Mark shakes his head as the cooing pulls him out of his thoughts.
"No time like the present, I suppose, since I was going to eat this for the old lady anyway."
Without further hesitation, Mark pushed the strange blood cake into his mouth, but he did not feel it. He pulled his hand away to see if it was just a strange texture, but there was nothing in his hand any longer.
When he was done with the strange beast blood substance, he just shook his head in resignation, accepting that he had somehow managed to consume it without feeling like he actually ate it. At that point, the weird cooing from the mystery bird in the elder tree ceased, and the night became quiet and serene.
Mark began to feel drowsy, so he prepared himself for bed after eating a couple of pieces of beast jerky. As he lay down on the furs of his bed, he began to drift off to a colorful swirl that began to take over his vision.
His normal, void-like sleep state did not come this night, as vivid dreams began to take over his normally restful night as they broke through the colorful swirls.
In the elder tree, a young man that Mark would recognize as an older version of the child who told him to eat the beast blood cake substance was sitting on a large branch of the elder tree high up in the sky with a bird cage hanging next to him. The bird within the cage was a very strange-looking bird with different colored feathers that did not match, and they were dull and dark, giving the bird an ugly appearance.
The young man was gazing toward Mark's house as he fed the bird some bread, and when he noticed the energy shift that only he could see coming from Mark, he chuckled and muttered to himself.
"Seems like it has begun, what an interesting thing to happen in these mountains. . ."
After muttering to himself, he paused and thought about the events, then shrugged and pulled out a notebook and started writing down the events that occurred to lead up to this event. He then watched over Mark to take notes of the shift in the energy he was giving off due to the beast blood cake substance.
Meanwhile, Mark was drifting through seemingly meaningless dreams. Since this was his first time experiencing a dream, he just went along with the weird interactions he was having without thinking about them.
One moment, he was petting a goat that ended up catching on fire, so he grabbed a hammer to put out the fire, and while he was hitting the goat to extinguish the fire, a bear came along and ate the goat.
The dream then shifted, and Mark was sitting at a table with his hammer in his lap while he listened to the bear explain the intricacies of blacksmithing as it sat on the table across from him.
Mark nodded his head from time to time to let the bear know that he understood when suddenly the bear roared and took a large bite out of the table but then a river washed the table away and Mark had to grab onto a board that floated by and he was helped into the boat by a pirate.
The pirate shoved a mop into Mark's hands and pointed to the poopdeck, where Mark walked over and began mopping. When he was done cleaning up the deck, the bear dropped out of the crow's nest and destroyed the freshly mopped deck.
The pirate ran down a flight of stairs to where the bear had broken the floor, but before he could say anything, the bear ate him and dove off the gangplank.
Mark followed the bear and dove headfirst into the river, where he sank to the bottom quickly. The water was crystal clear, and he could see for several meters in any direction. At the bottom of the river was an entrance to a bright cave, and when he entered the shimmering entrance, he was walking down the path from his house to the smithy.
When Mark approached the smithy, he could hear the familiar ping of the hammer on steel.
He poked his head into the smithing area to see the giant bear working on the ruined project sword.
"This will take a couple of years of work, young human."
The bear spoke perfectly human language despite its snout, and Mark just went along with it.
"The sword is ruined. I'm not sure if I have the skill to fix it. You are welcome to try your hand, or paw."
The Bear just kept hammering at the sword for a while before it replied to Mark, giving him a look one might expect from a parent teaching their young child a fundamental truth of the world.
"This sword is not ruined, young human. You see how the cracks and colors come together as it is heated and hammered?"
The bear turned the sword over on the anvil to emphasize its point.
"This sword has experienced a clash of energy during an important point of the refinement process. At some point, you went beyond the simple creation of a mundane sword and began to refine it into a weapon of power."
Mark was confused, as he had never heard of refinement used in this way or what the bear meant by 'weapon of power'.
Seeing the confused look on Mark's face, the bear just shook its big head and resumed hammering the sword.
"From the look on your face, I can see how this poor weapon has gotten to this point. No worries, you simply need to realign the power that is already within it by slowly melding the energies together. This should be intuitive as you work on the weapon, since you were able to get to this point in the first place."
Mark thought back to his previous experience in crafting this weapon and then his repair process he had already been doing to it, and nodded his head with understanding.
Seeing that the young human was picking up what the bear was putting down, it let go of the sword and grabbed a knife.
"Now, young human. You must ask yourself if this sword is real or not."
The Bear then handed Mark the knife, and Mark looked at it for a while before approaching the sword on the anvil.
As Mark went to plunge the knife into what looked like a sword, Mark said, "Bitch, is this cake?"
And to answer his question, the knife went right into the sword, which turned out to be cake. He cut himself a piece of the tip and ate it, realizing that the bear was really a good baker.
As Mark turned to the bear, the giant animal was floating upward as if gravity had lost all meaning. It was twirling its arms and kicking its legs to try to right itself, which looked quite comical, and it left Mark with parting words.
"Remember what I said about the sword! . . ."
Then a giant seagull swooped in and ate the bear in one gulp.
Mark was left scratching his head at the absurdity, but he simply shrugged his shoulders and went back to eating his cake.
'. . .this is some delicious cake. . .'
. . .
Meanwhile, the young man in the elder tree was watching the energy pulses coming from Mark's house as he absentmindedly fed the strange bird he had caged up.
Suddenly, the pulses seemed to spread much further as they resonated with the bedrock of the mountain. This caused imperceptible tremors throughout the mountain that the village people were unable to perceive, but the young man in the elder tree could feel them just fine.
The unknown young man just thought to himself, 'Must have been blood from a bear. . . Unikuma for the horned ones, as the village calls them, if I remember correctly. . .', unknowing what was happening in Mark's dream itself.
He still had a relaxed posture as he lay on the branch of the elder tree he found most comfortable. That was until he felt a particularly strong pulse of energy coming from Mark's house.
The pulse was strong enough to make its way down into the valley, which the young man paid no mind to. Initially. Out of nowhere, his head suddenly snapped beyond he tree he was watching, out toward the edge of the mountain ledge.
Coming up to the sheer cliff face was a gigantic vampire moose. The biggest one he had seen in the valley. It stood over 20 meters from hoof to antler.
Seeing the approach of this beast, the young man jumped from the tree. He landed directly at the ledge where this part of the mountain dropped off, just in time to see the moose approach the ledge.
Knowing that the beast could hear him, he spoke to the monster.
"Elder Spirit Beast! This place is off limits to your kind, by declaration of the King of the Sentry Kingdom and under direct order of the Emperor of the Empire Sect! Speak now your purpose if you have attained beastial wisdom, or be killed by me for being a rampaging beast!"